Do presidential campaign events influence how people vote? Do campaign events impact polling margins? If not, why would presidential candidates and their campaign teams hold hundreds of campaign events in the fall leading up to Election Day? Political science research about the effect of presidential campaign events on election phenomena is mixed. This study examines the relationship between campaign events and average polling margins, at the state level, and vote margins, at the county level, in the 2024 presidential election. This study finds: (1) support for Hypothesis 1 that in a close race, as reflected in the polls, candidates work harder via campaign events in competitive states with a relatively high number of electoral votes; (2) that with respect to Hypothesis 2, the results did not find clear support that within battleground states, candidates hold campaign events where average polling margins are close. Instead, the study finds that for a few states, specifically Michigan, Wisconsin, and perhaps Pennsylvania, there is a moderate to weak correlation that there are fewer campaign events when the margin is larger. However, when the individual battleground state regressions were performed, generally in most states, there was no statistically significant relationship between polling margins and the number of campaign events in the week before the poll or the week following the poll, with few exceptions. With respect to Hypothesis 3, the study did not find clear support that the number of campaign events in a given county had a positive affect on vote margin at the county level. Instead, the regression results may have been affected by selection bias or the tight one-week time frame applied to measure the data.

We are in the midst of a boy crisis. Statistics and cultural observations indicate that there are a myriad of problems in health, education, the workforce, etc., which are having a disproportionate effect on men. At the heart of the boy crisis is a loss of purpose, as men no longer have a clear social role, drawn from their identity as soldier, leader, and sole breadwinner. To make sense of this cultural moment, I reach back to Plato, who lived in the midst of a boy crisis in the fifth century B.C. Athens. Through philosophy, Plato clarified the concept of masculinity and the virtue of courage, rooted in truth and goodness. I close-read Plato's Republic, defending his definition of courage as the act of preserving through everything the beliefs that the lawgiver declared ought to be feared through the process of education. I offer a philosophical response to the boy crisis and call for a cultural consensus and clear societal standards by which boys can find and preserve their sense of purpose. Without courage well-conceived and well-expressed, both individuals and society suffer. I present case studies from in-depth field interviews I conducted with members of Courage International, a Catholic ministry that works with those experiencing same-sex attraction. Through these case studies, I document the unique experiences of two Courage members and a priest working as the organization’s associate director to illuminate Plato's conception of courage, masculinity, and the common good at work in the lives of contemporary American men.

A FICTIONAL NATION: DYSTOPIAN LITERATURE AND THE REVERSAL OF AMERICAN PROGRESS UNDER TRUMP This thesis argues that under Trump’s administration, America begins to reflect the political dystopias imagined in the 20th century, signaling a reversal in the democratic progress of the 21st century. The central research questions guiding this thesis are as follows: • What historical role has storytelling played in shaping political discourse and public consciousness? • How does dystopian literature reflect and critique the political conditions and anxieties of the era in which it was written? • In what ways does the political climate under the Trump administration parallel the dystopian themes articulated in 20th-century fiction? This thesis employs a mixed-methods approach to address these research questions. The qualitative component consists of a close textual analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which serves as the primary lens for interpreting contemporary parallels. Where relevant, it will also incorporate Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 as a supporting microlens to broaden the comparative framework. These texts are selected for their canonical status in the totalitarian-dystopian genre and their thematic resonance with current socio-political conditions. The quantitative component involves constructing a longitudinal dataset of dystopian novels published across the 20th and 21st centuries, cross-referenced with major political events in the United States. This dataset will help identify patterns in the rise of dystopian literature during political upheaval, democratic backsliding, or heightened civil unrest. Together, these methods allow for interpretive depth and broader contextualization of dystopian literature’s political function.

The primary research question driving this analysis is whether macro-level findings established in the global aggregate survive when applied to a region, like the Caribbean, with fundamentally different structural conditions. Specifically, this thesis hypothesizes that the ever-present gravity of US influence in the Caribbean moderates the impacts of Chinese economic statecraft, causing the global consensus on Chinese leverage to either fail or significantly alter. To test this, the analysis replicates four existing studies on the impact of Chinese influence, reanalyzing their regression results with a dataset localized to the Caribbean. The empirical findings of this replication exercise validate this regional divergence, revealing a landscape where the global assumptions either completely reverse direction or are heavily amplified by US proximity. Ultimately, this implies that researchers and policymakers cannot rely on global averages to understand how Chinese aid impacts regions so geographically and historically tied to the United States.

This paper investigates the extent to which U.S. foreign policy outcomes align more closely with the preferences of older Americans than younger Americans. While existing research on substantive representation (the congruence between policy preferences and policy outcomes) has demonstrated that inequality in policy responsiveness exists across income, race, and gender, age has rarely been tested using a variant of the opinion-policy congruence framework which these empirical studies have utilized. Beyond applying age as the demographic variable of interest, this study applies the framework to four major domains of foreign policy: military interventionism, climate change, trade, and immigration. Specifically, it compares age-disaggregated public opinion data on major flashpoint moments in each of these foreign policy domains with subsequent policy outcomes. The findings of this study did not support the existence of a universal age-based representation gap in U.S. foreign policy. For instance, there is little consistent evidence of a generational gap in military use of force policy and trade policy. For these reasons, in these particular domains, it seems that policy outcomes appear less connected to age-based differences. Immigration policy similarly delivers mixed results, with substantial divergence between younger and older preferences, but no consistent pattern of unequal representation disproportionately benefitting the opinions of the older cohort over younger citizens. By contrast, climate policy provides the strongest evidence of an age-based substantive representation gap. Younger generations consistently express greater support for more aggressive policy action to tackle global climate change, yet policy outcomes are often less ambitious than the preferences of younger Americans. These results therefore suggest that age-based differences in representation only emerge when generational preferences diverge clearly and outcomes disproportionately benefit the views of one age cohort over the other. Additionally, the study’s findings more broadly elucidate that foreign policy responsiveness cannot be understood by treating the public as a unified actor, and that instead, intra-public variation in preference exists across different demographic cleavages. Altogether, by introducing age into the study of substantive representation, this paper contributes to existing theories of democratic responsiveness by highlighting the conditions under which generational inequalities in alignment of foreign policymaking are most likely to arise.

This thesis analyzes the role, or lack thereof the United Nations played during the Rwandan Genocide. Examining the consequences of flawed information processing. Particularly, how mishandling of information, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and cognitive biases influenced decision-making processes, ultimately contributing to delayed and inadequate interventions. By evaluating primary sources, official reports, and scholarly analyses, I was able to identify critical failures in intelligence gathering, risk assessment, and crisis response by the United Nations. The findings bring to light systemic weaknesses in international institutions and ways information processing mechanisms were improved to prevent future humanitarian crises from occurring again.

Military coups d’état are often seen as detrimental to democracy, but most coups occur in nondemocratic countries. Consequently, a number of scholars have suggested that coups can play a pivotal role in democratization, but others have pointed to heterogeneous effects of coups d’état on democratization. In this thesis, I use linear-regression models with country- and year-fixed effects along with two comparative case studies to test the relationship between various conditions and post-coup democratization. I find that a country’s having recently been a democracy, the presence of protests during the coup, and a country’s having recently experienced another successful coup have positive correlations with post-coup democratization as compared with coups that occur in the absence of those conditions, although not necessarily as compared with the absence of a coup altogether. I also suggest that coups led by officers with ideological goals will be less likely to lead to democracy.

This thesis investigates how citizens in democratically backsliding European Union (EU) member states shift their trust toward the EU as domestic governance deteriorates and whether the basis of that trust differs from patterns in non-backsliding member states. Using fourteen waves of Standard Eurobarometer data from 2008 to 2021, findings show that within countries experiencing democratic decline, citizens who are dissatisfied with the national governments how elevated trust in the EU specifically through procedural legitimacy evaluations (the perception that EU decision-making is fair, inclusive, and accountable), while evaluations of EU output legitimacy (perception based on the performance of the EU) remain comparatively weaker and less consistent. Cross-national differences between backsliding and stable member states are not strongly confirmed, which suggests that the compensatory dynamic is primarily a within-country response to democratic backsliding over time rather than a categorical difference between member states.

How do institutions at the state level, and within political parties’ function to gatekeep political power and suppress political ambition? To answer this question, we combined two studied that give us a deeper understanding of how institutions shape ballot access and how that effects candidates. The first study was comprised from data obtained from all 50 states and shows us a visual picture of ballot access across the entire country. The second study scoped deeply into New Jersey's institutions and process on the hyper local level with original research in the form of field work that spanned over two years. We found that all 50 states impose a significant barrier to run for office for low socioeconomic candidates. These obstacles are evident when the numbers are listed and personal experience explains the complexity of the barriers. This research contributed to the broader questions within political science that ask about candidate participation and the reasons for the composition of our government officials. My study adds to the lingering question on why most house members or politicians in America are wealthy.

Since 2018, when the Murphy V . NCAA legalized sports betting in the United States, public opinion towards the sports betting industry has dropped steadily despite increased participation rates. This thesis investigates the potential drivers in public opinion to determine what is responsible for this paradox. The two competing driving forces are: social and economic harms caused by legalized sports betting and integrity concerns about the amount of sports betting scandals that have occurred since legalization. After combining existing literature and public opinion data about sports betting, the integrity concern theory emerges as the driving force behind this downward shift in public opinion. Some of these high profile sports scandals are amplified by the media coverage, causing more Americans to change their opinions about sports betting. While there was an abundance of evidence documenting specific social harms that emerge from sports betting, social harms likely will not produce political mobilization or a change in opinion because they are internalized by the affected individual. Overall, both theories hold some weight but integrity concerns are the driving force behind this major drop off in public opinion about the sports betting industry.

California has passed a substantial number of housing reforms intended to increase residential development, many of which focus on expanding allowable density. Yet housing production has remained persistently below what is needed. This thesis examines whether changes in maximum allowable density are actually associated with meaningful changes in housing production and prices across California jurisdictions over time. Using the National Longitudinal Land Use Survey, this paper employs a first-difference design to analyze California jurisdictions observed in 1994, 2003, and 2019. The findings suggest that increases in maximum allowable density are associated with greater housing production, especially multifamily housing, but that these effects are modest and do not consistently translate into lower housing prices. Interviews with housing providers suggest that these modest estimates reflect the broader regulatory environment where discretionary approvals, environmental review, fees, and layered policy requirements continue to constrain housing development even when formal density limits are loosened. This thesis argues that density reform is an important part of expanding housing supply, but that California’s housing shortage cannot be meaningfully addressed unless the state is willing to confront policy tradeoffs and reduce the broader set of regulatory burdens that continue to suppress housing production.

How do state-level political structures, party affiliations, and committee memberships shape oil and gas lobbying and policy outcomes? While federal lobbying has been widely studied, state-level dynamics remain underexplored despite its critical role in energy regulation. This paper hypothesizes that oil and gas lobbying strategies vary across state legislatures, dependent on party affiliation, committee memberships, and legislative tenure. Moreover, this thesis suggests that higher campaign contributions correlate with industry-friendly votes with energy committee members receiving higher contributions. Using a comparative case study of Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and Michigan, this study analyzes campaign contributions, legislative votes, and policy outcomes. Findings show that party affiliation is the strongest predictor of voting behavior, with Republicans consistently favoring industry policies. Contributions correlate with support, but outliers highlight limits to lobbying influence. Additionally, energy committee members receive substantially more funding indicating strategic lobbying efforts, while the impact of tenure varies depending on state political ideology.

Carl Schmitt’s work on sovereignty and decisionism has been immensely influential in the world of political theory and jurisprudence. However, surprisingly little work has been done putting Schmitt in dialogue with jurists from the Oxford analytic tradition, the dominant tradition in Anglo-American legal philosophy. This thesis undertakes such an attempt. Three chapters examine regime transition, judicial discretion, and legal normativism under a decisionist lens. It is the ultimate opinion of this thesis that the aforementioned important questions in jurisprudence are more amply resolved through the dialectical synthesis of the analytic tradition and Schmitt’s decisionism.

Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, scholars have debated the growing cooperation between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea that some have dubbed the “Axis of Upheaval.” Many observers have argued that these countries do not share an ideology and are solely united by shared animosity towards the United States. This study challenges these observations and demonstrates the existence of a shared ideology between the Axis of Upheaval consisting of support for multipolarity, anti-imperialism, and viewing the world through a civilizational lens. Using a mixed method approach, this study conducts a quantitative analysis of speeches by the leaders of the Axis of Upheaval, namely Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Ali Khamenei of Iran, and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. It also conducts case studies of state-controlled media coverage across the Axis of conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The results demonstrated consistent rhetoric and emphasis on ideologies of multipolarity, anti-imperialism, and civilizationism. The study further revealed that state-controlled media in China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea interpret global events the same way, further suggesting the existence of ideologically driven narratives. Meanwhile, a comparative analysis with speeches by former U.S. President Joe Biden and American mainstream media reveals ideological division between the United States and the Axis of Upheaval. These findings challenge observations that the Axis of Upheaval is purely bound by opposition to the United States and not ideology. These findings also challenge the assertion that the conflict between the United States and countries like China and Russia is not ideological