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This thesis analyses the legal status and the importance of short titles in the legislative processes of the Westminster Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the US Congress. Through a large quantitative survey of US short titles that spanned over 30 years and 18 Congresses, it was demonstrated that there has been a paradigm shift in the way the US Congress titles its bills, in which it transitioned from a largely descriptive, technical style to a wider range of styles, among which a more explicitly evocative style became both acceptable and frequently used. Such titles are permeating the legislative process and the US statute book with what I argue is overly political language, and are blurring the lines between proselytizing and what has historically been regarded as a formally descriptive (not political) element of legislative drafting. Conversely, save for a few choice titles, the Westminster Parliament and Scottish Parliament continue to employ mostly descriptive short titles, similar to the previously innocuous style of the US Congress. From a contemporary and historical perspective in all three jurisdictions, the short titles of bills have been viewed as relatively insignificant reference points for those engaged and/or interacting with legislation from a drafting, legislative process or larger legal or political perspective, and have subsequently received little attention in the academic community. By employing a comparative research approach primarily focused on a cross-disciplinary literature review and hypothesis testing through three empirical projects, this thesis draws upon both qualitative and quantitative methods of research to answer the primary research questions. The main empirical method used was a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with lawmakers, staffers, bill drafters, government officials and media members from all three jurisdictions. Although the legal status of short bill titles in each jurisdiction differed, many individuals from each jurisdiction viewed short bill titles as a considerably important part of the lawmaking process. Also, to varying degrees in each jurisdiction, interviewees repeatedly offered the opinion that short titles: may affect a bill’s chances of becoming law; are at times misleading; serve as more than referential points; at times may pressure legislators to vote for a bill; may be used as framing devices; and sometimes employ language that is not justified during the legislative process. These support the proposition that short titles have legislative process and political implications. The interviews support the legislative process analysis of the three jurisdictions that Chapter IV discusses, which is that the Scottish Parliament operates with the strictest regulations in regards to short title accuracy. In addition to being the only jurisdiction studied that openly endorses a ‘proper form’ in which bills must be drafted (which explicitly mentions short titles), many Scottish interviewees stated that such titles were important in the legislative process for different reasons than US and Westminster interviewees, stressing descriptive legal accuracy and taking care in regard to bill scope, among other concerns. The thesis’ quantitative survey portion includes separate surveys and sample populations from the US and Scotland. Though data collection was marred by an error in the US, thus hindering the analysis of such data, the Scottish results suggested that short bill titles may have psychological effects when analysing the favourability of proposals: all four evocative naming types produced higher favourability ratings than bland titles, and some results were statistically significant. However, the naming types were not statistically significant in assessing why the measure was supported or whether participants desired more information on bills. In response to the absence of short bill title standards in the US Congress and Westminster Parliament, and with the aim of describing how the Scottish Parliament standards might be made more thorough, the thesis provides short title recommendations that are suitable for all three jurisdictions. These recommendations largely accentuate proper form for language and processes in order to ensure short title accuracy, and have the potential, if applied consistently, to significantly reduce the chances of overtly political or evocative language entering the country’s legislative processes or statute books. While acknowledging that in all three institutions studied short bill titling may be in many respects a small aspect of the monumental and lengthy policy process, this thesis advances the proposition that it is considerably important to those who interact with and encounter legislation frequently, and that preventing evocative language from entering short bill titles is a benefit for the legislative processes of all three jurisdictions.

abstract: By collecting and analyzing more than two million tweets, U.S. House Representatives’ voting records in 111th and 113th Congress, and data from other resources I study several aspects of adoption and use of Twitter by Representatives. In the first chapter, I study the overall impact of Twitter use by Representatives on their political orientation and their political alignment with their constituents. The findings show that Representatives who adopted Twitter moved closer to their constituents in terms of political orientation. By using supervised machine learning and text mining techniques, I shift the focus to synthesizing the actual content shared by Representatives on Twitter to evaluate their effects on Representatives’ political polarization in the second chapter. I found support for the effects of repeated expressions and peer influence in Representatives’ political polarization. Last but not least, by employing a recently developed dynamic network model (separable temporal exponential-family random graph model), I study the effects of homophily on formation and dissolution of Representatives’ Twitter communications in the third chapter. The results signal the presence of demographic homophily and value homophily in Representatives’ Twitter communications networks. These three studies altogether provide a comprehensive picture about the overall consequences and dynamics of use of online social networking platforms by Representatives. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2016

The paper discusses the lexical representation of the metaphorical image of Russia formed in the discourse of the committees of the 116th and 117th US Congress (2019-2022). The object of the study is the political discourse of the US Congressional committees. The goal of the study is to characterize the image of Russia reflected in the materials of the 116th and 117th US Congress. The research material consists of 244 documents posted in the public domain on the official website of the US Congress. From these documents, 2058 lexical units were selected for analysis. The analysis showed that the most common types of metaphors are the military, the metaphor of immoral behavior, the metonymic model «RUSSIA – PUTIN» and the criminal metaphor. It was also revealed that the confrontation between the USSR and the USA during the Cold War still plays a significant role in understanding modern Russia. In analising the discursive characteristics, a correlation was established between the dynamics of metaphorical discourse and events in Russian-American relations. / The paper discusses the lexical representation of the metaphorical image of Russia formed in the discourse of the committees of the 116th and 117th US Congress (2019-2022). The object of the study is the political discourse of the US Congressional committees. The goal of the study is to characterize the image of Russia reflected in the materials of the 116th and 117th US Congress. The research material consists of 244 documents posted in the public domain on the official website of the US Congress. From these documents, 2058 lexical units were selected for analysis. The analysis showed that the most common types of metaphors are the military, the metaphor of immoral behavior, the metonymic model «RUSSIA – PUTIN» and the criminal metaphor. It was also revealed that the confrontation between the USSR and the USA during the Cold War still plays a significant role in understanding modern Russia. In analising the discursive characteristics, a correlation was established between the dynamics of metaphorical discourse and events in Russian-American relations.

This thesis deals with legislative obstruction in the United States Senate. It presents the filibuster as one of the key procedural tools in the hands of a legislative minority during the consideration of legislative proposals, presidential nominations and international treaties. At first it presents the main theoretical approaches to the topic and the historical development of Senate procedures. A key theme of the work is the necessity to distinguish between formal and informal provisions that determine how Senate business is conducted, since the formal text of the Standing Rules of the Senate is rutinely bypassed by alternative strategies. The last part of the thesis confronts the existing theoretical approaches with the important procedural changes of the last several years and assesses whether these models are still valid in light of the new Senate procedures.

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This investigation deals with a change of congressional attitude concerning violence in entertainment media, from noninterference to investigation to initiation of research. The data are primarily from official government records. This study first examines a period of congressional reluctance to interfere with the violent content of movies and radio in 1929-45. Next examined is the period 1945-68, when Congress actively investigated media violence,, focusing on television. Finally, the study examines congressional activity concerning television violence in 1968-74 and the Surgeon General's report on television violence. This report concludes that, by 1955, the pattern of congressional interest in media violence had turned from reluctance to activity, -and discusses the likelihood of future control of television program content.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T13:48:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Ivy B G Turner.pdf: 404366 bytes, checksum: 8f7580f072c2944058d678625559e197 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-06-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The objective of the present work was to present factors that promote congressional activism in the area of foreign policy. The work involved an analysis of the main subjects related to the participation of the United States Congress in the foreign policy-making process, the intention being to present the latest thinking in this area. As such, the work seeks to contribute to the body of research being developed on the influence of domestic factors in American foreign policy. Although information and studies in Brazil about the United States abound, this is not the case for this specific area of investigation. It should be stressed that the intention of this work was not to explain the performance of the institution through history, but rather to focus on the institutional structure of the process by which US foreign policy is formulated / O objetivo do presente trabalho esteve em tentar desvendar quais fatores promovem ativismo congressual em temas de política externa. Para tanto, realizou-se análise das principais questões relativas à participação do Congresso na formulação da política externa norte-americana. O intento foi apresentar o estado da arte do debate acerca do papel que o Congresso possui neste processo. Ao estudar este tema pretendeu-se contribuir com as pesquisas acerca da influência de fatores domésticos na política externa norte-americana por que, apesar das informações e estudos disponíveis no Brasil acerca dos Estados Unidos serem abundantes, não o são nesta área específica. Ressalta-se que o trabalho não teve intenção de explicar a atuação da instituição ao longo da história, sendo uma análise focada na estrutura institucional do processo