<p>  </p> <p>This dissertation attempts to explain a uniquely modern phenomenon—totalitarianism—through a case study of Chinese totalitarianism. It seeks to solve the puzzle of why the Chinese people’s inclinations, manners, customs, and morals were particularly suitable for totalitarian rule, and its thesis is that <em>Confucianism</em> laid the moral and psychological foundations of Chinese totalitarianism, paving the way for socialism and communism’s takeover of China in the twentieth century. </p> <p>It is this Confucian substratum that distinguishes Chinese totalitarianism from Western parallels. It is true that socialist and communist ideas were significant in advancing the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorship, but the Chinese did not succumb to a socialism or communism imported from abroad. In the West, totalitarian ideologies bewitched masses suffering from economic crises and social unrest, who were thus willing to accept a centralized government led by a “strong man” promising economic renewal and restoral of order. In China, those ideologies only took root because of and on the basis of their accordance with the preexisting Confucianism. </p> <p>This dissertation includes in-depth and extensive textual analysis of original Confucian texts. Its theoretical analysis of Confucius’s original thought, in particular his ethical and political teachings, illustrates how traditional Chinese political culture, nurtured in Confucian ethics, predisposed the Chinese people to a totalitarian solution to political problems. </p> <p>Chapter 2 presents the analysis’s method and terminology, which are unconventional. It explicates a few key terms which are essential to the Confucian canon, but which have long been mistranslated in the English literature. Chapter 3 reviews the literature of totalitarianism and proposes a (re)conceptualization of totalitarianism deviating from conventional treatments. Chapter 4 turns to the analysis of the intellectual characteristics of the ru school of thought, explaining the amenability of Chinese society to a totalitarian rule depending on mass obedience and the inability of individuals to think for themselves. It is shown that human hermeneutics—modes of interpreting and understanding phenomena—are realized fundamentally differently in China than in the West. Chapter 5 examines ru ethics, the moral foundation of traditional Chinese politics, which is here termed <em>family politics</em>. Comparing Western accounts of ethics with 伦理 (<em>lun li</em>) demonstrates the essential differences between Chinese and Western morality. Chapter 6 concerns China’s traditional political culture, which shaped China’s imperial politics and is still robust in today’s China. Finally, Chapter 7 explains why European socialism, an ideology seemingly alien to Chinese culture, nonetheless was able to flourish in China. This chapter also addresses the question of why other East Asian countries, also influenced by the ru school of thought, did not follow the same totalitarian pathway as China.  </p>

Education policy and funding is, and has historically been, the purview of the individual states. Each state developed its own education system and did so within the specific historical contexts unique to that state. Although federal involvement in education policy has grown drastically since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002, education policies and practices are still largely controlled by the individual states. In addition, for most states the single largest expenditure of state and local government resources is education. This dissertation addresses the question of whether differences in educational practices and policy outcomes are attributed to state political culture. A path analysis model was used to analyze causal relationships between state education policy outcomes and political culture, as well as other variables identified by the literature as strongly tied to student achievement or state policy outcomes such as: societal factors, economic factors, political factors, and education practices. A major goal of this research was to identify factors that may be influencing the success of national education policies, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1964 (ESEA) and its subsequent reauthorizations such as the NCLB Act of 2002. These policies address long-standing education policy issues—such as the achievement gap between minority and impoverished students and their statistically higher achieving peers. The results indicate that political culture does influence differences in policy outcomes, although indirectly through other variables such as societal and economic factors. Very often factors such as societal and economic factors are treated only as causes or predictors of student achievement and other policy outcomes. This analysis shows these causes to themselves be functions of political culture, providing additional insight into factors influencing state policy outcomes in order to aid public administrators in the development and implementation of more successful policies.

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The political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 created a new political order in the region. This research is aimed at examining how political trust has developed from 2011- 2022 in Tunisia and Egypt. It also aims to understand which variables affect political trust and whether the two countries differ. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the field by using the most recent data up until 2022. The research has been conducted with a comparative quantitative method, using Arab Barometer survey data. The results of the study results align with previous scholars’ results, the political trust declined in both countries after the Arab Spring but the most recent results from Tunisia show that the trust is slightly recovering. The results also indicate that the institutional theories of political trust are the more relevant theories when it comes to explaining political trust in the studied countries.

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This dissertation makes three key arguments regarding politics and print culture in antebellum Florida. First, Florida’s territorial status, historic geographical divisions, and local issues necessitated the use of political parties. Second, Florida’s political parties evolved from a focus on charismatic men and local geographic loyalties to loyalty to party regardless of who was running to national and regional loyalties above local issues and men. Lastly, the central and most consistent aspect of Florida’s political party development was the influence of newspapers and their editors. To understand Florida politics in the nineteenth century it is necessary to recognize how the personal, geographical, and political divisions in Florida’s territorial past remained a critical factor in the development and function of national political parties in Florida. The local divisions within Florida in the 1820s created factions and personal loyalties that would later help characterize national parties in the 1840s. Political leaders, with the help of editors and their newspapers, created factions based more on personal loyalties than on ideology. By the 1850s party loyalty became paramount over personal or regional loyalties. In the last years before the Civil War Democrats linked Southern loyalty to the Democratic party and accused their opposition of treason against the South leading Florida and the nation to Civil War. Yet, throughout these political changes, editors and their newspapers remained central to political success, becoming the voice of political parties and critical to attracting and maintaining potential voters. In addition to understanding how politics functioned in antebellum Florida, this dissertation contributes to our larger understanding of the Second Party System and the South. An underlying argument of this dissertation is that while the Democrats tended to be better organized and more ideologically coherent, the Whigs suffered from constant in-fighting and splintering. This led to the Democratic domination of politics and, in the South, the ability of secession supporters to control the public conversation during the Sectional Crisis of the 1850s and lead the nation to war. This dissertation also claims that there is not just one South but many and exposes the myth of a changeless and monolithic South. / History

This thesis examines the relationship between the political opposition and populism. The goal is to identify when, how, and under what circumstances an opposition to a populist leader affects change to the political system. A comparative historical analysis is employed as five case studies from South America are examined. The evidence presented in these case studies demonstrates that the political oppositions in each country were unsuccessful in affecting change to their respective political systems. They were unable to demobilize the support base that the populist leaders had created. Change came to the political systems in four out of the five case studies only when the populist leader's actions demobilized his support and not from the actions of the opposition. / by Morgan Alissa Weiss. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

by Choi Ming Fai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-111). / by Choi Ming Fai. / LIST OF TABLES --- p.iii / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.iv / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --- p.v / ABSTRACT --- p.vi / Chapter CHAPTER ONE - --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background and Purpose of the Study --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Significance of the Study --- p.4 / Chapter CHAPTER TWO - --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- A Review of Political Culture --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- The Classic Conception of Political Culture --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- The Development of Political Culture in Political Science --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2 --- Changes of Political Culture in Hong Kong --- p.17 / Chapter 2.3 --- Political Education of Hong Kong under the Process of Decolonization --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- "Political Education, Political Socialization and Political Culture" --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- The Development of Political Education in Hong Kong --- p.23 / Chapter 2.4 --- Textbooks and Political Socialization --- p.28 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- The Sociology of Curriculum --- p.28 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- The Relationship between School Textbooks and Politics --- p.31 / Chapter 2.5 --- Content Analysis of Textbook --- p.34 / Chapter 2.5.1 --- Methodology of Content Analysis --- p.35 / Chapter 2.5.2 --- Content Analysis for Textbook Research --- p.38 / Chapter CHAPTER THREE - --- RESEARCH METHODS AND DESIGN --- p.40 / Chapter 3.1 --- Aims of Study --- p.40 / Chapter 3.2 --- Research Questions --- p.40 / Chapter 3.3 --- Methods --- p.41 / Chapter 3.4 --- Textbook Analysis --- p.43 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Analytical Framework --- p.43 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Subject and Unit of Analysis --- p.52 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Analysis of Data --- p.55 / Chapter 3.5 --- Interviews --- p.55 / Chapter 3.5.1 --- Interview Questions --- p.57 / Chapter 3.5.2 --- Subjects --- p.53 / Chapter 3.5.3 --- Data Collection and Treatment --- p.59 / Chapter 3.6 --- Methodological Issues --- p.60 / Chapter 3.6.1 --- Reliability --- p.60 / Chapter 3.6.2 --- Validity --- p.61 / Chapter 3.7 --- Limitations of the Study / Chapter CHAPTER FOUR - --- POLITICAL CULTURE REFLECTED IN THE TEXTBOOKS --- p.63 / Chapter 4.1 --- The Political Culture in the Textbooks --- p.63 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- The Apathetic Political Culture Reflected in the Textbooks --- p.64 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- The Changes of Political Culture Reflected in Textbooks --- p.66 / Chapter 4.2 --- The Allocation of Political Objects in Textbooks --- p.70 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- The Two Political Systems in the Textbooks --- p.71 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Political Inputs --- p.78 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Political Outputs --- p.80 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Roles of a Political Actor --- p.83 / Chapter 4.3 --- The Influence of Textbooks to the Classroom Teaching --- p.86 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Teachers' Perception of the Political Culture in Textbooks --- p.86 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- The Influence of Textbooks on Teaching Content --- p.88 / Chapter 4.4 --- A Summary of the Textbooks Analysis --- p.89 / Chapter CHAPTER FIVE - --- DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATION --- p.93 / Chapter 5.1 --- The Political Culture Reflected in EPA Textbooks --- p.93 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- The Social and Political Influences on the Textbooks --- p.93 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- The Anational and Apathetic Political Culture --- p.94 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- The Portrait of Citizenship in the Textbooks --- p.97 / Chapter 5.2 --- Preparation of Citizen for the Future: Some Recommendations --- p.98 / Chapter 5.3 --- Conclusion and Suggestions for Further Studies --- p.103 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Conclusion --- p.103 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Suggestions for Further Studies --- p.103 / REFERENCES --- p.105 / APPENDICES --- p.112 / Chapter Appendix I --- Selected Examples of the Themes coded --- p.112 / Chapter Appendix II --- Frequency Distribution of the Political Objects in the Textbooks --- p.114 / Chapter Appendix III --- Interview Summaries --- p.115

South Africa and Russia achieved two of the most remarkable political transformations in modern history, yet significant numbers of their citizens feel a longing for aspects of the old regimes. While there have been some studies of nostalgia among older Russians and South Africans, the following is the first comparative qualitative examination of the phenomenon among young members of the countries’ inaugural “born free” generations: those who came into the world just before or after the fall of Apartheid and Communism, and have had little or no experience of life prior to regime change. Its purpose is to examine how and why young people growing up in post-authoritarian transition societies experience, and long for, the past. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven South African and five Russian youths, recruited through purposive sampling, who reflected on the ways in which the recent past impacts their lives, self-perceptions and socio-political identities. While they differed in some areas, respondents from both countries identified several broadly shared areas of nostalgia, clustering around a perceived loss of community, moral values, personal safety and social trust; and a concomitant rise in individualism, materialism and anomie. Employing a Marxian engagement with symbolic interactionism and interpretative phenomenological analysis, I analyse their transcribed testimonies in light of the relevant scholarship on nostalgia, social memory and transition studies, alongside theories of post-modernity and critical sociology. I conclude that their nostalgia may be the product of Russia and South Africa’s belated and compressed transition from “modern” to “post-modern” societies; a rebellion against the harsh transition to a Baumanian “liquid” life characterised by economic precariousness and the fraying of social bonds; and/or an expression of profound ambivalence that struggles to reconcile nostalgic regrets about the risks and human costs of globalised capitalist polyarchy, with a hunger to exploit the freedom and opportunities it offers. / Theses (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.