State parties often differ in their values and platforms from their national counterparts, explains junior political science and history major Rebecca Flores in her Capstone paper. Because of the success of this argument for Dr. Daniel Bowen’s (Political Science) thesis course, she has been invited to present her ideas to Congress as a part of the “Posters on the Hill.”
For all thesis courses in the HSS, submitting to the Celebration of Student Achievement is the minimum. But Rebecca said she wanted to shoot for a higher honor — and Dr. Bowen, her mentor, encouraged her ambitions.
“(He) said it’s a competitive one, but that I could try it out,” Rebecca said. It turns out, her proposal about her research on “state party divergence” was received well because now she will be presenting the following (extract of the) abstract to Congress members.
This study seeks to add to the research regarding the causes of divided federalism, the phenomena in which national and state executives of the same party experience different levels of electoral success. … While scholars have investigated partisanship and its effects on divided federalism, they have failed to go beyond the national parties and look at state parties whose policy positions often diverge from their national counterparts.
“It has to do with the state parties making themselves distinct from the national parties,” Rebecca said, summarizing her thesis. She cited as examples of this often unexplained division the Republicans in the Northeast who are pro-choice and the Democrats in the South who are pro-life.
We congratulate Rebecca on the rare honor to add valuable research to a scholarly topic. We encourage readers to stay tuned for the next story about her impact on Congress.
—Jack Meyers