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This thesis examines the claim that the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger's Being and Time necessarily leads to an authoritarian politics. Using the arguments of Jurgen Habermas and Richard Wolin, I examine the contention that Heidegger's dichotomy between "authenticity" and "inauthenticity" is essentially a normative distinction between good and bad, serving to irrevocably split the social world into classes of leaders and followers. Against this, I argue that distinction between “authenticity” and "inauthenticity" is ethically neutral and therefore has no necessary political momentum in any direction. Heidegger's critics argue that Being and Time reflects an "ideologically tinged worldview" that deems everyday social understandings and interaction as worthless "inauthenticity" obstructing the realization of our true "authentic" essence. With no positive valuation of the common social practices that any democratic political framework deems essential, "authenticity" leads inextricably to a detached and arbitrary elitism amenable to an authoritarian politics. I argue, however, that "inauthenticity" embodies a range of positive as well as negative phenomena from which "authenticity" can never extricate itself. Instead of representing a dichotomization of the social body, the split between "authenticity" and "inauthenticity” is an ethically neutral distinction between the awareness and non-awareness of the self. Contrary to the critics' arguments, "authentic" self-awareness is not the repudiation of our everyday social world, but instead is contingent upon how we go about our everyday social projects. Thus, lacking the totalizing critique of our everyday social world and common understandings, Heidegger's existential analytic is better understood as a normatively neutral philosophical perspective that does not necessarily lead in any political or ethical direction. / Master of Arts

Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-34).

This dissertation investigates the relationship between elections and authoritarian rule with a focus on the case of China's adoption of elections at the grassroots level. In this dissertation, I look at the incentives facing Chinese local governments in choosing between holding competitive elections or state-controlled elections, and how the selection of electoral rules shapes the public's preferences over political institutions and influences the citizens' political behaviors, especially voting in elections and participation in contentious activities. The overarching theme in this dissertation proposes that the sources and consequences of Chinese local elections are conditioned on the state-owned resources and the governing costs. When the amount of state-owned resources to rule the local society is limited, the paucity of resources will incentivize authoritarian governments to liberalize grassroots elections to offset the governance costs. The various levels of election liberalization will lead to different consequences in the public's political behavior. An abundance of state-owned resources not only discourages rulers from sharing power with the local society, but also supplies the rulers with strong capacity to obtain loyalty from voters when elections are adopted. As a result, elections under authoritarian governments with an abundance of state-owned resources will see more loyalist voters than elections with authoritarian governments with fewer state-owned resources. In addition, the varieties of election practices will exert impacts on public opinion toward the authoritarian government: awareness of elections will enhance public trust in the government and decrease the public's intention to challenge the incumbents' authority while at the same time increasing the public's faith in the institutions, thereby encouraging the public to adopt official channels to air their grievances. The analysis of the village-level as well as individual-level survey data and cases lends empirical supports to the argument. First, I find that the governing costs—measured by the size of labor force—are significantly and positively associated with the likelihood that local officials allow the villagers to freely nominate candidates. Second, I find that party members are more likely to vote in rural elections than urban elections while urban elections attract citizens with higher levels of democratic consciousness. The rural-urban divide in voter type indicates that the possession of economic resources by rural grassroots governments helps mobilize rural loyalist voters to participate in village committee elections, whereas the lack of such resources by urban governments discourages regime loyalist but encourage democratic voters to turn out to vote in urban elections. Third, I find significant evidence that citizens who are aware of grassroots elections are less likely to engage in contentious activities such as protest, strikes or demonstrations. Yet, the awareness of elections also encourages citizens to more frequently adopt, shangfang (petition), a government-sponsored conflict resolution mechanism, than those who are not aware of such elections. The implications of these findings suggest that the capability of state in controlling resources is vital to the success or failure of elections in stabilizing authoritarian regimes. The findings also provide an assessment on the substantial influence of the rural and urban grassroots elections in China's subnational democratization.

This graduate thesis comparatively analyzes key features of political systems of Malaysia and Singapore using the chosen concepts of hybrid regimes theory. In the first part, main conceptualizations of this theory are presented to be later critically assessed. What follows is a thorough comparative analysis of political systems of the countries in question using the concept of "chain of democratic choice" introduced by Andreas Schedler as a framework for analysis. Subsequently, operationalized concept of competitive authoritarianism by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way is applied. The outcome of the analysis is the classification of Malaysia as competitive authoritarian while Singapore is classified as a case of hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime. As far as theory is concerned, the thesis argues that although hybrid regimes themselves cannot provide for a unique mid-range regime type, some concepts connected to the paradigm offer an appropriate tool for the study of nondemocratic regimes.

This dissertation explores the role of Internet censorship and circumvention in the Arab world as well as Arabs’ views on the limits to free speech on the Internet. The project involves the creation of an Internet censorship circumvention tool named Alkasir that allows users to report and access certain types of censored websites. The study covers the Arab world at large with special focus on Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. This work is of interdisciplinary nature and draws on the disciplines of media and communication studies and computer science. It uses a pioneering experimental approach by placing Alkasir in the hands of willing users who automatically feed a server with data about usage patterns without storing any of their personal information. In addition to the analysis of Alkasir usage data, Web surveys were used to learn about any technical and nontechnical Internet censorship practices that Arab users and content producers may have been exposed to. The study also aims at learning about users’ experiences with circumvention tools and how such tools could be improved. The study found that users have successfully reported and accessed hundreds of censored social networking, news, dissident, multimedia and other websites. The survey results show that while most Arab informants disapprove censoring online anti-government political content, the majority support the censoring of other types of content such as pornography, hate speech, and anti-religion material. Most informants indicated that circumvention tools should be free of charge, fast and reliable. An increase in awareness among survey respondents of the need for privacy and anonymity features in circumvention solutions was observed.

In Latin America, the regimes of Fidel Castro and Alfredo Stroessner are indiscriminately posited as representative cases reflecting similarities and differences of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. This work tests the more general typology by studying the contrasting institutions, processes, and styles of the Castro and Stroessner autocracies, habitually labeled totalitarian and authoritarian, respectively. Totalitarianism emerged as an analytic concept as social scientists attempted to understand characteristics of the Hitler and Stalin regimes distinctive from other forms of dictatorship. While authoritarian regimes are generally based on history and tradition, leaving intact existing arrangements regarding wealth, status, church, family, and traditional social behavior, totalitarian regimes aim to revolutionize and politicize society, culture, and personality. They claim jurisdiction over the whole life of the citizenry and obliterate the boundaries between public and private. Despite the corpus applicable to totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and Latin America, few studies exist melding all three topics in a comparative context. Paraguay has long remained outside the mainstream of serious study by political scientists, yet Stroessner's 34-year dictatorship was one of the world's most durable. This research contributes to a better understanding of a nation and regime begging scholarly attention. Stroessner's downfall leaves Castro's Cuba the Western Hemisphere's oldest non-democracy and provokes analysis revealing organizational resemblances common to both regimes. Divergences relate more fully to sui generis social forces, forms of government, and geopolitics. The work analyzes the differences and similarities between Cuba and Paraguay, linking them to the larger typologies by focusing on four distinguishing variables comprising the totalitarian syndrome: (1) the supreme leader; (2) the nature and ideology of the single, official party; (3) the forms and uses of political force in the state control apparatus; and (4) the scope and degree of societal mobilization and mass legitimacy engendered by the regime. The work concludes by considering the policy relevance and utility of these heuristic paradigms.

Die nachfolgende Länderstudie ist während eines längeren Arbeitsaufenthaltes im Rahmen der internationalen Zusammenarbeit in Kamerun entstanden. Mit ihr versuchen wir, unsere persönlichen Eindrücke und täglichen Beobachtungen in einem Land zu verarbeiten, in dem offenbar alle Hoffnung darauf beruht, dass der alternde Staatspräsident Paul Biya seinen Abschied von der politischen Bühne nimmt und damit ein autokratisches, korruptes Regime sein Ende findet. Diese Hoffnung scheint mit der Erwartung von Francis Fukuyama verbunden zu werden, der 1992 nach dem Zusammenbruch des Sowjet-Imperiums das „Ende der Geschichte“ erklärte, in der Überzeugung, dass das demokratische Gesellschaftsmodell bald überall Einzug halten würde. Bekanntlich hat sich diese Erwartung als zu optimistisch erwiesen. Mit unserer Untersuchung versuchen wir aufzuzeigen, warum sich die Hoffnung auf eine gerechtere Gesellschaft trotz langjähriger Bemühungen westlicher Geber um die Stärkung der Zivilgesellschaft und die Dezentralisierung staatlicher Aufgaben auch in Kamerun kaum erfüllen wird. Ein „Ende der Geschichte“ lässt sich auch für die Zeit nach Paul Biya nicht prognostizieren. / After more the thirty years in office, the political career of the elderly Cameroon President Paul Biya seems to have come to an end. After gaining independence in 1960 Cameroon was quickly turned into a dictatorial police state under Paul Biya’s predecessor, Mr Ahmadou Ahidjo. A forced political liberalisation at the beginning of the 1990’s removed the existing one-party-system. However, in reality, little has changed regarding the country’s political situation as the newly granted democratic rights exist only on paper. Not only is Mr Biya the sole and unchallenged ruler of Cameroon, he is also the “glue” that binds the country together. Despite the country’s wealth of natural resources, government corruption and mismanagement has resulted in an elite with much wealth and a majority of people living in poverty. In spite of this, and even in face of ethnic and religious diversity, Cameroon is one of the most stabile countries in Africa. Civil war did not occur and Christians and Muslims live peacefully side by side. Therefore, the end of the rule of Paul Biya seems to offer both an opportunity as well as a threat to this nation’s future. The opportunity could be realized if democratically minded segments of the society succeed in installing a pluralistic regime that abolishes corruption and nepotism. In order to make this scenario more likely, western donors have begun to support the establishment of a civil society and, through decentralisation programs, strengthened the concept of democratic local self-governance. The treat is that with the disappearance of Paul Biya from the stage a dangerous political vacuum may result. As no successor seems to be in sight who is capable of leading the people and democratizing the country, there is a danger that Cameroon might follow the path of other African nations and fall into a state of turmoil and decay. This book offers an analysis of the mechanisms which have resulted in Cameroon remaining a fragile state even after fifty years of independence. At the same time - on the basis of examining the findings of transformation theories - the book explores the possibility of bringing about democratic changes to the country by critically examining the impact of the activities of the international donor community. Cameroon is often called the „Afrique en miniature“. This is why a great part of the results of this analysis are also useful for judging the political circumstances in other francophone countries in Africa. Therefore the significance of the book goes beyond the context of the situation in Cameroon.

The problem of this study was the effect of social mobility of teachers on the anxiety and academic progress of lower socioeconomic boys in spelling and arithmetic skills.

This research sought to find if a significant relationship existed between a factor of personality, authoritarianism, as measured on the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, and perceived effectiveness of teaching as measured by ratings on the Purdue Rating Scale for Instruction.