Date on Senior Honors Thesis

5-2022

Document Type

Senior Honors Thesis

Degree Name

B.A.

Department

Political Science

Degree Program

College of Arts and Sciences

Author's Keywords

consensus, majoritarian, Portugal, United States, drugs, harm reduction

Abstract

Drug use is a global problem that impacts every country around the world. Although this issue is international in nature, there is no one shared response to addiction globally. The approach utilized by each country can generally be characterized as punitive or rehabilitative. Rehabilitative approaches, which center around the employment of harm reduction services, focus on reducing the negative consequences of drug use, while punitive approaches respond to substance use with prison sentences. Considering this lack of commonality in response, I sought to better understand potential causes for this disparity and was especially curious if government structure impacts the policy in place. My research examines the relationship between addiction policy and democracy characteristics 39 industrialized democracies. The democracy characteristics, categorized as either majoritarian or consensus, are founded upon Dr. Arend Lijphart’s theoretical framework. To execute this research, I designed a drug policy scale which I utilized to score each country’s addiction policy from punitive to rehabilitation centered. The results from the OLS performed reveal a significant relationship between majoritarian democracies and lower drug policy scores. This data was applied to two case studies: Portugal (consensus) and the United States (majoritarian). The case studies revealed that consensus characteristics may have played a role in the effective implementation of rehabilitative policies in Portugal, while majoritarian characteristics may be a factor in the lack of change in US drug policy, supporting the idea discovered in the statistical analysis.

Lay Summary

Drug use is a global problem that impacts every country around the world. Although this issue is international in nature, there is no one shared response to addiction globally. The approach utilized by each country can generally be characterized as punitive or rehabilitative. Rehabilitative approaches, which center around the employment of harm reduction services, focus on reducing the negative consequences of drug use, while punitive approaches respond to substance use with prison sentences. Considering this lack of commonality in response, I sought to better understand potential causes for this disparity and was especially curious if government structure impacts the policy in place. My research examines the relationship between addiction policy and democracy characteristics 39 industrialized democracies. The democracy characteristics, categorized as either majoritarian or consensus, are founded upon Dr. Arend Lijphart’s theoretical framework. To execute this research, I designed a drug policy scale which I utilized to score each country’s addiction policy from punitive to rehabilitation centered. The results from the OLS performed reveal a significant relationship between majoritarian democracies and lower drug policy scores. This data was applied to two case studies: Portugal (consensus) and the United States (majoritarian). The case studies revealed that consensus characteristics may have played a role in the effective implementation of rehabilitative policies in Portugal, while majoritarian characteristics may be a factor in the lack of change in US drug policy, supporting the idea discovered in the statistical analysis.

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