The effects lobbying has on Congressional voting has been debated for a long time. Despite scholars’ consistent findings that there is no relationship between campaign contributions and a legislator’s vote, special interest groups continue to routinely contribute money to members of Congress. In this project, I consider the connection between contributions from the finance industry and failed legislative efforts aiming at regulating Wall Street or providing greater financial consumer protections. I employ multivariate regression analysis to examine lobbying contributions to individual members of Congress and their subsequent roll call votes in Congressional sessions during 2009-2018. I test for an explicit connection between the finance industry’s lobbying contributions and the inability for Congress to pass financial reforms post-2008. Since campaign finance plays a vital role in the ability for a politician to be elected to office, I expect to find that a congressperson receiving contributions from the finance industry will be inclined to vote in favor of those interests. The findings from this research contribute to the conversation of the influence of big money in American politics and the influence those interests have on specific legislation.

With political polarization in the United States leading to widespread legislative gridlock, the nation is in dire need of instruments to encourage legislators to cooperate with their colleagues regardless of partisan affiliation. This research will investigate how Congress’ ban on earmarks might have affected the tendency of legislators to vote in favor of bills that are not supported by their parties. Earmarks are commonly understood to act as a form of inducement through which legislators can gain electoral benefits within their constituencies in exchange for their cooperation with Congressional leadership. I expected that the presence of more earmarks in a bill would increase the tendency of legislators to back bills that are not supported by their parties. I employ multivariate regression to compare the relationship between the number of earmarks in appropriations bills and the rate at which legislators defected from their party’s position on roll call votes taken. This information is available for bills introduced between 2008 when the rule mandating the declaration of earmark requests went into effect, and 2010 when the ban was enacted. If the data supports this hypothesis then my work will imply that the ban should be repealed to reduce the negative effects of legislative gridlock. If no relationship is apparent; however, it will represent a significant indicator that earmarks in their most recent form provide no benefit beyond the enrichment of the legislators themselves, which would suggest that the ban on earmarks should be maintained.

Budget policy in the United States is not uniform across agencies, with some budgets subject to cuts year after year. This research looks to answer why some agencies are more affected by budget cuts. I theorize that differences are explained by the politicization of the agency’s function. Specifically, I emphasize the role of neoliberalism, a political ideology which promotes fiscal and moral conservatism, as well as laissez-faire approaches to government. This presentation hypothesizes that subfunctions that have roles which conflict with neoliberal values, such as those pertaining to education, training, and social services, will experience non-incremental budget decreases more frequently than subfunctions that reflect greater neoliberal values. To test this theory, annual appropriations data for 64 subfunctions was collected, resulting in a database of budget outcomes from 1977 to 2018. Preliminary multivariate regression models suggest that while a subfunction’s “neoliberalness” has some effect on the magnitude of budget cuts, specific subfunctions can experience budget patterns that are not explained by neoliberalism alone. This research adds to existing policy literature by exploring the intricacies of budget-making that have previously been dismissed as chaos.

The United States military is a massive proponent for airstrikes and utilizes them in place of ground forces. Although people expect airstrikes to increase precision and reduce civilian casualties, military conflicts continue to last for years. Nevertheless, the United States continues to rely on airstrikes as a principle strategy despite prolonged military conflicts. It is puzzling why the United States would transform military strategy to include a heavy reliance on airstrikes despite few indicators showing its success as a strategy. This research paper examines whether U.S. airstrikes reduce the magnitude- or the total civilian casualties- resulting from military conflicts. I expect to find that airstrikes increase civilian casualties and theorize that the use of these strikes is more for domestic favorability than any military benefit. I explore this expectation by using multiple regression analyses on wartime data from the Iraq War and the Syrian Conflict. I analyze the United States' use of ground forces during the Iraq War and its use of airstrikes during the Syrian Conflict, all while controlling for other actors and forces within these conflicts. This analysis provides insight into the capabilities of drone strikes as a means of ending conflict. 

Why do some American social movements enjoy Congressional attention while others do not? By contextualizing this question in existing social movement and policy elite preferences theory, this paper proposes a novel theory identifying social movement threat as a key causal mechanism underlying recognition from Congress. To operationalize this, “social movement threat” was measured by analyzing the size, frequency, and violence of protests organized under a corresponding social movement in a given year, while “Congressional attention” was measured by the amount of proposed legislation addressing a corresponding social movement in a given year. The project focuses on the actions of formal social movement organizations as a unit of analysis and hypothesizes that a continuous trend of threatening protest tactics is key to sparking Congressional attention. Preliminary multivariate regression analysis of three distinct social movements and over 300 protests in the 20th century indicates that more threatening social movements may have garnered greater Congressional attention in the form of proposed bills but did not necessarily enjoy a significantly higher amount of passed laws. Further, while Congressional attention did not increase with movement threat, it does appear that it increased over the lifespan of a social movement. The implication of these preliminary findings is that protests do little to influence Congressional decision-making, but that some other characteristic of an ongoing social movement may spark increased Congressional attention.

Mental health issues are prevalent across cultures and people. Immigrants with developmental disabilities (ID) face a double minority challenge due to the formidable differences among diverse groups in perceptions of mental health and difficulty in accessing services. Yet, health disparities and barriers faced by people with disabilities from a culturally diverse background have not been prioritized in educational curriculum, in scholarly research, and in general societal discourse. Recent reports suggest that systematic neglect of culture in health and healthcare has contributed to barriers to the advancement of health worldwide. This study strives to illuminate the development of mental health services for immigrants with co-occurring developmental (ID) and mental health challenges (MHC). It includes data from surveys and interviews with health care practitioners serving people with ID. Data analysis focuses on practitioners' challenges and successes working with this population. The findings help identify strategies and resources to support the immigrant communities who are experiencing the intersecting effects of marginalizing characteristics in their daily lives, especially through an intersectionality framework.

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated millions of American lives; yet, despite the collective suffering experienced across the board, individual responses to the pandemic have been plagued by the extreme polarization that has defined the last few decades of American politics. This paper explores the origins and key drivers of this polarization. Specifically, I examine the relationship between elite messaging and how Americans perceive the coronavirus pandemic by comparing changes in public opinion data regarding concern about COVID-19 to the ways in which political elites have discussed the pandemic. To conduct this study, I create a categorical “Elite Concern Index” comparing the concern and sentiments expressed by political elites of both primary parties through eight personal Twitter accounts and the official statements of the Democratic and Republican parties. I conduct a multivariate regression analysis to determine the relationship between my Elite Concern Index and public opinion about COVID-19 in order to assess whether elite messaging may have an influence upon the public’s perception of COVID-19. I expect to find a positive relationship between the concern expressed by political elites and the concern expressed by the public, which would suggest that political elites emphasizing the threat of COVID-19 can increase public concern regarding the virus. Understanding what is causing the polarization around COVID-19 can help us learn how to fight back against it and rally Americans to take the threat seriously, as a unified response is the best way to both defeat the virus and minimize its human impact.

Graffiti acts are aggressively criminalized in most American cities, with writers subject to hefty fines and jail time among an array of other punishments. Even the most progressive cities have implemented zero-tolerance approaches to graffiti. To justify their hardline positions, many cities employ rhetoric evocative of the Broken Windows Theory, citing graffiti’s threat to public safety and negative impact on property values. In this study, I assess the punitiveness of forty-three American cities’ graffiti laws. I theorize that municipalities are driven to adopt punitive anti-graffiti laws because of constituent concern about crime and deteriorating property values, purported outcomes of the Broken Windows Theory. To test my hypotheses, this study will employ multivariate regression models to test each hypothesis while controlling for other factors. I expect to find that cities with more punitive graffiti laws will have higher rates of crime perception among its residents and will face worsening property values to a greater extent than cities with less punitive graffiti laws. Ultimately, revealing the motivations driving municipal authorities to adopt punitive laws for non-violent crimes like graffiti helps illuminate what societal values they are invested in maintaining.