Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has received growing attention, both in academic and corporate area. Companies often define their approach to CSR in different views, being influenced by different factors at the regional, industrial and national levels. This study aimed to identify how the largest companies in Latin America are presented by terms of CSR, and is justified by the fact that, despite the increasing pressure on companies to develop an active role in promoting well-being social, there are few studies that seeks to identify how the Latin American companies approach this type of action. The research was conducted by analysis of organizational documents available on the websites of the top 100 Latin American companies listed in the ranking of "The biggest 500 " prepared by the magazine American Economy . The study is characterized as a cross-section analysis, where countries and sectors were analyzed as individual cases. To the data collection, we used the model proposed by Silberhorn and Warren (2007), which includes motivation principles of CSR, CSR processes and issues related to Stakeholders. For the analysis of results, comparisons were made among the countries surveyed and among the sectors to which firms belong. It was found that, in general, firms of Brazil were more concerned in terms of socially responsible actions than the other firms in other countries of Latin America. Among the economy sectors, Commerce/Trades and Oil/Gas stood out positively about the process and socially responsible actions, while the Automotive/repair-parts fell behind, becoming the sector that has shown less interest in CSR issues. / A Responsabilidade Social Empresarial (RSE) tem recebido crescente atenção, tanto na área acadêmica quanto corporativa. As empresas geralmente definem sua abordagem de RSE sob diferentes visões, sendo influenciadas por distintos fatores em nível regional, industrial e nacional. O presente estudo teve como objetivo identificar como as maiores empresas da América Latina se apresentam em termos de RSE, e se justifica pelo fato de que, apesar da crescente pressão exercida sobre as empresas para que estas exerçam um papel ativo na promoção do bem-estar social, ainda são escassos os estudos que buscam identificar como as empresas latino-americanas abordam este tipo de ação, não sendo suficientes para que se compreenda a real situação existente. A pesquisa foi realizada mediante a análise de documentos organizacionais disponibilizados nos websites das 100 maiores empresas da América Latina que figuram no ranking As 500 Maiores , elaborado pela revista América Economia. O estudo se caracteriza como uma análise cross-section, onde países e setores foram analisados como casos específicos. A coleta de dados foi realizada a partir do modelo proposto por Silberhorn e Warren (2007). Para a análise de resultados, foram realizadas comparações entre os países pesquisados e entre os setores aos quais as empresas pertencem. Verificou-se que, em geral, as empresas situadas no Brasil apresentaram-se mais preocupadas em termos de ações socialmente responsáveis do que as empresas situadas nos demais países da América Latina. Dentre os setores da economia, Comércio/SVGerais e Petróleo/Gás destacaram-se positivamente quanto aos processos e ações socialmente responsáveis, enquanto o Automotivo/Autopeças ficou em desvantagem, constituindo-se no setor que menos mostrou interesse pelas questões de RSE.

The main objective of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the forms that environmental cooperation takes in regions of the South and the processes determining these different forms. Environmental cooperation has been researched extensively in other contexts, notably in relation to global environmental regimes, but the regional dimension and regions in the South in particular, have received very little attention. This thesis provides an in-depth exploratory study comparing three cases of regional environmental cooperation in one region of the South, the Southern Cone of South America. Based on the findings from two extensive fieldwork periods which served to conduct over 50 interviews with policy-makers, civil society representatives and researchers in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and to collect relevant documentation, the thesis argues that regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone takes place in three main forms; regional organisations; regional resource regimes; and the regional implementation of global environmental conventions. These vary in terms of the type of institutional framework and its political purpose; the scope of issues addressed; and the way the membership is determined. Regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone is promoted by different types of drivers from within the region, notably civil society organisations and networks of government officials, as well as drivers from outside the region, most importantly donors and international organisations. The variation in the forms of cooperation is thus determined not only by the position of national governments, but also by the objectives and strategies used by the different drivers. In addition, regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone is marked by low political will and takes a marginal position in particular in relation to economic interests. While different drivers have been crucial in shaping the different forms that regional environmental cooperation takes, the marginality of this is an outcome of the political and economic context and the development strategy adopted by governments. Consequently, during the research process it became clear that it is important to distinguish between differing levels of strength of regional environmental cooperation and the thesis has developed the concepts of robustness and marginality to this end. These theoretical tools provide an important basis for further research and comparisons on environmental cooperation in regions of the South.

The U.S. War on Drugs has been underway for several decades. Since it was declared by the Nixon Administration narcotics have been understood as a growing security threat to the American public, their health, economy and society. Illicit drugs have gradually become a securitised issue. From the Nixon Administration onward, the law enforcement and eventually military assets of the United States government were increasingly deployed in an effort to counter this drug threat. While initially regarded as a minor issue, as the potency and addictive qualities of illicit drugs increased during the 20th Century, so too did the concerns of influential actors from the political and public spheres. Nixon's actions did not represent the high-water mark of U.S. counter-narcotics. There was growing violence on American streets linked to the drug trafficking cartels out of Colombia, especially in Southern Florida where traffickers battled each other for lucrative drug markets. In response to this national security threat, the Reagan Administration – followed by the successor Bush and Clinton Administrations – gradually increased the involvement of the U.S. military in counter-narcotics policy. This occurred both at home in the form of greater militarisation of police forces, and abroad in support of several Latin American countries’ security forces. In 2000, drug-related instability in Colombia resulted in the launch of the Plan Colombia initiative, a dedicated package of American financial and security assistance, with counter-narcotics the primary purpose. In 2008, as drug-related violence in Mexico reached epidemic proportions and threatened to spillover across the American border, the U.S. launched the Merida Initiative in an attempt to aid Mexican counter-narcotics efforts. This thesis uses qualitative research methods to examine the militarisation of U.S. foreign counter-narcotics policy by analysing the case studies of Colombia and Mexico and their American-backed efforts. It also examines domestic policy, by considering the historical development of U.S. counter-narcotics, the progressive militarisation of law enforcement as a consequence of the drug war, and the security situation on the southern border with Mexico. This empirical research is facilitated by the development of a militarisation analytical framework, which builds upon the securitisation framework. Based on the findings of the case studies, the processes that drive militarisation are explored, and the framework itself is further developed and refined. The research possibilities for counter-narcotics policy and future direction for militarisation research are also explored in the Conclusion. Ultimately, this thesis offers a detailed analysis of militarisation in U.S. foreign and domestic counter-narcotics policy, the processes behind this, and develops a militarisation framework applicable to any security situation, contributing to the overall securitisation debate.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Joye C. Gordon / Global warming and its implications have astounding consequences for the global community. Although some research has been done on the trends within environmental reporting, few studies have looked at the issue of global warming in particular. Global warming is a troublesome issue for reporters for a number of reasons, and hence, it is important that we delve into how newspapers cover the topic. Latin America, especially the Caribbean region, is expected to suffer extreme consequences due to global warming, yet no studies regarding global warming coverage have been done in these regions. The first purpose of this study was to discover how a Mexico newspaper frames the issue of global warming. Next, this study sought to expand the current knowledge of global warming coverage by the media. Lastly, this study sought to expand on existing literature to discover how journalists outside of the United States communicate, to the public, the issue of global warming. Based on previous studies on global warming a frame analysis was conducted to explore how the Mexico City-based newspaper Reforma covers the issue of global warming. This study identified that ecology/science and consequences are the most frequently occurring themes of coverage, while scientific conflict and North/South conflict are present, but in low frequencies and near the end of stories. This study also identified international relations as the most frequent solution to global warming, while global warming story frequencies peaked during international conferences. These results confirm previous research, which has found that news media outside of the United States tend to emphasize international relations and de-emphasize conflicts and controversies.

This thesis examines why party systems of some developing countries become deeper and more quickly stabilised than others. Drawing on the scholarship of party system institutionalisation in third wave democracies, the thesis argues that the field can be strengthened by looking to three factors that the current literature has taken for granted: the role of cleavages, the function of personalistic politics, and the requirement of legitimacy to assess party systems. This thesis addresses these issues and in so doing provides a novel view of how, when and why party systems in newer democracies from Latin America, Europe and Asia consolidate over time. The research considers three case studies from three regions of the world, following the most similar approach method of comparison. One country per world region has been chosen for study in detail: Chile (Latin America), Estonia (Central and Eastern Europe) and South Korea (East and Southeast Asia). They all have party systems which have become more stable over time, but they exhibit different trajectories and speeds of consolidation. The thesis uses a variety of methods. In order to infer the causes of different processes of institutionalisation from party systems’ own participants, more than 120 elite interviews were conducted in the three countries over 13 months. To evaluate the overall legitimacy of the stabilisation process, this works presents the results of almost 500 face-to-face interviews with randomly selected individuals from the population. Quantitative analyses based on secondary public opinion surveys are used to test implications and observations, and offer potential generalisations. The findings suggests: 1) Where the ideological cleavage (left-right) is a strong determinant of party support the party system is more stable, and the stronger the ideological cleavage becomes over time, the more consolidated the party system is. Here, an ideological trauma can be at the core of the limitations of the left-right scope development. 2) Party systems with personalistic leaders can consolidate, contrary to the received wisdom, if charismatic figures build their parties around programmatic lines. And 3) legitimacy should not be regarded as a dimension for the Theory of Party System Institutionalisation, because it does not contribute in any way, positive or negative, to the stability of party systems. The thesis concludes that theories of party system institutionalisation should be reconsidered with respect to cleavages, personalism and legitimacy. In so doing, the growing literature on party system institutionalisation can benefit from a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of party systems in new democracies from different regions of the world.

As the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship ended in 1986, the emergence of Mouvement Lavalas out of the grassroots organizations of Haiti's poor majority, and election of charismatic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990, challenged efforts by Haitian political parties and the U.S. foreign policy establishment to contain the parameters of Haiti's democratic transition. This dissertation examines the politics of Lavalas to determine whether it held a particular conception of democracy that explains the movement's antagonistic relationship with the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters. Using the qualitative methodology of process-tracing outlined in the works of Paul F. Steinberg (2004) and Tulia G. Falleti (2006), this study analyzes primary and secondary sources associated with Aristide and the grassroots organizations across the period of contested democratization from 1986 to 1991, with emphasis on four critical junctures: 1) the rule of the Conseil National du Gouvernement; 2) the government of Leslie Manigat; 3) the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril; and 4) Aristide's 8 months in power before being overthrown on September 29, 1991. This study concludes that there were systematic differences in how Lavalas pursued democracy in Haiti, as contrasted to the political parties and U.S. foreign policy-makers. Evidence indicates that while Lavalas placed emphasis on popular mobilization to challenge Haiti's legacy of authoritarianism, the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters emphasized processes of negotiation and compromise with Haiti's anti-democratic forces. Lavalas was rooted in the long historic struggle of the country's poor masses to, not simply establish procedural democracy, what noted political scientist Robert Dahl calls polyarchy, but to expand the parameters of politics to guarantee the right of all Haitians to participate directly in the process of governing, in order to share more equitably in the distribution of national resources, in what critical scholar William I. Robinson calls "popular democracy."

This dissertation offers two essays on the engendering and the consequences of employee brand behavior. The first essay addresses the impact of employee brand behavior on customer experience in the retail environment. Retailers, with some exceptions, paid relatively little attention to the role that employees play in the experience they provide to their customers. While there seems to be a general consensus regarding both the importance of customer experience and the role of employees in delivering it, there has been no study attempting to measure the impact front-line employees have on the overall customer experience process from the consumer point-of-view. In essay two the antecedents that make up the customer experience construct are explored through the usage of a previously tested model with the addition of two new components: the employee in-role brand-building behavior construct and the expansion of the word-of-mouth construct to include social media word-of-mouth. The second essay complements essay one by focusing on the importance of employee branding behavior and examining its two variants: in-role and extra-role brand-building behavior. Both behaviors are engendered within the firm but companies are still struggling to differentiate between the two. The distinction between the two types is important because when developed correctly these behaviors can help companies build a competitive advantage. Since the differentiation gap between companies nowadays continues to shrink, companies must strive to develop a unique competitive advantage that cannot be easily copied by their rivals. The tailoring of such a specific set of brand oriented behaviors to be performed by employees is one potential solution to this challenge. By directing the behavior of employees that come into direct contact with customers, a firm has a unique opportunity to align all its branding promotional initiatives with those of its representatives in the front lines resulting in a more consistent customer experience.

The subject of this thesis is the temporary and travelling exhibition Velorios y santos vivos: comunidades negras, afrocolombianas, raizales y palenqueras [Wakes and living saints: Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero communities]. ‘Velorios,’ as many people involved in the project referred to it, portrayed Afro-Colombian funerals and devotions to Catholic saints, and was on display in the temporary exhibitions hall in the National Museum of Colombia, in Bogotá, from 21 August to 3 November 2008. Before it closed, a travelling version was designed that began to go around the country in 2009. When I wrote this thesis, ‘the Itinerante,’ as the travelling version was referred to at the Museum, was still available as one of the displays that its Travelling Exhibitions Programme (TEP) offered to the public. I use Velorios and the Itinerante as the main ‘characters’ in an ethnography of the National Museum of Colombia, where I explore the different instances in which this major exhibition produced visibilities and invisibilities regarding the place of Afro-Colombian people in the nation. As a museum, this institution is responsible for managing, researching and displaying its four collections (of art, history, ethnography and archaeology) but also, as one of the Ministry of Culture’s ‘special administrative units,’ it is in charge of designing and implementing policies that regulate all the other museums in Colombia. This is in keeping with national and international official legislation regarding cultural heritage, like the National Culture Plan and UNESCO’s resolutions, and in support of the development and strengthening of museums, museology and museum design in the whole country. Here I show what these responsibilities and duties translate into on the ground. The themes that the thesis explores are i) (in)visibility, ii) participatory collaboration and, also as the means to approach these themes, iii) documents and documentation. They are all components of the kind of curatorship that this museum exhibition conveyed.

Chile allowed therapeutic abortion (cases in which the mother’s life was in danger) from 1931 until 1989, the last year of the Pinochet military dictatorship. After Pinochet stepped down, Chile underwent a democratic transition in 1990 that was heavily reliant on a moral fundamentalist mentality, primarily influenced by the Catholic Church and conservative political parties. It has been widely argued that after the democratic transition, the previously strong and united women’s movement lost much of its visibility and cohesiveness due to its progressive fragmentation. This thesis holds that the women’s movement in Chile is not dead, but instead there are numerous small movements that apply different methods in an attempt to change abortion legislation in Chile. Through the dissemination of secondary research and first-person interviews conducted over a period of six months in Chile, the results show that Chilean third-wave feminists have re-shaped the women’s movement in an effort to introduce innovative ideas and tactics to advance abortion rights. Nonetheless, these new voices have also created tensions between new and old feminists further dividing the movement and limiting their ability to effect real change in regards to the abortion debate in Chile.

After years of boom, Brazil will experience a recession this year. There was a significant imbalance in recent years from a budgetary point of view, inflation and foreign exchange. Protectionist Brazilian policy don't support foreign trade. Therefore consumers in the current recessive market environment are more willing to work with so-called collaborative consumption, even though Brazil is a country with one of the highest crime rate and the level of trust of consumers is lower than in other countries. Sharing economy pioneer offering short-term accommodation Airbnb used FIFA World Cup to bring sharing economy to Brazil and before the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro the company is booming. The collaborative economy projects spread the values and culture of sharing and collaboration in other Brazilian cities. At the same time worldwide service, Uber (mobile-app-based transportation network) was banned from the country. This Master's thesis aims to analyze the cultural and legal environment in the frame of sharing economy in Brazil, in the field of gastronomy. Could the concept of home restaurants, so called "meal sharing", which is currently spreading in developed countries, work in Brazil?