Cuba has adopted a traditional Marxist or Marxist feminist approach to women’s equality, which helped produce some positive changes for women. However, the limitations of the theory – namely, the ideas that women’s equality should be subsumed to a larger Marxist revolution and that patriarchy is a historically specific situation that would dissolve with the change to a communist mode of production – mean that Cuba cannot adequately address gender inequality. Because Cuban leadership prioritizes the revolution and does not believe that patriarchy needs to be directly attacked, women’s oppression to continues. Even though they acknowledge that the progress is incomplete for women in Cuba, leaders stand by Marxist theory – the only way for the “remnants” of past societies to disappear is to keep the revolution pressing forward.

Contrary to the position of the Cuban state, I argue that more revolution alone will not generate full women’s equality. I present evidence in the areas of health, work, and politics that illustrate that patriarchy persists. Rather than dissolving with a change in the material base, Cuba’s patriarchy has evolved into Marxist machismo. Women’s equality cannot be a secondary goal of the Cuban revolution: in order to achieve full equality in Cuba, a women’s movement that directly attacks women’s oppression as women is imperative.

In the first chapter, I summarize John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and conduct a comprehensive review of the literature surrounding the controversy aroused by the book. I present the foremost academic, media, and other responses elicited by the treatise to distill a ‘conventional wisdom’ on the pro-Israel lobby. While I find the perception of pervasive pro-Israel lobby influence in policymaking and public discourse is largely accurate, I nonetheless conclude the book’s empirical claims on pro-Israel lobby influence are exaggerated and bordering on fallacious. Further, I conclude the book’s claims regarding how lobby influence is gained and exercised and the extent to which such influence operates are, in light of the paucity of systematic empirical evidence provided in the book, imprecise.

In the following chapter, I present a preliminary case study of J Street, a dovish pro-Israel lobbying organization which rose to prominence after Mearsheimer and Walt’s treatise was published. I detail how J Street came to be and how it has already begun to made its mark on the American Jewish community, established pro-Israel lobbying groups, and U.S. policy toward Israel, tracing the organization’s successes and struggles through its first four years of existence. I find that Mearsheimer and Walt, and their panoply of critics, minimize the profound changes taking place in the Jewish community regarding Jewish communal affiliation and attachment to Israel; they also underestimate changes in American society generally regarding American relations with Israel and the perception of the deleterious influence of the pro-Israel lobby on policymaking and public discourse.

It is this disregard that prevented Mearsheimer and Walt and their various critics from anticipating the advent of J Street. Though still a fledgling organization, J Street has begun to transform the pro-Israel landscape by broadening the tent of acceptable pro-Israel discourse within the Jewish community, and by becoming an increasingly well-heard, if not always heeded, lobbying presence on Capitol Hill. J Street’s founding and organizational expansion renders Mearsheimer and Walt thesis increasingly void, above and beyond the faults exposed by its multitude of critics.

This thesis is intended to contribute to the larger literature on interest-group politics by demonstrating that the “pro-Israel lobby” is neither monolithic nor invincible. The pro-Israel lobby, led for decades by AIPAC and other centrist groups, did not win every legislative battle, and has had to accept major compromises to maintain its significant influence. No more than the NRA, AARP, or U.S. Chamber of Commerce--in their respective spheres of policy influence--is the pro-Israel lobby a lobby that can’t be beat, or an influence network that prospers without effecting compromises and bargains.

My main point is that AIPAC and the rest of the centrist pro-Israel lobby are not the whole story. The influence of the pro-Israel lobby cannot be adequately understood without taking into account the increasingly weighty role and countervailing political influence of the other pro-Israel lobby in the policy subsystem that crafts U.S. policy toward Israel. While this thesis is hardly a definitive exposition of pro-Israel lobby influence on American life, I argue that the analyses, arguments, and findings proffered present a compelling counterpoint to The Israel Lobby.

I contend that Russia’s concern for 1) international stability and 2) state sovereignty norms drives Russia’s voting patterns in the Security Council. The evidence for the subsequent analysis comes from 1095 Security Council resolutions and vetoed draft resolutions as well as their accompanying United Nations press releases. Both the statistical analysis and the qualitative case analyses found that a consistently conservative interpretation of Security Council jurisdiction and the promotion of state sovereignty norms influenced Russian voting. I also find that Russia views the entirety of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) making up the former Soviet Union as part of Russia’s sovereign sphere. I test these hypotheses against hypotheses predicting an expansion-motivated Russia and a status-seeking Russia, but neither alternative viewpoint receives the same empirical support that a defensive Russia receives. Finally, the findings in this paper have a number of implications. First, the paper finds that Russia has internalized a strict legalist approach to Security Council affairs. Therefore, the Western diplomatic approach for compromise should not focus on Russian interests, but should rather engage Russia through the compatibility of legal principles. Second, the paper emphasizes the lack of normative consensus and highlights the importance of further codification of legitimate international legal behavior.

Putnam believes in the power of local relationships: "The challenge the country faces today is to do the equivalent of reinventing the boyscouts or the Rotary Club," and he believes that the Internet is incapable of this reinvention (Putnam 2000,17).

Has Putnam has misjudged the efficacy of aspects of Internet-generated relationships? Recent Internet-aided phenomena like the 2011 Arab Spring suggest that the Internet can contribute to social activism, and to a large degree. Through a series of experiments utilizing agent-based modeling (ABM), the effect of non-local interactions – those connections that are not predicated on being face-to-face, such as the types of interactions generated by the Internet – is examined.

The first section of this thesis reviews relevant social science literature on the nature and influence of interest groups in governance. The next section analyzes the primary methods through which interest groups influence government: campaign finance and lobbying. This section includes information regarding the growth of such activities over time and the strong advantage business representatives have over unions, public interest groups, and consumer advocates. The third portion includes the two case studies: the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform. These two case studies illustrate the strong power of business interest groups in the legislative process, while also demonstrating the continuing ability of consumer advocates to influence key policies.

This "switch in time that saved nine" has no established consensus that explains its occurrence. Some have posited that President Roosevelt's "court packing" legislation forced Roberts's hand, while other have argued that public opinion caused Roberts's swing in jurisprudence.

This paper approaches the question in two realms. First, the specific jurisprudence of Justice Roberts on economic and labor rights issues is examined, producing an original dataset that provides a clear indication of where Roberts stood on these matters from 1931-1937.

Using this dataset, which denotes an undeniable conservtive shift pre-Parrish (1934-1936), and a marked liberal shift post the 1936 election, this paper constructs a compelling argument that Justice Roberts's varying jurisprudence was not guided as much by public opinion, or differing legal arguments, but rather by a desire to run against President Roosevelt in the 1936 election. It is an explanation, supported by a plethora of original evidence, that most comprehensively explains Justice Roberts's confounding jurisprudence from 1933-1937.

My objective is to analyze the military dimensions of United States oil policies since the end of the Cold War. America’s increasing economic dependency on imported oil, a vital input in the health of western economies, has been widely documented, but how does the military understand the role of oil, particularly in war times? I question long-standing assumptions about oil and international politics, particularly regarding “access” to the resource. In the end, I hope to produce a report that will shed light on aspects of the military’s oil strategy that either contradicts or is not captured by the existing scholarship.