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open access

When Race Matters: The Influence of Race on Case Clearances in Capital vs. Non-Capital Homicides in Texas

Description: Texas leads the nation in the number of executions carried out since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Race was a key factor in the 1972 moratorium, and though the Supreme Court allowed for its return under new statutes, race continues to plague the capital punishment legal system. In this study, I examine the influence of race on case clearances in capital and non-capital homicides in Texas, using the extra-legal and non-discretionary theories from existing clearance literature. I fin… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Samaniego, Rebekah
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Out with the Old? Voting Behavior and Party System Change in Canada and the United States in the 1990's

Description: This study has attempted to explain the dramatic challenges to the existing party system that occurred in Canada and the United States in the early 1990s. The emergence of new political movements with substantial power at the ballot box has transformed both party systems. The rise of United We Stand America in the United States, and the Reform Party in Canada prompts scholars to ask what forces engender such movements. This study demonstrates that models of economic voting and key models of par… more
Date: December 1997
Creator: Rapkin, Jonathan D.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The State of Democracy in the Arab World

Description: This comparative study assesses the state of democracy and examines the process of democratization in the Arab World between the years 1980-1993. It addresses shortcomings in the mainstream democracy literature that excluded the Arab World from the global democratic revolution on political cultural grounds. To fulfil the objectives of this study, I employ both the qualitative and quantitative research approaches to test a number of hypothesized relationships. I hypothesize that transition to de… more
Date: December 1995
Creator: Al-Olimat, Muhamad S. (Muhamad Salim)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Determinants of Federal Spending for the Administration of Justice

Description: This study develops and empirically tests a model of the determinants of federal spending for crime-fighting policies. An inter-disciplinary approach to building the model is utilized that merges ideas from budgeting, policy analysis and criminology. Four factors hypothesized to impact federal spending for the administration of justice are operationalized as eight variables and tested using ordinary least squares regression analysis on time series data. The factors hypothesized to impact federa… more
Date: December 1998
Creator: Gabriano, Gina
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Unexpected Unexpected Utilities: A Comparative Case-Study Analysis of Women and Revolutions

Description: Women have been part of modern revolutions since the American Revolution against Great Britain. Most descriptions and analyses of revolution relegate women to a supporting role, or make no mention of women's involvement at all. This work differs from prior efforts in that it will explore one possible explanation for the successes of three revolutions based upon the levels of women's support for those revolutions. An analysis of the three cases (Ireland, Russia, and Nicaragua) suggests a series… more
Date: December 2000
Creator: Casey, Walter Thomas
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Economic Development, Social Dislocation and Political Turmoil in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis and a Test of Causality

Description: This study focuses on economic development and political turmoil in post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa. There has been a resurgence of interest in the region following the end of the Cold War. In 1997 U.S. president Bill Clinton took a 12-day tour of the region. In 1999 the U.S. Congress (106th Congress) passed the Growth and Opportunity Act and the Hope for Africa Act, designed to encourage political stability and economic development in the region. Although most Sub-Saharan African countrie… more
Date: December 2000
Creator: Obi, Zion Ikechukwu
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Schoolyard Politics: Ethics and Language at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Description: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been both contentious and successful. By examining the ICTY from a Levinasian ethical standpoint, we might be able to understand how the court uses language to enforce ethical and moral standards upon post-war societies. Using linguistic methods of analysis combined with traditional data about the ICTY, I empirically examine the court using ordinary least squares (OLS) in order to show the impact that language has upon the… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Hatcher, Robert
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Senate Apprenticeship Norm: A Longitudinal and Multivariate Investigation

Description: This study has as its central focus an investigation into the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm in the United States Senate. Over its history, the Senate has been frequently portrayed as a body guided by rather restrictive, informal rules of behavior for its members. The apprenticeship norm has been identified by some as the most important of these rules; contributing to the Senate's centralized and conservative policy orientation. More recently, however, it has been argued that t… more
Date: December 1983
Creator: Carter, James L. (James Lee), 1937-
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Decision-Making at the Court of Appeals Level Involving Religious Liberty Cases

Description: Many studies have been completed on factors affecting judicial decisions. Studies have focused on civil rights cases, economic cases, criminal cases, sexual discrimination and obscenity cases, but no work has specifically looked at religious liberty cases. This work examines the factors affecting United States Courts of Appeals judges' decision-making in religious liberty cases. I hypothesize that gender, race, religious background, prior judicial experience, circuit, region and litigant status… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Reeves, Susan Kay
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Foreign Policy-Making in Jordan: the Role of King Hussein's Leadership in Decision-Making

Description: The purpose of this study is to identify King Hussein's belief system, or operational code as it is called by George and Holsti, and to test its influence on foreign policymaking in Jordan. The research has three related goals: to identify King Hussein's operational code through analysis of his writings and speeches during the period between 1967 and 1980, to review four major foreign policy decisions in an attempt to understand the factors affecting the decision making process in Jordan, and t… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Rashdan, Abdelfattah A. (Abdelfattah Ali)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

International Political Economy of External Economic Dependence and Foreign Investment Policy Outputs as a Component of National Development Strategy: Nigeria 1954-1980

Description: This study examined the effects and expectations of external economic dependence on foreign investment policy outputs with particular reference to the Nigerian experience between 1954 and 1980. Three basic kinds of external economic dependence were studied: foreign investment, the penetration of the Nigerian economy by foreign capital through the agency of the multinational corporations (MNCs); foreign trade, a measure of the Nigerian economy's participation in the world market; and foreign aid… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Ighoavodha, Frederick J. O. (Frederick J. Ofuafo)
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Political and Administrative Role of Planning and Budgeting in Saudi Arabia: Adaptation for Rapid Change

Description: This study examines the political and administrative role of planning and budgeting in Saudi Arabia. It demonstrates how they have contributed to lessening the political crises of distribution, participation, and penetration that confront developing countries. The study also investigates how these two bureaucratic processes have helped adapt rapid changes in a manner acceptable to the cultural milieu. In addition, the study explores the politics of planning and budgeting and identifies the role… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Al-Kahtani, Mohammed S. A. (Mohammed Saeed A.)
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Religious Resurgence and Religious Terrorism: a Study of the Actions of the Shiʹa Sectarian Movements in Lebanon

Description: The purpose for undertaking this case study of the Shi'a in Lebanon is threefold. First, as a hypothesis-generating case study, its objective is to formulate relevant hypotheses about religious resurgence and religious terrorism. This study achieves this objective by formulating 14 general and nine special hypotheses, and testing and confirming the latter. Second, the purpose of this study is also to explore the trajectory of the Lebanese Shi'a's sectarian mobilization. This exploration permits… more
Date: December 1988
Creator: Schbley, Ayla Hammond
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Respecification of Factors Affecting Vote Turnout: A Test of Three Competing Models

Description: This study tests hypothesized causal relationships between predictor variables and voter turnout. Attention is focused on the psychological and attitudinal dimensions of turnout. Using data from the 1980 National Election Study of the Center for Political Studies, recursive and nonrecursive causal models are constructed to test the effects of election specific factors, social psychological factors, and rational choice based factors on voter turnout. Self-reported turnout is used as the primary … more
Date: December 1983
Creator: McClure, David Lawson
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Management of Communal Conflict in the Middle East: The Case of the Kurds

Description: The objective of this study is to describe and analyze the management of communal conflict in the Middle East, focusing on the Kurds. To this end, an effort is made to examine (1) the means that have been used to manage the Kurdish conflict by Middle Eastern countries; (2) the degree of success or failure of applied measures and (3) possible explanations for the first two questions.
Date: December 1983
Creator: Khosrowshahi, Manouchehr Rostamy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The National Defense College of Thailand and Its Alumni in the Context of Thai Politics

Description: This study deals with the National Defense College of Thailand and its alumni, who are senior military and civil service officers of the government of Thailand. The study examines the proposition that the political attitudes of military and civil service officers in developing countries are likely to be similar and negative. The second proposition examined in this study is that the attitudes of government officials toward the people are likely to be similar and negative. The study also attempts… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Surapong Burusphat
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Media Agenda-Building Effect: Analysis of American Public Apartheid Activities, Congressional and Presidential Policies on South Africa, 1976-1988

Description: The mass media's role in informing the American public is critical to public support for government policies. The media are said to set the national agenda. This view is based on the assumption of selective coverage they give to news items. Media coverage also influences the salience the public attaches to issues. However, media agenda effect has been challenged by Lang and Lang (1983). These scholars, in their media agenda-building theory, argued that the success of media effect on national ag… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Agboaye, Ehikioya
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Enemy of My Enemy: International Alliances Against Transnational Terrorist Organizations

Description: A dearth of pre-existing research in the field prompted this thesis on whether traditional econometric analyses of war deterrent alliances are applicable to modern alliances for counter terror purposes. Apparent foundational and contextual differences between the two types of alliances and the costs and benefits member nations derive from each lead the author to theorize that factors contributing to the formation of each alliance are fundamentally similar. Multiple types of statistical models a… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Berthume, Joshua Guy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

International Peacekeeping Operations: Sinai, Congo, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Chad Lessons for the UN and OAU

Description: Peacekeeping is a means by which international or regional organizations control conflict situations that are likely to endanger international peace and security. Most scholars have viewed the contributions of peacekeeping forces only in terms of failures, and they have not investigated fully the political-military circumstances" under which conflict control measures succeed. This dissertation is an attempt to bridge this gap and to show how the OAU compares with the UN in carrying out peacekee… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Demsa, Paul Meslam, 1949-
Partner: UNT Libraries

Wisdom and Law: Political Thought in Shakespeare's Comedies

Description: In this study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Measure for Measure I argue that the surface plots of these comedies point us to a philosophic understanding seldom discussed in either contemporary public discourse or in Shakespearean scholarship. The comedies usually involve questions arising from the conflict between the enforcement of law (whether just or not) and the private longings (whether noble or base) of citizens whose yearnings for happiness tend to be sub- or … more
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Date: December 2002
Creator: Major, Rafael M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Beyond GNP: Economic Freedom as a Determinant of Basic Human Needs.

Description: Research concerning ‘basic needs' in the Human Rights literature has consistently found a positive and significant relationship between measures of wealth and basic needs provision. This study utilizes a relatively new measure of economic freedom to test hypotheses regarding general macro-economic policy decisions and basic needs outcomes. A pooled dataset of 138 countries over four years is examined using OLS panel regression controlling for both' year' and ‘country,' in a standard basic needs… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Juenke, Eric
Partner: UNT Libraries
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