William Kang

This research seeks to investigate key variables affecting low female political representation in the US. Although playing a leading role in promoting democracy and human rights in other countries, the US ranks low in female political participation than expected. For instance, New Zealand is similar to the US in political history and culture, demographic structure and gender ratio, and democracy level; however, it ranks higher in political representation of women than does the US. Arguably, existing literature on female political representation relies on three strands of explanations: socio-structural, culture-based, and institution-based. The findings in this research confirm the validity of the institution-based explanation. They suggest that political institution such as the electoral system is a crucial variable that can explain why the US ranks lower in female political representation than does New Zealand. The electoral system is also a key variable that can explain why female representation ratio in state legislatures in six particular states in the US-Vermont, Washington, Arizona, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Maryland-is higher than the rest. The research confirms that the mixed-member proportional system elects more women than the single-member district plurality system in the US.

The concepts of balancing and bandwagoning theoretically have been the known strategies that states often utilize when they are exposed to pressing external threats. Scholars debated about the absence of balancing by states in the post-Cold War era against the United States, such that concepts like soft balancing and underbalancing have been introduced as the alternatives. States' balancing strategies become more complicated under fragmented, multi-polar system such as the Middle East. Due to power diffusion, the Middle East has many weakened states and various types of actors are trying to take advantage of it; Iran has gained the most geopolitically. The puzzle is why Turkey is not employing either a balancing or bandwagoning strategy towards Iran, even though Iran's regional geopolitical gains are a threat. This paper argues that Turkey has adopted 'compartmentalized hedging' towards Iran during the outbreak of civil wars and conflicts that are internationalized. Compartmentalized hedging allows Turkey to transcend the traditional relationship boundaries of ally or foe by straddling the grey area by simultaneously combining negative balancing and economic engagement as a hybrid policy towards the regional threat.

Turkey and Iran has had a long history of rivalry and cooperation. However, the advent of the Arab Spring and the Syrian conflict escorted unprecedented tensions between these two non-Arab states. Syria epitomizes the geopolitical tensions between Turkey and Iran amongst a host of regional issues, in which they are at loggerheads over regional influence at the expense of each other. At pernicious odds over Syria, Turco-Iranian relations seemed inexorably precarious going forth. That is until Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's January 29 th , 2014 visit to Iran signaled a thawing and growing alignment toward Iran. The alignment behavior of Turkey and Iran presents something of a puzzle. This paper investigates the nature of the current Turco-Iranian alignment by adopting structural realist theory of alliance. The choice of grand strategy that the U.S. adopted and its actions in the Middle East resulted in Turkey and Iran bandwagoning with the U.S. instead of balancing against it, which in turn made Turkey and Iran cooperate. Even though Turkey is a NATO ally of the U.S., both Turkey and Iran had limited options due to the actions of the U.S.