This paper aims to explain how both the Donald Trump campaign for President of the United States and the Leave campaign in support of Brexit achieved national electoral success. Both stunning political victories initially shocked global markets and people across the world alike. In this paper, I aim to understand their electoral successes within the broader context of growing populist, nativist, and isolationist sentiments in western democracies. I argue that both the Trump campaign and the Leave campaign mobilized broad feelings of resentment in white, economically stagnant, deindustrialized communities scattered across their respective countries to augment their bases, build their political coalitions, and achieve electoral success. I rely mostly on qualitative methods and some quantitative data to conduct rigorous case studies on different British and American communities with the presence of deindustrialization serving as the independent variable. I intend for these case studies to show that the combination of deindustrialization and lingering effects of the global recession in predominantly white communities led to increased susceptibility to populist appeals to feelings of economic resentment. Further, in economically dynamic but demographically comparable cases where deindustrialization is not present, the same populist appeals were substantially less successful. The key implication of my work is it demonstrates the saliency of populist, nativist, and isolationist political appeals to white voters in deindustrialized communities in western democracies, and the ability to build a successful political coalition based off feelings of resentment and economic anxiety.

This project examines the relationship between government use of technology through mass surveillance and the individual's right to privacy. In what some have called the “Big Brother” age of democracy, states often use mass surveillance technologies such as drones, wiretapping phones, intercepting internet communications, and other forms of secret surveillance. States argue technology aids efforts to combat security threats to the state, keep the public safe, and prevent crime. Individuals and NGOs argue that these practices can violate their rights to privacy. In a global age marked by global terrorism threats and a broadening use of mass surveillance technologies, the right to privacy is often portrayed as the loser. International courts are beginning to change this dynamic. This projects analyzes the emerging field of mass surveillance case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to understand the role of individuals, states and courts in shaping this area of law. Cases were selected directly from the ECtHR Factsheet titled "Mass Surveillance" and a specific emphasis is placed on cases with a significant domestic impact. The findings bring into question dominant understandings of state power, and reveal the court does not hesitate to uphold individual and group privacy rights in the face of state opposition. Yet the findings also warn that rights to privacy are not absolute in the global “war on terror” and in the new “Big Brother” era of mass surveillance. In a field that will only continue to grow with a surge of technology, this project has important implications for future relationships between privacy and state security.

Despite the separation of church and state, religion and the religious beliefs of legislators have influenced the outcomes of elections since the founding of the United States. Measuring variation in the relative religiosity of congresses has not been possible because of the lack of available information. Nonetheless, religion has played a central role in campaigns. Political campaigns have claimed time and time again that they need to restore order in Washington D.C. and cite the religious beliefs of the candidate as evidence that they will be able to do that. This study examines whether or not that argument is persuasive to voters. To move beyond previous literature, this project has collected original data and has quantified the religiosity of congress by examining senatorial webpages and the rate with which they use religious terms on their webpages. This will be compared to survey data in the senator’s states. A multivariate regression has tested if there is a statistically meaningful association between voters’ concerns about public safety or economic conditions will lead to the election of senators that appear to be more religious. A relationship between public concerns about safety or economic concerns would indicate that voters are persuaded that a candidate’s religious beliefs make the candidate more qualified to restore order.

Ireland generally does not come to mind when debating military doctrine or civil-military relations; nevertheless, the Irish military has seen battle both abroad and at home since the British relinquished their legal domain over the nation in the 1920’s. Despite this short history, the nature of Ireland’s civilian relationship with its Permanent Defence Forces, or Óglaigh na hÉireann, is worth inspection due to its professional respect for civilian authority and successful minimal force policy which can serve as a comparison to our own military in the United States. This research uses political scientist Samuel Huntington’s terms of formal authority and informal influence to assess the success of the Irish Permanent Defence Forces via the quality of its relationship to both the Irish Parliament and the general Irish civilian population. I measure the formal relationship by the level, unity, and scope of influence, whereas I measure the informal relationship by group affiliation, economic resources, post-military occupations, and level of prestige. Following analysis of these several factors, the paper concludes that the informal de-politicized and formal subordinate role of the Irish military serves the state as a successful instrument of defense. The Defence Forces hold fairly little informal influence in terms of prestige, post-military occupations, economic resources, and group affiliation, yet this may serve in the best interests of the state. It has little to no formal autonomy to manipulate political affairs, yet very structural, stable control over the breadth of its own military responsibilities with internal avenues for releasing tension or for incurring incremental, thoughtful administrative change as necessary. The Irish military is constantly reminded of its subordination to the civilian government while at the same time accorded a fair degree of autonomy over its own regions of authority. These factors combined have created a peaceful and efficient civil-military relationship within Ireland.

This project compares the results of recent political shifts n the US and Brazil on human rights in both countries, and examines how gendered perceptions of corruption and media consolidation led to the rise of the political right in both countries.  In this research, corruption is examined as a political tool which is particularly 'gendered'; that is, mobilized in order to portray women in power as inherently corrupt. Instead of attempting to ascertain the validity of corruption in either country, I focus on subjective experiences and conceptions of where corruption is situated, disrupting the idea of countries in the Global South as inherently more corrupt than countries in the Global North by examining corruption as a political tool. Thus, this project examines the rhetoric of gender and corruption in the media during political upheaval within the last year in both the Brazil and the US, comparing the conception of "fake news" with #Globogolpista in order to understand the role the media plays in constructing corruption. Discourse analysis is important in order to attempt to understand the possible impact of gendered corruption on politics and human rights in two countries with low levels of female participation in politics. The project concludes that despite different historical and political contexts, both the US and Brazil mobilize corruption as a gendered political tool which centers on women in power. 

Across Asia today, rapid globalization and social change means the region’s heritage is constantly under concern and undergoing a revival of conservation as unprecedented. Cultural heritage has become an effective part of a country's pride, nationalism, and psychological treasure. This research branches off various studies of cultural heritage in the perspective of Asia in the context of brands with heritage, to better understand the significance of heritage and how these countries value it. More specifically, this research is a starting point to better understand how Asian countries value heritage and the role it can play in global consumer brands. To investigate this research question, I will facilitate multiple focus groups of international students on the University of Washington Tacoma campus from Asian countries and their family members living with them. Using a series of questions related to the research project, respondents will answer to the best of their knowledge regarding cultural heritage in their country of origin. Will we conduct separate focus groups of the students, and their family members. For results, I expect to confirm or deepen the literature review findings, as well as find new insights as to how they view heritage from an eastern perspective especially with regard to the significance of heritage associated with brands, what role emotions play in making sense of this heritage that is of importance to them, and what this implies for the relationships that consumers share with their brands.

Many scholars have constantly claimed that a shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans has been the wrong course of action in policy and it has brought direr effect to the economy. Economists have argued that defined contribution plans are generating inefficiency pension income for employees in the private sectors, creating further cost burden for taxpayers and discouraging employees to stay at a job. While most observers are accepting the current situation by sticking to the traditional defined benefit plans, there are significant indicators in which the shift to defined contribution plans is inevitable. Economic shocks such as financial crisis, new health policy like Affordable Care Act and Congress abolishment of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children federal assistance program have changed the tides. They have brought a great deal of attention on how defined contribution pension plans can shape agents’ behavior in the labor market. Using datasets from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) Synthetic Beta file and the National Quarterly Workforce Indicators, this paper examines the proposition that defined contribution plans motivate newly hired workers to stay at a job for a much longer period and gain higher weeks at pay without federal assistance programs taken place. This occurs particularly for male employees in public sectors. Regression analysis (OLS and logistic) demonstrates that workers enrolled in defined contribution pension plans have increasing personal level annual earnings taxed under FICA, higher probability in having employer- based health insurance and a larger family size in their individual households. Furthermore, this paper attempts to explain whether defined contribution plans have transitory or permeant effect on workers’ wellbeing during economic shocks using unit root test to determine whether there exists a stochastic trend.

Keywords: defined contribution pension plans, labor market, individual households, workers