As social media makes it easy for politicians, journalists, pundits, and news broadcasting organizations to deliver information and news directly to the people, scholars have growing concerns regarding the increasing reliance on social media to advance political information and agendas. Social media algorithms have the power to tailor information to people's preferences, issuing content that tends to cover and promote one side of a political narrative. Individual motivations to discover political content on social media, often driven by political ideology, further impact one’s political knowledge and engagement (their level of political sophistication). Bridging social media influences could clarify whether consuming news on social media shapes perceptions of media bias, which may erode trust in media, drive individuals toward ideologically aligned sources, and contribute to increased polarization and shifts in democratic engagement. Expanding on previous research that highlights the role of social media algorithms in shaping partisan bias, this paper examines the interaction of social media consumption with party affiliation and political sophistication to shape perceptions of media bias. I utilize a secondary data set from the American National Election Studies (ANES) to examine this connection between social media consumption and media bias perceptions.

Does Universal Basic Income impact educational attainment? Theorists and prior researchers have drawn mixed conclusions on the effectiveness of UBI. While some argue that unconditional cash transfers increase personal goal seeking and human capital investment behavior, increasing educational attainment, others find that UBI negatively impacts educational attainment because it encourages individuals to neglect any investment in their human capital. Despite these arguments, prior research on this topic is extremely limited, which is why it is so important for this paper to investigate these claims. I expect UBI is associated with increased educational attainment because people could use the finances from UBI to support the additional financial and time commitment costs of education. To investigate this puzzle and test my theory, this paper uses Alaska as a case study, as it provides an opportunity to study the effects of UBI through the Permanent Fund Dividend. The Permanent Fund Dividend is a recurring annual payment given to nearly every Alaskan citizen, sourced from the State’s mineral revenue, thus presenting the best large-scale proxy of UBI available to study. This paper will estimate a counterfactual, or synthetic, Alaska without the PFD, which will allow us to infer the impact of PFD on education by comparing real educational attainments with the estimated levels.

As wealth continues to consolidate among the top 10% of the United States population, investing in quality and accessible education is one of the most explicit ways to increase individuals' median income. However, legislator’s perspective on the best way to support education varies widely which has contributed to the patchwork of inequitable systems throughout the nation. My research aims to test whether legislators’ socioeconomic backgrounds predict their support for and their likelihood of supporting policy to promote access and quality of K-12 public education. A negative relationship between legislators’ socioeconomic status and their voting history could provide evidence to support my hypothesis that upper class legislators are perpetuating barriers to class mobility by inhibiting pro-education legislation throughout the United States. 

This paper explores the significance of U.S. financial assistance to weak democracies and its impact on their political processes, particularly protest movements. In recent history, almost every nation has seen anti-state demonstrations, driven by factors such as war, elections, inflation, or social issues. Domestically, these international conflicts have sparked debate among politicians, scholars, and voters about how U.S. aid should be allocated. While U.S. aid is generally regarded as a stabilizing force that fosters economic growth and democratization, little is known about its influence on political mobilization. Protest as a concept remains underutilized as a mechanism for understanding political dynamics, especially in the context of ongoing global regime changes. This paper examines how U.S. aid shapes protest in weak and transitional democracies. It investigates two competing theories: increased aid either promotes economic stability, discouraging protests, or fosters democratization, which empowers civil society and encourages protests. Using data from transitioning democracies from 1990 to 2020, this research analyzes the frequency of anti-state protests in relation to U.S. economic and military aid allocations.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) owns abundant natural resources like minerals and oil, yet they struggle to translate this wealth into sustainable economic growth and prosperity. This research explores the question: What strategies can the DRC implement to achieve sustainable economic growth while fostering prosperity for its population? The study hypothesizes that embracing resource-driven economic diversification, improved governance, and international partnerships can transform the DRC’s economic trajectory. This research is a secondary research because there are many study cases for many countries in which they had faced economic challenges due to the non-transparency of their government. One example is Brazil; they are also land-rich and rich in natural resources. However, unlike the DRC, Brazil has managed to achieve a significantly higher GDP. This research indicates that a major factor behind the DRC’s hardship is the lack of transparency in its government, which reduces foreign investor confidence and limits economic growth. To foster their prosperity, we suggest that global organizations, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), communicate with the DRC’s government based on the information from the World Bank and IMF for their openness to trade and transparent management to confide foreign investors’ investment in the country. If these, transparent government and confiding foreign investors strategies are well-implemented, this project could greatly impact many nations. It could lift millions of people out of economic hardship and turn the DRC into an example for other nations with similar challenges, especially in the African continent. The accomplishments made by the transparent government and confiding foreign investors policy in DRC may act as a model for nations worldwide on how to develop an economy that is sustainable, equitable, and advantageous for every world citizen.

Founded in 1989 as a joint effort between Boeing, the University of Washington's School of International Studies, and the Jackson Foundation, the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) sought to bridge the gap between academic subject experts and policymakers to develop U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific. But to understand the NBR, one needs to explore the context in which it was conceived. Through analyzing policy publications, communications, and digital sources in the context of sociological analyses of the think tank, this thesis argues that the NBR was influenced by the "end of history" thesis, which declared that liberal democratic capitalism had triumphed over communism, and advanced this concept by encouraging the growth of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), an intergovernmental forum also founded in 1989 concerned with expanding free trade in the Asia-Pacific. In effect, through APEC, the NBR helped disseminate the "end of history" thesis as well as the language of globalization that defined U.S. foreign policymaking toward Japan. This research details the ways in which NBR interacted with academia, government, and business and the role of the think tank in U.S. foreign policymaking during a period of rapid change in the international order.