Presidential-Congressional Conflict in Domestic and Foreign Policy Making

Research project funded in academic year 2008-09The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.The American form of government was founded on the key principle of checks and balances. By separating powers between the president and Congress, the founding fathers hoped that each would provide a counterweight to rein in the power of the other.Mershon Center for International Security Studie

Immigrants, Assimilation, and Cultural Threat: A Political Exploration

Research project funded in academic years 2007-08 and 2008-09The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Immigration is a controversial issue, dividing Democratic and Republican parties in the Untied States and contributing to the emergence of far-right parties in Europe such as the National Front in France, Vlaams Beland in Belgium, and Dansk Folkeparti in Denmark. Anthony Mughan sees the controversy over immigration as a product of globalization, and his research sheds light on it by using focus groups to uncover perceptions of immigrant assimilation.Mershon Center for International Security StudiesProject summar

Economic Insecurity: Meaning and Measurement

Research project funded for academic years 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2007-08The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.This project consists of a series of focus groups to explore what economic insecurity means to ordinary people and how it affects them politically.Mershon Center for International Security StudiesProject summar

"My husband, my hero": selling the political spouses in the 2010 general election.

In spite of a record number of female parliamentary candidates, the 2010 general election campaign became notable for the intensity of coverage given to the female spouses of the three main party leaders. We find that this resulted from a combination of party communication strategy, established media discourses, and the agency and visibility of the wives themselves. First, Labour and the Conservatives were the most prominent in integrating their leaders’ wives into their campaigns, often to counter the less marketable qualities of the leaders themselves. Second, while mainstream media outlets—particularly newspapers—sought to cover all three women, they did so drawing upon established gender-based conventions, focussing on the wives’ physical appearance and apparent dedication to their husbands. Third, while the wife of the Liberal Democrat leader opted for limited and strategic contact with media, the wives of the Conservative and Labour leaders exploited a range of new media platforms, combining official party websites, personal blogs, and webcasts. We argue that any assessment of the role of the spouses of party leaders has to look at media-driven priorities only alongside the various strategies open to parties and individuals in managing media activities. We also suggest that there is room to use the coverage of leaders’ spouses to explore the development, limits, and gender politics of any shift toward presidentialism

Presidential-Congressional Conflict in Domestic and Foreign Policymaking: A Fresh Approach to its Measurement and Explanation

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Presidential-congressional conflict is the leitmotif of American government. Historically, however, a congressional tradition of bipartisanship in foreign policymaking has meant that conflict has been far more characteristic of domestic policy debate. In the contemporary era, however, the erosion of bipartisanship, the prevalence of divided government and the increasing divisiveness of a number of overseas commitments have meant that foreign policy decisions in particular have become more controversial in Washington DC. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the short-term dynamics of congressional-presidential conflict in either policy sphere. A good part of the reason is that nobody has produced a measure that, one, picks up short-term variation in the incidence and intensity of conflict between the two branches of government and, two, that can be used to sketch the pattern of similarities and differences in the character of foreign as opposed to domestic policy conflict. Content analyzing newspaper articles, this project proposes such a measure and investigates its relationship to, amongst other things, public opinion, economic performance and overseas involvement.Mershon Center for International Security Studiesproject summar