Seabirds are often used as markers of ecosystem health due to their heavy dependence on the base of the food chain. The Alcidae family consists of small, diving birds who feed exclusively within the water column and rely on the sea year-round. Because of this, many view alcids as the only “true” seabirds. A research apprenticeship at UW’s Friday Harbor Laboratories on the pelagic ecosystem, Pelagic Ecosystem Function, has observed all seabirds since 2004, with consistent data since 2013. Alcids have been largely ignored in previous Pelagic Ecosystem Function studies, as the Common Murre (Uria aalge) artificially inflates the alcid family data due to their high abundance within the San Juan Channel. Upon removal of this species, it is found that non-Common Murre alcids are declining at a higher rate than any other seabird family within the channel, with a near-linear decline since 2013. In order to investigate the leading drivers of population decline, variables regarding food availability and habitat were collected in the form of chlorophyll, photosynthetically active radiation, and sea surface temperature. Compelling correlations were found between non-Common Murre alcid density and photosynthetically active radiation, as well as between chlorophyll and sea surface temperature. The data presented here is important not only for the mitigation of local ecosystem degradation, but also due to the consistency with global trends of seabird populations.

In this project, I seek to examine the relationship between economic development and Russian influence in the post-Soviet states of Romania and Bulgaria. While scholars have studied the individual paths that these recently formed states have taken since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there has been little inspection of how these nations regard the now Russian Federation. My work studies this relationship at a closer level. Specifically, I examine data on economic development at the district level (standardized by NUTS 3) in these countries and vote share for pro-Russian parties. I run a multivariate regression to examine the effect that level of development has on citizens’ willingness to accept Russian influence in their country, controlling for other relevant factors. I hypothesize that as the amount of development increases, the level of vote share for pro-Russian parties will consequently decrease. This hypothesis is grounded in the well documented positive effect that development has on democracy. In this case, a nation such as Russia, who touts anti-democratic ideals, would be looked upon less favorably by a district that is relatively more developed. Thus, I expect to see an inverse relationship between my variables. This analysis will inform research on the interactions between nations in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, areas of growing importance in this world, and allow us to examine the path forward for other post-Soviet states.

This project seeks to explore the effect of spending on state-level ballot initiative campaigns on voter turnout. Past research into the area of voter turnout has revealed evidence of relationships between campaign spending, voter turnout, and vote outcomes. Differentials in spending by competing campaigns has been demonstrated to have clear effects on vote outcomes in a variety of electoral contexts, and aggregate spending has been shown to affect levels of voter turnout as well. However, no work has in the past sought to look exclusively at the role of spending allocated to ballot initiatives in its ability to affect turnout. I anticipate higher levels of spending by pro and opposition groups correlating to higher overall voter turnout. In addition, I expect spending by opposition groups to have the greatest impact, as these groups are able to allocate funds mainly to media ads which seek to influence voter behavior through psychological aspects like fear. Using publicly disclosed data on ballot initiative spending tied to election year, the relationship between spending and voter turnout for the previous six biannual elections in four states with active ballot measure processes is investigated. Types of election, changes in voter partisanship, voter registration, and quantities and policy areas of ballot measures considered are controlled for to establish a baseline for voter turnout. The influence of campaign spending on turnout is sought after to help bridge-the-gap in relationships between spending and vote outcome, and turnout and vote outcome.

Over recent decades, scholars have noted declining trends in perceptions of legitimacy in high-income, democratic countries. Many theories offer competing explanations for this decline, including immigration, polarization, and neoliberalism, but scholars have yet to connect declining perceptions of legitimacy to stagnant wages. I argue that within the Group of 7 (G7) countries, wage stagnation triggers a crisis of legitimacy because ordinary citizens’ living standards worsen as wages remain low and the cost of living rises, resulting in the belief that their governments are unresponsive and illegitimate. I hypothesize that wage stagnation plays into a legitimacy crisis in domestic democratic institutions, because stagnant wages increase economic inequality and generate perceptions of an illegitimate government. To test this claim, I create a legitimacy index to compare trends in perceptions of legitimacy cross-nationally. I also run a multivariate regression test to assess the strength of the relationship between stagnant wages and government legitimacy, controlling for other relevant factors. This project may reveal that if a productive economy fails to benefit its people, there is the possibility of democratic decline.

After Saudi Arabia announced its VISION2030 plan to reduce its oil dependence through economic diversification, a wide-scale crackdown on corruption was carried out. Following that was the imposition of the first tax policy in the Kingdom, a 5% value-added tax. These reforms strike a delicate balance; to develop infrastructure and new industries, particularly for an oil-dependent economy (ODE), the country must sustain high levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) among other sources of funding. Nonetheless, attracting FDI requires transparent and resilient fiscal institutions, and the presence of corruption negatively impacts FDI by conveying uncertainty and increasing costs of conducting business. ODEs may also seek to enhance non-resource taxation, providing another stable revenue stream. FDI enlarges the non-resource tax base by including new firms and increasing employment opportunities. By relying on FDI as an indicator of institutional quality, this paper tests the interaction of corruption and FDI and its impact on levels of non-oil tax revenue. I employ regression models to conduct a cross-national study of 17 ODEs, controlling for population, GDP per capita, government expenditure, oil sector ownership and oil price. I expect to find that higher levels of corruption lead to lower levels of FDI, which in turn decreases non-oil tax revenue collection. Additionally, I will use a Fiscal Reliance Measure (Haber and Menaldo, 2011) to test the same interaction’s effect on the ratio of hydrocarbon and oil revenue to total government revenue as a second proxy for economic diversification. This research contributes to the growing field of oil-dependence and economic diversification in two ways: it rejects the presence of a “resource curse” and examines the relationship between corruption and non-resource tax revenue by studying institutional state structures, and it explores the causal mechanism running from FDI to tax revenue, whereas previous literature has tested the inverse relationship.

Immigrant stereotyping has a long history in the U.S. that parallels patterns of mass immigration and native-born fear. Scholars have demonstrated that the production and reproduction of Hispanic criminal identities, constructed in news coverage of immigration law enforcement instances, poses challenges to their assimilation into US society and their opportunity for upward social mobility. The expansive scope of federal government power post-9/11 and the consequent convergence of immigration and criminal law created an apparatus of control that targets Central American and Mexican immigrants. Scholars have dedicated time to examining the effects of media narratives on immigrants in the US; however, efforts have not been made to discern or understand the effect of media narratives on immigrants at the border. To address this omission, this study empirically analyzes the impact of media narratives on the rate of petition denials for various asylum seekers. I hypothesize that refugees from Central America and Mexico will have higher rates of U.S. asylum petition denials as a result of negative presentation in U.S. media narratives, which frame the group as “undeserving” of refuge. To test this claim, I ran a multivariate analysis to quantitatively measure the effects of media narratives on petition denial rates for three regional nationality groups. I expect to find that negative media narratives, which portray immigrant criminality, have a significant negative impact on the outcome of asylum petitions, resulting in higher rates of petition denial for Central American immigrants who are criminalized in media narratives.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) affects the lives of over 294,000 individuals in the United States alone. Therefore, there is an urgency for development of therapies for SCI. We are exploring the role of environmental enrichment in promoting motor recovery from chronic cervical SCI that produces partial to complete forelimb paralysis in adult rats. Novelty, a major component of our environmental enrichment, has been associated with memory consolidation which could be related to the release of plasticity-related products (PRPs). PRPs are a key component of lasting plasticity changes in vitro, which could prove to be vital to motor learning after spinal cord injury. Throughout a 6-week therapy period during which the rats are exposed to environmental enrichment, motor function of the impaired forelimb is assessed using behavioral scores on a reach-and-grasp pellet-retrieval task. Our project will utilize environmental enrichment to enhance the effectiveness of our physical training paradigm. Environmental enrichment will include access to toys that provide opportunities for physical exercise, socialization, and social learning. The toys will be changed each week to promote novelty. We predict that environmental enrichment will have an additive effect in promoting recovery of the impaired forelimb when combined with physical therapy. We hope these results will help inform how neural plasticity can be deployed for design of effective therapies for promoting motor recovery after chronic SCI.