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 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.

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. 

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.

Unionization has been proven to give significant benefits for workers, specifically in terms of wages and employee benefits. However, in spite of these benefits, unionization has been on the decline in the United States since the 1960s. One of the main reasons for this decline is right-to-work (RTW) laws, which allow employees to opt out of paying union dues that contribute to the cost of union representation. This poses an interesting puzzle: why are RTW laws enacted in the United States, in spite of the negative economic effects towards workers? My research attempts to examine the relationship between a state’s ‘economy’ and RTW laws. I theorize that RTW laws, while hurting employees, provide a significant incentive to firms who are looking to relocate. Therefore, states with a lower gross state product (GSP) may be incentivized to institute a RTW law. I first look at GSP per capita to identify if there are cases where GSP stagnated, and then a RTW law was enacted. I then analyze the 8 most recent cases of RTW laws, using state data from 1965 to 2019 to look at the impacts of RTW laws on GSP, employment, median household income, and unionization. This is done using a multivariate regression analysis, to test the correlation between the passing of the RTW law and my dependent variables. Ultimately, this study hopes to both build on the existing body of evidence that asserts a negative relationship between both RTW states and unionization, and research additional effects of RTW laws beyond unionization by focusing on state economic development, and incentives around proposing a RTW law. 

The dominant perspective within school governance scholarship is Iacconne and Lutz’s Dissatisfaction Theory, which posits that local school politics are democratic because representatives elected by the public. If a constituency is sufficiently dissatisfied with its elected officials, incumbent board members will be voted out, inducing administrative change in the district. Within this framework, most scholars have focused on the institutional response to incumbent defeat, with topics like superintendent turnover and policy reform. This study places theoretical emphasis upon the community as the foundation of democratic self-government and investigates underlying socioeconomic conditions which induce citizens to vote out their representatives. It is hypothesized that civic engagement affects the causal linkage between dissatisfaction and incumbent defeat as posited by Dissatisfaction Theory. This is tested by a multiple regression model, which incorporates 141 school districts using ACS and newspaper data. If this hypothesis holds, then a positive correlation between civic engagement and democratic outcomes is established. The underlying insight being that civic culture is an essential consideration for local democratic governance.

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.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected nearly every facet of life, most alarmingly that of food security. Scholars suggests that food security is one of the most important indicators of physical and financial wellbeing. Many governmental policies, both on the federal and state level, have been passed in order to alleviate some of the building pressure. Grassroot organizations, particularly food pantries, have also stepped up in order to meet the increased demand for food security. My study examines the success rate of various food pantries across Washington State in their addressing of local food insecurities. “Success” is measured by how many households each food bank served. In order to collect this data, I individually contacted food banks across Washington State requesting them for the number of households that their pantries served between January and August of 2020. As food pantries are community-based organizations, this study will specifically examine whether food pantry success has been influenced by community population size. A multivariate regression model is employed in order to examine whether locality population size (primarily measured by ZIP code) has a statistically significant relationship with the number of households served, controlling for other variables. It is expected that lower population size will lead to higher rates of food bank success because (1) smaller communities have stronger collective identities and (2) local information is more accessible in smaller communities. If the regression fails to reject the null hypothesis, the implications of this study would be that food bank operators may benefit their communities more by starting multiple smaller local food banks rather than upgrading existing ones. These findings may also be applicable to other grass-roots non-profit organizations wishing to expand their reach.

The lifetime prevalence of PTSD is approximately 6.8% among adults in the United States, with an estimated 36.6% experiencing serious impairment. While increased reactivity to trauma stimuli, or hyperarousal, is heavily researched and well-understood, differences in the appraisal of neutral stimuli are minimally studied. Hostile Assessment Bias (HAB) is a measure of the extent to which a person views others’ actions as hostile or threatening towards them. People with higher levels of Hostile Assessment Bias may be at greater risk of decreased functionality and increased emotional distress due to their disproportionately negative reaction to neutral stimuli. Utilizing one of our existing studies which investigate the use of Prazosin, an alpha-1 adrenergic receptor antagonist, in treating subjective symptoms and functional distress in veterans diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we investigated the relationship between PTSD severity and increased Hostile Assessment Bias while a participant is not receiving treatment for PTSD, examine the role trauma type and substance abuse play in hostile cognition, and evaluate functional impairment in veterans with both PTSD and increased HAB.We also evaluated if medication (prazosin) improves HAB and if the improvement is associated with biomarkers of noradrenergic signaling. With a positive relationship established and prazosin effectively normalizing hostile assessment patterns, it could provide a new way to target functionally impairing symptoms. We expect this research to have applications in understanding and preventing police brutality, given police officers’ repeated exposure to trauma. The next steps would include participating in the design of a clinical trial based on first responders, including the police.

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.