The purpose of this thesis was to analyze President Trump's Afghanistan foreign policy and to determine if it fits the mold of one of the four historical foreign policy paradigms as described by Walter Russell Mead in his book, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. Mead describes four U.S. foreign policy schools of thought, in which he titles after influential statesmen who embody the specific school's core principles. These paradigms include the Hamiltonians, who believe in a strong relationship between big business and government for foreign policy success. The Wilsonians, who encourage the spread of democratic principles abroad. The Jeffersonians, who favor the protection of domestic liberal democracy over other foreign policy endeavors. Lastly, the Jacksonians, who prioritize the physical and economic security of American citizens above all else. The primary research question in this thesis states, which of the four traditions of U.S. foreign policy identified by Walter Russell Mead helps explain President Trump's Afghanistan foreign policy? President Trump's rhetoric and specific foreign policy actions were analyzed. His rhetoric was examined through his August 2017 Afghanistan Strategy speech and his specific foreign policy actions were measured through various air operation metrics, U.S. aid to Afghanistan, and U.S. troop deployment trends. Overall, this thesis gave support to my hypothesis that President Trump's Afghanistan foreign policy contains various Hamiltonian and Wilsonian principles, but it has proven to be principally Jacksonian. / Master of Arts / The objective of this thesis was to further understand President Trump's Afghanistan foreign policy through the theoretical framework of Walter Russel Mead's four historical foreign policy paradigms. Mead's four historical paradigms are useful tools to examine and understand U.S. foreign policy. Mead provides in-depth historical context, goes into great detail on core principles, and also provides a surfeit of advantages and disadvantages for each school of thought. His breakdown of U.S. foreign policy into complementary yet combative paradigms is one of the most complete explanations of U.S. foreign policy to date. The primary research question in this thesis states, which of the four traditions of U.S. foreign policy identified by Walter Russell Mead helps explain President Trump's Afghanistan foreign policy? President Trump's rhetoric and specific foreign policy actions were analyzed. His rhetoric was examined through his August 2017 Afghanistan Strategy speech and his specific foreign policy actions were measured through various air operation metrics, U.S. aid to Afghanistan, and U.S. troop deployment trends. Overall, this thesis gave support to my hypothesis that President Trump's Afghanistan foreign policy contains various Hamiltonian and Wilsonian principles, but it has proven to be principally Jacksonian.

After the 2016 United States presidential election, people became newly involved in social action and civic engagement efforts around the nation. This participation involved joining both established and newly developing groups. One newly developed group was Indivisible. Indivisible chapters were created all over the country; group goals included resisting the aims of the Trump administration and saving democracy. The chapters looked different depending on the local context and group member composition. Some early participants moved on; other activists remained involved in this work over time. Not enough has been understood about their reasons for staying committed, or what kind of learning and changes resulted from their involvement in these communities. This study considered the Indivisible participants who were new to activism, and their experiences with learning, sustained involvement, and community. This study focused on the factors that kept new activists involved in Indivisible social action efforts from 2017 to 2020, what participants learned or how they changed through their involvement, and the roles of community in participants’ learning or development. Participants were involved for a minimum of two years; 93% had been involved for four to five-plus years at the time of the study (n=51). All of the study participants were able to articulate what they had learned through their participation in Indivisible activities. Learning more about the experiences of new activists was prioritized to understand how to support adult learners drawn to social activism and civic engagement in the future. This qualitative case study included accounts from participants in Indivisible groups from around the United States. Data were collected from 55 participants who submitted demographic questionnaires with critical incident questionnaires, with a subset of 22 participants then doing a follow-up interview. A different subset of four participants also participated in a focus group. The study found eight factors that sustained involvement, seven sub-factors that could help to sustain involvement, and three factors that may hinder involvement. The most significant factors were: (1) Community relationships and friendships, (2) Making a difference and thinking more was possible, and (3) Having a sense of duty, and belief that quitting was not an option. The most reported sub-factors were: (1) Supportive family members and friends and (2) Indivisible’s flexible format helping participants make it work for their interests and contexts. There were eleven findings specific to learning. The learning and changes findings included: (1) Participants learned about democracy and activism; (2) Participants learned to contribute and work together in community; (3) Participants had increased consciousness; (4) Participants experienced leadership or personal development; (5) Participants reported becoming more empowered, assertive, and politically engaged; (6) Learning was supported and facilitated in Indivisible communities through several community aspects. The findings of this study may be of interest to adult learning professionals interested in learning that took place within social action or civic engagement activities, and for people seeking to encourage and support new participation in social action organizations.

The 2016 presidential election in USA was extraordinary from several point of views and the election was majorly covered by swedish media. The aim of this research was to examine how Swedish newspapers portrayed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from a gender perspective during the 2016 presidential election. We also wanted to analyse how other common political news frames were used to portray Clinton and Trump.   This is a qualitative framing analysis of 14 strategically selected articles, seven that were published by Aftonbladet and seven by Dagens Nyheter. The results showed tendencies of several gendered stereotypes that are being retained by the frames the newspapers use. Frames such as gendered traits and gendered issue emphases, but also game frames were offered to the reader.   We discovered that Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter offered a more positive opinion of Clinton than of Trump. While Clinton was framed as an experienced, emotional and compassionate candidate, Trump was framed as an inexperienced, insensitive and aggressive candidate. Clinton was framed with gendered issue emphases in both the public and private sphere, while Trump was framed with gendered issue emphases in only the public sphere. Furthermore, game frames showed that the newspapers had a tendency of polarizing and personifying the candidates.

Från Reagan till Trump: Populistiska uttryck inom det republikanska partiet 1980–2017 är en kandidatuppsats av Angelica Carlsson. Syftet med studien är att förklara förekomsten av populistiska uttryck inom det republikanska partiet i USA under tidsperioden 1980–2017. Populistiska uttryck i politiska tal av presidenterna Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush och Donald Trump undersöks och graderas utifrån Kirk A. Hawkins sex kriterier över populism. Talen analyseras också utifrån de teoretiska begreppen tunn respektive tjock populism. För att förklara de populistiska uttrycken beaktar studien den historiska kontexten och utvecklingslinjer inom det republikanska partiet. Utifrån studiens resultat kan konstateras att de populistiska uttrycken är högst i Reagans och Trumps tal, medan Bushs tal har en lägre grad av populism. I studien förklaras detta utifrån den historiska kontexten, där 1980 och 2016 präglades av mer politisk instabilitet än 2000. Studien belyser hur populism inte uppstår ur tomma intet utan ska förstås i relation till kontexten i vilken den uttrycks. / From Reagan to Trump: Populist expressions within the Republican Party 1980–2017 is a bachelor thesis by Angelica Carlsson. The aim of the thesis is to explain populist expressions within the Republican Party in the United States during the period 1980–2017. Populist expressions in political speeches by the presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump are investigated and graded based on Kirk A. Hawkin's criteria of populism. The thesis is also taking the theoretical terms thin and thick populism into consideration. In order to explain the populist expressions the historical context and the historical development of the Republican Party is taken into account. The main findings of the thesis is that Reagan's and Trump's speeches has the highest degree of populist expressions, while Bush's speeches has a lower degree of populist expressions. The study explains this from the historical context, where 1980 and 2016 were characterized by more political instability than 2000. The study illustrates how populism does not arise from nothing and should be understood in relation to the historical context.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the latest U.S government shutdown was framed and what kind of framing was used in two major news outlets, Fox News and CNN. The paper ask two questions first, how is the shutdown presented in CNN and Fox News coverage? And second, what examples of framing can be seen in the different company’s coverage? To find this out the paper uses a qualitative text analysis of several news articles from these outlets with framing theory as a theoretical background for the paper. The paper reaches the conclusion that for the most part in the more news focused articles both CNN and Fox News portray the shutdown as a conflict between different actors as well as a problem meanwhile the opinion pieces show similar framing but differ in that they often include a pro/anti Trump framing besides the conflict framing to the articles.

This thesis investigates the discourse patterns of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush during the Republican primary campaign from August 2015 through January 2016. The goal of this study is to identify differences among the candidates’ discourse patterns, particularly those distinct to the discourse style of Donald Trump, on the basis of a newly compiled corpus from their respective debates and speeches. This corpus analysis reveals differences in terms of readability and lexical choice that distinguish the speech style of Donald Trump from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and identifies metaphors utilized by Donald Trump. Drawing heavily from the research of Charles Fillmore and George Lakoff, this study also illustrates the importance of metaphors and frames within political discourse, and the corpus analysis of Republican candidates during the 2016 election provides clear evidence that candidates use frames and metaphors to create a unique profile. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The present master thesis analyses the idiolects of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump against the background of the speeches of other candidates for the post of President of the United States in 2016. Using the 'corpus-assisted discourse analysis' (Partington et al., 2013), the thesis strives to uncover words, phrases and patterns that distinguish the speech of the two candidates in a political discourse from other presidential candidates. First, the thesis examines the keywords, collocations, negative keywords and clusters of the respective target corpora. While the main focal points of the study are lexical and grammatical indicators of style, proper nouns and lexical indicators of content ('aboutness keywords') are subjects to analysis as well. In the next step the results of the respective analyses are compared, i.e. the differences between the speeches of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are discussed.

Previously threats were conceived as being connected to wars and armed attacks on other countries. But if we observe the world today there are financial situations that, if they got out of hand, could cause severe problems for large parts of a countries population. The environment is another area where severe consequences can be expected. Buzan, Waever and de Wilde (1998:2) work from the premises that security can, and should, be applied to a wider selection of areas in society. From this stand point this Bachelor thesis will cover the discourse of threats in the inaugural addresses of USAs five most recent presidents: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump. The inaugural address` were chosen because it is the presidents opportunity to outline their strategy and ‘set the tone’ for their term in office (Brownell 2016).Throughout the analysis there is a focus on the five sections outlined in Buzans (1991:116) analysis model: military, politics, economy, ecology and societal. The analysis frame is based on both traditional realism and more alternative security theory. There is also a comparing element to examine whether there have been any changes in the discourse, connected to threats, since the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, the study sets out to see if any of the subjects have shown signs of becoming securitized.The result of this study shows that the discourse of threat is mainly focused around the military section. There has been a general increase in the number of threats mentioned since 9/11, although some sections have decreased. Terrorism and immigration are the two questions that meets the criteria to have undergone securitization.

[pt] Este trabalho propõe uma interpretação alternativa da eleição de Donald Trump à presidência dos Estados Unidos, a partir de uma releitura do conceito de ultraimperialismo, de Karl Kautsky. Para esta releitura, o trabalho se apoia na literatura marxista sobre o imperialismo, nas contribuições teóricas de Antonio Gramsci e Robert Cox, e no conceito de Classe Capitalista Transnacional. É empreendia uma análise histórica do desenvolvimento do império estadunidense em sua dimensão doméstica – a emergência do bloco hegemônico em torno do New Deal – e externa, a expansão do modelo hegemônico à ordem mundial. A partir de uma análise histórica e ideacional, é observado o papel do conservadorismo e do neoliberalismo, dentro dos EUA, na formação do novo bloco que alcança supremacia mundial a partir dos anos 1980. Este bloco tem orientação globalista, ou seja, tem por objetivo a integração de todas as economias nacionais ao capitalismo global. Argumenta-se que o bloco é liderado por classes capitalistas transnacionais que empregam o poder estatal para avançar essa integração, enquanto a articulação entre conservadorismo e neoliberalismo legitima o processo. Neste contexto, o império estadunidense assume o papel de Estado líder em um cartel de países capitalistas avançados – o ultraimpério – promovendo integração desigual e mantendo relações de dependência. As contradições deste arranjo, somadas às contradições do bloco globalista, contribuíram para a ascensão de Donald Trump, que foi capaz de articular, eleitoralmente, um desafio à agenda globalista. Conclui-se argumentando que a permanência dessas contradições resultará em novos fenômenos como Trump, no futuro. / [en] This work proposes an alternative interpretation of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States, through a rereading of Karl Kautsky’s concept of ultra-imperialism. For this, the work is supported by the Marxist literature on imperialism, on Antonio Gramsci’s and Robert Cox s theoretical contributions, and on the concept of Transnational Capitalist Class. It undertakes a historical analysis of the development of the US empire in its domestic dimension – the emergence of a hegemonic bloc around the New Deal – and external, the expansion of the hegemonic model to the world order. It is observed, through a historical and ideational analysis, the role of conservatism and neoliberalism, inside the US, in the formation of the new bloc that achieves world supremacy from the 1980s onwards. This bloc has a globalist orientation, that is, its objective is to integrate all national economies to global capitalism. It is argued that the bloc is led by transnational capitalist classes that employ state power to advance this integration, while the articulation between conservatism and neoliberalism legitimates the process. In this context, the US empire assumes the role of leading state in a cartel of advanced capitalist countries – the ultra-empire – promoting uneven integration and the persistence of relations of dependency. The contradictions of this arrangement, added to the contradictions of the globalist bloc, contributed to the rise of Donald Trump, who was able to articulate, in the elections, a challenge to the globalist agenda. In the conclusion, it is argued that the permanence of these contradictions will result in new phenomena like Trump, in the future.

Jana Leichterová Conservative Criticism of Obamacare and its Transformation in the Context of Donald Trump Running for President Abstract The thesis deals with the debate over the health care reforms in the United States. It focuses specifically on the debate over the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, a health care reform initiated by President Barack Obama that was signed into law in March 2010. The goal of the thesis is to identify the main arguments of the conservative criticism of the Affordable Care Act, and to determine whether the debate transformed with the emergence of Donald Trump onto the political scene. The thesis provides historical context of the three main approaches to the health care policies in the United States throughout the 20th century: the Social Security path of strong government in the 1930s, the mixed "American way" with government providing social benefits to citizens through private institutions in the 1970s, and the approach of unregulated free market since the 1980s. Obama's health care originates in the urge for a national solution of the high number of uninsured citizens (more than 50 million in 2009) and rising cost of health care. The reform has three essential pillars: 1. the reform of the health insurance market that unifies the diverse state approaches and...