Name: Alexandra Agostinelli
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: ajagosti@buffalo.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: University At Buffalo
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Morning
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title:  Political Habits of Bronies: A Comparative Study on Non-Governmental Participation among Bronies
Abstract:
This study aims to examine the impact of popular culture on political beliefs. Specifically, it explores whether involvement and comfort expressing that involvement in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan community influences the adult fans’ feelings of political efficacy and their level of level of involvement in civic and non-electoral political participation compared to the general population of American adults, regardless of political identification. This research hypothesizes that as individuals become more connected to a culturally homogenous and identifiable community, the more that community will mold their political opinions and actions. In addition, when the cohesiveness that binds a community together is a media product, the explicit and implicit messages contained in that product will influence the opinions and behaviors of the individuals in the community. Greater involvement and connection to the community leads to higher civic and non-electoral participation. To collect data, in- person interviews of attendees at the BronyCon convention in Baltimore during early August 2014 were conducted. Surveys were also administered through a number of social network sites visited by fans of the franchise. This dual data collection technique promises to bring richness to the findings that emerge from the study, as the qualitative responses from the personal interviews can be used to elucidate the various mechanisms whereby membership in a fan community influences aspect of political behavior and belief construction. Counties with more than three respondents were used to compare respondent’s ideology and the general population. One interesting finding is, as as a whole, the Brony community leans politically left, however in the locations of respondents that allowed for further analysis, the Bronies leaned politically right.

Name: Tracy Goodwin
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: Tracy.Goodwin@stonybrook.edu
Professional Status: Graduate Student
Institution: Stony Brook University
Scheduling Preference: Saturday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Co-author info: John Barry Ryan, Stony Brook University john.ryan@stonybrook.edu
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Paper Title:  Conflicting Motivations: Gender Stereotypes and Partisanship in Presidential Elections
Abstract:
According to social norms, men are expected to display greater agency consisting of assertiveness, competitiveness, and ambition; and women are expected to display greater communality consisting of warmth, empathy, and supportiveness (Prentice & Carranza, 2002; Vinkenburg et al., 2011). When women act contrary to their prescribed gender roles they face negative backlash (Rudman et al., 2012). In the 2016 Presidential election, the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton violated this social prescription, which left Democrats who endorse gender stereotypes in a bind. Clinton’s disregard for agency stereotypes led those who endorse gender stereotypes to evaluate Clinton more negatively, but Democrats’ partisan identity motivated them to support their party’s candidate. Democrats who endorse gender stereotypes compensated for their lower evaluations of Clinton by downgrading their evaluations of Trump. This allowed them to support and vote for Clinton as the better candidate despite her agency violations.

Name: David Rasmussen
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: david.rasmussen@faculty.ashford.edu
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: SUNY New Paltz, Ashford University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title: The Political Context of US Army Doctrinal Change in 2008
Abstract:
The publication of the new edition of the US Army’s principle doctrine, Field Manual 3-0, Operations, in 2008, represented the single largest shift of Army doctrine along a spectrum of war since the end of World War II. FM 3-0 is the military doctrine that informs how the Army organizes, trains, equips, and fights. This 2008 edition shifted the majority of Army doctrinal content from mid-intensity conventional warfare to low-intensity unconventional warfare content, and was considered revolutionary. The Association of the United States Army stated that, “the new field manual’s impact on the force and the application of doctrine is...revolutionary.” Jennifer Taw, a leading defense scholar, described the new manual as revolutionary in that it, “entails offensive, defensive, and stability efforts.” Describing this shift from mid-intensity to low-intensity warfare, General William Wallace, the officer in charge of Army doctrine in 2008, stated, “[j]ust as the 1976 edition of FM 3-0 began to take the Army from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the battlefield of Western Europe, this [2008] edition will take us into the 21st century…battlefields among the people” where unconventional warfare is waged. An Army doctrinal shift in 2008 from mid-intensity to low-intensity combat is not surprising given that the Army was deeply engaged in both Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. What is surprising is the timing of this shift. By 2008, the Army had been fighting in Afghanistan for seven years and Iraq for five. Previous updates to FM 3-0 were made during or immediately after other US conflicts. New editions were published in1941, 1944, and 1949 as the Army prepared for, fought, and learned from WWII. A 1954 edition was published just one year after the conclusion of the Korean War, and another update was released in 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War. The current body of scholarly literature suggests that the Army delayed updating its doctrine until 2008 because it was not willing or able as an institution to learn the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq fast enough or well enough while engaged in those conflicts. Although this consensus provides a partial explanation for delay, failure to learn as an institution does not account for how and why the Army finally made this shift. I argue that domestic politics, particularly Republican losses in the 2006 mid-term elections, combined with the impact of the 2007 Republican presidential primary campaigns, had a significant impact on the Army, finally prompting it to make this doctrinal shift when it did in 2008.

Name: Darby Ratliff
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: ratliffd@canisius.edu
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Institution: Canisius College
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Paper Title: The 9/11 Generation Turns 18: Generation Z and its Effects on the Political Landscape in the United States
Abstract:
In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2016, members of all living generations named the events of September 11, 2001 as having the greatest impact on the United States. Then, in 2018, the research institution named the cutoff for the millennial generation as 1997, citing the fact that millennials were old enough to understand the historical significance of the event, while those born after 1997 were likely not. In 2005, generational scholars Edmund and Turner wrote that “The New York attack could create a ‘9/11’ generation that will be conscious of the negative effects of terrorism on their life chances[…] This new global generation is likely to be less complacent than the generation that preceded it.” Now, as the generation of individuals who either have no memory of the events or were not yet born when they occurred comes of voting age, it is time to see whether or not Edmund and Tuner’s thesis will prove true. This paper will examine the effects of September 11th on the political landscape for millennials and then will consider how 9/11 will affect Generation Z’s political views. It will consider what their conceptions of the event and its effects are. The paper will also utilize data from the 2016 United States presidential election to see how those born in the earliest days of “Generation Z” (1997 and later) voted and looking at the engagement of youth in politics today, whether it be through a variety of issues-based movements (gun control, immigration, etc.) or otherwise. Finally, it will also theorize what ramifications 9/11 had on members of Generation Z as they come of age before the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Name: Joshua Sandman
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: jsandman@newhaven.edu
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: Univ. of New Haven
Scheduling Preference: Friday Morning
Proposal Type: Paper
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Paper Title: Trump Going Public: Setting the Narrative and Employing Communication Media to Achieve Political Goals
Abstract:
I contend that President Trump has been effective in establishing the narrative that has dominated the national political dialogue. Issues central to his agenda have taken center-stage. Further, he has successfully accessed communication media to reach political objectives. Trump's out-sized personality and career as a Reality TV star puts him at ease with broadcast and social media. I study how Trump used his media skill in the presidential campaign and how he currently employs that skill in the political arena. I compare and rate the defectiveness of other presidents in the media arena. I contend that Trump is most highly effective with his three pronged base (white working class, conservative Republicans, and Evangelical Christians) and with broad segments of the general population. PLEASE NOTE: I am a Saturday Sabbath Observer. I am kindly requesting,If my paper is accepted for presentation, that I participate in the first or second panel session. I need to return to Connecticut prior to the Friday evening start of the Sabbath. I very much appreciate your consideration.

Name: Sean Shannon
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: Sean.Shannon@Oneonta.Edu
Professional Status: Adjunct Professor
Institution: SUNY Oneonta
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Paper Title: “Judicial Entrepreneur? The Contract Clause and Justice Neil Gorsuch’s Dissent in Sveen v. Melin (2018)”
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Judicial entrepreneurs rarely play a short game. When maneuvering to change constitutional or jurisprudential thought, they are intentionally and methodically focused on a longer game of incremental change through their opinions and writings. This paper analyzes and evaluates whether Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch is playing the role of a judicial entrepreneur through his solo dissent in the eight-to-one decision in Sveen v. Melin (2018), a relatively simple Contract Clause case regarding a Minnesota law that automatically eliminates spouses from life insurance beneficiary designation at the time of divorce. The paper analyzes Justice Gorsuch dissent in Sveen in the context of the history of the Contracts Clause, the lingering shadow of substantive due process Liberty of Contract, and recent attempts to breathe life back into a laissez faire interpretation of the Constitution. Justice Gorsuch’s dissent is important because it lends clear insight into his originalist and strict constructionist approach to constitutional interpretation and, in the manner of the late justice Antonin Scalia, it may be indicating justice Gorsuch’s intent to pursue the Contract Clause and its interpretation as a judicial entrepreneur. Although Sveen may seem like a vanilla case, justice Gorsuch’s dissent argues the Court’s balancing approach is not appropriate and he lays his marker down that the critics “deserve a thoughtful reply, if not in this case then in another.” In respects to the Contract Clause, Sveen will probably not be the last time justice Gorsuch addresses the matter and is deserving of analysis.

Name: Adam Stone
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: astone@gsu.edu
Professional Status: Associate Professor
Institution: Georgia State University
Scheduling Preference: Friday Afternoon
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Paper Title: You can't control me, I'm a defector: Democrats Voting for Trump’s Circuit Court Judges 
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the final U.S. Senate confirmation votes on the 29 Trump nominees (and possibly more during the lame duck session) to the U.S. Court of Appeals during the 115th Congress, First Session. Trump has appointed more appellate court judges in his first two years in office than any other president in history and the Republican-controlled Senate is attempting confirm as many as possible to create a conservative judicial legacy no matter the electoral fate of Trump and the GOP. Some Democratic senators have provided support for this conservative judicial revolution. Who are these defectors? Analyzing these confirmation votes using OLS regression, we find that reelection concerns are important, in line with the literature on Congress pioneered by Mayhew. Incorporating Govtrack’s ideological scores to the regression analysis provides further prediction of defection based on moderate ideology and using Govtrack’s leadership score to derive a partisan hierarchy also adds a predictive element of this model. The conventional wisdom of Red-State Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018 supporting Trump’s judicial nominees for political survival is challenged by these empirical findings.

Name: Eric Svensen
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: eps007@shsu.edu
Professional Status: Assistant Professor
Institution: Sam Houston State University
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
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Paper Title:  Are Executive Orders Unlawful?
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Can executive actions be both legal (upheld by the Court) and unlawful (violate constitutional doctrine)? Despite a strong tradition in the United States on centering law within constitutional principle, one example of this contradiction is executive agreements—instances when presidents circumvent Congress and ignore the treaty provision of the Constitution to unilaterally forge international agreements. Surprisingly, where scholarship on the use of executive agreements in both political science and law tends to focus on the practical reasons presidents use this tool or why these agreements are sometimes necessary to solve important global issues, rarely does the literature discuss its fundamental flaws. Not only do executive agreements strain constitutional principle by marginalizing Congress in the foreign policy debate, this approach also creates expectations on presidential leadership that is not transferable to other policy areas. In this paper, I argue executive agreements are unlawful since presidents sidestep the Constitution, effectively removing Congress from the treaty process. In addition, and perhaps more troubling, I argue by ceding constitutional ground to the chief executive Congress and the Courts elevate the presidency into an unnatural position in the constitutional order where the relative ease in which presidents use executive agreements creates the impression that presidents can transcend partisan politics and restrictive constitutional arrangements whenever necessary. As a consequence, the public is often frustrated with presidents who seemingly exercise powers that ignore the separation of powers in foreign policy but are often constrained by constitutional limitations in the domestic policy front.

Name: Jim Twombly
Section: American Politics
Professional Email: jtwombly@elmira.edu
Professional Status: Full Professor
Institution: Elmira College
Scheduling Preference: No Preference
Proposal Type: Paper
Panel Title: AP-2 Voting Choice
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Co-author info: Chuck Lindsay & Devin Woolf
Co-presenter info: Chuck Lindsay & Devin Woolf
Paper Title:  Polarization and Presidential Approval
Abstract:
There are two major observations we can make about recent politics, the analysis of which have intersected in only a few works thus far (see for example Abramowitz 2018). At the same time that a president is experiencing record low and relatively stable approval (Twombly 2018) we also observe a highly polarized political system – both in elected office and among the electorate (Campbell 2017, Wood and Jordan 2017). Pew Research (2018) recently reported that President Trump’s approval rating is the most polarized of any president since Eisenhower. By polarized, Pew means the difference between approval from the president’s party and the approval of the president from the opposing party. This raises the question of the strength of any relationship and its explanation. This project proposes first to examine the relationship using measures of polarization suggested by the previously named authors and standard measures of presidential approval to determine if there is a statistically significant relationship between the measures. Further, the project will seek to uncover factors that may be driving such a relationship, including measures of economic performance and social trends.