Social science scholars mainly regard dehumanization as a phenomenon of conflict and war. Concurrently, dehumanizing attitudes and behavior in democratic, non-conflict settings is a significant field within social psychology. Given the rise of right-wing populism and populist rhetoric, there is reason to believe that dehumanization has nestled its way into political discourse. With this background, the current study has investigated whether dehumanizing attitudes allegedly held by citizens are also expressed in their political arguments. Dehumanization can lead to support for aggression, discrimination, and violence even in democratic societies. Therefore, it is essential for political scientists to acknowledge its existence, as dehumanization can have a severe impact on equality and the defense of human rights. This paper is a cross-cutting study, which bridges the gap between political science and social psychology in the study of dehumanization by answering the question: Whether and how dehumanization is used in the debate on street begging in everyday politics? Discursive dehumanization on social media was mapped with the help of a novel analytical tool for content analysis. Social psychology has shown that people hold dehumanizing attitudes, and this study has shown that people are also willing to express these attitudes. This study finds that dehumanization is used in the debate on street begging to a significant degree. Dehumanization is mainly used in negative depictions of beggars, which undermine their moral capacity, civility, and refinement. The results of this study provide a foundation for studying both discursive dehumanization and dehumanization in political science.

Foi realizada pesquisa qualitativa que trata da atuação de imigrantes no Conselho Participativo Municipal de São Paulo, refletindo sobre participação política de migrantes internacionais a luz de uma problemática que revela algumas das limitações da congruência construída entre nacionalidade e cidadania. O estudo foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de analisar a atuação dos conselheiros imigrantes no Conselho Participativo Municipal, procurando compreender como se articulam termos como cidadania e nacionalidade, a partir da experiência inédita na qual imigrantes puderam tomar parte, como votantes e votados, em uma eleição no Brasil. A construção teórica se apoia especialmente na literatura sobre cidadania e nacionalidade no contexto do Estado-nação, cidadania e migrações internacionais e em estudos sobre conselhos participativos. O principal instrumento utilizado foi a entrevista semiestruturada. Foram entrevistados nove conselheiros municipais imigrantes. As entrevistas foram analisadas com uso de mapas dialógicos, organizados em categorias analíticas, que possibilitaram delinear os sentidos da participação no Conselho. As categorias levantadas foram: Experiência no Conselho Participativo Municipal, Vidas em movimento e Cidadania migrante. Os resultados evidenciam as consequências simbólicas e práticas da ausência do direito ao voto e as perspectivas dos imigrantes sobre a experiência no Conselho, participação política e cidadania / The qualitative study about immigrants in the Municipal Participatory Council of São Paulo debates political participation of international immigrants revealing some of the limitations of the congruence built between nationality and citizenship. The study was developed proposing the analysis of immigrant councilors participation the Municipal Participatory Council, seeking to understand how terms such as citizenship and nationality are articulated, based on the unprecedented experience in which immigrants took part, as voters and candidates, in an election in Brazil. The theoretical construction relies especially on the literature on citizenship and nationality in the context of the nation-state, citizenship and international migrations and in studies on participatory councils. The main instrument was the semi-structured interview. Nine immigrants councilors were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using dialogical maps, organized in analytical categories that allowed to delineate the meanings of the participation in the Council. The categories were: Experience in the Municipal Participatory Council, Lives in Movement and Migrant Citizenship. The results show the symbolic and practical consequences of the absence of the right to vote and the perspectives of the immigrants on the experience in the Council, political participation and citizenship

A questão da prática democrática e da efetiva participação política ainda é uma temática bastante polêmica na sociedade brasileira. Mesmo com uma constituição democrática e com uma série de instrumentos participativos instituídos, o Brasil ainda parece bastante distante de atingir uma democracia consolidada. Há muitas teorias que versam a respeito dos fatores que podem motivar ou desmotivar o envolvimento e a participação política, tais como a cultura, a confiança, o capital social e o reconhecimento. Na presente dissertação, busca-se entender quais os reais motivos que levam um cidadão a escolher se envolver ou não na política, adotando uma posição ativa e participante ou uma posição passiva em relação a estas questões. A proposta consistiu em realizar uma revisão das teorias sobre a motivação para participar, um levantamento da situação democrática do país, estudando o papel da história política e da memória coletiva no contexto da participação, bem como a influência das narrativas circulantes no mundo da política, com especial destaque para as narrativas cotidianas, que nada mais são do que aquelas que ocorrem na esfera íntima dos indivíduos, no seu dia a dia, com familiares, amigos e conhecidos. É neste contexto que a presente dissertação pretende acrescentar, introduzindo no debate da participação a questão do contexto de vida dos indivíduos, das experiências vividas por ele ou para ele passadas por meio de narrativas e sua influência como estímulo ou desestímulo na motivação dos cidadãos a envolver-se com assuntos políticos. Para tanto, além da revisão bibliográfica, foi realizada uma pesquisa empírica baseada em entrevistas em profundidade com cidadãos atuantes e não atuantes no cenário político do município de São Paulo, buscando entender seu comportamento político e suas motivações para tal. / The democratic practice and effective political participation is still a theme very polemic in Brazilian society. Even with a democratic constitution and series of participatory tools, Brazil still seems quite far from reaching a consolidated democracy. There are many theories that talk about the factors that may motivate or discourage involvement and political participation, such as culture, trust, social capital and recognition. In this dissertation, we seek to understand the real reasons that lead a citizen to choose to get involved or not in politics, taking an active role or a passive position in relation to these issues. The proposal was to conduct a review of the theories on motivation to participate, a study of the democratic situation in the country, studying the role of political history and public memory in the context of participation, as well as the influence of narratives that circulates in the world of politics, with special emphasis on daily narratives, which are nothing more than those that occur in the private sphere of individuals in their daily lives, with family, friends and acquaintances. It is in this context that this dissertation intends to add, introducing in the participation discussion the question of the life context of individuals, the experiences that they live or they have known through narratives and their influence as stimulus or discourage on the motivation of citizens to engage with political issues. Therefore, in addition to the literature review, we conducted an empirical research based on interviews with active and not active citizens in the political scene in São Paulo, seeking to understand political behavior and their motivations for doing so.

No description available.

Assuming gender neutrality in comparative analysis, i.e. not including either explicit or implicit references to a particular gender or sex, runs the risk of camouflaging the unequal distribution of political power, economic influence, and political access for men and women. Unfortunately, in assuming such neutrality, one is blinded to the inherent flaws of political systems, the inequalities they create, and their lack of consideration of gender and women's rights. To counteract this inequality between the sexes, women's social movements are fighting to create gender awareness and establish formal policies that place them at the same level as their male counterparts, and feminist ideals are slowly becoming more prominent. As in other regions, in Latin America, quota laws have been established as affirmative action-type mechanisms that are meant to create a balance in view of the inequalities women face in ascending to political office. My study focuses on whether or not quota laws have increased women's presence in Latin American political legislatures and if they have met the intended objectives by the women's social movements that advocated for them. My results indicate that quota laws have not worked in every Latin American country to dramatically increase women's presence in politics. The literature also suggests that quota laws have not entirely been able to produce the desired outcomes as proposed by women's social movements in the region. I also address the question of what has made quota laws successful in some countries, yet not in others. My research indicates that the effectiveness of quota laws depends on how they are drafted and implemented, that is if institutions have effectively been altered and if the government is taking specific measures to ensure that the law is being enforced. Since women have not been able to rely on the good faith of the political parties to determine their entry to positions of public authority, traditional procedures for candidate selection have been in need of alteration. I conclude that if quota laws are not customized to a country's electoral system and applied meticulously by political parties, they will hardly produce any results for women.

Activists are increasingly relying on online tactics and digital tools to address social issues. This shift towards reliance on the Internet has been shown to have salient implications for social movement formation processes; however, the effectiveness of such actions for achieving specific goals remains largely unaddressed. This study explores how the types of Internet activism and digital tools used by activism campaigns relate to success in meeting stated goals. To address these questions, the study builds on an existing framework that distinguishes between four distinct types of Internet activism: brochure-ware, which is oriented towards information distribution; e-mobilizations, which treats digital media merely as a tool for mobilizing individuals offline; online participation, which is characterized by wholly online actions such as e-petitions or virtual protests; and online organizing, where organization of a movement takes place exclusively via the internet with no face-to-face coordination by organizers. Ordinal regression models were conducted utilizing cross-sectional data from the Global Digital Activism Data Set (GDADS), a compilation of information on 426 activism campaigns from around the world that began between 2010 and 2012; additional data regarding the types of Internet activism used was also appended to the GDADS using source materials provided within the data set. The findings suggest that use of the Internet for mobilizing offline actions is negatively associated with campaign success, but that this does not hold true for protest actions organized without use of digital tools. E-petition use was also found to be negatively related to achievement of campaign goals.

Thesis (MPA)--University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus), 2011 / Public participation in South Africa is provided for in various legislative prescripts, not limited to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996; White Paper on Local Government, 1998; Local Government: Municipal Structures Act, Act 117 of 1998; Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, Act 32 of 2000. Whereas all 283 municipalities in South Africa are required, as per these legislative prescripts, to conduct community participation, and whereas the same municipalities are pursuing the Integrated Development Planning Process (IDPP), community participation is not immune from problems and challenges. Pursuant to this, the research assessed public participation in the municipality under study, and found that these problems and challenges include among others, resource constraints; abuse of participatory structures by community elites and opportunists; marginalization of communities from decision-making; legitimacy of structures, through which the public participates. In addition, the following were identified: lack of creation of democratic culture of rights; lack of induction of the citizenry into democratic discourse and practice; lack of creation of mutual, reciprocal, and political tolerance; and a normative consensus as some key issues that will not auger well for a conducive public participatory environment in developmental planning processes. To be specific, the municipality under study has failed dismally in addressing certain areas of community participation in the municipality’s IDPP, such as, providing transport to members of the public to attend public participatory forums, utilization of ward committees as platforms for community participation, and ensuring representation of previously disadvantaged groups. vi Based on the critical issues raised and conclusions drawn, the study has therefore provided possible recommendations to resolve the problems and challenges of public participation in the municipality under study. Although the problems and challenges may not necessarily be generalized to other municipalities, the recommendations proffered, can also be populated to other municipalities, to add value in enhancing respective public participation, which is believed to consequently influence positively on service delivery

Typescript (photocopy) Bibliography: leaves 779-813.

Consensus conferences evolved as a response to the public's increasing dissatisfaction with technocratic decision-making processes that are judged to have repeatedly failed to serve its interests. The staging of the first Australian consensus conference at Old Parliament House in Canberra in March 1999 therefore presented an ideal opportunity to analyse the evolution of this new kind of policy input from its conception through to its implementation and subsequent evaluation. This thesis set out to provide an analysis of that trajectory using elements of the theoretical approach known as actor-network theory (ANT). Previous analyses of consensus conferences have generally provided only limited evaluations of single aspects of the entire process of setting up, implementing and evaluating such a conference. Furthermore, many of the early evaluations were conducted by reviewers or units which were themselves internal to the consensus conference under scrutiny. My own analysis has tried to offer broader, although inevitably less detailed, coverage, using a perspective from contemporary social theory that offers particular advantages in analysing the creation of short-term networks designed for specific purposes. By describing and analysing the role of this relatively new policy-making instrument, I have explored the different sub-networks that operate within the consensus conference process by focussing on the ways in which the conference was organised and how the relationships between the organisers and the participants helped to shape the outcomes. Thus the entire consensus conference sequence from idea to outcome can be thought of as a construction of a network to achieve at least one immediate goal. That goal was a single potential policy input, a consensus position embodied in the report of the lay panel. To realise that goal, the network needed to be recruited and stabilised and its members made to converge on that collective statement. But how is it that a range of disparate actors, including lay and expert, are mobilised to achieve that particular goal and what are the stabilisation devices which enable, or fail to enable this goal to be reached? In the context of the first Australian consensus conference, three key alignment devices emerged: texts, money and people. Yet it is clear from the evidence that some of these network stabilisation devices functioned poorly or not at all. This thesis has drawn attention to the areas in which they were weak and what importance that weakness had for the kind of policy outcome the consensus conference achieved. The role and extent of these powerful stabilisation devices in networks was therefore a vital issue for analysis. If one of the criteria to evaluate the success of a consensus conference is that it provides the stimulus to hold another, then the Australian conference must be deemed so far a failure. No further Australian consensus conference is planned. However, Australia stands to forfeit a number of advantages if no further consensus conferences or similar occasions are organised. Policy formation in contemporary democracies has had to accommodate an increasing array of new participants in order to track more effectively the diversity of potentially significant opinions on complex policy issues. This process requires new and transparent ways to educate and inform the public on policy issues and to ensure that policy makers are better informed about the needs and concerns of their community. As the evidence presented in thesis for the Australian example and its predecessors overseas suggests, consensus conferences have the potential to play a role in the contemporary policy-making context. But the realisation of that potential will vary according to their institutional contexts and the capacity of the actors to create the temporarily most stable and productive network out of the heterogeneous human and material resources to hand.

<p>This study is case study of political participation among the Kani tribe from Kuttichal grama panchayat in the Thiruvananthapuram district in Kerala, India. The study is based on the collected data of 117 people of the Kani tribe living in four different settlements: Pankavu, Mangode-Valippara, Chonampara and Kaithode. The aim of the study is to examine the impact on political participation by different factors, which is done by the use of the quantitative method of cross tables. The study confirms previous studies in its conclusion that high status individuals, defined in terms of education and economic standard, are the group of the highest political participation, when this is defined as being involved in political work and holding a party membership. On the local political scene however, where political participation consists of participation in local assemblies and voluntary work, the impact of the examined variables are very limited. The main theory, which is used for the analysis, is a cost and benefit analysis.</p>