The incidence of sexual assault inundates the courts with many cases each year. Given the unique nature of the crime, judges and juries are faced with an array of different scenarios to which they are required to make fair, justifiable and consistent decisions. I examine child sexual assault cases of Dallas County 1999-2005, I look at both legal and extralegal factors including case characteristics, institutional characteristics and characteristics of the defendants and the victims. First, I examine the impact of the independent variables on sentence length using regression analysis to determine influences on sentencing for judges and juries. Second, I examine the same factors using Probit analysis to determine which characteristics make a life sentence more probable for those decision-makers.

Integrated process models that combine both legal and extralegal variables provide a more accurate specification of the judicial decision making process and capture the complexity of the factors that shape judicial behavior. Judicial decision making theories borrow heavily from U.S. Supreme Court research, however, such theories may not automatically be applicable to the lower federal bench. The author uses vote dilution cases originating in the federal district courts from the years 1965 to 1993 to examine what motivates the behavior of district and circuit court judges. The author uses an integrated process model to assess what factors are important to the adjudication process and if there are significant differences between federal district and appellate court judges in decision making.

This research sought to ascertain how newspaper ownership structures influence the quality of local political news coverage. More specifically, do independently owned newspapers tend to produce larger quantities of quality local political reporting than do corporately owned and publicly traded newspapers? In the thesis, I develop an understanding of "quality" news coverage as being coverage that is thematic, or providing interpretive analysis and supplying contextual information. Additionally, I tackle the question of quality news coverage from three angles: whether or not independently owned newspapers provide more quality local political news stories per edition than corporately owned papers; whether or not the percentage of quality local political news stories of total political news stories within an edition is higher for independently owned or corporately owned newspapers; and whether or not the percentage of total political news stories of total news stories is higher for independently owned or corporately owned newspapers.

It has become something of a cliché for contemporary scholars to assert that Madison turned Montesquieu on his head and thereafter give little thought to the Frenchman’s theory that republics must remain limited in territorial size. Madison did indeed present a formidable challenge to Montesquieu’s theory, but I will demonstrate in this dissertation that the authors of the Federalist Papers arrived at the extended sphere by following a theoretical pathway already cemented by the French philosopher. I will also show that Madison’s “practical sphere” ultimately concedes to Montesquieu that excessive territorial size and high levels of heterogeneity will overwhelm the citizens of a republic and enable the few to oppress the many. The importance of this dissertation is its finding that the principal mechanism devised by the Federalists for dealing with factions—the enlargement of the sphere—was crafted specifically for the purpose of moderating interests, classes, and sects within an otherwise relatively homogeneous nation. Consequently, the diverse republic that is America today may be exposed to the existential threat anticipated by Montesquieu’s theory of size—the plutocratic oppression of society by an elite class that employs the strategy of divide et impera.

This investigation sought to identify linkages between the Texas Supreme Court and public opinion through 1) a matching of written decisions with scientifically conducted public opinion polls; 2) direct mention of public opinion and its synonyms in Texas justices' decisions; 3) comparison of these mentions over time; and 4) comparison of 10 personal attributes of justices with matched decisions. The study moved the unit of analysis from the U.S. Supreme Court to the state court level by using classification schemes and attribute models previously applied to the U.S. Supreme Court. It determined that linkages exist between the Texas Supreme Court's written decisions and public opinion from 1978 to July 1994.

This study develops and tests a group conflict model as an explanation for international immigration beliefs in the United States and Canada. Group conflict is structured by evaluations concerning group relationships and group members. At a conceptual level group conflict explains a broad range of policy beliefs among a large number of actors in multiple settings. Group conflict embodies attitudes relating to objective-based conditions and subjective-based beliefs.

The purpose of this study is to examine two major psychological determinants of the vote in presidential elections - candidate image and party orientation. The central thesis of this study is that candidate image, as measured here, has been a greater determinant of electoral choice in the majority of presidential elections since 1952 than has party orientation. One of the vices as well as virtues of a democratic society is that the people often get what they want. This is especially true in the case of electing our leaders. Political scientists have often concentrated their efforts on attempting to ascertain why people vote as they do. Studies have been conducted focusing on the behavior of voters in making that important decision-who should govern?

Partisanship is found in voter and Congressional behavior. Members of the federal judiciary should behave similarly. I utilize cases involving the Republican and Democratic parties from 1966 to 1997 and examine the voting behavior of federal Courts of Appeal judges. I utilize both cross tabulations and a Logit regression model to determine the likelihood appellate judges will vote for their own party and against the opposition.

"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 …

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 will all influence the way judges vote in religious liberty cases. The explanatory power of this study is relatively low, but the results indicate that judges follow the law when making decisions in religious liberty cases.

This study presents the thesis that religious cleavages in Lebanon have been the major factor behind most of the country's problems since the achievement of independence in 1943. The coming of the Palestinians in 1948 and in the 1970s upset Lebanon's delicate sociopolitical balance between Christians and Muslims in favor of the latter. The study's four chapters describe the origins of Lebanon's religious groups, the arrival of the Palestinians, Lebanon's emergence as the sole Palestinian guerrilla base, and the outbreak and aftermath of the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1976. Finally, suggestions are made for the resolution of the continuing Christian-Muslim conflict, notably the alternatives of federalism and confederalism as possible future political arrangements for Lebanon.

This thesis investigates federalism and civil conflict. Past work linking federalism and civil conflict has investigated the factors that pacify or aggravate conflict, but most such studies have examined the effect of decentralization on conflict onset, as opposed to the form federalism takes (such as congruent vs incongruent forms, for example). I collect data on civil conflict, the institutional characteristics of federalist states and fiscal decentralization. My theoretical expectations are that federations who treat federal subjects differently than others, most commonly in an ethnically based manner, are likely to experience greater levels of conflict incidence and more severe conflict. I find support for these expectations, suggesting more ethnically based federations are a detriment to peace preservation. I close with case studies that outline three different paths federations have taken with regards to their federal subunits.

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 is a study of Korean presidential elections. Its purpose is to determine how Koreans voted in the 1992 and 1997 presidential elections and to examine the factors that contributed to winners. In addition, the study compares the two elections by developing three models: candidate choice, voter turnout and political interest models. Using post election data from the Korean Social Science Data Center a multinomial logit regression was used in the candidate choice model. It shows that Korean voters selected their candidates mainly in terms of interest in the elections, age, orientation toward the governing or opposition parties, the regional effects of the Southwest (Honam) and the Southeast (Youngnam), and the evaluation of merged parties in 1992 or a united candidacy of parties in 1997. A Monte Carlo simulation was also employed to test the traditional assumption of candidate strength. It indicates that Kim Young-Sam had a more cohesive support from his older supporters in the 1992 election while Kim Dae-Jung had a greater cohesive support from his older supporters in the 1997 election. Both Kim Young-Sam's and Kim Dae-Jung's loyalists were crucial to the winning candidates in the 1992 and 1997 elections respectively. How did people vote? To address …

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.

In this study, I examined the Supreme Court's agenda from 1801 to 1993 to determine the composition and dynamics of the issues that have dominated the business of the Court. Specifically, I set out to test empirically Robert G. McCloskey's (now standard) characterization of the Supreme Court's history, which sees it as dominated by nationalism/federalism issues before the Civil War, by economic issues just after the War through the 1930s, and by civil rights and liberties since the 1930s. The question that drove my investigation was "Is McCloskey's interpretation, which appears to be based on the great cases of Supreme Court history, an accurate description of the agenda represented in the Supreme Court's total body of reported decisions?" To test McCloskey's historical theses I employed concepts adapted from Richard Pacelle's (1991) important work on the agenda of post-Roosevelt Court and used the methods of classical historical analysis and of interrupted time-series analysis. Data for my research came from existing datasets and from my own collection (I coded the manifest content of thousands of Supreme Court's decisions from 1887 back to 1801). The most important finding from my analyses is that McCloskey not withstanding, the pre-Civil War Supreme Court's agenda was …

This study examines the agenda setting and decision-making behavior of the United States Supreme Court from 1888 to 1989.