Shepherd's Faculty Research Forum begins October 29

ISSUED: 12 October 2009
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
(Shepherd's Faculty Research Forum begins October 29)

Shepherdstown, WV--Shepherd University's Faculty Research Forum will begin Thursday, October 29 with Dr. Joseph Robbins, assistant professor of political science. Dr. Robbins will present "Party System Institutionalization and Government Spending" during a noon brown bag lecture in room 256 of the Shepherd University Scarborough Library.

Although previous works have considered explanations for government spending levels, few studies include considerations of party system institutionalization. In his work, Dr. Robbins argues that weakly institutionalized systems should result in lower public goods but higher parochial goods spending. In contrast, more institutionalized systems should result in more public goods spending as these systems try to appeal to broader swaths of the population. With three different spending measures in time-series cross-sectional analyses, Dr. Robbins' results support the stated hypotheses that institutionalized party systems significantly influence spending patterns.

The Shepherd Faculty Research Forum will also include Dr. Heidi Hanrahan, assistant professor of English, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, November 18, with "A Series of Mere Household Events: Poe's 'The Black Cat,' Domesticity, and Pet-Keeping in Nineteenth-Century America;" and Dr. Jason McKahan, assistant professor of communications, on Thursday, December 3, with "Critical Methods of A/V Applications in Classroom Instruction" during a brown bag lecture at noon.

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