Welcome to my website! I am an assistant professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University. My research and teaching interests are Comparative Politics, International Relations (Security Issues), International Political Economy, Political Behavior, Quantitative Methods, Asian Politics, and Political Communication. My dissertation, "Political Participation and Democratic Citizenship in New Democracies — Asia in Comparative Perspective," examines competing statistical models of political behaviors and its relationship to democratic citizenship in Asian new democracies and western mature democracies. Based on empirical data collected from Asian Democracies, this observation allows me to generate new insights into several enduring puzzles in comparative politics, including what factors drive voters’ decision in Asia and what types of political participation are suited to these Asian countries. In general, my works demonstrate that despite cultural differences, the institutional/systematic setting may influence how people participate in politics.

 

My research is interdisciplinary in nature and methodologically pluralistic. Thematically, I am interested in applying quantitative methods to examine my two research interests: 1) political behaviors in different countries and its impact in comparative perspective; 2) the effect of domestic political instability on the possibility of international conflict in different countries, East/Southeast Asia regional disputes in particular, such as Taiwan and China, ASEAN, and Korean Peninsula. In extending my previous work, my future research projects aim to focus on the two directions.

 

 

Dennis L.C. Weng