This thesis examines women?s participation in politics by utilizing a model of gender integration. This model shows that there are two ways that women enter the political world: horizontally and vertically. Horizontal integration represents the increase of women into politics in numbers while vertical integration requires that women ascend to positions of power and leadership within the institution. The main focus of this study is an analysis of women?s appointment to boards and commissions in North Carolina. My analysis focuses on the number of women serving on forty boards and commissions over an eight-year period. The boards and commissions were chosen in two groups. First, a survey of elected officials and other key individuals was performed to assess the state?s most powerful boards and commissions. The top twenty of these were chosen for examination. Then, twenty lesser boards and commissions were chosen at random. After a statistical analysis of my results, I conclude that women are not making significant gains in their appointments to boards and commissions and I explain this lack of progress as an example of the continuing significance of political roles. Throughout the paper, I explore definitions of gender and how a woman?s experiences may affect her participation in certain issue areas in the political realm, particularly with regard to appointments to boards and commissions. In addition, I discuss women in North Carolina politics from 1920 to the present and give substantive examples of how women have influenced public policy in North Carolina.

<p>Abstract LEGREE, LAWRENCE FREDERICK. Strategic Change for NATO: Incremental ResponseFrom an Organizational Perspective. (Under the direction of Dr. Roland Stephen) In his article on thepersistence of NATO after the Cold War, Robert McCalla frames the following question: How do alliancesrespond to changing strategic circumstances? The focus of this project is to explore McCalla's question froman organizational perspective. The thesis details the following chain of logic: NATO is an institution thatpossesses bureaucratic characteristics and these characteristics can be understood through theories oforganizations. Specifically, the manner in which NATO is evolving is consistent with the descriptive theory ofincrementalism. Political-military policy formation that provides the substance to the debate over NATO'sfuture is described in terms of an incrementalist model to demonstrate that change to the structure and role ofNATO will take place under predicable circumstances. Policy makers within the organizational andinstitutional regime of NATO continue to adapt to new missions that are congruent with patternedexpectations. The predominant finding is that NATO shows evidence of change under the mechanism ofincrementalism. This mechanism will remain a valid model for future determinations of NATO's persistence<P>

<p> This study examines the relationship between a person?s volunteer activity and their attitude toward government involvement in social programs, feelings of efficacy in the political system and interest in politics in general. The connection between political views and volunteering is an important one to consider when evaluating public outcry against government intrusion into what some claim is a community?s prerogative to take care of their own. Does the outcry emanate from citizens who shoulder responsibility for communal problems and involve themselves in its activities and needs? In addition, the analysis tests part of Robert Putnam?s Social Capital Theory by evaluating its role in determining who volunteers in America. It seeks to prove that an individual?s positive feelings of trust, helping behavior and fairness in others are a motivating force behind his or her decision to volunteer. Finally, the study attempts to confirm that those who read the newspaper more and watch television less are more apt to give time back to their communities. Survey data from the 1996 General Social Survey was used to create an index measurement of the dependent volunteering variable. Next, indexes were created to gauge both a person?s feeling of efficacy within the political system and their attitude towards government?s role in supporting social programs. When tested against the dependent variable, survey respondents? views regarding personal efficacy within the political system, faith in American democracy in general, and support for government responsibility in multiple social areas did not play a significant role in determining whether or not a person volunteered. Supporting existing literature, however, interest in politics in general did have a positive and significant relationship to volunteering. The same volunteer index was tested against various factors that were considered to approximate aspects of Putnam?s theory. Time spent watching television did not have an impact on the level of volunteering among respondents to the survey. Similarly, frequency of reading the newspaper did not increase one?s propensity to volunteer, despite the findings of Putnam which positively associated news reading with stronger levels of social trust and group membership. The variable asking respondents whether people are helpful most of the time, versus people look out for themselves, did not have a significant effect on the dependent variable. However, an individual?s opinion that it is important to teach children to help others yielded the strongest positive standardized coefficient within its particular model than all other independent variables tested in the analysis. Finally, the feeling that people are fair and can be trusted had a small, yet significant, effect on the volunteer variable. In keeping with Putnam?s argument, trust makes volunteering more likely, and that increased involvement in one?s community ? in theory ? could encourage an even greater level of community efficacy and trust.<P>

In this dissertation I introduce an institutional approach for the research of the Chinese welfare state and the measure of people’s welfare benefit. I demonstrate that multiple institutional transitions due to the economic reforms initiated in the early 1980s have since dramatically changed the Chinese welfare state and the way welfare benefits are distributed. Multiple institutional transitions discussed in this dissertation are structural changes associated with the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms, the rapid industrialization, ever-growing urbanization, and large-scale decentralization of the fiscal system. Through the exploration of the data from the 1988 and 1995 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), I found that SOE reforms and the fiscal decentralization played a significant role in the cutback of welfare benefit in the reform era. Employees in nonstate sectors and drawing welfare benefits from local welfare funds are more likely to receive less welfare benefits from the state or the work unit than those people employed in the state sector and drawing welfare benefits from state funds. The other two institutional changes, namely industrialization and urbanization, are not statistically significant.

Why have foreign counterinsurgency operations had such low success rates since 1945? While operations of this type succeeded at the rate of 85.71% during the period of 1816-1945, they declined by 56.30 percentage points to just 29.49% during period of 1945-1997 (Sarkees, 2000: 123-144). This occurred even though foreign powers were often fighting in the same territories where they had previously been overwhelmingly victorious. I argue that military defeats suffered by European states during the Second World War convinced the peoples of the developing world that colonial control could be successfully challenged. As guerrilla struggles emerged in post-war Asia and Africa, colonial powers conducting counterinsurgency operations in those regions were constrained by a revised international order in which the existing multi-polar world had been replaced by a nuclear-armed, bi-polar East-West confrontation that offered the possibility of real-time, system-wide deadly responses to provocations. The United Nations Charter also offered support for territorial self-determination in Articles 1, 55, 73, and 76 (United Nations Charter, 1945, Articles 1, 55, and 73); support that was heightened by the growing number of former colonial states within the United Nations membership. This broad political and military support for native rule legitimated the existence and heightened the resolve of post-war nationalism (Westad, 1992), making nationalistic insurgencies virtually impossible to truly defeat, regardless of the counterinsurgency strategy employed. To further evaluate these arguments, I developed hypotheses that advance the propositions that (a) counterinsurgency campaigns facing significant United Nations opposition will fail more often than those which do not, (b) insurgencies which receive broad support from great powers will be more likely to succeed than those which do not, and (c) the employment of either of the two primary counterinsurgency strategies will not be significant in success or failure of counterinsurgency efforts. Those hypotheses were then tested by briefly comparing information across the 17 case studies contained in the Correlates of War (COW) Extra-State Dataset for the period of 1945-1997 (see Appendix I), and then evaluated in depth through four case studies drawn from that dataset. The results were compelling, and offer significant support for all three hypotheses.

An inherent contradiction exists between two fundamental principles embedded in American political philosophy: the notion of "checks and balances" and the idea of an "independent judiciary." After all, a truly "independent" branch of government would be immune to the influences, or "checks," of external institutions. This dissertation addresses that juxtaposition through a two part analysis of Supreme Court decision-making. The first part uses multivariate regression to illustrate that justices confirmed under conditions of divided government are more moderate in their voting behavior than justices confirmed under conditions of unified government. Ancillary findings also reveal that justices who receive more votes during their Senate confirmation hearings will be more moderate in their voting behavior and that justices appointed by presidents with higher Gallup Approval Ratings tend to be more "extreme" in their voting behavior. Overall, the confirmation process appears to offer an avenue through which the executive and legislative branches can "check and balance" the voting outputs of the Supreme Court. The second part of this dissertation assesses the degree to which justices remain independent from the influences of the "political" branches once they begin serving on the Court. Time series regression models indicate that Supreme Court justices are likely to vary their voting behavior in civil rights and civil liberties cases based on which party controls the White House at the time a vote is being cast. Evidence also shows that justices are likely to vary their voting behavior in economic cases based on which party is strongest in Congress. Beyond that, findings also suggest that justices exhibit differences in voting behavior while the appointing president is in office, and, surprisingly, that justices seem to grow more liberal in their voting behavior over time. Collectively, this information indicates that there are certain situations (such as case issues or time periods in a justice‘s tenure) in which Supreme Court justices are not entirely "independent" in their behavior. For those who cherish the ideal of judicial independence, this may be a deleterious development; conversely, for those who deride the expansive role that the Supreme Court may have taken in contemporary society, the implication of a link between democratic processes and voting outputs may be a sanguine pronouncement.

This study represents an analysis of the public policy mandated in Grutter v. Bollinger and the public policies and procedures administered through Geier v. Bredesen at professional schools in the State of Tennessee. To gather information and ensure objectivity, a multiple information-gathering approach was used, which included administering a written questionnaire, reviewing court documents, conducting elite interviews, and participating in various University of Tennessee-based committees. Both Grutter and Geier used affirmative action policies to help achieve student body diversity in public higher education institutions. Grutter used affirmative action as a voluntary means to support the argument that diversity is a compelling governmental interest. Diversity included, but was not limited to, racial diversity. In Geier, Tennessee professional higher educational institutions were court-ordered to use affirmative action policies to remove the legacy of de jure segregation. In Geier, diversity was the desired goal but was limited primarily to racial diversity of two racial groups, Blacks and Whites. Through the admissions processes they examined, Grutter and Geier dealt with both applications of affirmative action policies—non-remedial (diversity) and remedial (correcting past discrimination). In 2003, the Grutter case became the national standard for all colleges and universities, public and private, in the use of race-conscious admissions policies in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs. In 2006, a Final Order of Dismissal was issued on the Geier lawsuit. As a result, public higher education institutions in the State of Tennessee must now abide by the standard laid out in Grutter. The central question posed in this study was whether Geier’s admissions policies comply with the current Grutter standard. The findings indicate that, as originally written and applied, Geier admissions policies do not meet the current Grutter standard. Under Geier, race was the only type of diversity sought, and race was limited only to Blacks and Whites. Therefore, Geier, as originally written, is not narrowly tailored and does not pass the strict scrutiny test. Under Geier, much progress was made to increase student body diversity, particularly of historically underrepresented groups. As Tennessee moves into the post- Geier era, administrators of the state public colleges and universities continue to assert that diversity is a compelling governmental interest. Future efforts must demonstrate the ability to maintain the progress made under Geier while complying with the Grutter standards. This must be done while recognizing that Grutter, the current law of the land, is still being scrutinized and challenged.

Malcontents within international relations are small states that signal the decline of the hegemonic state. While not the direct cause of a hegemonic state‘s downfall, the malcontent is a sign that the hegemon is becoming weaker and the more malcontents is a symbol of the dwindling power of a hegemon. This work takes combines hegemonic theory and international relations theory to form a typology of malcontents. In addition this work introduces a futures analysis methodology that helps to quantify the impact that malcontents have on the hegemonic future of the United States. This typology divides malcontents into three specific categories, revolutionary, benign, and passive aggressive according to their approach to achieving their national goals. The futures analysis exercise gives results that show how malcontents are a part of a much larger decline in general. Malcontents help to demonstrate how weak the hegemon really is, further hastening its decline. The use of force against hegemonic malcontents is often the only policy choice left and it is often the worst policy decision that can be made.

The optimistic vision of the Internet as an “electronic agora” has been a common theme of discourse among scholars studying the impacts of computer technology on everyday life. In opposition to this view stand pessimistic scholars who insist that meaningful democratic discourse must be direct and claim that the Internet, like television, is reshaping our lives in decidedly antidemocratic and asocial ways. The present study contributes to this debate by examining online social networks to better understand their potential impact on society. Data were collected via a web-based survey using a convenience sample of 170 students from the University of Tennessee. The results of this study suggest that through their socializing efforts, members of online social networks have the potential to enrich their lives by connecting to society, increasing the diversity of their friendships, and collecting and disseminating political information. The findings herein are likely to be of particular interest to 1) academics studying the effects of Web 2.0 technologies on society, 2) political activists and strategists interested in using such technologies to communicate with and mobilize young adults, and 3) social scientists studying political socialization.

This research project addresses the issue of service consolidation by units of local government. Service consolidation between units of local government is a frequent occurrence and references the partial merger of local government departments. The research defines the topic and suggests a distinct placement in the academic literature. Service consolidation is a similar but different topic from local government cooperation, collaboration, functional consolidation or comprehensive merger. To assist, a survey of county managers in North Carolina is conducted to determine the frequency of service merger activity, the attitudes of manager‟s regarding the practice and to determine the types of services viewed favorably for this activity. The research project also conducts two case studies of successful service merger projects with the goal of better understanding the process and specific management strategies creating a favorable outcome. The survey and case study results suggest a favorable view of this activity from administrators and are coupled with a series of cautionary assertions from existing research.