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Perennial and Situational: A Study of Immigrant Identity Formation and Transformation
This dissertation investigates the formation and transformation of Latino identities as well as the political implications of these transformations. I argue that upon arrival, shift from a defined stance in terms of their identity. Namely, they are likely feel strongly identified with their country of origin and far less ...
A Contest of Legitimacy: The Supreme Court, Congress, and Foreign Law
(2013-02-25)
Before 2003, the Justices on the United States Supreme Court routinely, if infrequently, cited foreign or international jurisprudence in their written opinions. Neither the media, nor members of Congress paid much, if any attention to the practice. However, after the decisions in <italic>Lawrence v. Texas</italic> (2003) and ...
Politics in the Moral Universe: Burmese Buddhist Political Thought
(2013-02-25)
This dissertation is a work of comparative political theory that draws attention to how religious beliefs can generate fundamentally different conceptions of what is political. I argue that Theravada Buddhism is the source of the conceptual framework within which most Buddhists in Myanmar think about politics. Specifically, ...
Providing for the Common Defense: Strategic Agency Adaptation and the Politics of the National Guard
(2013-04-17)
This research examines how government agencies adapt to new or qualitatively different demands from policymakers. I argue when faced with these demands, an agency's leaders bargain at arms length with their overseers for resources and institutional changes that enable appropriate adaptation of agency roles. The degree of ...
Political Competition and Judicial Independence in Non-Democracies
(2013-02-25)
This dissertation examines the relationship between political competition and judicial independence in non-democratic polities. In it I advance two key arguments. The first is that the common "political insurance" explanation of judicial independence in democracies, predicated on the incentivizing effects of electoral ...
Institutionalizing Transparency: The Global Spread of Freedom of Information in Law and Practice
(2013-02-25)
Transparency has been hailed as the key to better governance. Access to government information empowers citizens, enables journalists, constrains politicians, and exposes corruption. Yet for precisely these reasons, transparency is highly political. Most political actors prefer secrecy to openness, and oppose constraints on ...
The Pursuit of Victory and Incorporation: Elite Strategy, Group Pressure, and Cross-Racial Mobilization
(2013-04-17)
Cross-racial mobilization (CRM) is conscious race-targeted mobilization of blocs of voters of one racial group by politicians and campaign operatives of another racial group. To date, no theoretical framework has articulated the processes and myriad components of CRM. This dissertation fills that void. The four research ...
Rules of Access: Congress, the Federal Courts, and Judicial Agenda-setting and Change
(2013-02-25)
What explains variation over the issues federal courts examine over time? Adopting an interbranch approach, I argue that this variation is a function of changes in rules of access. Rules of access govern whether litigants can use the federal courts and are set by both lawmakers and judges. I focus on two rules of access - ...
The Politics of the Extinction Predicament -- Democracy, Futurity, and Responsibility
(2013-07-25)
This dissertation examines the species extinction crisis as a matter of environmental political theory. By engaging the anthropocentrism/ecocentrism debate, literature in green deliberative democracy and green civic republicanism, and the work of Hans Jonas and Hannah Arendt, among others, I explore the challenges of the ...
The Color of Fat: Racial Biopolitics of Obesity
(2014-02-24)
This dissertation employs the analytics of biopolitics, critical race theory, and feminist theory to explore the racial and gender dynamics of the political and medical construction of the American `obesity epidemic.' Its two-part structure enables me to critique `obesity' both as a legitimate public health concern whose ...