A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Management at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Management in Public and Development Management, 2016 / This report sought to determine the nature of participatory democracy practices in Madibeng municipality. In order to achieve the intension of this study, two research questions were formulated (1) what is the nature of participatory democracy in Madibeng municipality? (2) To what extent does the implementation of participatory democracy mechanisms influence municipal policy decisions? A hypothesis was formulated in respect of the second question that: The implementation of participatory democracy mechanisms in Madibeng is limited to compliance with existing laws and regulations. Data was drawn from two strata’s (population samples), [ward councillors and community members] from Madibeng municipality. A probability simple random sampling was used to collect data from a total list of 36 ward councillors, whilst a non-probability convenient sampling was used to collect data from 27 community members. In respect of ward councillors, the study targeted 26 respondents and only achieved 52% response rate, whilst a total of 11 respondent was targeted and 27 responses were attained, indicating 145% response rate in respect of data collected from community members. The general finding in relation to the first question is that participatory democracy practice in Madibeng municipality is characterised by the implementation of five mechanisms; IDP, Ward committee structures, Mayoral imbizos, Policy public hearings and Petitioning system. A revelation was made that communities prefer to participate in IDP and ward committee structures meetings than the other three mechanisms reflected in the report. However, it remained unclear as to how effective and efficient is the exercising of the two preferred mechanisms. The general arguments found in various literature sources, that the practice of participatory democracy in South Africa’s local municipalities seem ineffective and often do not often yield positive results, was also confirmed by this study. This conclusion was based on the revelations made from the contradicting responses given by ward councilors and community members. In general, ward councilors considered the implementation of available participatory democracy practices in Madibeng as effective and strongly believed such practices informs the municipal Executive Council’s policy decisions to a large extent. On the other hand, community members seemed unsure or inadequately informed about the influence, their participation in policy decisions has on the overall service delivery by the municipality. / XL2018

Declining youth political participation among democracies has been a major issue and a widely researched debate in recent years. Most research has targeted youth in democracies in general but has failed to acknowledge the youth living in poverty such as those living in South African townships. This thesis was a case study investigation in the Langa township in Cape Town. It aimed to understand the perceptions and opinions of youth in the township regarding political participation. It aimed to understand why the trend is showing that political participation is declining and to further understand how these young people choose to participate as well as how they best believe they can make a difference. This study included interviews with ten youth respondents from Langa. Due to the small number of respondents, the conclusions drawn from this study should not be applied to the entire youth population in townships, nor the entire youth population in Langa. More research is needed in this field with larger sample groups to make more general conclusions representative of the entire population. From this thesis, a conclusion can be drawn that the pedagogical political participation model can explain youth political participation to a certain degree. However, there are additional reasons outside of the framework that helps explain political participation. It was found that youth in Langa lack confidence in their government due to the lack of development and major issues that the township is faced with. This refers to issues such as housing, electricity, water, employment, and education. This lack of confidence leads them to withdraw from formal participation methods such as voting. Due to these pressing issues, the respondents find that more change can occur through informal methods of participation such as protesting. Therefore, this study concludes that youth in the Langa township prefer informal methods of participation with the main focus on protests. This is because it is the best option to voice their opinions, create awareness, grab the politician’s attention and create change

O Sistema de Proteção Social brasileiro logrou um avanço desde a Constituição Federal de 1988, desafiando os paradigmas enraizados até então do conceito de pobreza e de ações assistencialistas configuradas sob a lógica da tutela, do clientelismo e da urgência, fornecendo bases para as ações socioassistenciais no país. O Ministério de Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome (MDS) tem buscado consolidar a importância da proteção social, enquanto política de direito na defesa, garantia e promoção de suas ações na abrangência do território nacional. Os serviços de proteção social básica possuem como objetivo fundamental a prevenção às situações de risco pessoal e social por meio do desenvolvimento de ações psicossociais que atuam no fortalecimento dos vínculos familiares e comunitários, prestados pelo Centro de Referência de Assistência Social (CRAS). Tendo em conta tal realidade, este projeto visa identificar os limites e possibilidades das práticas psicossociais comunitárias desenvolvidas nos CRAS do Município de Várzea Paulista, a partir de uma análise crítica, sob o referencial teórico-metodológico da psicologia política, acerca das intervenções destinadas às famílias atendidas no campo da Assistência Social. Vale ressaltar que esta pesquisa teve como norte analisar as especificidades produzidas por Várzea Paulista que, entre os anos de 2008 a 2012, fundamentou suas ações buscando promover a educação popular e a participação política, através da implantação de ferramentas como o Orçamento Participativo e os Conselhos Municipais. A fim de propiciar uma inclusão produtiva das famílias acompanhadas pelos CRAS, introduziu-se a metodologia da Economia Solidária, como estratégia de superação das situações de vulnerabilidades. Por meio de uma pesquisa de campo realizada nos CRAS do Município de Várzea Paulista, procuramos investigar se as práticas comunitárias contribuem ou não para o desenvolvimento de processos de autonomia e participação política das famílias acompanhadas pelos Centros de Referência de Assistência Social CRAS. Para tanto, realizamos uma entrevista exploratória com a Gestora da Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Social, que nos forneceu dados sobre os trabalhos desenvolvidos, ajudando-nos a caracterizar as ações de Proteção Social Básica. Realizamos também entrevistas semiestruturadas com profissionais que participaram das ações dos CRAS durante o período em estudo, além de um grupo focal com alunas das oficinas, a fim de garantir o olhar sob a perspectiva de participantes das ações promovidas pela Economia Solidária. O grupo focal propiciou discussões a respeito de temas como: CRAS, participação, autonomia e fortalecimento comunitário. Utilizamos a análise de discurso para respaldarmo-nos teórico-metodologicamente, tendo em vista identificar os sentidos produzidos nas entrevistas e no grupo, analisando os dilemas, tensões e desdobramentos das práticas psicossociais comunitárias nos CRAS. Em seus discursos as participantes, apontaram algumas contribuições que, segundo elas, propiciaram uma melhora na qualidade de suas vidas. Dentre estas contribuições destacamos: novos aprendizados técnicos, aprendizados referente à comercialização, ampliação na sociabilização e o envolvimento com novas atividades anteriormente restritas ao ambiente doméstico. Contudo, percebemos que estas práticas ainda focam em estratégias de inserção no mundo do trabalho, reforçando uma perspectiva neoliberal e mantenedora do status quo. Além disso, analisamos que tais práticas não propiciaram a ampliação de um envolvimento comunitário e político, que segundo Martin-Baró (1998) e Montero (2004, 2006) são fundamentais para ações que se dizem fortalecedoras e emancipadoras, a fim de romper com estruturas fatalistas e excludentes. / The Brazilian Social Protection System achieved advancement since the Federal Constitution of 1988, challenging the so far entrenched concept of poverty and assistentialist actions configured under the logic of tutelage, clientelism and urgency, and providing new bases for the social assistance projects in the country. The Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Alleviation (Ministério de Desenvolvimento Social e Combate à Fome MDS) has sought to consolidate the importance of social protection, as legal policy in the defense, security and promotion of its actions on the range of the national territory. The basic social protection services have as main objective to prevent situations of personal and social risk through the development of psychosocial activities that work on strengthening of both family and community ties, actions developed by the Reference Center of Social Assistance (CRAS). Due to this reality, this project aims to promote a reflection on the limits and possibilities of the community psychosocial practices developed at the CRAS of Várzea Paulista city, from a critical analysis, under the theoretical and methodological referencial of the political psychology, about interventions to familiesunder the supervision of Social Services Bureau. It is worth mentioning that this research is focused in analyzing the particularities produced in Várzea Paulista between the years 2008-2012, particularly on the actions that have sought to promote popular education and political participation, through the implementation of tools such as Participatory Budget and municipal councils. In order to enable a productive inclusion of CRAS´s monitored families, it was introduced the methodology of the Solidarity Economy as a strategy to overcome the situations of vulnerability. In this context, we conducted an exploratory interview with the Manager of the Social Development Bureau, which provided us data about the projects developed, helping us to characterize the actions of Basic Social Protection. Likewise, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with professionals who participated in the CRAS´s actions during that period, besides focus groups with the workshop´s students, in order to ensure the look under the perspective of participants in the actions promoted by the Solidarity Economy. The focus group led discussions on topics such as: the CRAS itself and the community participation, its autonomy and empowerment. In this context, the discourse analysis was used in order to achieve a theoretical and methodological foundation, seeking to identify the meanings produced in the interviews and in the groups, analyzing the dilemmas, tensions and consequences of Community psychosocial practices developed at the CRAS. Therefore, some contributions were raised by the participants and, in their points of view, they have provided a better quality of their lives. Among these contributions we emphasize: new technical learnings, knowledge-acquiring processes on the products commercialization, expansion in the socialization and engagement with new activities previously restricted to the domestic environment. However, analysing from a dialectical perspective, we notice that these practices still focus on the strategies of integration into the labor market, reinforcing a neoliberal perspective and maintaining thestatus quo. Furthermore, we analyzed that such practices did not promote the expansion of a community and political involvement, which according Martin-Baró(1998) and Montero (2004, 2006) are fundamental to actions that are said to be empowering and emancipatory in order to break with fatalistic and excluding structures.

Os estudos situados no campo de intersecção entre a psicologia e a política têm contribuído de forma significativa para a investigação de diversos fenômenos ligados ao comportamento político. Entre os principais temas abordados nesse campo interdisciplinar, está presente a participação política. Os referenciais que abordam tal temática, via de regra, têm privilegiado os processos e os fatores implicados na participação política. A presente pesquisa teve como foco de interesse compreender esse fenômeno partindo das perspectivas dos sujeitos e das tensões por eles vivenciadas. A partir do referencial vigotskiano, em articulação com a teoria gramsciana, objetivou-se estudar os sentidos e os significados atribuídos à participação política por sujeitos do setor de educação de um assentamento rural vinculado ao MST. A práxis política, ação intencional que visa a intervenção no homem enquanto ser social, é a categoria central do trabalho. Ela é entendida aqui como imersa em uma realidade social e política gramsciana e orientada a partir de uma subjetividade vigotskiana. Segundo o referencial aqui adotado, a constituição do sujeito é perpassada a todo o momento pelas relações sociais nas quais ele está inserido, ou seja, as tensões presentes no campo social e econômico também se manifestam no campo da subjetividade, na organização do seu drama subjetivo. Participaram da pesquisa quatro sujeitos adultos. Foram priorizados como participantes os envolvidos com as atividades de educação de crianças e jovens no assentamento. O corpus empírico foi construído por meio de duas entrevistas individuais com cada participante e observações de atividades que envolviam o setor de educação do assentamento. As informações obtidas por esses dois instrumentos foram articuladas durante a análise. A análise foi elaborada a partir da construção de categorias baseadas nas entrevistas e nos referenciais teóricos. Foram realizadas análises individuais e uma análise transversal com o intuito de abordar elementos comuns aos quatro sujeitos. Os principais conceitos que orientaram o olhar para o corpus empírico foram: práxis política, sentido, drama e senso comum. Evidencia-se que a práxis política deve ser entendida como um processo em constante movimento e transformação, relacionado a dimensões diversas: gerais e específicas; objetivas e subjetivas; cognitivas e afetivas. Além disso, o entendimento da práxis política não pode se limitar somente à participação no movimento social, mas deve abranger vivências nos diferentes campos da vida dos sujeitos: família, religião, trabalho, etc. Os papéis desempenhados nesses diferentes campos se entrelaçam com o papel de militante. Os sujeitos demonstram passar por contínuos processos de mudança relacionados à práxis política. Destacam-se aqui mudanças ligadas aos seus sentidos, aos seus dramas subjetivos e ao senso comum. Tais mudanças são apenas possíveis a partir das contradições e potenciais críticos presentes na própria subjetividade dos participantes. Por fim, defende-se a importância de se entender a práxis política dos sujeitos enquanto processo concreto sempre manifestado a partir de um contexto específico e um projeto/objetivo determinado. / Studies located in the field of intersection between psychology and politics have contributed significantly to the investigation of various phenomena related to political behavior. Among the main topics discussed in this interdisciplinary field, political participation is present. As a rule, the references that deal with this theme have privileged the processes and factors involved in political participation. This research focused on understanding the phenomenon starting from the perspective of the subjects and the tensions they experienced. From the Vigotskyan point of view, in conjunction with the Gramscian theory, the research aimed at studying the senses and significances attributed to political participation by individuals of the education sector of a rural settlement linked to the MST. The political praxis, which is an intentional action aimed at the intervention in men as a social being, is the central category of this work. It is understood here as immersed in a social reality and in a Gramscian-oriented politics from a Vygotskian subjectivity. According to the framework adopted, the constitution of the subject is constantly permeated by the social relations in which the subject is embedded, i.e., the tensions that are present in the social and economic fields are also manifested in the field of subjectivity, in the organization of their subjective drama. The participants of this research were four adult subjects. Those involved with educational activities for children and young people in the settlement were prioritized as participants. The empirical corpus was constructed through two interviews with each participant and observations of activities involving the education sector of the settlement. The information obtained by these two instruments were articulated during the analysis. The analysis was performed from the construction of categories based on the interviews and on the theoretical framework. Individual and across-sectional analyses were performed in order to approach common elements to the four subjects. The main concepts that guided the look for the empirical corpus were political praxis, sense, drama and common sense. It is evident that the political praxis must be understood as a process in constant motion and transformation, related to different dimensions: general and specific, objective and subjective, cognitive and affective. Furthermore, understanding the political praxis can not be limited only to the participation in the social movement, but it must cover experiences in different fields of the subjects life: family, religion, work, etc. The roles played in these different fields intertwine with the role of being an activist. The subjects demonstrate they undergo continuous change processes related to political praxis. Changes linked to their senses, to their subjective dramas and to common sense stand out from the analyses. These changes are only possible from the contradictions and critic potential present in the participants\' own subjectivity. Finally, we advocate the importance of understanding the political praxis of the subjects as a concrete process that is always manifested from a specific context and a determined project / goal.

Com a introdução das tecnologias da informação e comunicação (TICs) em governos, em especial a internet, tornou-se possível ampliar não só a capacidade e níveis de qualidade dos serviços prestados, mas também o enfoque na transparência, provocando diversas mudanças no âmbito do controle social e participação cidadã. Esta nova perspectiva de uso das TICs em governos para fins de ampliação de canais de participação é conhecida como governança eletrônica (e-governança). O objetivo desta dissertação é identificar quais os impactos da participação cidadã nas consultas públicas para a produção de leis e os limites e os desafios das consultas públicas online do Poder Legislativo federal. Os instrumentos de coleta de dados foram a visita estruturada ao website da consulta pública online, o e-Democracia, e entrevistas semiestruturadas dos gestores responsáveis pela consulta pública, bem como deputados envolvidos na elaboração da Lei das Lan Houses e seus apensados. Também foram entrevistados participantes da consulta pública e a associação de lan houses do Brasil. Em segundo lugar, foi realizada uma análise documental das contribuições para verificar quais as principais mudanças do pré-projeto em relação ao projeto final afim de mensurar o impacto da participação cidadã através da contagem das 10 palavras mais utilizadas em cada área documental; Proposições Legislativas dos Deputados, Contribuições Cidadãs pelo e-Democracia e Projeto Final enviado ao Senado Federal. Foi constatado neste estudo que as consultas públicas online podem ser consideradas um ambiente em que a e-participation se realiza, contudo, ainda existem limites e desafios para que esta participação ocorra devido a problemas gerenciais destas ferramentas de participação cidadã online e de outros problemas externos os quais literatura específica aborda e são retratadas na revisão de literatura e ressaltados nas considerações finais deste trabalho. As conclusões indicam que há evidências de que a participação cidadã tem impactos na produção colaborativa de legislações no governo federal, contudo, elas estão condicionadas a uma série de processos e condutas das áreas política, cultural, de recursos e de tecnologia. / With the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in government, in particular the Internet, it became possible not only to expand the capacity and quality levels of services, but also focus on transparency, leading to several changes within the social control and citizen participation. This new perspective on ICT use in governments for the purpose of expanding participation channels is known as electronic governance (e-governance). The objective of this dissertation is to identify the impacts of citizen participation in public online consultations for the production of laws and limits and challenges of public online consultations of federal legislative power. The instruments of data collection were the structured visit website of the online public consultation, the e-Democracy, and semi-structured interviews of managers responsible for public consultation, as well as representatives involved in drafting the Law on Lan Houses and joined her. Also interviewed were participants of the public consultation and the association of Internet cafes in Brazil. Secondly, there will be a documentary analysis of contributions to see what the main changes from the pre-project in relation to the final design in order to measure the impact of citizen participation by counting the 10 most frequently used words in each document area; Legislative Proposals Members, Citizens Contributions on e-Democracy and Final Project sent to Federal Senate. It is believed that public consultations are an online environment that can be performed e-participation, however, there are still limits and challenges to which this participation occurs due to management problems of these tools for citizen participation online and other external problems which addresses the specific literature and are portrayed in the literature review. The findings indicate that there is evidence that citizen participation has impacts on collaborative production of laws in the federal government, however, it is believed that they are conditioned to a number of dimensions as politics, culture, resources and technology.

O presente trabalho tomará por objetivo, através de uma revisão bibliográfica temática e pesquisa em banco de dados, uma contribuição para o Programa de Pós-Graduação em Mudança Social e Participação Política (PROMUSPP), radicado na Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades da Universidade de São Paulo, ao oferecer uma leitura geral e introdutória sobre a temática da mudança social e um panorama de autores recorrentes, tidos como referência neste campo interdisciplinar recentemente relido e em constante construção. Tendo em vista que, no âmbito do PROMUSPP nenhum estudo tenha proposto tal iniciativa, cremos estar no tempo, momento e local apropriado para tal. Neste sentido, será apresentada uma síntese teórica de caráter introdutório sobre o tema da mudança social como objeto científico de estudo / Through a literature review and data research this work aims to contribute to the Post-Graduate Program in Social Change and Political Participation (PROMUSPP), of School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities of University São Paulo. It will provide a general and introductory reading on the theme of social change, and an overview of recurrent authors, taken as a reference in this recent, and in constant construction, interdisciplinary field. Considering that, in PROMUSPP, no study has proposed such initiative, we believe being on the time and appropriate place to do so. In this sense, will be presented: a brief history on the subject of social change as a scientific object of study and a mapping of modern authors who have addressed the \"social change\" theory on their research

O objetivo deste trabalho é discutir a relação entre raça e comportamento político, em especial o papel da raça na participação política não eleitoral (organizações políticas e ativismo político). A partir da abordagem baseada em recursos, estabelecem-se os estatutos analíticos imputados à raça através, principalmente, dos trabalhos de Sidney Verba e seus colaboradores. Para além de identificar as contribuições (e as críticas a essas contribuições) sobre o papel da raça na participação política na abordagem dos recursos, foram identificadas as proposições das literaturas sobre Brasil e África do Sul, uma vez que foram analisados os casos de Belo Horizonte e da Cidade do Cabo. Para qualificar a análise empírica, lançou-se mão da literatura sobre categorização racial no Brasil e na África do Sul, com o intuito de qualificar as hipóteses e proposições da literatura sobre raça e comportamento político a partir dos significados de raça em cada país. Em síntese, encontrou-se que, na Cidade do Cabo, a probabilidade de participar politicamente aumenta substantivamente quando um indivíduo se identifica como African, enquanto ter mais recursos como escolaridade e renda não afeta a probabilidade de participar. Já em Belo Horizonte a posse de recursos como renda e escolaridade eleva substantivamente a probabilidade de participar ao passo que a identificação racial não distingue quem participa e quem não participa. Em ambas as cidades, participar em organizações não políticas eleva a probabilidade de participar politicamente. A partir dos resultados, foram defendidos os quatro pontos principais. Em primeiro lugar, diferentemente do esperado pela literatura brasileira sobre raça e comportamento político, a experiência individualizada de discriminação por negros não leva a comportamento político diferenciado entre negros e brancos. Em segundo lugar, os resultados com relação à Cidade do Cabo permitem conjecturar plausivelmente que são fatores próprios ao sistema político derivado da maneira com que a clivagem racial se reflete nas bases sociais de instituições políticas que explicam a relevância da raça no comportamento político nessa cidade Em terceiro lugar, defendeu-se que o movimento de endogeneização da raça nos últimos trabalhos de Verba e seus colaboradores, para o desenvolvimento do Modelo do Voluntarismo Cívico (CVM), apesar de tornar o modelo mais preciso e coerente, não trouxe benefícios heurísticos para a compreensão dos casos aqui analisados em especial em comparação aos primeiros trabalhos de Verba e colaboradores. Por fim, argumentou-se que para o desenvolvimento da teorização sobre a relação entre raça e política é necessário levar em consideração os processos de constituição de raça em cada país, de modo que os mecanismos imputados à raça tenham maior capacidade explicativa. / The main goal of this thesis is to discuss races role in non-electoral political behavior (participation in political organizations and political activism). Based on the resource-based approach to political participation, especially on works done by Sidney Verba and his coauthors, we describe and discuss the analytical meanings given to race in the debate on political participation. We not only identified the way race was dealt with in the resource-based approach, but we also discussed the main hypotheses on race and political behavior found in the literature on Brazil and South Africa since our empirical cases are Belo Horizonte and Cape Town. In order to further specify our empirical hypotheses on both cases, we discussed the literature on racial classification in Brazil and South Africa. In summary, we found that, in Cape Town, identifying oneself as African greatly increases the probability of participating politically, whereas having resources such as income and schooling does not affect ones likelihood of being political active. On the other hand, in Belo Horizonte, resources such as income and schooling substantively increase ones probability of participating politically while race does not seem to affect an individuals probability of being politically active. In both cities, taking part in non-political organizations plays an important role in determining who participates. Based on these findings, we argue four main points. Firstly, the experience of racial discrimination and prejudice suffered by negros in Brazil does not seem lead to a distinctive pattern of political behavior between negros e brancos differently from what the literature on race and political behavior in Brazil had expected. Secondly, our findings in Cape Town allow us to plausibly argue that are factors related to the way how racial cleavages and social bases of political institutions greatly overlap in South Africa which leads to the prominence of race in Cape Town. Thirdly, we argue that, even though by incorporating race as an endogenous variable in the model developed by Verba in his last works, makes his own model more accurate and internally coherent, his last model did not seem to be more analytically accurate to understand our findings when compared to Verbas first models. Finally, we argue that in order to development a more robust theory on the roles race play in political behavior, one has to take seriously into account that varied meanings of race in different polities, so that the explanatory mechanisms are more precise and accurate.

There has been a grassroots revival of craftivism leading up to, and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This qualitative dissertation explores the experiences of women within three craftivist groups to facilitate a deeper understanding of their conceptions of craft, activism and feminism, the salience of older women within these communities, and how the affordances of new media are potentially reshaping craftivism. Drawing on interview data, as well as offline and online participant observation, this study found that craftivists have highly diverse personal trajectories and understandings of feminism and activism, that older women—many with a lifelong history of activism—play a significant role in craftivist groups, and that participation in craftivism, supported through extensive use of social media and online communication, provides a gateway to civic expression and engagement. Beyond deepening our understanding of craftivism in the current political climate, this research makes significant contributions to scholarship on participatory culture, activism, and civic engagement. While these bodies of research have traditionally been youth-centric, this dissertation adds value by shedding light on the participatory practices of older women in creative online sites.

[pt] O presente estudo abordará as teorias da representação política como expostas por Bernard Manin, Nadia Urbinati e Pierre Rosanvallon, sob a perspectiva de que a relação entre democracia e representação política é marcada por uma tensão inerente, como retomada por Bernard Manin. A retórica que acompanha a escalada do sufrágio universal como solução da tensão entre representação política e democracia faz com que a forma de entendimento da institucionalidade representativa esteja cercada de superstições quanto à eficácia e pujança de seus métodos. Interpelar a representação política enquanto um processo mediador destas tensões entre a esfera social e política é um movimento que aproximaria os três autores estudados. A questão é que para os dois primeiros, o processo de representação seria pré-estabelecido e, portanto, fechado e não permeável às mudanças, onde o mundo da política é claramente delimitado. Enquanto que para o terceiro, por uma postura diferenciada no que concerne à relação entre o social e o político, parece haver uma perspectiva singular de processo em aberto a ser considerada, traduzida em uma concepção de política expandida e contraditória, ou seja, do social e do político em intersecção. / [en] The research herein deals with the theories of political representation as they are exposed by Bernard Manin, Pierre Rosanvallon and Nadia Urbina ti, considering the perspective of a tense existing relationship between democracy and political representation, as it was recovered by Bernard Manin. There is a rhetoric that follows the universal suffrage adoption in which it is seen as a solution to the tense relationship among political representation and democracy, what has led general understanding of representative institutionality to be surrounded by superstitions regarding its mechanisms effectiveness and responsiveness. It is possible to approximate the three studied theorists if political representation is inquired as a process that mediates these tensions between political and social spheres. The question is that for both former authors, the political representation process is pre-established and, thus, closed and not permeable to changes, where the world of politics is clearly delimitated. While to the later, a different attitude towards the relationship between the social and the political seems to assure a singular perspective of open process to be considered, traduced in an expansive and contradictory conception of politics, in others words, of social and political intersection.

This thesis extends our understanding of a ‘puzzle of participation’ (Brody 1978). Across established Western democracies, turnout in elections has been steadily falling - at the same time, society is modernising. Central to this latter phenomenon is educational expansion, a process in which there is increased higher education (HE) enrolment, rising attainment levels, and even wider citizenship education. Under classic civic education hypotheses, such factors are anticipated to increase political literacy, raise electoral interest, and provide encouraging environments for political participation. Hence, the patterns we observe in turnout present as paradoxical. This is especially evident among the very youngest electors, who comprise arguably the most educated generation yet but are also the least likely to vote. The thesis thus poses the question: Why is the comparatively higher level of education enjoyed by young people today not associated with a higher level of voter turnout? My response takes inspiration from Norris’s ‘critical citizens’ (1999, 2011) and combines this with repertoire replacement (Dalton 2008; Norris 2003) and sorting model (Nie et al 1996) theories to develop an argument based on a multiplicity of education effects on turnout. Specifically, I present a thesis which contends that higher levels of education today encourage the emergence of a non-voting disaffected citizenry, characterised by two distinct dimensions. The first, a dissatisfied-disaffection is thought to be present among growing student populations. It is this demographic group which, in response to its members’ HE experiences, is challenging established political processes, becoming more demanding of an active role in politics, and turning to alternative participation activities when opportunities arise. Within this I posit two non-voter types: (a) frustrated electors, committed to voting yet exasperated by the responsiveness of political actors and their policy offers at elections, and (b) engaged activists, pointedly rejecting voting in favour of more direct and ongoing influencing activities. The second dimension reflects alienated-disaffection. Here, individuals who lack HE experience are seeing their status and position decline in line with educational inflation, and, as a consequence, experience limited political network mobilisation, find their confidence for participation falling, and so withdraw from politics altogether. They are marginalised citizens. Meanwhile, a number of young people will continue to vote, receiving encouragement from their social networks and partisan attachments; mobilised voters. This thesis makes its contributions in testing and refining these propositions in the case of the British electorate using data from the British Election Study, British Participation Survey, and the Citizens in Transition Survey. Through a range of statistical techniques (including logistic regression, latent class analysis, and structural equation modelling) I devise new ways of operationalising disaffection, and assess its varied impact on turnout. This thesis progresses to explore typologies of participation repertoires, within which combinations of disaffection attitudes and turnout behaviours exist. It then examines in more detail the educational mechanisms through which these occur.