How do small EU member states approach the Council Presidency: is the Presidency a silencer or an amplifier of national interests? Moreover, what challenges and opportunities do a small state face in the Presidency? In this comparative case study, I analysed the approach, challenges and opportunities of three member states in relation to the chairmanship: Denmark, an old and experienced member state and its Presidency in 2012; Latvia, a relatively new member state and first time Presidency in 2015; and finally Estonia, another new member, and its upcoming first time Presidency in 2018.My main findings indicate that the Presidency functions as a silencer for first time holders of the Presidency; and as an amplifier for Denmark, which efficiently used cognitive power resources to tilt the Presidency agenda in its favour, while remaining an honest broker. The Presidency offers many opportunities, among which the most important is the transformation of the public administration. Moreover, to showcase the EU to the incumbent state, and vice versa, is important for the integration process. It is also essential for the identity formation of small states to prove their capacity within the union. Finally, I established that a close relationship with the Commission is an important leadership quality and power resource for small states. For small states, the Presidency represents a challenge for the public administration, while unforeseeable events can entirely change the course of the Presidency. Furthermore, the domestic as well as the European political landscape can negatively influence the decision-making.

The essential issue of this project is the relationship between the American people and their president. As technology changes, people adapt to new methods of communication which simultaneously allow them to connect with others and the wider world more easily and yet also separate themselves from others and the wider world more easily. The need for presidential candidates and sitting presidents to connect with citizens has led to the adoption of diverse media strategies that include traditional news initiatives with established journalists, face to face interaction with small groups of supporters, and visits to traditionally non-political entertainment-based venues. This dissertation research examines that last element of presidential-level communication: an embrace of entertainment forums for political purposes. This project is a necessary contribution to the field because there has not been a thorough and exclusive examination of the embrace of the entertainment-based venue by presidential campaigns guided by the thoughts of veterans of presidential campaigns themselves. Some scholars and journalists have partially analyzed this phenomenon as part of a larger examination of presidential communication strategy, but this specific element has largely been uninspected and has become especially relevant in the context of the presidency of Barack Obama, a trailblazer in the use of entertainment-based venues for political purposes, and in the context of presidential campaigns and administrations going forward. The 2016 presidential primaries have only made the purpose of this project more urgent because of the rise of Donald Trump, perhaps the ultimate example of the fusing of politics and entertainment. To understand the phenomena driving presidential campaigns to embrace entertainment-based venues, I conducted interviews with twenty-two veterans of presidential campaigns dating back to the 1980 election. Between them, these twenty-two political strategists have worked for five administrations – Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama – and a number of major campaigns in every election cycle since 1980, including the 2016 campaign. I also conducted two interviews with veterans of the most viewed entertainment platforms of the 1990s and 2000s: The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman. These twenty-four interviews, including with one individual who worked for both a presidential campaign and a late night entertainment talk show, were conducted between March 2015 and February 2016 and included targeted questions and an oral history component. Presidential candidates have increasingly needed to stress the lighter sides of their personalities to appeal to a voting public fascinated by the horserace media coverage of presidential politics but largely uninterested in the minutiae of day-to-day policymaking. Slowly, sitting presidents have attempted to do the same but have had to balance revelation with the responsibilities of holding the highest office in the land. This project evaluates the implications of the moves that presidential campaigns and presidential administrations have made to become more accessible and connected with the citizenry in a constantly changing media environment. Based on the data collected through the interview process, his project offers a new theoretical underpinning for this media strategy based on a synthesis of role theory, the postmodern presidency theory, and technological determinism that allows for the significant influence of individual personality in the decision-making process and predicts how future campaigns will operate in this regard as media technology and American political culture evolve. / Media & Communication

No description available.

One of the challenges facing community colleges in the United States is the looming retirements of executive/senior-level leadership, particularly the president, on a wide scale. This study explored the career aspirations of executive-level leaders within the community college using Social Cognitive Career Theory as the conceptual framework. Within the context of a three-person collaborative dissertation project, a mixed methods case study approach was utilized for the research design. It first examined the perceived and preferred organizational culture(s) by administering the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI). Building upon results of the OCAI, interviews with executive-level leaders explored how personal and institutional factors impact their aspirations of to ascend to the community college presidency. The findings of the research indicate that affecting change, being asked, and the desire to help are personal factors of influence that motivate executive-level leaders to seek the role of community college president. On the other hand, age, family, and potential work-life imbalance might dissuade executive-level leaders from seeking this role. The study reveals that organizational culture (the “culture of caring”) and leadership development are positive factors of institutional influence. Institutional factors that dissuade executive-level leaders from seeking the community college presidency are politics, the state of the institution being led, and the unknown. This study advances the field of educational leadership in that a number of personal and institutional factors are adduced that influence the aspirations of executive-level leaders to progress to the community college presidency. The findings identify the need for research across multiple institutions and the need to expand Social Cognitive Career Theory to include personal-cognitive barriers of race and gender.

This paper reads Larry Beinhart’s novel The Librarian (2004) and its nonfiction companion Fog Facts (2005) as a double attempt at writing that is politically invested in representing reality but that nevertheless is openly aware of the postmodern crisis of representation. In this sense, I read both books as indicative of a broad cultural search for forms of writing that engage their readers’ reality without simply attempting to return to a less complicated moment before postmodernism. The paper situates both books within crucial textual contexts: a broad ‘epistemic panic’ about the facts and reality at the time, a surge of political nonfiction published in response to George W. Bush’s Presidency, and a longer tradition of political fiction. Tracing how the novel struggles with its nonfiction aspects and how the nonfiction book relies on fiction to make its point, I then look at how the two books evoke political affect to have a realist appeal of sorts despite their insistence on the precarious nature of all realist representation. Reading both books as distinctly popular, mass-market products and thus bringing together the debate around post-postmodernism from literary studies with an interest in reading pleasures informed by popular culture studies, I argue that the two books constitute decidedly popular attempts at a new, meta-aware yet politically engaged textuality.

The struggle between the President and the Congress over the power to control the use of military force is an enduring dimension of U.S. foreign policy. In the 20th century Arthur Schlesinger labeled the growth of Presidential war power the “Imperial Presidency.” While some scholars have attempted to explain the expansion of Presidential power based on the Cold War or nuclear weapons, there has been little work studying the link between America’s ascending role in international legal frameworks and this domestic legal transformation. In this dissertation, I argue that America’s participation in international legal frameworks, such as the United Nations and NATO, has been a central factor in enabling the growth of Presidential war power. These international frameworks allow the President to circumvent Congress and to assert that the use of military force was something other than a ‘war’ that would need Congressional authorization. In case studies of pre-WWII aid to Great Britain, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, I demonstrate how the rise of executive war power relied on America’s growing participation in international legal frameworks. The dissertation contributes to the nexus of International Relations and Constitutional scholarship. It offers a unique interpretation of Presidential war power while also offering new insights on the nature of the United States’ relationship with international legal frameworks. I argue that participation in international legal frameworks has been ‘democracy-undermining’ as the President utilizes those frameworks to circumvent the Constitution’s restrictions on Presidential war power.

Nos últimos anos o termo diplomacia presidencial tornou-se conhecido por todos devido a sua presença tanto na mídia, quanto nos meios acadêmicos e diplomáticos. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar o conceito de diplomacia presidencial no Brasil, cunhado por estudiosos para nomear a nova atitude – mais ativa – de alguns presidentes em política externa. Essa análise é importante para uma melhor compreensão da ação dos chefes de Executivo nacionais no cenário externo. Para isso, comparam-se publicações que abordam o conceito e aquelas que o definem, o que contribui para a compreensão do seu estatuto teórico. Além disso, confronta-se o conceito de diplomacia presidencial com outras abordagens que tratam da ação da Presidência da República na formulação de política externa. / In recent years the term presidential diplomacy has become widely known due to its constant presence in the media, the academic and diplomatic circles. This paper aims to analyze the concept of presidential diplomacy in Brazil, coined by researchers to describe the new and more active attitude toward foreign policy of some presidents. This analysis is important to better understand the actions executed by the head of the Executive in the international arena. Publications that approached the concept and those that defined it were compared in order to contribute to the comprehension of its theoretical statute. Furthermore, the concept of presidential diplomacy was confronted with other approaches that deal with the direct intervention of the Chief-of-State in the formulation of foreign policy.

<p>C-level Thesis in International Relations Course.</p>

The presidential contest of 1952 established a new trajectory for Florida politics. This pivotal election reversed decades of Democratic dominance and signified the beginning of presidential Republicanism in the state. Elections in the second half of the 20th century provided evidence of an increasingly favorable environment for Republican nominees. During this period Democrats were limited to carrying the state's electoral votes three times. GOP presidential ascendancy in Florida was augmented by partisan conversion and the disproportionate in-migration of white Northerners following World War II. Contrary to unrivaled 1980s support, which created an anchor in a new core Southern Republican electoral bloc, the 1990s restoration of competitiveness highlighted voter fluidity. This trend was exemplified by a virtual tie in the 2000 election. This paper confirms an atypical regional diffusion of Republican presidential dominance attributable to demographics. Contemporary Florida elections have been profoundly altered by an older population, increasing diversity due to immigration, and the erosion of Southern culture. Unlike intensifying national sectionalism, Florida has been classified as a "too close to call" during most of the past four presidential campaigns. A unique partisan balance is a component of a demographic profile mirroring the nation. Steady population growth has gradually positioned Florida as an unexpected presidential bellwether. The longevity of highly competitive national elections will continue to be primarily dependent on the partisan inclinations of newcomers.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Political Science, 2006. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-122).