This page contains honors theses produced by senior Politics majors. For a list of all honors theses since 2011, click here.
Theses from 2024
Emancipatory or Merely Appropriate? Revealing the Right to Education under the Thirteenth Amendment and Its Implications for Students with Disabilities, Rachel Joyce Liazos
To Remember, To Forget: Political Actors’ Use of Collective Memory During Democratic Transitions in Spain and Chile, Caroline Thayer Milne
Running the Risk: Why Citizens Choose to Engage in Political Protest in 21st Century Russia, Grace Murphy
The Construction of Coloured Identities: Apartheid Nostalgia & The Politics of Memory, Helena May Raddock
Theses from 2023
Wildfires in the US and Australia: NGO Polarization Amidst Political Polarization and Climate Disasters, Kallie E. Polgrean
Theses from 2022
Emotion in the Neutral Court: Attorney Appeals to Emotion in Jury Trial Argumentation, Elise Marie Lambert
Evaluating the Role of Race in Foreign Policymaking: U.S. Public Diplomacy in Latin America during Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, Sophie Mackin
Hitting Refresh: Regulating internet speech in the 21st century, Jack Charles Valentino
The Political Theory of Digital Sex Work, Christina Wang
Theses from 2021
"Without Lawful Authority": Reassessing Nullification and its Contributions to Political and Constitutional Development in Antebellum America, Benjamin Keener
"La Migración Cambió Mi Visión (Migration Changed My Vision)": How and Why Oaxacan Return Migrants Run for Mayor of Their Hometowns, Daniel Lawrence Tepler
Theses from 2020
"The Divergent Paths of Jihad: Comparing Violence Against Civilians Perpetrated by IS and JN in the Syrian Civil War", Abigail Katherine Frost
Theses from 2019
Truth-Telling and Transitional Justice in Chile: Healing for Women Survivors of Trauma Through Testimonial Art Collectives, Olivia Snow Fried
Welcoming New Mainers: Local Economic Development and its Effects on the Politics of Immigration, Trevor H. Fry
Reimagining Citizenship in the Age of Climate Change, Anna Setzer
“If There Be One Only, She Shall Inherit Half”: Explaining the Preservation of Islamic Inheritance Law in Tunisia’s 1956 Personal Status Code, Gwendolyn R. Whidden
Theses from 2018
Divided We Fall: Eurosceptics in the European Parliament, Dylan Desjardins
You Are Not Alone: HIV/AIDS Activism in Maine, Ian W. Erickson
Targeting Terrorist Leaders, Stephen Charles Rowe
Europe’s Outsourced Refugees: Contextualizing NGO work in the “Calais of the Balkans”, John M. Sapoch
Power, Autonomy, and the Role of Law: Nudity and the Public-Private Distinction, Martin Francisco Saps
Explaining Social Protection in Sub-Saharan Africa: Political Settlements in Kenya and Uganda, Shanina van Gent
Theses from 2017
Revealing What Recidivism Hides: Punishment, Surveillance, and Bias in Evaluating Adult Drug Court in Maine, Claire Brown
Mi Bolivia está Cambiando: the effect of decentralization on ethno-political mobilization in Bolivia, Tessa Holtzman
The Freedom of Information Act Reimagined: Lawmaking, Transparency, and National Security In Twenty-First-Century America, Matthew F. Phillips
Theses from 2016
The Influence of U.S. Foreign Policy on Asylum and Refugee Admissions to the United States, Nicole Louise Bermudez
A Court Under Strain: The U.S. Supreme Court's Democratic Deficit, Brielle E. Dalvano
Applying the Neo-Functionalist Paradigm to Assess the Integrative Consequences of the European Court of Justice's Human Rights Jurisprudence, Elizabeth Sarah Dolgicer
Fragmented Citizenship in a Fragmented State: Ideas, Institutions, and the Failure of Reconstruction, Allen C. Sumrall
Theses from 2015
A More Durable Peace: The Nexus Between Local Influence and Power-Sharing Governance, Benjamin Skorpen Claeson
Constitutional Assembly Breakdown: A Study of Why Nepal’s Constitution Writing Procces Failed, Evan Cooper
"Same Story Every Time / Being Black is Not a Crime": Gun Regulations and Recurrent Patterns of Government Control of Black Americans in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Joshua Kurzer Manson
The Third Dimension of Power within Education Based NGOs in Nicaragua, Emily Catherine Roseman
Theses from 2014
Same Sex Relationships and the Right to Intimate Association: Developing an Alternative Constitutional Framework in Support of Gay Rights, Evan L. Binder
Legal Hybridity: Rule of Law under Authoritarianism, Aung Phone Myint
Theses from 2013
How to Maintain One-Party Control: A Case Study of the Political Strategies Used by New Hampshire Republicans, Mikayla Clara Foster
Turkey's Gender Equality Puzzle: Navigating the difference between policy and practice, Nora M. Hanagan
Getting Away With Murder: Why States Deny Past Atrocities, Cameron Ashleigh Sheldon
Theses from 2012
Political Change through Narrative, Catherine Elliott
Dams over Nukes: Explaining Indian Water Treaties, Romina Istratii
Commemorating the Holocaust and Communism: The Politics of Hungarian Public Memory, Kelsey LaFreniere
Multinational States, Multicultural Nations: The Challenge of Liberal Multiculturalism in Nested Nations, Justin Gregory Lipton
Revising Sovereignty - A Case Study of Kosovo, East Timor, and South Ossetia, Gina Cristina Sima
Theses from 2011
Taking Back Sicily: The Antimafia Movement and its Counter-Hegemonic Attack on Cosa Nostra, Jennifer Anne Diefendorf