Thesis written by a student in the UNT Honors College discussing Native American groups, the history of colonialism and government paternalism in the United States, and current affairs and legal cases.

This thesis seeks to examine the levels of support for African American reparations amongst minorities. After providing a historical account of redress efforts separated racial group and discussing factors that influence reparations, I argue that minority groups possess cross-racial linked fate (minority linked fate) that significantly impacts their political attitudes concerning reparations for African Americans. Additionally, I argue that higher levels of minority-linked fate will equate to significant support for reparations. The probit regressions reaffirm the initial hypotheses that minority-linked fate has a significant impact on support for African American reparations. However, the racial groups most affected were not suspected initially.

"In an attempt to determine the effectiveness of the political leadership provided by members of an ethnic group, this thesis investigates the Mexican-American electorate in San Antonio and Laredo, Texas. Three variables were studied: the leaders, the followers, and the circumstances under which both operate...Data for this investigation were gathered through personal interviews and from voting records complied by the county clerks of Bexar and Webb Counties. "--leaf 1.

Why is black partisan identification so one-sidedly Democratic forty years past the Civil Rights movement? A black/non-black political dichotomy manifests itself through one-sided African-American partisanship. Racial consciousness and Republican hostility is the basis of the black/non-black political dichotomy, which manifests through African-American partisanship. Racial consciousness forced blacks to take a unique and somewhat jaundiced approach to politics and Republican hostility to black inclusion in the political process in the 1960s followed by antagonism toward public policy contribute to overwhelming black Democratic partisanship. Results shown in this dissertation demonstrate that variables representing economic issues, socioeconomic status and religiosity fail to explain partisan identification to the extent that Hostility-Consciousness explains party identification.

A participant-observer approach is utilized in a case study of Dallas, Texas, homeowners who organized to challenge city acquisition of their property for the expansion of the Fair Park State fairgrounds. From this study, a model of protest and political bias in urban politics is conceptualized. It is hypothesized that some individuals and groups are unable to place their demands, regardless of the extent of their organization and mobilization, on the governmental agenda. This inability to gain access to the decision-making arena is due to the existence of persistent and cumulative political biases. The biases are delineated as systemic, modes of operation, and ideological. Protest activity is a response by powerless groups to encountering these political biases.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, humanity is entering a new age of political and social equality, a new epoch in which the human race has no historical example or experience. As a result, he holds humanity's future will be largely determined by the political and moral choices made in this transitional time. For Tocqueville, the new egalitarian era is a forgone conclusion, but for him, the pressing question is whether humanity will choose a future in which it enchains itself to new forms of tyranny, or, whether the human race can establish the political and moral institutions designed to assure human freedom and dignity. In Tocqueville's view, liberty or slavery are the two choices modern men and women have in front of them, and it is the intent of this dissertation to explore Tocqueville's warning in regard to the latter choice. Tocqueville warns us that modern democratic peoples must beware of the moral and political effects of a new type of political philosophy, a political theory he terms democratic pantheism. Democratic pantheism is a philosophic doctrine that treats egalitarianism as a "religion" in which all social and political striving is directed toward realizing a providentially ordained strict equality of conditions. …

This research examines the political implications of the Millennial generation on American politics by exploring the interaction of generational cohort with race, social issues, and civil liberties. Relying on the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and the 2018 General Social Survey, I examine (1) Millennial attitudes toward race and ethnicity by looking specifically at racial linked fate, (2) how Millennials interact with race and evangelical Christianity and how this interaction influences social policy preferences, and (3) how generational factors influence Millennial attitudes toward American civil liberties. I find that there are measurable effects of generational cohorts on the predicted value of Linked Fate for racial minority groups in the United States. My results suggest that Millennials are significantly more likely to have higher levels of linked fate for Latino and Asian Americans. However, I do not find sufficient evidence to suggest that African Americans' level of linked fate is affected either positively or negatively for Millennials. Second, for the investigation on social policy, the results suggest that those who sit at the intersection of the three groups- the Latino-Millennial evangelicals- hold policy preferences that contrast from those who are solely either Latino, Millennial, or evangelical. Latino-Millennial evangelicals are significantly more …

Since the 1990s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has increasingly impacted minority groups in the United States, particularly African Americans. Why is this happening? Comparative studies of developing nations have convincingly established a relationship between concentrated poverty, ethnic boundaries, and lack of effective governmental response as contributing to high levels of infection in those countries. To date, however, no study has sought to apply these insights to the American context. This dissertation endeavors to show that, first, marginalization of U.S. sub-groups most at risk of infection is largely a product of poor health outcomes associated with concentrated urban poverty and economic stratification. Second, this sub-group marginalization is exacerbated by the politics of retrenchment which increasingly privatizes risks onto individuals, states, and non-governmental providers. The net result of these changes is a U.S. health care system too fractured to recognize and respond to changes in HIV/AIDS demographics.

The problem undertaken in this thesis is a study of Ayn Rand's political theory as presented in her writings. Rand considers herself both a novelist and a philosopher; her writings are not primarily political in nature. Thus, compiling her political philosophy requires an interpretation of her views on all subjects.

The purpose of this study is to determine, if possible, North Central Texas views or attitudes toward international relations. These attitudes will be compared to studies on Southern attitudes to determine any similarities or dissimilarities. Literature on Southwestern attitudes is sparse; therefore, all data will be compared with that compiled by political scientists on Southern attitudes.

Why do interest groups participate in state courts of last resort by filing amicus curiae briefs? Are they influential when they do? This dissertation examines these questions using an original survey of organized interests that routinely participate in state supreme courts, as well as data on all amicus curiae briefs and majority opinions in over 14,000 cases decided in all fifty-two state supreme courts for a four year period. I argue that interest groups turn to state judiciaries to achieve the dual goals of influencing policy and organizational maintenance, as amicus briefs can help organized interests achieve both outcomes. Furthermore, I contend that amicus briefs are influential in shaping judicial policy-making through the provision of legally persuasive arguments. The results suggest that interest groups do file amicus briefs to both lobby for their preferred policies and to support their organization's long-term viability. Additionally, the results indicate that organized interests also participate in counteractive lobbying in state courts of last resort by filing amicus briefs to ensure their side is represented and to dull the effect of oppositional amici. The findings also demonstrate support for the influence of amicus briefs on judicial policy-making on state high courts, as amicus briefs can …

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that international legal considerations played a vital role in the Cuban Missile Crisis All major areas of legal considerations are discussed, including both an American and Soviet perspective. An analysis of the American approach to the crisis exemplifies the participation of various departments of the Executive )branch, Congress, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, and the President. The approach by the Soviet Union in justifying the deployment of offensive nuclear weapons and the Kremlin's objection to the U. S. quarantine of Cuba were influenced by legal considerations. The time period that this study encompasses is August 1962 through October 1962, a period much'longer than is usually associated with the crisis.

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 dependent variable in all models. Validity tests support use, despite acknowledged limitations.

This study proposes and tests a comprehensive theory detailing the motivations behind political apologies. A brief survey of the literature shows a field rich in case studies but lacking in rigorous scientific analysis. The theory presented proposes a three-level examination of political apology at the state, dyadic, and system levels and incorporates the effects of culture, conflict, and the nature of the international system into analysis. This study makes use of a new dataset recording the occurrence of political apologies for interstate conflict atrocities from 1900 to 2006. The results suggest that the existing literature, while rich, does not account for all the motivating factors behind apology. The results also confirm that political apology is a creation of the modern era and a result of the liberalization of the international system. In conclusion, paths for future research are suggested and the advent of a global "age of apology" is confirmed.

Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua have all experienced significant social, economic, and political changes during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua experienced violent national revolts, while Costa Rica and Honduras did not. I tested a process theory that endeavored to account for the origins and intensity of national revolts in Central America. The analysis was formulated in a most-similar-systems (MSS) design. Pooled cross-sectional time-series regression techniques were employed in order to conform with the MSS variation-finding strategy. The findings supported the conclusion that armed attacks against the state were not random occurrences, but rather, that they may have arisen in response to certain economic and political conditions.

This study develops a model of macroeconomic and political determinants of public support for European integration. The research is conducted on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from five European Union member states between 1978 and 1994. The method used in this analysis is a Generalized Least Squares - Autoregressive Moving Average approach. The factors hypothesized to determine a macroeconomic explanation of public support for integration are inflation, unemployment, and economic growth. The effect of the major economic reform in the 1980s, the Single European Act, is hypothesized to act as a positive permanent intervention. The other determinants of public support are the temporary interventions of European Parliament elections and the permanent intervention of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. These are hypothesized to exert a negative effect. In a fully specified model all variables except economic growth and European Parliament elections demonstrate statistical significance at the 0.10 level or better.

This investigation is concerned with determining what influence, if any, results from the dependence upon foreign sources of petroleum by the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The influence that petroleum plays upon the changing attitudes of these four nations towards Israel and the Arab nations is ascertained by the utilization of primary and secondary sources. The study analyzes all the resolutions that have been adopted by the United Nations Security Council in the years between 1948 and 1976 dealing specifically with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Other chapters analyze each of the four nations to which attention is being directed. This study concludes that the growing and continuing dependence upon Arab oil has influenced the foreign policies the four nations have assumed toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Post-force congressional rally effects are presented as a new incentive behind presidential decisions to use diversionary behavior. Using all key roll call votes in the House and Senate where the president has taken a position for the years 1948 to 1993, presidents are found to receive sharp decreases in both presidential support and success in Congress shortly after employing aggressive policies abroad. Evidence does suggest that presidents are able to capitalize on higher levels of congressional support for their policy preferences on votes pertaining to foreign or defense matters after uses of force abroad. But, despite these findings, diversionary behavior is found to hinder rather than facilitate troubled presidents' abilities to influence congressional voting behavior.

Terrorism has become a focus of much political thought over the past few years, and with good reason, yet most quantitative studies of terrorism investigate the likelihood of a terrorist incident while ignoring the precursors to terrorist group formation. I examine cases of new terrorist group formations between the years 1968 and 1999 as a function of domestic demographic, geographic, governmental and societal factors. This is done by Poisson regression analysis, which determines the significance of the independent variables on a count of new international terrorist group formations per country year. The results indicate that higher levels of material government capability, high levels of political freedom, the availability of low-cost refuge, and a cultural tradition of terrorism all have a positive impact on the number of new terrorist group formations, while a higher degree of governmental durability has a negative impact.

This dissertation investigates the consequences of fractional dynamics for political modeling. Using Monte Carlo analyses, Chapters II and III investigate the threats to statistical inference posed by including fractionally integrated variables in bivariate and multivariate regressions. Fractional differencing is the most appropriate tool to guard against spurious regressions and other threats to inference. Using fractional differencing, multivariate models of British politics are developed in Chapter IV to compare competing theories regarding which subjective measure of economic evaluations best predicts support levels for the governing party; egocentric measures outperform sociotropic measures. The concept of fractional cointegration is discussed and the value of fractionally integrated error correction mechanisms are both discussed and demonstrated in models of Conservative party support. In Chapter V models of presidential approval in the United States are reconfigured in light of the possibilities of fractionally integrated variables. In both the British and American case accounting for the fractional character of all variables allows the development of more accurate multivariate models.

Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) present a unique opportunity to study political behavior. In educational settings, role-playing games (RPGs) of all kinds have proven to be valuable educational tools, and even when played for fun, participating in role playing games has been shown to increase one's level of confidence. Knowing this, I designed an experiment to attempt to increase internal political efficacy through the use of a politically-themed TRPG. I took inspiration from the original TRPGs of the 1970s and 1980s which were used purely for entertainment purposes to create my own game in a traditional TRPG setting with current issues woven into the story of the game (also called a campaign), and utilized quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze participants' reactions to the campaign and levels of efficacy. In doing so, I seek to determine whether players will recognize real-world issues when presented in a science fiction or fantasy-themed campaign. Furthermore, given that TRPGs have the potential to shape players' understanding of how the world works and their place in it, will players be more motivated to act on said issues presented in-game, even if they do not consciously make the connection between the real-life issues presented in the science …

"This report concludes that the evidence from the analyses seems to support the following propositions in regard to Texas electoral behavior. (1) The 1956 election year was a critical election year in Texas. (2) A pattern indicative of an underlying economic liberalism-conservatism was present in Texas voting patterns from 1944 through 1956, but not after. (3) The Mexican-American and German counties experienced political realignment in 1956 which continued through 1972. (4) The counties affording the most support to the liberal faction shift continuously. (5) The Texas electorate had been in a state of flux since 1956. To date no pattern other than the ethnic group realignment has stabilized. (6) Party-competition in gubernatorial elections has been increasing since 1962. (7) Ralph Yarborough has been the only liberal candidate for a major statewide office to draw support in a high and uniform degree across the state. (8) Ralph Yarborough's base of support has completely shifted since 1952. (9) The Farenthold vote was most closely aligned with that of Donald Yarborough. (10) Socio-economic factors have stronger relationship to Republican, liberal Democratic candidates, and major third party candidates than to conservative Democratic candidates. (11) All evidence form these analyses points to personalism and candidate …

The purpose of this research is to investigate the innovation process in municipal personnel offices by answering three questions. What factors are related to the innovativeness of personnel offices? What factors are involved in the diffusion of personnel innovations from one city to another? What intraorganizational processes are involved in the decision to adopt personnel innovations? This research focuses on ten innovations selected by a panel of both personnel academicians and practitioners. Data collection involved a mail survey sent to all cities over 25,000 in the Chicago and Dallas federal regions and in-depth interviews with personnel directors in twenty-two cities. The implications of this research are both practical and theoretical. Officials interested in more complete innovation diffusion would do well to stress the nonradicalness of the change and any applicable governmental mandates. Federal, state, and regional governments can obviously improve both the availability and applicability of personnel information. In terms of theory, the research offers support to both the rational and power-based models of decision making and change, although the latter seems most appropriate in explaining radical change.

This dissertation explores the how external threat from militarized interstate disputes and interstate rivalries affect the relationship between the state and the ethnic groups within its borders. Specifically, it finds that national identity, the preservation of ethnic regional autonomy, and the formation of ethnic-based militias are all influenced by states involvement in international conflicts. In Sub Saharan Africa, discriminated groups are less likely to identify with their national identity and when the state is involved in an interstate dispute, while the rest of the country increases their likelihood to identify with the nation, discriminated groups cling to their ethnic identity. During and interstate rivalry, ethnic groups face a heightened risk of the state taking away their autonomy over a region. If the rivalry becomes too intense or the ethnic group shares kin with the rival, the ethnic group has lower chance of losing their autonomy during rivalry. Finally, ethnic minority seeking to form a militia are able to form one faster if their ethnic group is well represented in the military's rank and file or if their co-ethnics in the rank and file had combat experience in an interstate dispute were military force was used. Ethnic groups that are well …