Showing 801 - 810 of 2040 Items

Interview with Jim Sasser by Diane Dewhirst

Date: 2010-04-27

Creator: James 'Jim' R Sasser

Access: Open access

Biographial Note

James R. “Jim” Sasser was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on September 30, 1936. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, he was awarded a law degree in 1961, admitted to the Tennessee bar, and became active in the Democratic Party; he managed Albert Gore Sr.’s unsuccessful 1970 campaign. In 1976 he sought election and won a seat in the U.S. Senate; he was reelected to two further terms, serving until 1995. He first met George Mitchell in 1972 when they were both working on Ed Muskie’s presidential primary campaign. He worked with Senator Mitchell on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the Senate Budget Committee, which Sasser chaired. In 1995, President Clinton appointed him ambassador to China, where he served until 1999.

Summary

The interview includes discussion of: Budget Committee work; 1990 budget summit; DSCC 1986 (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee); Democratic National Committee; and the 1972 Muskie presidential primary campaign.


Interview with Paul Sarbanes by Diane Dewhirst

Date: 2009-09-29

Creator: Paul Sarbanes

Access: Open access

Biographial Note

Paul Sarbanes was born on February 3, 1933 in Salisbury, Maryland. He attended Princeton University and continued his studies at Balliol College of the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then attended Harvard Law School. He served as a Democrat from Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977 and in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 2007. He was the first Greek American senator and notably co-sponsored the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, which strengthened corporate governance and created a federal oversight board for the accounting industry.

Summary

Interview includes discussion of: George Mitchell’s personality; winning back the Senate majority in 1986; the Senate Majority Leader race of 1989; George Mitchell’s departure from the Senate; partisanship; and an anecdote about George Mitchell and Senator John Warner during an “old-style” filibuster.


Statement by Sarah DeWitt collected by Rachel George on October 16, 2014

Date: 2014-10-16

Creator: Sarah DeWitt

Access: Open access



Statement by Tyneshia Wright collected by Rachel George on August 28, 2014

Date: 2014-08-28

Creator: Tyneshia Wright

Access: Open access



Statement by Anonymous collected by Charlotte Bacon on September 9, 2014

Date: 2014-09-09

Creator: Anonymous

Access: Open access



Statement by Anonymous collected by Charlotte Bacon on January 20, 2015

Date: 2015-01-20

Creator: Anonymous

Access: Open access



Statement by John Hawkes collected by Rachel George on December 15, 2014

Date: 2014-12-15

Creator: John Hawkes

Access: Open access



When is Change Possible? Presidential Power as Shaped by Political Context, Constitutional Tools, and Legislative Skills

Date: 2021-01-01

Creator: Ryan Telingator

Access: Open access

Many Americans believe that the president is an omnipotent figure who can achieve any political or policy objective if they try hard enough. On the contrary, the presidency was intentionally crafted by the Framers of the Constitution to have limited legislative powers to mitigate the risk of despotism. Thus, this paper seeks to answer the question, when is change possible?, to try to bridge the gap between popular belief and Constitutional powers. Three questions guide this research: 1) What conditions are conducive for change? 2) What Constitutional tools help a president facilitate change? And 3) What skills can a president bring to office to help create change? This thesis seeks to answer these questions by reviewing the existing literature on political context, tools, and legislative skills. Case study analyses of the Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan presidencies are then presented to assess their legislative successes and failures, and the factors behind them. Finally, the thesis concludes by evaluating President Joseph Biden’s first 100 days in office and uses the theory and findings from the cases to predict Biden’s ability to affect change. This research reveals that the political context is the most important factor in determining the possibility of change – successful change relies on open policy windows, resilient ideological commitments, and a mandate to stimulate congressional action. Within the constraints of the case studies, Constitutional tools were not important. Legislative skills helped to pass legislation, however, they were not potent enough to overcome a bad political context.


Reconsidering Operation Condor: Cross-border Military Cooperation and the Defeat of the Transnational Left in Chile and Argentina during the 1970s

Date: 2014-05-01

Creator: Georgia C Whitaker

Access: Open access

In this study of the roots of Operation Condor, I track the development of this unusual military alliance forged by six Southern Cone governments (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay) during the 1970s, as well as the push-and-pull relationship between the transnational migration of political militants and the military’s impetus for collaboration. While most accounts of Condor focus on the United States as the operation’s primary orchestrator, I contend that initial motivation for the type of cooperation that Condor would later formalize was driven not by the U.S., but by the Southern Cone militaries’ perception that Marxism had to be excised from the entire region. In addition, while Condor scholars have either ignored or minimized the role of the left as political actors and placed the blame for violence exclusively on the militaries and the United States, I draw from unpublished Argentine police records, Argentine Embassy documents, and Chilean-Argentine solidarity group publications to argue that it is essential to broaden our understanding of what both sides in this ideological confrontation were attempting to accomplish. The transnational left, never a homogenous group, evolved to meet a variety of objectives. Many militants continued to be politically active while they were in exile, and many acted in solidarity with like-minded leftists in their midst.


Digital Authoritarianism in China and Russia: A Comparative Study

Date: 2020-01-01

Creator: Laura H.C. Howells

Access: Open access

Digital authoritarianism is on the rise around the world and threatens the data privacy and rights of both domestic and international Internet users. However, scholarship on digital authoritarianism remains limited in scope and case study selection. This study contributes a new, more comprehensive analytical framework for the study of Internet governance and applies it to the case studies of China and Russia. Special attention is paid to the still understudied Russian Internet governance model. After thorough literature review and novel data collection and analysis, this paper identifies relative centralization of network infrastructure and the extent and pace of change in governance as the most notable differences between the two models. These points of divergence may be explained by two theories; the varieties of authoritarianism hypothesis posits that different political systems face persistent and unique constraints to governance of the digital realm. The development trajectory theory argues that each country’s technological development path foreshadows the systems’ capacity for and extent of governance. This study is among the first to distinguish between Internet governance strategies of authoritarian regimes.