Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Politics'

El desacuerdo es un componente central de la política en cuanto se extiende y persiste a través de todas las posturas ideológicas y los asuntos de política pública. Desafiar puntos de vista opuestos y defender posturas personales, tanto en contextos electorales como en la política contenciosa, determina en gran medida la forma en que experimentamos la política diariamente. En consecuencia, la aceptación del desacuerdo es un requisito fundamental para un aspecto normativo de cómo se concibe la democracia: la toma de decisiones que considera posiciones contrapuestas. Esta tesis se centra en una dimensión actitudinal del desacuerdo político que involucra procesos cognitivos que pueden ayudar a entender mejor a los demás y a reconocer activamente las diferencias: la toma de perspectiva. Esta tesis aborda la investigación previa sobre el desacuerdo político considerando la toma de perspectiva como un tema relevante de estudio, y de esta manera contrapone actitudes generales tales como la tolerancia y la empatía, con objetos de actitud específicos, tales como posiciones contrarias y adversarios políticos. Esta tesis propone principalmente estudiar las consecuencias potenciales del desacuerdo en circunstancias particulares y explorar las percepciones de atribución culpa en asuntos que dividen la opinión pública. El diseño de investigación se basa en el contexto de la protesta política con el fin de aprovechar los casos en los que la opinión pública está claramente dividida y donde el desacuerdo entre las posiciones es evidente. Esta tesis se compone de tres artículos. El primer artículo se centra en issue publics y sus interacciones con las organizaciones mediante el análisis del entorno informacional de asuntos específicos. Más concretamente, se evalúa la exposición de las personas al desacuerdo político en la movilización a la protesta investigando el rol de las organizaciones en la vinculación de posiciones opuestas. Se encuentra una relación positiva entre la exposición al desacuerdo y la toma de perspectiva en el contexto de la movilización en los casos de las manifestaciones por la independencia catalana y el aborto en España. El segundo artículo proporciona una medición única de la toma de perspectiva basada en una mención directa de los adversarios políticos con el fin de estudiar en qué grado se relacionan la disposición a tomar la perspectiva de los adversarios con las motivaciones para protestar y para participar en un referéndum sobre la independencia catalana. El estudio se basa en datos de una encuesta transversal en Cataluña con el fin de confirmar el potencial efecto desmovilizador de la exposición al desacuerdo político. En contraste con estudios anteriores de comportamiento electoral, el efecto potencial en este estudio depende del estatus del grupo. En particular, aunque los defensores del status quo están menos dispuestos a manifestarse o a participar en el referendo, los retadores no tienen una menor disposición cuando consideran puntos de vista opuestos al suyo. Este efecto es mediado por la identidad de grupo, lo cual confirma la importancia del contexto particular en la hipótesis de presiones cruzadas. El tercer artículo investiga el desacuerdo político mediante la identificación de los factores individuales, organizacionales y contextuales que explican las diferencias entre las atribuciones de culpa en asuntos de posición. Los datos de encuestas a manifestantes que participaron en eventos de protesta a gran escala en ocho ciudades europeas entre 2009 y 2011 revelan diferencias entre las percepciones con respecto a los adversarios políticos, en la percepción de los manifestantes sobre el desacuerdo, y sobre la manera en que estas percepciones varían de acuerdo con el asunto, con los diferentes niveles de vinculación con las organizaciones, y de acuerdo con cada contexto. La tesis avanza la investigación sobre los componentes actitudinales de la exposición, las posibles consecuencias sobre el comportamiento y las percepciones del desacuerdo político. Centrarse en las actitudes hacia el desacuerdo y hacia los adversarios políticos en el contexto de la protesta en asuntos altamente divisivos ofrece una nueva perspectiva para las preguntas centrales de la literatura sobre el desacuerdo político. Las conclusiones de la tesis también pueden ampliar nuestra comprensión de la política contenciosa y del desacuerdo cotidiano, la cual no es evidente al estudiar las dinámicas electorales. Las conclusiones sobre el rol de las organizaciones políticas también plantean implicaciones prácticas a la luz de su papel de significación del conflicto político y de mediación entre adversarios políticos. Establecer el potencial de influencia estos roles sobre las actitudes individuales es relevante no sólo para la investigación académica, sino que también puede guiar políticas que busquen promover el civismo.
Disagreement is a central component of politics, for it extends and persists across all ideological stances and all issues of policy. Challenging opposing views and defending personal perspectives, both in electoral contexts and in contentious politics, greatly determine how we experience politics daily. Consequently, negotiating disagreement is an underlying requisite for a normative aspect of how we tend to conceive democracy: considerate decision-making. This dissertation focuses on an attitudinal dimension of disagreement that involves cognitive processes that, in turn, can help people to better understand others and actively acknowledge differences: perspective taking. This dissertation addresses previous research on political disagreement by considering perspective taking as a relevant subject of study and, in doing so, shifting from general attitudes, such as tolerance and empathy, to particular attitude objects, such as opposing stances and political adversaries. This dissertation chiefly proposes to address potential attitudinal and behavioral consequences of disagreement in particular circumstances and to explore perceptions of blame attribution in highly divisive issues. Its design is grounded in the context of protest politics in order to leverage cases in which both public opinion is clearly divided and disagreement between positions is highly evident. This dissertation is composed of three papers. Paper 1 focuses on issue publics in their actual interactions with organizations by analyzing the informational environment of their specific issues. More specifically, it assesses individuals’ exposure to political disagreement in protest mobilization by questioning the role of organizations in linking opposing stances in such mobilization. As a result, it finds positive relationships between exposure to disagreement and perspective taking in the context of such mobilization, particularly in cases of demonstrations for Catalan independence and abortion in Spain. Paper 2 provides a unique measure of perspective taking built on direct mentions to political adversaries in order to gauge the extent to which mentioning adversaries relates to individuals’ motivations to demonstrate and turnout for a referendum on Catalan independence. The study draws upon data from a cross-sectional survey in Catalonia in order to confirm a demobilizing effect of exposure to political disagreement. In contrast to previous studies of voting behavior, the potential effect in this study depends upon group status. In particular, though defenders of the status quo become less resolved to demonstrate or to turn out, challengers do not when considering opposing viewpoints. This effect is mediated by group identity, which confirms the importance of the issue context in the cross-pressures hypothesis. Paper 3 investigates political disagreement by identifying individual, organizational, and contextual factors that explain differences between blame attributions in position issues. Data from protest surveys of demonstrators who participated in large-scale events in eight European cities between 2009 and 2011 reveal differences among perceptions regarding political adversaries, how demonstrators perceive disagreement, and how these perceptions vary among issues, organizational involvement, and contexts. As a result, the dissertation as a whole advances the research of attitudinal components of exposure, potential behavioral consequences, and perceptions of disagreement. Focusing on attitudes toward disagreement or political adversaries in the context of protest politics and highly divisive issues provides new insight into core questions of the literature addressing political disagreement. The dissertation’s findings can also broaden our understanding of contentious politics and everyday disagreement that might not be captured by electoral dynamics. The findings regarding the role of politically motivated organizations also pose practical implications in light of their roles in providing meaning to political conflict and mediating political adversaries. Establishing the potential influence of these roles on individual attitudes is relevant not only for academic research; it can also guide policy in order to promote civility.

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This thesis examines if increased Department of Defense (DOD) involvement in political warfare (PW) is justified through a qualitative, comparative analysis of U.S. PW actions conducted by the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency, and DOD in two Cold War cases: Italy from 1943–1948 and Chile from 1961–1973. Concepts of strategy and social movement models of Doug McAdam, Charles Tilly, and Sidney Tarrow are applied to historical PW actions, both overt and covert. The case-study analysis clarifies each agency’s conduct of PW and develops analytical tools to classify PW actions by approach and impact within the political setting. Data was collected from archives, declassified government documents, and expert analyses. Results indicate that, compared to other U.S. agencies, the DOD had a limited direct role in PW in the cases studied, but was an important enabler. In applying models of social movement theory to historical analysis, this thesis identifies and develops the contentious politics mobilization model’s potential use in planning and evaluating PW strategies.

The political actions of the Druze of Israel have formed the focus of a large body of research. Despite this, academic studies to date have failed to explain why so many Druze resorted to a politics of loyalty when Israel was first established but have, in more recent years, resorted to a politics of violence. The research herein proposes that a model of the politics of accommodation is able to explain the political actions of the Druze during the first three decades of the Israeli state. Data from The Israel State Archives and the archives of leading Druze families show that many Israeli-Druze resorted to a politics of loyalty. This loyalty was inextricably linked to the perception of the new state and its government's policy as creating a new structure of opportunity for the economic, social and political progress of the Druze community whilst also safeguarding the Israeli-Druze community as a distinctive cultural and religious group on its own land. Similarly, it is proposed that the ethnic state supremacy model is able to explain the recent rise in the politics of violence within the Israeli-Druze community. Data from personal interviews with state officials and Druze activists confirmed that many Israeli-Druze resorted to a politics of violence because they perceived the Israeli government's policy as a threat to their preservation as a cultural and religious group on its own land. This study of Druze political action is intended as a contribution to the debate surrounding the Israeli state's politics in relation to Israel's Arab minority. This research also seeks to address wider issues in that it proposes a model that is applicable to the general question of ethnic conflict resolution in divided societies and polarised states.

Historians have long been familiar with the link between astrology and politics, especially during the Civil War and Interregnum. By contrast, the link between them during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been neglected by historians. This thesis sets out to bridge an historical gap. It provides a detailed study of astrology and politics between 1678, with the Popish Plot, and 1715. It examines the extent to which astrology was used as political propaganda during these years through a close study of the works published by the leading astrological polemicists, focusing particularly on their annual almanacs. It also examines the role religion played in politics, and the way in which the astrologers' religious outlooks and beliefs shaped their political views. The vitriolic feuds between leading astrologers on opposite sides of the divide are also examined in detail. This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first elucidates the outlook of the astrologers writing in the last years of Charles H's reign, covering the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, and the period of Tory ascendancy between 1681 and 1685. The second chapter assesses how astrologers reacted to the succession of the Catholic James 111, and his attempts to give Catholic subjects equality with their Protestant counterparts. Chapter three examines reactions to the Glorious Revolution and the reign of William 111, and chronicles astrologers' attitudes toward the succession, war and the Church. The final chapter deals with the reign of Anne, focusing on the ferocious party battles for which it is notorious. It assesses the extent to which these were reflected in the works of the astrologers and examines their arguments as the battle lines were drawn. The thesis argues that the stormy nature of politics between 1678 and 1715 ensured that the link between astrology and politics, which had become much weaker following the Restoration, was reforged and rendered as strong as it had ever been. Indeed the period witnessed a final renaissance in political astrology.

La dimensione delle politiche pubbliche locali e con esse le politiche sociali sono state sempre oggetto di particolare attenzione per la qualità dei servizi erogati a favore dei cittadini. Certamente in un clima di "austerità permanente " coniugare risorse erogate e qualità dei servizi non è certo facile per i decisori politici locali che si trovano ad affrontare problemi connessi con la gestione delle scuole, sostegno alle famiglie, accesso ai servizi socio-sanitari, politiche abitative di sostegno ai cittadini in difficoltà economiche. In quest'ottica il ruolo strategico delle politiche locali sono fondamentali per delineare come le ideologie e l'appartenenza partitica dei decisori politici locali incidono nella effettiva pratica delle costruzione del welfare locale. Questo lavoro cercherà di mostrare come le politiche pubbliche locali possono essere influenzate dall'appartenenza politica dei decisori politici. Le complessità delle congiunture economiche attuali non permettono politiche pubbliche espansive e di conseguenza le politiche sociali pongono seri problemi ai politici sul territorio. Partendo da questi assunti, in questo lavoro, cercherò di far emergere le dinamiche che sottintendono il rapporto tra il livello politico e la comunità locale e se il colore politico e l'ideologia di appartenenza hanno influenzato nel corso degli anni le politiche pubbliche locali nel loro complesso e in particolare le politiche sociali sul territorio.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the political modernization experience of the Uzbeks. In order to do that, first, this dissertation critically analyze the modernization theory, and second, the identity- and socio-political transformation of Uzbeks in the pre-modern and modern eras. The political modernization of Uzbeks and its relation with the peculiar social-political structures, as well as the impact of Tsarist and the Soviet rule on those structures are examined. Moreover, the dissertation analyzes the emergence of an Uzbek political identity and its influence on the post-Soviet independent Uzbekistan. The main argument of this dissertation is that the Uzbek experience under the Tsarist and Soviet rule has inevitably transformed the Uzbek society and achieved relative success in changing the traditional forms into ostensibly modern ones. However, despite the successful political modernization during the Soviet era, the specific socio-political organization, clans and kinship structures inherent in the Uzbek society succeeded adapting and even transforming modern institutions and structures externally imposed by the Soviet. These informal traditional structures emerged as strong institutions in the post-independence era. Moreover, the dissertation claims that the transition and modernization approaches to Post-Soviet Uzbekistan failed in understanding the peculiar socio-political structures and their impact on informal politics in independent Uzbekistan.

The 1997 British general election saw the return of 120 women Members of Parliament. The central question of this thesis is whether this unprecedented number of women MPs makes a difference to the political representation of women. The research is applied political theory, in which conceptual analysis is informed by and informs the empirical research. Pitkin's seminal contribution The Concept of Representation and Phillips' The Politics of Presence are both considered. In particular, Phillips' 'shot in the dark thesis', which makes a link between women's numerical representation and the substantive representation of women by women representatives, is subjected to empirical analysis. The data are drawn from interviews with half of the Labour women MPs elected for the first time in the 1997 election. The introduction in Chapter 1 includes discussions of the research objectives and the research design and methods. Chapter 2 explores women's legislative recruitment within the Labour Party, focusing upon its policy of all-women shortlists. Chapters 3 and 4 examine Pitkin's and Phillips' ideas respectively. The next three chapters (Chapters 5, 6 and 7) utilise the empirical data to analyse in tum symbolic, microcosmic and substantive conceptions of representation. The last of these chapters centres upon the question of whether women representatives seek and are able to act for women at constituency, parliamentary and governmental levels. The analysis broadly supports Phillips' thesis. However, the intersection of party and gender identities is emphasised to a greater extent. It is also argued that women MPs may not have, at least as yet, secured the 'safe spaces' from which to act for women. These conclusions suggest both that the complexity of the concept of representation must be recognised and that combining conceptual and empirical analysis engenders a more sophisticated understanding of women's political representation.

If we are interested in questions about how we ought to organize our political lives, what kind of weight, if any, should we give to evidence about what people actually think? The thesis explores this question about the role of public opinion in normative political theory. First, I disentangle a number of distinct justifications for taking account of public opinion. Specifically, the thesis evaluates four views of the status of public opinion: as an epistemic resource; a feasibility constraint; a means of democratizing political theory; or constitutive of moral and political ideals. I defend the epistemic argument, outlining two forms in which popular attitudes represent a valuable epistemic resource. The thesis criticizes the feasibility and democratic accounts of the role of public opinion as these are presented in the existing literature, but suggests more convincing ways of reconstructing these arguments. Finally, I reject the view that public opinion constitutes the ideal of justice, arguing that such an account is subject to a fundamental tension. As well as clarifying the status of popular attitudes, the thesis addresses the methodological difficulties that arise when we seek to bring public opinion to bear on ideas from political theory, whose meaning and status in everyday political thought and discourse is often limited or uncertain. I outline two approaches to integrating normative theory with the investigation of popular attitudes that mitigate the methodological problems that often confront such projects. The second major aim is to situate the question of the role of public opinion in the context of wider debates about the aims and methods of contemporary political theory. In particular, I address recent demands for greater ‘realism’ in political theory, distinguishing two main strands of realist critique and drawing out their contrasting implications for the role of public opinion.

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa))--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2009.
Thesis Advisor(s): Hafez, Mohammed ; Boylouny, Anne Marie. "June 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on July 13, 2009. DTIC Identifiers: Hezbollah, Hizbullah, political integration, social movement theory, Lebanese Shia, Shiite Muslims, Imam Sayyid Musa Al-Sadr, PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), radicalization, Arab-Israeli War, Al Nakba, Six Day War, IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), Cairo Agreement, Islamic fundamentalism, social movement theory. Author(s) subject terms: Hezbollah, Hizbullah, Lebanon, Political Integration, Social Movement Theory. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-61). Also available in print.

The application of marke ting to the political process has been advanced in a number of writings . A marketing perspective in e xamining the political process and electoral behaviour offers n ew insights into electoral behaviour and understanding the c ampaign p r ocesses of polit i cal parties . Research on the actual marketing orientation of political parti es is not signif i cant at this stage and as such this r e search addr esses the market i ng orientation and structur al and process charact eristics of political marketing with the research problem being: To determine what extent marketing has been inc orporated i n to the ope rations of the QLD Liberal Party and identify the struc tural and process characteristics of par ty's market ing environment. The research questions were : RQ 1. To what extent has the QLD Liberal Party adopted the marketing concept and is there support within t he party for the researcher's redefini tion of the Ma rke ting Concept i nto poli tical terminology to suit political marketing? RQ 2. To what extent are the QLD Liberal Party market ing oriented? RQ 3 . What are the struct ural and process characteristics o f the QLD Liberal Party's marketing environment? These research questions provided a focus for the investigations and the r esearcher' s endeavor to address the research problem. Chapter 1 of this thesis set the scene and identif i ed the broad d ire ctions and boundaries for t he study. It i ntroduced the topic and set out the purpose of the s tudy and its background. Chapte r a lso justif i ed the study on a number of theoretical and pra ctical 1 grounds and h ighlights the signif icance of the study because of its focus on polit i cal marketing which is postulated to b e part of marketing's e xtended doma in . Chapter 2 provided a review of the relevant literat u re , addressing the broader parent discipline f ocusing on the market ing concept, e xchange, market orientation and other key concepts and parent di s cipline issues . Importantly the r eview identified t he arguments for proposing that mar keti ng or more pre cisely a marketing orientation has been incorporated into politics by political parties rests upon the generic concept of marketing and that it (the generic concept) has been accepted as a central paradigm in marketing. Chapte r 2 then focused on the immediate discipline of political marketing and reviews the similari ties between commercia l marketi ng and pol itical marketing and other issues and concepts that the political marketing literature has addressed. From the two areas gaps in the literature are identified and the research questions developed. Chapter 3 aqdressed the methodological issues related to the research area and discussed the selected methodology. I t descri bed the data gathering techniques to be employed and types of analysis to be performed in the two stage primary research desi gn of this case study. Chapter 3 also established that the study was rigorous, methodologically sound and repl icable. Chapter 4 presented t he patt erns of results of the two s t age data gathering of the primary research for the three research question. The anal ysis of results i ndicated that the key dimensions and concepts addressed in the survey were significantly associated and the scale was quite rel i able and as such the measure of internal consistency was satisfactory . The results were judged not to be an artifact of the individual or separate stages . The pattern of results indicated that the interviewees had mini mal to none existent understanding of the marketing concept and a somewhat negative attitude toward ic. However survey results indicated a positive acceptance and attitude toward the marke ting concept generally and also its application in politics. The researcher's redef inition of t he marketing concept i nto political terms also received a high level of acceptance from respondents . The results indicated t he marketing concept has not been adopt~d by the party and their voter focus is minimal and they do not have a market orientation . The results indicated that the organisation is highly ' organisa tion centered ' which i ndicates the l a ck of a true marketing orientation; it has a strong sales orientation, where it believed electora l success is obtained if it can persuade the voters to accept its policy and issues stands rather than its competitors. The QLD Liberal Party does not possess a marketing 'mind set', structure or follow processes that yield a marketing orientation. The structural and process characterist i cs of the QLD Liberal party's marketing environment indicated that the product is a complex blend of various elements and that ser vice is a component . The results also indicate that loya lty was very important for the par ty and that mutability created pr oblems because of the party's minor status and alignment with the National Party. Furthe r the r esults indicated amateurism and volunteers creat ed p r oblems of control and motivation for the party and that a negative percept i on of marketing exists in some sections of t he party. The results also indicated that campaigns are based on style over substance and there is a high use of negative advertising and with the media being both a market and communications channel . The r esearch orientation of the party is toward polling and tactical voting was a critical strategy in campaigns. Chapter 5 discussed the findings and detailed the conclusions drawn f r om the data pre sented in c hapter 4 t o a nswer the r esearch prob lem , and discussed the implications of the study's findings. The r esearch problem as such went beyond e xami ning singular concepts that are appropriate in marketing and looked for the i n tegrated and synergistic appli cati on of marketing concept s and tools by- the party. It also focused on the political marketing environment to e xamine the structural and process characteristics that affect the party's operations . The conclusion about the research problem was that the party has not incorporated marketing into it operations. Specifically marketing whi ch is i ntegrated and s ynergistic . Further the study identified those structural and process characteristics that wer e identified in the literature and discovered t hat the produ~L was more comp lex than the literature indicated. Further the ~arketplace was identified as being competitive and volatile . Al so the process element of party tactical voting in a preferential voting system was ide n tified as being a critical s trategy to ensure t he opposing candidates were allocated last on the ballot by loyal voters. Further the mar keting concept with its custome r centered orientation creates a major concern from the perspective of interviewees, as they indicate the role and significance of the voter{customer) in deve l oping the political product is negligible. In conclusion the results of this study indicated that marketing has not been successfully extended into the QLD Liberal Party 's political operations, even though the party argues it successfully uses advertising and political polling. Contrary t o the party's belief marketing is characterised by an integrated and synergistic mix of product development and design , dis tribution, pricing or economic cost and promotion . This set of marketing activities is the twin edge. sword of marketing, the first edge is the mix of these elements that are developed to meet the needs and wants of target customers (voters) and the second edge is to meet the objectives of the organisation.

The aim of the research is to identify implications for the practice of Politics academics from the experience their students have of expressing their political views. This exploratory study is set within the wider debate of power and performativity in the HE classroom. It is situated in a study of practice and perceptions in one Department at the University of Chester and conducted through a review of the literature and empirical qualitative research with both Politics students and Politics academics. The research found that while Politics students wish to express their political views, these may not be their actual political views. Politics students indicate that the Politics academic can affect their expression of political views. They prefer academics who express their own political views and they do not like politically neutral academics. They may wish to know an academic’s political views in order to gain advantage for themselves. Knowing an academic’s political views enables the student to avoid expressing political views which some Politics academics find offensive. The research highlights the part played by power and performativity in the expressing of the Politics student’s political views and identifies some of the complexities arising from this. The practice outcomes provide guidance on how Politics academics can approach the issue of the Politics student’s expression of political views. This single case study’s value lies in these contributions to wider practice. Research is identified which will explore the findings further.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2005.
Title from title screen. Emanuela Guano, committee chair; Kathryn A. Kozaitis, Susan McCombie, Cassandra White, committee members. Electronic text (96 p. : photos) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 11, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-96).

Marriage has come to be center-stage in a semiotic and ideological “culture war.” The issue of same-sex marriage has emerged as a defining political argument shaping the manner by which the contemporary gay rights movement positions itself. In Georgia’s 2004 election, a constitutional amendment was proposed defining marriage as legal unions between only biological men and women. In response, campaigns were organized by both supporters and opponents to same-sex marriage. This thesis examines the politics of spectacle at play through which both sides of this argument positioned themselves. This thesis employs anthropological theory, queer theory and public sphere literature to illuminate the campaign against same-sex marriage as one of not only the denial of citizenship rights, but of identity recognition. The methods of theatricality employed by both sides of this debate are examined alongside the manners by which they represented themselves as legitimate voices in the fight over “marriage.”

Political marketing and political science are relatively young disciplines. Their contemporary shape follows the context of the dynamic social changes, caused by the technological innovation. This thesis should try to cover a range of areas, related to the connection between politics, political science and political marketing. The consistent analysis is supplemented by example from practice of the Czech political party. The chosen case study refers to the parliamentary election in 2013. The thesis introduces key tools of marketing communications and their applications on the market, establishing proper communication objectives and shows, how to choose appropriate communication strategy.

The diploma thesis studies specific features of the local politics in the Czech Republic. The focal point of this case study is the village Dolni Lhota and local elections in 2014, during which a change of the local political elites has occurred. The main aim of this thesis is to understand the factors having led to the victory of a new local representatives and to ascertain whether the citizens are satisfied with chosen political elites so far. The content is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter there is paid close attention to local democracy, local administration and to the introduction of Dolní Lhota. In the second chapter there are interpreted the results of the questionnaire survey, moreover it provides the reader with the analysis of interviews with the executive representatives elected in 2014. Finally, in the third chapter the research questions are evaluated.

This dissertation examines body politics in the People’s Republic of China. It first closely looks at Zhuangzi’s idea of xu by analyzing the major aspects of the term—blandness, lack of substance, spontaneity, dispossession, incompleteness, and absurdity. It then argues that the concept of xu generates profound implication for politics by bringing up a particular mode of politics—politics of indeterminacy. In this mode of politics, power relation and power structure are never settled. Instead, they morph without being actualized. Examined in this context, the body for Zhuangzi is understood as an indeterminate entity whose political agency is attributed to its capacity in re-articulating power relation by constantly receiving and transforming a manifold of forces. That the body can be alternatively construed this way is crucial for our re-examination of the shaping of reshaping of identity in the contemporary Chinese society. In this light, the work investigates two cases—the Cultural Revolution and the state capitalism to find out in what specific ways the body, identity and politics are intertwined in manifesting the story of changing political relations in the everyday life of the ordinary Chinese people. The work contends that the making of the subjectivity is an indeterminate process in which one’s identity is impossible to be fixed. It can never be composed with certainty. The construction of identity is a process of detachment by which one experiences the unexperienced without being settled around a center. The making of the political, to Zhuangzi, is thus founded on this indeterminacy to create new self and dissident political subject.

This dissertation is a critical study of technopolitical issues in the history of African American people. Langdon Winner's theory of technopolitics was used to facilitate the analysis of large scale technologies and their compatibility with various political ends. I contextualized the central technopolitical issues within the major epochs of African American political history: the Atlantic slave trade, the African artisans of antebellum America, and the American Industrial Age. Throughout this study I have sought to correct negative stereotypes and to show how "technological gauges" were employed to belittle people of African descent. This research also has shown that the mainstream notion that Africans had no part in the history of technology is false. This study identifies and analyses specific technologies that played a major role in the political affairs of Africans and African Americans. Those technologies included nautical devices, fort construction, and automatic guns in Africa, and hoes, plows, tractors, cotton gins, and the mechanical cotton pickers in America. The findings of this study suggested that African Americans have been disengaged and victimized by western technologies. This dissertation proposes how to overcome the oppressive uses of technology.

Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett
This dissertation investigates Aristotle’s famous claim that “the human being is by nature a political animal.” This claim seems to express a basic disagreement between Aristotelian political philosophy and the contractarian political philosophy that informs modern liberalism. Aristotle asserts, contrary to Hobbes, for instance, that the political community is not a convention between naturally individual human beings but a natural entity in its own right prior to and authoritative over the individual. Yet not only are Aristotle’s reasons for supposing that we are naturally political obscure and questionable, but the meaning of Aristotle’s claim that we are naturally political is not altogether clear. For not only does Aristotle suggest that we are naturally political because the city is naturally prior to and authoritative over us, but he suggests we are political animals above all due to our distinctive faculty of reason, or speech, which, because it is the medium of the perception of advantage and justice that informs our actions, is what constitutes the city. Speech, in other words, is what brings the city to sight as the natural whole Aristotle asserts it to be. This suggests, however, that the naturalness of politics must be evaluated on the basis of such speech, which admits of clarification, and not on the basis Aristotle originally offers, which is speculation about the origins of the city. We argue that Aristotle’s dialectical examinations of despotic, political, and kingly forms of rule provide an outline of this task of clarification, which alone can permit us to evaluate the naturalness of politics. A close reading of these examinations, however, indicates that Aristotle ultimately rejects the view that the city is the natural whole it presents itself as being
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Political Science

This thesis brings the concept of humanitarianism sharply into focus within the discourse of international political theory. Existing literature examines humanitarianism obliquely, via debates on military humanitarian intervention or human rights, resulting in an impoverished account of a vital idea. Meanwhile, a vibrant discussion among professional humanitarians has recently questioned the nature of their endeavour, along lines that clearly fit the remit of international political theory. Bringing together these two discussions in the course of its critical analysis, the thesis argues that humanitarianism should be conceptualised as a political context in which we articulate, negotiate and defend our understandings of common humanity. Central to this politics are the ways in which we react to and conceptualise human suffering, through humanitarian crises that are often "crises of humanity". In sparking concern and mobilising responses to suffering, the affective underpinnings of the humanitarian impulse create a complex and shifting backdrop to extensions of solidarity and humanitarian action. At the heart of this action is the idea of rescue, a crucial "presumptive occasion" of our moral life. But an important part of humanitarian action consists in the efforts to institutionalise the humanitarian impulse. In this sense human rights and projects of global justice represent important crystallisations of humanitarian concern, yet neither can fully capture the more contingent workings of the humanitarian impulse. What emerges is an understanding of humanitarianism as a broad discussion, central to the identity of contemporary liberal international political theory, but with a scope best gleaned not from cosmopolitan accounts, but from a more fluid internationalist tradition of thought. The thesis concludes that the importance of this theoretical approach will be borne out by the complex and far-reaching practical challenges that humanitarianism is set to confront over coming decades, not least the "crisis of humanity" threatened by climate change.

Territory is an important part of contemporary political debates but there is an odd silence about the concept of territory in contemporary political theory. The unraveling of colonization and concerns over global justice should make territory a central aspect of political theory, yet it is not. This silence has the curious feature of recalling the original justifications for territorial acquisition. Because territory is neglected by contemporary thinkers, it is important to return to theorists such as Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Pufendof and Kant for a critical engagement with the concept of territory. Understanding the arguments of these thinkers illuminate the presuppositions of present day theorists and contributes to the understanding of contemporary theoretical problems. The thesis is organized into eight chapters. The first two chapters consider the neglect of territory in political theory the role of territory in international law. This sets up the three middle chapters which are critical engagements with historical thinkers organized around three conceptions of territory: territory as possession, as property and as jurisdiction. Contemporary cosmopolitanism is inspired, in part, by unraveling of colonization and a concern for global justice. Chapter 6 considers the relationship between contemporary cosmopolitanism and the legacy of the historical conceptions of territory. The next chapter investigates the communitarian critique of cosmopolitanism and the role of identity in territorial claims. At first glance there seems to be good reasons for contemporary theory to presuppose or ignore territory. However, the answer, though skeptical, is more subtle. Following Rawls and others, contemporary theory is right to remain silent about territory and about property in territory. The main skepticism is about arguments for colonial restitution or global redistribution of resources. This is because many take a crude territory as property view - which when abandoned seems to leave the world un-owned and therefore subject to equal distribution or claims. Yet skepticism is not the only alternative. Jurisdiction entails some elements of the territory as property view. This is a more sophisticated claim than the straight territory as property argument. Here ownership is a secondary but important claim states make in the absence of a binding universal norm. As a result there is a prima facie but not indefeasible right to particular territory. Identity plays a role in linking peoples to places. It also raises the bar to colonial restitution and global resource redistribution. This legitimates the current view of territory in political theory and international law where territory is pre-supposed but not theorized.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the processes of consolidation and decomposition of the Venezuelan party system and their relation to democratic stability. Both processes are analyzed through a theoretical framework based on four conditions for institutionalization and three conditions for decomposition of a party system. Preliminary findings reveal that the Venezuelan party system became institutionalized as of 1969 but began to unravel during the 1980s. This particular order, whose legitimacy rested on the distribution of rents, solidified an arrangement that collapsed when confronted with a deteriorating economic environment combined with growing popular disenchantment stemming from its institutional inability to represent and respond to shifting demands. The thesis also concludes that current political developments do not respond to a process of institutionalization of a new party system but to the development of an inchoate system.

In the past decades, political theory and philosophy have seen the canonization of a new conceptual difference, whose roots have been traced back to a number of thinkers, but whose main theoretical elaboration can be said to have begun with the Centre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique founded by Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe in 1980 and closed in 1984: the difference between la politique and le politique, or between ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. As Chantal Mouffe (2005a: 8f), borrowing Heidegger’s vocabulary, has pointed out, the two terms operate on different levels: whereas ‘politics’ refers to the ‘ontic’ level and designates the empirical ‘facts’ of political organization – practices, institutions, discourses, etc. – ‘the political’ implies a philosophical inquiry at the ‘ontological’ level, asking, as Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy (1981: 12) put it, about the ‘essence of the political’. While, in theorists as diverse as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, Claude Lefort, Roberto Esposito, Ernesto Laclau, and many others – most of them located on the political left – this inquiry has yielded very different results, they all agree on the basic necessity to make this distinction between conventional politics, on the one hand, and a more profound dimension concerning the institution of the social itself, on the other. Similarly, virtually all the thinkers mentioned are in agreement as to the state of the political in the contemporary world: they all see it as in danger of being ignored, repressed or neutralized in the context of what they criticize as increasingly ‘post-political’ and ‘post-democratic’ social arrangements. This critique of today’s post-politics is a powerful and important one. In the following, I want to argue that the work of Stuart Hall to some extent shares in – in fact, anticipates, since most of the relevant theories were developed after 1989 – this critical discourse. More specifically, I will 1) bring out and discuss Hall’s critique of post-politics; 2) elaborate upon his own understanding of the political, which is implicit in this critique and elsewhere in his writings – I will argue that Hall’s thought can be considered as belonging to what the sociologist Oliver Marchart (2010) has termed ‘the moment of the political’, insofar as it is a product of and response to our ‘post-foundational condition’, emphasizing as it does conflictuality, contingency and the groundlessness of society; 3) and finally, building on this, I will briefly talk about the conclusions concerning (ontic) politics that the post-foundationalism Hall shares with most of the other theorists I have mentioned leads him to, which are very different from those arrived at by philosophers such as Badiou, Rancière or Žižek and closer – partly via the shared engagement with Gramsci – to those of Mouffe and Laclau or Lefort.

This thesis explores the injunctions and disjunctures effected through relations between politics, philosophy, and ethics by working through various issues and problems confronting discourses of identity politics. These confrontations concern such matters as speaking positions and their relations to the legitimation of knowledge claims; relations between history, power, and the appropriation of political identities; relations between philosophy and politics; and the renegotiation of these relations with regard to a certain space of ethics and justice. Among the cases studied are those concerning the 'authenticity' of Australian Aboriginal identities; the politics of appropriation and subversion in 'queer' commentaries; the epistemological and political status of the category of 'woman' in feminist criticism; and the ethical status of a freedom fighter (Chris Hani) who belonged to the South African Communist Party. According to a certain structure of identity, the realms of politics, philosophy and ethics are separable from one another, while according to a certain logics of identity politics these realms are inseparable from one another. This thesis argues, however, that these realms are neither separable nor inseparable: they are always being brought into crisis in the formation of emancipatory struggles. While many commentators concerned with the disjunctures of such a crisis have sought to reconcile the irreducibility between the three domains by asserting the primacy of the political, this thesis is concerned with ways in which the privileging of 'the political' can have detrimental effects for the promise of the emancipatory ideal. This is not to undermine the importance accorded to the category of the political, but to pursue what might ironically be the political and ethical costs of refusing to question (via a necessary and difficult detour through the philosophical language of ontology) the privileged status of the political in such movements. Beginning with Foucault's analytics of discourse, the thesis moves to a consideration of Derrida's critique of the metaphysics of presence. This critique (as argued by way of Derrida's negotiations with Foucault, Nietzsche, Levinas and Marx) raises problems for any notion of identity insofar as the metaphysics of presence infuse all relations between politics, philosophy and ethics, requiring such relations to be continually re-applied and re-worked. While this is to unsettle the structure of identity, it is not to refuse the necessity of politics or the urgency of decisions. On the contrary, the critique of politics opens onto a certain space of justice which pledges the emancipatory promise of identity politics to the promise of a democracy-yet-to-come.

In this dissertation I discuss the tension between social choice and political philosophy. The aim is to explore the possibility of a ‘tolerable Platonism’, a form of political Platonism that can be consistent with a liberal defence of democracy. My starting point is the social choice theory view, namely the liberal justification of democracy elaborated by Riker in Liberalism against Populism. Riker’s analysis is shaped by Arrow’s theorem and around the dichotomy between liberalism and populism. Riker maintains that these are the two main traditions of interpreting democracy and the two contrasting accounts of democratic voting. But Arrow’s theorem is not just the basis for the social choice research program; it is also a fundamental background out of which the more general concerns of contemporary political philosophy about the just institutions grow. The following question drives my discussion: can political philosophy and its account of democracy be contained in Riker’s dichotomy between liberalism and populism? To put the matter more provocatively, and to emphasize the main interest that drives this work: should political philosophy give up to populism? The question aims to engage social choice theory on shared terrain (the passage from individual preferences to collective decision; the connection between method and ideal; the confrontation between market and democracy). The mathematic language in which social choice theory formulates its assessments should not prevent political philosophy from recognising the importance of this account of politics and democracy, and from confronting the controversies that the social choice analysis reveals. Rawls’s program itself might be regarded as an outcome of this confront. This dissertation will not refute Riker’s work or the social choice theory framework that underlies it. The aim is to use Riker’s distinction between liberalism and populism to reflect on the normative commitments of political philosophy; to re-describe the aggregative problem formalised in Arrow’s theorem by using the “idealistic” point of view of political philosophy. If political philosophy does not accept Riker’s distinction and invitation - Riker’s solution seems to call for a ‘positive’ political philosophy, that is, one solely based on criteria of feasibility and weighted toward the method side of the tension between ideals and methods - the challenge is to point out the problems that redound from a rigid discontinuity between the two views. And a first, good argument for this exploration is that some of the most interesting cases of normative political theory propose solutions that mix liberalism and populism (e. g. Mill and Rawls). I do not wish not to minimize the importance of the liberal, anti-tyrannical option but rather to show that a more objectivistic version of liberalism is possible within the anti-tyrannical framework. Following the path drawn by epistemic democracy, I aim to take some steps toward a version of liberalism that is more compatible with populism.

This work is an inquiry into the nature of politics. I will argue that the idea of a "political sphere" emerged primarily in reference to the subject matter of political science, and therefore its nature is that of a scientific object (chapter 1). Building on recent and less recent debates among social science methodologists and philosophers of science, I will defend a realist approach to the explanation of political phenomena (chapter 2). I will then proceed to work out the implications of this realist approach concerning the nature of its object(s) of study (chapter 3). My conclusion is that political phenomena consist solely of the effects of the causal properties of individual entities, and that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a "political sphere" at the ontological level. Such a scientific object must instead be seen as the product of the classification of political phenomena into kinds with increasing degree of generality, at the top of which lies the class of all political phenomena – i.e. the political domain. In line with the realist approach I defend, I contend that such classifications are based on stipulations about the similarities between individual phenomena rather than on general features that such phenomena actually share (chapter 4). Finally, I will conclude that despite their relative arbitrariness, such classifications constitute representational models whose validity can be tested on the basis of their explanatory power (chapter 5).

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O presente trabalho estuda um período da história político-partidária e eleitoral (1966-1982) brasileira, percorrendo os níveis nacional, estadual e local, com ênfase neste último. Com a chegada dos militares ao poder em 1964 e a extinção dos partidos políticos em 1965, inicia-se um novo sistema denominado bipartidarismo, que se estende até 1982. Diante da dependência partidária e eleitoral da legislação federal, os Estados e municípios se adaptaram, porém conservando suas diferenças regionais. As lideranças políticas paranaenses se articularam diante do novo jogo político e fortaleceram o partido do governo, em contraste com uma oposição decepada e fragilizada. Em nível local, embora receba a interferência da política nacional e estadual, o quadro caracteriza-se acentuadamente por contornos próprios, revelando a disputa de pessoas e grupos de interesses pelo poder local. A baixa institucionalização partidária e a volatilidade são fatores que fortalecem o individualismo na política, e o eleitor, sem referências partidárias consolidadas, até por interesses pessoais e por estar próximo dos candidatos, valoriza o personalismo. O trabalho analisa o desempenho e evolução da ARENA/PDS e do MDB/PMDB, através dos resultados eleitorais, colocando em destaque a representação da política no município de Maringá.
An analysis, at the national, state and local levels, with special emphasis to the latter, on the 1966-1982 history of party and election politics in Brazil is provided. A new bi-party system was introduced in Brazil on the arrival to power of the armed forces in 1964 and on the extinction of political parties in 1965, through 1982. Although states and counties adapted themselves to the party and electoral dependence on federal laws, they preserved their regional differences. The political leaderships of the state of Paraná organized themselves in the wake of the new political rules and strengthened the government's party. This cannot be said of the opposition, which remained fragmented and split. Although the local situation was influenced by the national and state politics, its features had special nuances that revealed the struggle of individuals and groups for local political power. Low party institutions and volatility were the chief factors that gave rise to political individualism, while the voter rated personal cult excessively. This was due to the lack of consolidated party references, invested interests and close dealing with candidates. Research investigated the performance and evolution of ARENA/PDS and MDB/PMDB through their election results, whereas the political representation in the municipality of Maringá was enhanced.

The paper aims to examine the nature of the relationship between beauty and the city. I examined this relationship by first providing a summary of relevant philosophers and their thoughts concerning aesthetics. Second, I compared their thoughts to my own creating my own abstract framework. Third, I implemented my abstract framework through the lens of architecture. This art form is the most organic to study the relationship of beauty within the city because it merges elements characteristic of one’s being like political discourse with the longing for some type of excitement or stimulation which might transfigure one’s self to a higher understanding, something that can only be achieved by experiencing beauty. In other words, buildings and the spaces around them drive the way in which humans interact with each other and their surroundings. I found that the beautiful is desirable and at a point becomes essential to a person’s happiness. To achieve a sense of beauty within the city, the ruling class must possess practical wisdom. A type of knowledge that allows them to pursue the appropriate and promote a kind of creativity that not only respects tradition but also aims to unveil some new form of experience.

Encounters between gringo volunteers and local residents in San Andrés are always heavily-laden with politics. “Gringo” and “local” identities come into being in relation to each other; they are not pre-assigned but rather worked out in practice on the ground, where multiple inequalities are re-produced, re-negotiated, and/or re-enforced. Gringo positioning invokes many of the histories, geographies and asymmetries of Northern imperialism. This baggage inspires a variety of different responses from gringos, each with different political implications. Using ethnographic methods, I trace gringo-ness in practice and find that exclusionary, whitened, and self-affirming patterns begin to emerge. I question how critical methodological, theoretical, and practical engagements with “gringo” might allow this identity to be used as a tool of politicization or decolonization. After tracing the ways that being “gringo” plays out in San Andrés, I ask how this identity might be practiced in more emancipatory ways that deliberately challenge imperialism and whitened privilege. I set my sights on the methodological potential of critical gringo-ness as an articulation of my desire to conduct academic research in a way that recognizes the force of – but resists reinscribing – racialized, economic, gendered, and geopolitical privileges.

This paper will argue in three sections that Thus Spoke Zarathustra necessarily implies an aristocratic political system. In the section "Zarathustra’s Value Theory," I lay out Zarathustra's theory of value creation. In the second section, "Possible Interpretations of Value Creation," I describe three different perspectives that can be used to understand Zarathustra’s value theory. In the third section, "Zarathustra and Politics" I provide a critique of modern liberalism and an alternative coherent with Nietzsche's philosophy, aristocracy.

Unter Queer Politics wird eine spezifische Form des politischen Aktivismus verstanden, bei dem eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlichen Konstruktionsprozessen von Geschlecht und Sexualität, die sozialen Folgen solcher Prozesse und ihre Einbindung in Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse fokussiert werden. Queer Politics wurden insbesondere durch die Befreiungskämpfe der lesbischen und schwulen sowie der feministischen Bewegungen des 20. Jahrhunderts geprägt. Die Queer Theory bildet den wichtigsten theoretischen Hintergrund. Kritik wird vor allem hinsichtlich der Unschärfe des Begriffs queer, als auch queerer Identitätspolitiken formuliert.

Unter Queer Politics wird eine spezifische Form des politischen Aktivismus verstanden, bei dem eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlichen Konstruktionsprozessen von Geschlecht und Sexualität, die sozialen Folgen solcher Prozesse und ihre Einbindung in Macht- und Herrschaftsverhältnisse fokussiert werden. Queer Politics wurden insbesondere durch die Befreiungskämpfe der lesbischen und schwulen sowie der feministischen Bewegungen des 20. Jahrhunderts geprägt. Die Queer Theory bildet den wichtigsten theoretischen Hintergrund. Kritik wird vor allem hinsichtlich der Unschärfe des Begriffs queer, als auch queerer Identitätspolitiken formuliert.

The major focus of this thesis is to discuss the development and current level of the concept of environmental politics in terms of its potential to serve as a general concept for the theoretical understanding of the relationship between man and his natural environment and of its dynamics. To the end the thesis, using a broad literature review, sets the major stages of the development of society focused on the exploitation of natural resources, the protection of nature, and the benefits of natural services, and on ways in which modern societies responded to negatively evaluated impacts of these activities. This serves as a base for analysis and better understanding ofthe development of a key concept of current environmental policy, the concept of sustainable development, the development and current state of the social sciences in terms of environmental issues, as well as their major focus in this area, the current debate over structure and power of environmental goals in modern societies, as well as the issues of effectiveness and integration of governmental environmental policies.

Rosalind Hursthouse, Mark LeBar, Martha Nussbaum, and other contemporary philosophers have brought virtue ethics into conversation with political philosophy. These philosophers agree with Aristotle that the function of political authority is to enable persons to live well. But we still lack an account of how the virtues, as characteristics of persons, relate to political authority as a property of institutions. I argue that the authority of political institutions depends on performing the function of enabling persons to live well, while the virtues require, but also limit, the authority of political institutions. According to the account I develop, living well consists in the exercise of practical wisdom within a socially embedded institutional context. Political institutions enable living well by means of institutionally defined rights such as property rights that protect the exercise of practical wisdom, and they promote its development through the institutions of civil society such as the family. But, I argue, political authority is limited by the individual virtue of justice, understood as balancing conformity to the existing social norms and laws of a community with their necessary updating through ideals of virtue. Ultimately, I conclude that political authority properly functions to promote an indirect conception of the common good, according to which persons relate to each other virtuously through their shared institutions.

Die vorliegende Arbeit zielt darauf ab, zwei Forschungslücken in der Literatur über Bürgerkriege zu schließen. Erstens, die Analyse der Strukturen nicht-staatlicher bewaffneter Gruppen. Zweitens, die Untersuchung der Politik von Milizen, als Form nicht-staatlicher Gruppen, denen in gegenwärtigen Bürgerkriegen eine zunehmende Bedeutung zukommt. Diese beiden Bereiche werden mit Hilfe einer historisch vergleichenden Analyse am Beispiel von zwei Milizen, die im sudanesischen und libanesischen Bürgerkrieg kämpften, untersucht. Die "Popular Defense Forces", 1989 von der Regierung des Sudan mobilisiert, wurden zum Sammelbecken für undisziplinierte und teilautonome militärische Einheiten, die schwerste Kriegsverbrechen begingen. Die "Lebanese Forces", eine maronitisch-nationalistische Miliz, wurde von einer Koalition konservativer christlicher Parteien gegründet. Nach dem Zusammenbruch des Staates 1975-6 wurde diese Miliz zu einer autonomen politischen Einheit mit einem territorial abgegrenzten Kanton im Osten von Beirut. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Prozesse und Strategien, die diesen Milizen die Etablierung von Herrschaft ermöglichte. Die beiden Gruppen entwickelten sich zu Organisationen, die die zu verteidigenden Gebiete beherrschten und mit staatlichen Geldgebern verbündet waren, aber auch in Konkurrenz zu ihnen standen. Diese Arbeit identifiziert drei Mechanismen, die die Entwicklungen von Milizen im Laufe ihrer Zeit bestimmen. Der Erste erklärt die Formierung von Milizen als ein Bricolage von politischen und nicht-politischen Antworten auf Unsicherheit. Der Zweite erklärt, wie sich Milizen in hybride Organisationen, von zentraler Mobilisierungseinheit und lokal eingebettete Organisationen, entwickeln. Der Dritte führt die Kontrolle des Zentrums über die lokalen Organisationen auf die Macht über Ressourcen zurück. Die Arbeit schließt mit dem Entwurf eines alternativen analytischen Modells für die Untersuchung von Bürgerkriegen.
This thesis provides an analysis of the organizational politics of state supporting armed groups, and demonstrates how group cohesion and institutionalization impact on the patterns of violence witnessed within civil wars. Using an historical comparative method, strategies of leadership control are examined in the processes of organizational evolution of the Popular Defence Forces, an Islamist Nationalist militia, and the allied Lebanese Forces, a Christian Nationalist militia. The first group was a centrally coordinated network of irregular forces which fielded ill-disciplined and semi-autonomous military units, and was responsible for severe war crimes. Equally responsible for war crimes, such as the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Shi''a and Palestinian civilians in 1982, the second group, nonetheless, became an autonomous military formation with an established territorial canton with a high degree of control over military units. After first analysing the political and institutional context of formation of these two groups, detailed case study analysis illustrates how political-military leaderships consolidated internal authority over combat units. At first, this authority relied on a bricolage of norms, motivations and institutions, as highly diverse, loosely coordinated actors mobilised in response to insecurity. As key leadership figures emerged, these groups evolved into hybrid organisations, divided between central organisations and locally embedded units operating according to localised security arenas decoupled from central military or political strategy. Central authority was then consolidated through a process of progressive institutionalisation and expansion, as centralised control was established, often violently, over resources, recruitment and discipline. This thesis shows, how militias, formed in allegiance with the state evolved into organizations rivalling state sovereignty and exploiting the communities which they claimed to defend.

The thesis is about the representation of the women in the politics, especially in The Czech Republic. The goal is to answer on the question, if this approach depends on the position of the political party on the ideological left-right spectrum. First the thesis is focused on the development of the women's position in the society since the 18th century and on the women's right struggle within feminism. The second part of thesis presents the methods, which support the women's political activity. The last capture analyzes the approach to the women in politics of seven political parties, which won the seat in the Chamber of Deputies in Parliament of The Czech Republic in the years 2006 and 2010. It compares their approach to policy of equal gender representation in the party's documents and in the reality. The result of the analysis is that the power of the party is more important than its position on left-right spectrum in the approach to women. The more powerful party is the less opportunities have the women in politics.

Does democracy lead to less income inequality? The intuition behind this question is simple and appealing: how well does political equality translate into economic equality? Although there are philosophical and theoretical foundations for the expectation that democracy should lead to less income inequality, empirical evidence, especially those from recent studies, has not been very robust. To contribute to the discussion, instead of repeating the analysis with an updated dataset or slightly different coverage, this project introduces several new perspectives to enhance our understanding towards the relationship between democracy and income inequality. Each question below corresponds to one of the chapters included in this research. First, is democracy still a relevant concept in determining income inequality if no direct associations can be found? Secondly, should the effect of democracy be considered from a long-term perspective? Thirdly, can the theoretical foundations of democratic redistribution be strengthened? And finally, should we regard concepts like government spending as a homogenous category and expect uniform effects from them? The answers to these questions can hopefully shine light on the true relationship between democracy and income inequality.

In 1994, in response to repeated scandals of political corruption, or of money politics as it was also called, the Japanese Diet passed a comprehensive package of political reform laws. By placing the focus on a change in the election system, this package suggested that money politics was primarily a problem of the incentive structures that the political system provided. This dissertation is based on the premise that political reforms and the debate that produces them are a good indicator of how the Japanese themselves evaluated money politics and what they hoped to change about it. The dissertation shows that both money politics and the political reforms designed to address it have not been a recent phenomenon but have existed more or less continuously for at least 70 years. It analyses the history of three case studies of political reforms that were aimed partly or exclusively at changing money politics: first a political education initiative, second the establishment and amendment of the law controlling political finance and fund-raising, and finally the attempted creation of a law on defining and regulating political parties. These three case studies suggest that reformers saw money politics predominantly as a function of political culture, not of the electoral system. Specifically, they placed this political culture in an evolutionary process of modernisation which sometimes did, sometimes did not resemble Westernisation. They were concerned especially about the role of organisations such as labour unions, companies and political parties as mediators in the relationship between the Japanese voters and the state. Finally, the fact that a changing coalitions of politicians, bureaucrats and independent activists supported the modernisation of the political culture suggests that this interpretation of money politics was widely shared.