This dissertation investigates the important role attitudes play in determining the participation levels of a large number of Americans. Over the past 30 years the prominent theories in the political participation literature have stressed the importance of socioeconomic status in explaining voter turnout. More recently, some have suggested that voting is a habit that most Americans acquire over their lifetimes. I contend that this previous work is incomplete in that it overlooks a large segment of the public that I describe as sporadic voters. Using National Election Study panel data from the early 1970s and 1990s, I find that neither socioeconomic status nor habit explains the voting behavior of sporadic voters. Sporadic voters decide to participate in elections based on their political attitudes at the time of any given election. If they have stronger partisan attachments, greater campaign interest or more external efficacy sporadic voters will be more likely to show up at the polls regardless of changes in education, age or income.

The purposes of this research are to investigate the situation and attitude of participation of the students in the volunteer services courses at National Sun Yat-sen University¡]NSYSU¡^, and to explore the influences of the students¡¦ personal factors on this issue. Besides, this research discusses the relation between the situation and attitude of participation in the service-learning courses. The population is students who enrolled in the volunteer services course in the second semester of 93 academic year at NSYSU. The research uses ¡§convenience sampling¡¨. A questionnaire designed by the researcher is distributed to 417 out of 538 freshmen who took part in volunteer services courses. After deducting invalid samples, the count of valid samples are 410. The statistic methods used in this research include mean, percent, standard deviation, t test, ANOVA, and kai square. According to the data collected, the important findings of this research are as follows. First, the descending order of the types of service-learning which the students on NSYSU participated is ¡§the service to beautify the school¡¨, ¡§community service outside of school¡¨, ¡§professional service¡¨, ¡¨the service to clean the surrounding of the school¡¨, and ¡§administrative service¡¨. Thus, the types of service-learning are centralized in the service within school, and the mostly is the labor. The descending order of the time-arrangement is ¡§regulation time¡¨, ¡§time arranged by myself¡¨, ¡§not sure, and must wait the notice¡¨, and ¡§the other¡¨ (had not serviced yet). In the aspect of reflection, the descending order of the types of reflection is ¡§reflection by myself¡¨, ¡§service note¡¨, ¡§group discussion¡¨, and ¡§reading the books about service¡¨. The ones who took part in community service outside of school are more likely to reflect during the process of the service. Second, the descending order of the score in attitude of participation is affection, action-tendency, whole, and cognition attitude. Third, genders, schools, and experiences in volunteer services course have significant differences in the types and the time-arrangement of service-learning. Fourth, ¡§the time-arrangement of service-learning¡¨ significantly relates to the cognition and affection attitude of participation in service-learning. And the reflection significantly relates to whole attitude and the sub-attitude of participation in service-learning (cognition, affection, and action-tendency).

The purpose of the study is to research the community participation of Kaoshiung Hsin-hsing community university in ecological club. Firstly, based upon the motive ations and aims of the study, the researcher analyze related of literature in order to construct the framework of this research . The develop went of ecological club ¡Bthe clubs¡¦ participation in community¡Bthe club members self refection and growth by the club¡Bthe crises encountered by the club. Four dimension were developed for the study: The results of this research are as follows¡G 1. The Nature Ecological Club was established in 2003.And developed along with three stages 2. Reasons for club¡¦s members in participating the community: A. identification with the indigenous land, B. sense of mission towards the environment, C. the natural understanding of the ideas among local leaders 3. The members have develop a brand new perspective toward the environment and have re-framed their own value system, and them have up-graded the quality of their lives. 4. Along the development of the Club, the Hsin-hsing Community University has offered limited guidance and support, therefore, too members have encountered numerous difficulties Base upon the results of the research, some suggestions have been proposed to the Kaoshiung Hsin-hsing community university¡BNature Ecological Club and these who would like to conduct similar research.

Under a free market economic system, the managements as a minority are in control of capitals and the important production means, whereas the labors need to provide their manpower and time for the relative wages in order to maintain the bread and butter for their everyday living. An intense relationship filled with oppositions and resistances is therefore easily found between labor and management in the environment today. Owing to the special political and economic backgrounds of our country, it is difficult for unions, (and especially unions) to elaborate on the functions that the unions should play. The unions of our country had been mocked on as ¡§labor insurance unions¡¨ or ¡§flower vase unions¡¨; therefore we would like to find out whether a union exists in our country, which does not offer labor insurance or national health insurance services yet still operates and functions fully as a normal union? Do any union commitments exist between the union members and the unions? How strong are these commitments? And what are the reactions on the degree of participation to the unions? Reviews on academic literatures have shown that not much research was conducted on union commitments and member participation to the unions. Moreover, academic literatures focused on the studies on industry unions as opposed to unions. It is therefore the goal of this research to find out whether union commitments for the members would influence people¡¦s decisions to join unions, through the discussion on related theories and physical evidences. Through this research we hope that we could gather and arrange some management references worth other unions to follow, as well as providing physical suggestions for the future development of the unions of our country. The subjects of this research are the members of the ¡§Keelung City Customs Brokers¡¦ Union¡¨ (currently with 1,200 members), in total 600 questionnaires were issued where 255 of them were collected and 243 of them valid. Factor analysis was used in this research to test the reliability and construct validity of the questionnaires. On confirmation of the reliability test, statistical methods such as the analysis of variance and the regression analysis were further used to come to the following conclusions: 1. Union commitments have strong positive effects on the member participation in the union: (1) The higher the ¡§Union Loyalty¡¨ a member has for the union commitment, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (2) The higher the ¡§Willingness to Work for the Union¡¨ a member has for the union commitments, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (3) The higher the ¡§Responsibility to the Union¡¨ a member has for the union commitments, the higher is his/her participation to the union. 2. The personal statistic variables of the members have strong positive effects on their participation in the union: (1) Male members have higher union participation than female members. (2) The older member in age, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (3) The longer Member in union seniority, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (4) Members with union organizer experiences have higher union participation than members without prior union organizer experiences.

My dissertation examines political participation in non-democratic countries. Specifically, it looks into China's urban political participation in the past decade and examines how Chinese urban citizens are mobilized to participate in politics when an authoritarian regime has been experiencing dramatic economic change. The theoretic question of this dissertation is the evolvement of state-society relations during the economic development and how the change of the state-society relationship is reflected in individual behavior. I found that while the social context such as the workplace served as fundamental grassroots institution to mobilize citizens' political participation in the early 1990s, China's urban political participation has shifted to lean more and more on individual resources. Political participation in non-democratic regimes is a unique and rapidly developing field in the studies of political behavior. Scholars studying citizens' political participation in USSR and China have long noted that political participation in an authoritarian regime is mobilized and controlled by the state and citizens are organized by the state to participate in politics to provide for regime legitimacy. In the dissertation I tested this paradigm within the context of China's economic development. The data I employ are the 1993 China's Social Mobility and Social Change Survey and the 2002 Asian Barometer Survey. Both data sets contain highly congruent batteries of questions on citizens' political behavior and political attitudes that provide the basis of comparison across time. The data sets were collected across China in 1993 and 2002 respectively representing the population of adult residents (excluding Tibet). The comparison of urban political participation in the past decade exhibited a general and measurable decline of citizens' participation in the economic reform. I found Chinese citizens' political participation has shifted largely from the pattern of "grassroots-state-mobilization" to "individual-voluntary-mobilization" during the economic reform. I argue that this is largely resulted from the change of state-society relations as individual citizens are granted with more autonomy in political liberalization and become less dependent on the state for economic sources.

Texte remanié de: Tesis doctoral--Departamento de historia moderna--Universidad autónoma de Madrid, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 271-285.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Sociologie--Paris--École des hautes études en science sociale, 2001. Titre de soutenance : Rénovation urbaine et immigration : une intégration sous contrôle : enquête sociologique dans une ville de la région parisienne. / Bibliogr. p. 311-314.

Extr. de: Tesis de maestría--Sociología--Universidad de la República. / Bibliogr. p. 113-118.

Habil.-Schr.: Diss.--Freie Universität Berlin, 1996. / Bibliogr. p. 413-435.

Diss.--Institut für Politikwissenschaft--Universität Hamburg. / Textes en allemand, résumé et questionnaire en anglais. Bibliogr. p. 142-157.