Thesis advisor: Ken Kersch / This thesis examines the tradition of Catholic natural law conservatism in contemporary American politics. Using the works of Clarence Manion and Robert P. George, it identifies two distinct strands of natural law political philosophy. The analysis concludes with an attempt to reconcile these interpretations with the hope of providing a viable framework for the natural law in modern America. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / While the Tea Party’s rise in 2009 prompted enormous media attention and subsequent academic inquiry, scholarship that investigates Tea Party ideology is scant. While not a social movement in the traditional sense, the Tea Party had an undeniable influence on the 2010 midterms, especially at the state level. This paper features New Hampshire, a perennial swing state and home to one of the largest legislative shifts to Republican control in recent memory. By exploring four broad issue areas, Constitutionalism, the economy, social issues, and race, the project seeks a clearer understanding of what Tea Partiers believe and what their sympathetic state legislators espouse. The first level of analysis uses opinion polling to demonstrate that while those respondents who back the Tea Party have conservative views on perceptual questions, a plurality agree with most Americans on specific policy positions. The second level of analysis compares opinion poll responses to interviews of New Hampshire state legislators, finding that the latter group is much more rigidly conservative on tangible policies, but lacks Tea Party voters’ distinctive fears of a changing America. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-21T14:42:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Elizabete_Schimanski.pdf: 2001841 bytes, checksum: d236dc4c2ab6fc0102e7fe98f044abb2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-11-05 / In a common sense, Ponta Grossa (PR) has been considered as a conservative and traditionalist city. Straightforwardly, its historical background has showed maintenance and centralization of political power of some historical families. These families projected themselves at the local political arena as aristocratic set which has centralized the economic and political power in opposition to popular groups. Frequently, the political actions from municipal govern have been endorsing elitist interests from this aristocratic faction in disagreement about popular groups. These popular groups have not find at local level large spaces of political participation when compared with the influential elite. Notwithstanding, at the turn of the twenty-century some two distinct popular groups achieved successful results from municipal elections. In this context, Ponta Grossa has been experienced some controversial situations considering participation from population, rupture with oligarchy trends and emancipation processes of constructing a democratic local society. In this sense, this research aims at understanding the way of conservatism from aristocratic sectors manipulates the political power in the region and its consequences for the city. At the same time, this study endeavours to identify and analyse some flourishing approaches from popular groups to face dominance of political power from privileged classes. / No senso comum, Ponta Grossa (PR) tem sido considerada como uma cidade conservadora e tradicionalista. Destarte, em sua história o controle político encontra-se centrado em algumas famílias históricas. Essas famílias projetaram-se na arena política local como uma elite aristocrática, a qual tem centralizado o poder político e econômico em detrimento aos interesses de grupos tidos como populares. Freqüentemente, as ações políticas provenientes do poder municipal têm endossado interesses elitistas em oposição aos interesses populares. Os chamados grupos populares não têm encontrado grande espaço de participação quando comparado a elite influente. Apesar disso, no final do século XX e início desse século, dois grupos distintos conseguiram expressivo sucesso nas últimas eleições. Nesse contexto, Ponta Grossa (PR) tem experimentado situações controversas no que tange a participação dos grupos populares e o desejo desses em romper com interesses oligárquicos e, assim, construir um processo emancipatório que leve em conta aspectos democráticos de uma sociedade. Nesse sentido, essa pesquisa visa compreender como o conservadorismo decorrente dos setores aristocráticos tem manipulado o poder político na região e suas conseqüências para a cidade. Ao mesmo tempo, esse estudo busca identificar e analisar como os grupos populares tem enfrentado o poder político das classes sociais mais privilegiadas.

This dissertation examines the shape, objectives, and fate of the anti-immigrationist movement from 1955 to 1981. During this period, groups and individuals operated within the confines of the British political system to advocate for the restriction of non-white immigration to the UK and also to minimize the perceived negative impact these immigrants were having upon the social and economic fabric of the UK. The study argues that by attaching their anti-immigrationist objections to existing political concerns, including anxieties about the welfare state, and by advocating for anti-immigrationist policies and legislation within the confines of established techniques of political activism and protest, anti-immigrationists were far more successful than they might otherwise have been, and indeed more successful than academic studies and popular opinion have portrayed them. However, their reliance upon a language of active citizenship and genuine democracy to justify their arguments to restrict immigration proved to be less popular with elite politicians and senior civil servants than a language of inclusivity and civil rights. As such, while much of the substantive legislation which anti-immigrationists advocated for was implemented at the highest level of government, the anti-immigrationist ethos, and the language in which they expressed their views, was not adopted by these powerful individuals, resulting in a foreclosure and minimization of the role of anti-immigrationists in agitating for the implementation of this legislation and body of policy. Furthermore, the decline of the anti-immigrationist movement was less the result of the success of the left in persuading the right to abandon its commitment to anti-immigrationism than of the success of the extreme right in claiming anti-immigrationism as its own, to the dismay of the more moderate right and centre-right.

This dissertation studies historical and contemporary conservative rhetoric to argue that the political right's variant of American populism defines the rhetorical figure of "the people" as ontologically opposed to the state. This state-phobic rhetoric poses a threat to democratic deliberation, I argue, because it presumptively cancels the very appeals to shared space that tend to make democracy thrive. By turns examining the new right, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2008 presidential campaign, and the rise of the Tea Party, this dissertation suggests American democracy is trapped in a populist feedback loop that creates tragic modes of melancholic democratic politics. This democratic melancholia contributes directly to contemporary political trends of hyper-partisanship.

This thesis argues that the 1938 Kentucky Democratic primary was a critical moment for the New Deal and the Democratic Party. Furthermore, it demonstrates the fractures forming within the southern wing of the party. Through this primary the paper examines peoples’ perceptions of a changing democracy. One that they believed included a much more powerful president and meddling bureaucracy. It details the major points of the campaign, including Franklin Roosevelt’s visit to the state the famous poisoning accusations, and the corruption within the Works Progress Administration.

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<p>This paper addresses the expectation that immigrants will assimilate into the culture of their new country, why that expectation may be legitimate and how the modern state may act upon it. The central contention made is that because a national culture provides meaning and structure to the lives of members, and because that culture must be both traditional and institutionalized by the state to fulfill that purpose, if the state’s institutions, processes and procedures through their association with the national culture create an assimilative pressure on immigrants, this is morally permissible. However, the modern state is restricted from actively pursuing assimilation in the private sphere because of its commitment to individual liberty. Implications of this argument for the nature of citizenship and public policy are also discussed.</p>

This paper addresses the expectation that immigrants will assimilate into the culture of their new country, why that expectation may be legitimate and how the modern state may act upon it. The central contention made is that because a national culture provides meaning and structure to the lives of members, and because that culture must be both traditional and institutionalized by the state to fulfill that purpose, if the state’s institutions, processes and procedures through their association with the national culture create an assimilative pressure on immigrants, this is morally permissible. However, the modern state is restricted from actively pursuing assimilation in the private sphere because of its commitment to individual liberty. Implications of this argument for the nature of citizenship and public policy are also discussed.