The main frame of this research is ¡§Economic Modernization¡¨ categorized modernization theory, and the objective of this research is TVEs to analyze the characteristics of Mainland China¡¦s economic modernization. TVEs is a kind of special enterprise style of China. TVEs integrate rural resources, collective ownership, and modern business management into the main power of the development of rural economy. Moreover, also the particularities of TVEs¡¦ system are the emphasis of this research. The members of TVEs which are villagers, local government officers, managers, and party cadres form a kind of special mutual-dependence relationship between rural communities, CPC (Communist Party of China), and governments. Finally, the extending question is economic modernization transiting to political modernization, also China with the different development from western nations.

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This is a master thesis centering around democratization in Taiwan and South Korea. The aim has been to reach a greater understanding of how Taiwan and South Korea could democratize and their respective democratization process. Related to the research gap, two theories were applied in the analysis. The theories are also reflected in the two research questions. The theories are modernization theory and Dahl’s democracy theory concerning the concept of polyarchy.  The thesis is comparative in its nature, and it is a two-case study. For the treatment of material, qualitative content analysis has been used. Following the literature review, a concise historical background to the two countries was written to provide context for the readers and as a background to the analysis which covered the period after World War Two.  In the analysis, the two theories were applied to Taiwan and South Korea. First, the four variables of economic growth from modernization theory and then the seven institutions of polyarchy from Dahl’s democracy theory. The analysis showed steady progress in both countries during the application of modernization theory. The seven institutions of polyarchy have been reached in both states, and the time for that is spelled out in the analysis. The conclusion found that modernization theory is facilitating understanding of the democratization in the countries and that Dahl’s democracy theory provided a framework for the timeline of democratization. It also showed that other perspectives such as culture, external influence, strategic culture, geopolitics, and in the Taiwanese case, ethnicity, are providing a greater knowledge of this subject.

Motivated by recent claims from youth that older generations are jeopardizing their future, the purpose of this thesis is to study potential explanations for the variation of intergenerational blame attribution among Swedish youth. Ordinary least squares regression analysis is conducted on survey data, especially focused on young participants, to test several hypotheses about how perceived economic threats and one’s value orientation can impact young people’s motivation to blame elderly generations for economic difficulties. The thesis does not find statistical support that one’s birth cohort - used as a proxy for childhood socialization during different economic conditions - moderates the effect of perceived threat on intergenerational blame attribution. However, when a person’s value orientation is explicitly measured in a regression model, the findings indicate that characteristics acquired earlier in life can alter a person’s reaction to presently perceived threats. The result shows that authoritarians are more prone to attribute blame towards older generations as a matter of habit, but also that libertarians are susceptible to changing their attitudes to liken authoritarians given a tangible threat. Furthermore, the study provides empirical evidence suggesting that libertarians and authoritarians react to perceived economic threats differently. These findings are evaluated in relation to measuring perceived threat in a survey context and the linear interaction effect assumption in multiplicative linear models.

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This paper analyzes the utilization of repression and democratic institutions by a non-democratic government striving for political power and private rents. We find that economic development has different impacts on policy choices, depending on whether it appears in the form of rises in income or in education: A higher income level reduces democracy, whereas more education leads to both more democracy and more repression. These theoretical findings are corroborated by panel data regressions.

In the 1950s, scholars in Europe and the United States announced the end of political ideology in the West. With the rise of affluent welfare states, they argued, ideological movements which sought to overthrow prevailing liberal democracy would disappear. While these arguments were questioned in the 1960s, similar ideas were presented after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Scholars now claimed that the end of the Cold War meant the end of mankind’s “ideological development,” that globalization would undermine the left/right distinction and that politics would be shaped by cultural affiliations rather than ideological alignments. The purpose of No alternatives is to compare the end of ideology discussion of the 1950s with some of the post-Cold War theories launched at the time of, or in the years following, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Juxtaposing monographs, essays and papers between 1950 and 2000, the dissertation focuses on three aspects of these theories. First, it analyzes their concepts of history, demonstrating that they tended to portray the existing society as an order which had resolved the conflicts and antagonisms of earlier history. Second, the investigation scrutinizes the processes of post-politicization at work in these theories, showing how they sought to transcend, contain or externalize social conflict, and at times dismiss politics altogether. Third, it demonstrates how the theories can be understood as legitimizing or mobilizing narratives which aimed to defend Western liberal democracy and to rally its citizens against internal threats and external enemies. As the title of the dissertation implies, the end of ideology discussion of the 1950s and the post-Cold War theories of the 1990s sought to highlight the historical or political impossibility of any alternatives to the present society.

This paper analyzes the utilization of repression and democratic institutions by a non-democratic government striving for political power and private rents. We find that economic development has different impacts on policy choices, depending on whether it appears in the form of rises in income or in education: A higher income level reduces democracy, whereas more education leads to both more democracy and more repression. These theoretical findings are corroborated by panel data regressions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if economic sanctions is a useful tool to promote the democratic development of a state. I am interested in exploring the effectiveness of the most common reasons for implementing sanctions; to change specific behavior incompatible with democracy or to incur regime transformation. In order to examine this, we look at the intent of implementing economic sanctions, how democratic development is measured, and the importance of human rights as a part of a democratic state. By applying these findings on opposing versions of modernization theory, I find measurable economic data that I can look at in connection with two case studies. The episodes chosen for the case studies are current sanctions being leveled against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Myanmar. In the case studies themselves, I discover that Iran and Myanmar are very different in both the intentions behind their autocratic regimes, and the results of the sanctions against them. In examining the economic effects, I find it difficult to find data for both cases, and I fail to locate parts of the economic data I intended to look at. In the end, I conclude that while economic sanctions can have some impact on specific goals and the foundation for support of democracy, they are unlikely to be the deciding factor in democratic development.