Politics, 1927-2024

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.

Foreign policy is not made in a vacuum. It is shaped—sometimes subtly, sometimes fundamentally—by the identity of those who wield power. This thesis explores how one of the most iconic figures in American history made sense of international conflict through the lens of a dualistic identity. Born into a family of privilege, yet shaped by a heritage of exclusion, John F. Kennedy carried with him the dual weight of Irish Catholicism and American exceptionalism. At the height of the Cold War, he governed not from a detached realist position, but through a worldview molded by moral conviction, contradiction, and lived experience. This study does not argue that identity alone drove policy, but that in moments of ambiguity—where no clear answer prevailed—identity revealed itself in different ways. Using an original framework that categorizes identity’s role as a policy driver, constraint, and rhetorical tool, the paper offers a new lens for understanding how personal identity can interact with the strategic imperatives of international leadership. It asks: How did a president defined by his Irish Catholic identity interpret and respond to the challenges of Cold War diplomacy?

Challenging common understandings of migration as a purely individual act, migrant caravans have emerged as strategies of collective migration through Mexico in response to the country’s increased interior immigration enforcement and precarious transit conditions. This thesis uses comparative case studies of caravans between April 2017 and April 2024 to examine variations in caravan outcomes, assessing how shifting conditions within Mexico’s immigration environment have either facilitated or impeded their journeys to the U.S. border. This thesis argues that the extent to which caravan agency is facilitated depends on the interactions between caravans, federal and state responses, and the degree of civil society support available. Over time, continued pressure to align with U.S. immigration interests, and diminishing facilitation across all levels of government and civil society have led to caravans’ diminishing success. By applying collective action theories to immigration studies, this thesis ultimately contributes to an understanding of migration as a dynamic process whose outcomes are a result of the interactions between structure and agency; it emphasizes the violence that immigration enforcement creates.

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.

This thesis interrogates the exclusionary dimensions of the American Dream by centering the voices, struggles, and political agency of undocumented migrants in the United States. Drawing from political theory, legal studies, and ethnographic research, it challenges meritocratic and citizenship-based narratives that define belonging, success, and civic participation. The work examines how undocumented communities redefine the Dream through acts of resistance, digital activism, and storytelling, reimagining it as a collective pursuit grounded in dignity, inclusion, and justice. In doing so, the thesis illuminates how the American Dream, often wielded as a tool of exclusion, can be reclaimed by those historically denied access to it.

What's a governor to do? Faced with crises that seem insurmountable, state leaders often turn to symbolic gestures rather than substantive solutions. This thesis probes that question by examining how governors manage unavoidable, high-salience, and structurally unsolvable issues—ranging from California's entrenched homelessness crisis to policy impasses in Texas and Florida. Employing a novel theoretical framework based on California that weaves together episodic framing, attribution, constraint framing, and agenda-setting theories, the study reveals how these executives use high-profile, symbolic actions to reassign blame, protect their political capital, and subtly shift public perceptions of accountability. Through a qualitative analysis of executive orders and media narratives, paired with a quantitative survey experiment conducted in California’s largest cities, the research demonstrates that while such measures elevate the public salience of urgent issues, they often obscure the deeper, systemic challenges at play. Ultimately, the thesis highlights the strategy behind governors’ responses to crises that defy easy solutions—offering fresh insights into the art of symbolic governance in modern American politics.

Abstract Over the past decade, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides online platforms immunity for certain types of user-generated content, has come under increasing scrutiny. While both proponents and opponents of Section 230 acknowledge that it was instrumental in allowing for the creation of the modern internet, critics of the law as it stands today raise concerns relating to politically biased moderation, centralization of platforms, algorithmic filter bubbles, and other democracy-related issues. Consequently, numerous proposals for the amendment or abolition of Section 230 have been introduced since its passage. In this thesis, we introduce a novel approach to liability protections for social media platforms which better achieves the speech-protection and innovation goods that Section 230 was originally meant to achieve, while also achieving additional benefits relating to democratic governance and digital rights. We begin by outlining some general normative considerations for the regulation of speech on the internet, considering what ends freedom of speech online is oriented towards, and normative difficulties that emerge as a result of private platforms controlling the digital public square. We then outline the current American legal framework for content moderation on social media landscape, and compare it to the frameworks for intermediary liability in other democratic jurisdictions. We consider and reject several existing proposals for the abolition or amendment of Section 230, before introducing the framework of goods achieved by liability protection in several other areas of law. Finally, we propose the approach of tying Section 230 protections to platform federation, and consider several possible challenges to this approach, along with possible resolutions to these challenges.

This thesis investigates why some contentious episodes, including social movements and revolutions, approach or achieve their stated goals, while others fall short. This paper lends particular attention to organizational structure, regime type, and other contextual variables in how they shape the outcomes of contention. Drawing on NAVCO 2.1 for international data on campaigns seeking significant political change from 1945 to 2013, and SCAD for data on Central American and Caribbean contentious events from 1990 to 2017, the research draws on normative lenses to justify empirical analysis of this question. The statistical tests provide strong evidence that structurelessness has a negative relationship with the progression of campaigns and increases the likelihood of government repression of individual events. By contrast, horizontally organized campaigns tend to be associated with higher participation levels, which in turn enhance progress toward stated goals. Violent tactics generally correlate with poorer short-term outcomes, while US backing and relatively democratic regime type correlate with stronger short-term outcomes. Surprisingly, government surveillance of social media shows some evidence of association with greater campaign progress.

This thesis investigates Japan’s contemporary immigration policies and exclusionary practices. By situating Japan’s approach within broader political theories of nationalism and immigration, the study explores how their state policy is shaped by an enduring narrative of national identity that resists multicultural integration. Drawing on both historical context and present-day policy analysis, this research develops a framework from literature on nationalism and immigration theories to evaluate Japan’s restrictive immigration policies.

The rising prevalence of far-right rhetoric on mainstream social media sites poses an ever-increasing danger towards American society. This thesis explores one potential cause of that mainstreaming, that being the use of memetic iconography by both the public and political elites. Through an in-depth content analysis of one of the most prevalent memes used by the far-right today, the wojak, as well as a quantitative and qualitative analysis measuring the engagement surrounding tweets of several political elites, I show that a) memetic iconography is an integral part of the mainstreaming of far-right rhetoric due to its ability to normalize such content and b) political elites use memetic iconography to signal support to those with silent far-right preferences, emboldening them to express their views on mainstream social media sites. These findings have implications for theories on political persuasion, radicalization, political normalization, and network amplification.

As support for marijuana legalization rapidly spreads across the United States, and individual states eagerly adopt recreational use policies, measures to expunge the records of past cannabis offenses remain stagnant. Existing research has thoroughly documented the economic benefits and growing public support for recreational marijuana legalization (RML), yet far less attention has been paid to the lack of expungement protocols and why expungement remains so controversial. This thesis argues that while legalization primarily boosts a profit-driven and largely white-owned industry, automatic expungement targets the deeply racialized harms primarily inflicted on Black communities through decades of disproportionate arrests and convictions. To test this argument, and to investigate how individuals’ race and political identities determine support for marijuana legalization and automatic expungement, I conducted a national survey experiment of 1,500 white and 1,000 Black adults. Participants were randomly assigned to policy prompts emphasizing legalization alone, legalization with economic/tax benefits, or legalization coupled with expungement. Alongside demographic and partisan measures, the survey included scales of racial resentment among white respondents and politicized racial identity among Black respondents. By analyzing these results within the broader history of racially-skewed drug enforcement, the study illuminates the factors that reinforce or undermine expungement as a truly restorative remedy. While overall support for RML remains robust, subsetting the sample ultimately reveals more stark racial and ideological divides: conservatives are notably more opposed, especially to expungement, and racial attitudes, specifically, high politicized racial identity among Black respondents and high racial resentment among white respondents, drive support or opposition for both legalization and automatic expungement, underscoring the extreme racialization embedded in this thesis’s theory.

This paper investigates the divergent energy transition pathways of Southeast Asian nations, with a deep focus on two nations in particular, Cambodia and Indonesia, in order to explore how structural factors, governance, and foreign investment shape national responses to climate change. The two nations have also taken very different approaches to the adoption of renewable energy, even though they are both exposed to international climate commitments and Chinese infrastructure funding under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Cambodia has quickly expanded its capacity for renewable energy, especially in solar and hydro power, by utilizing Chinese investment, international partnerships, and the absence of legacy fossil fuel industries to build a green energy system from the ground up, while Indonesia continues to prioritize coal because of its well-established coal industry, strong lobbying groups, and the complexity of its geography as an archipelago, which creates major infrastructure barriers to the integration of clean energy. Drawing on policy reports, energy data from years between 2000–2023, and case studies on foreign direct investment (also known as FDI), this paper argues that economic development alone does not determine a country's energy trajectory. Instead, legacy industries, governance capacity, and geographic realities critically mediate the impact of foreign capital and climate frameworks like the Paris Agreement. Additionally, my analysis will shed light on how Cambodia’s institutional flexibility and weak fossil fuel incumbency allowed room for rapid green transition, while Indonesia’s deep-rooted coal legacy industry sector and regulatory stagnation have prevented pro-green energy reforms. I also aim to include policy recommendations emphasizing transition strategies, regional cooperation, and targeted green finance which are all imperative for Southeast Asia’s sustainable future.

This paper aims to analyze China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the investments it has made into several key countries. The countries that will be used as a case study for this research paper are Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. These countries were selected as key pieces to China’s Belt and Road Initiative’s success. This research paper aims to show how connected China is to these countries' economies and the massive investments China has made. Ultimately, the main focus is on how China uses the economy's dependence and leverages the massive investment as political leverage. The research surrounding this primarily claims that China hasn’t been successful in gaining political leverage through investments from the Belt and Road Initiative. Although this is true in some instances, most of the research has been on European countries. This paper will show that certain qualities, such as economic dependency and relationships with the United States, determine if China can gain political leverage. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all meet specific criteria for China to gain political leverage. To see if political leverage is achieved in these countries, UN voting data will be analyzed between the countries and China. This will encompass years before and after the investment from China. Then, all the data will be taken and compiled into a graph showing whether or not UN voting alignment increases after the investment. This will indicate whether or not China has gained political influence, as the more aligned the country is with China on political issues, the more influence they have. In addition to this, there will be a qualitative study of each of the countries, as UN voting alone can’t give the full influence China has.

This thesis aims to explain what normative obligations obtain when the government- in-exile representing an oppressed minority seeks international recognition. When recognition as a government is sought by an entity lacking authoritative control over a region and its residents, it is by no means clear how we ought to discern whether legitimacy should (or even can) be awarded or withheld, what form that "legitimacy" would take, and who or what actor is in a position to be able — or obligated — to do the awarding. This paper will review several politically and morally significant aspects of exile governments' claims to recognition, as well as the corresponding considerations for peer governments upon whom these claims are made.

Particular attention will be paid to the exile governments whose claims concern Tibet, East Turkistan, and Taiwan. These three organizations' origins, assertions, rights, and obligations represent with considerable breadth the diversity of forms and aims which modern exile governments have adopted, each of which deserves more complete consideration than it has so far received in the literature on exile politics. Far from limiting the conclusions of this analysis to a Chinese context, I argue that these examples help to clarify morally relevant factors applicable to a much broader set of social and political circumstances, including those likely to define arguments around statehood and legitimacy in the near future.

Ultimately, I conclude that the recognition of legitimate exile governments by peer states can amount to a moral obligation, not simply a sovereign prerogative. This contradicts established thinking about state sovereignty and recognition, and introduces certain problems which I attempt to address as best I can. I provide, after extensive review of the cases, several important factors for the consideration of peer states with regard to the recognition of the governments-in-exile of Tibet, East Turkistan, and Taiwan. Finally, I make recommendations as to future applicability of this normative theory.

This thesis predicts that the current US strategy on deterrence will fail in its efforts to challenge Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. This failure will result from weaknesses in the US and its allies' positions, strategic doctrine, and the rise of China. Through a comprehensive analysis grounded in classical and extended deterrence theory, this study investigates key historical precedents, including the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the China-India border conflicts, and Russian actions in Ukraine, to identify successful and failed deterrence patterns. The core theoretical framework emphasizes credibility, perception, and proportionality as essential to maintaining strategic stability. Ultimately, the study contributes to the broader literatureas on maintaining regional stability in the Taiwan Strait by advocating for a recalibrated approach to deterrence, balancing credible military commitment with nuanced diplomatic engagement.