The aim of this paper is to examine the correlation between regime socialisation and censorship support in South Korea. The National Security Act is a policy that has been active in the country mentioned, since the 1950’s and restricts the freedom of speech. In a country like South Korea, which is a democracy, it is hard to understand the dual values that are being portrayed in the society. With the help of a theory about political socialisation by individual experience and by using a linear regression, this paper hypothesises that there will be people who are more supportive or completely against the backing for censorship if they have lived through an authoritarian regime. In the bivariate linear regression, the results indicate that there is a relation between the independent, regime socialisation and the dependent variable, support for censorship. However opposed to the theory of this paper, that inhabitants of countries with former authoritarian rule should be more supportive of censorship, the results from the multivariate linear regression show that with the control variables, gender, education, income and Asian values, the correlation between regime socialisation and the support for censorship is not statistically significant. Instead it shows that gender, education and income confound the relationship between regime socialisation and support for censorship.

Putin’s authoritarian rule reaches all areas of Russian society, this can be attributed to the soft powers that the regime uses to further establish their power. The basis of this research is a theory from the book Authoritarianism goes global, where the authors describes the importance of soft powers in an authoritarian regime. The soft powers analysed include election monitoring, disinformation, cyberspace security and civil society repression. The aim is to examine which soft powers play a part in the consolidation of the Russian regime, and the strategies used to further legitimise their political agenda. The three questions answered in this research is how did Putin’s first eight years in power affect the use of soft powers in Russia today? What soft powers have led to the consolidation of an authoritarian regime in Russia? And how does Putin use these soft powers to further legitimize his political agenda? A qualitative text analysis was performed to answer the questions. The conclusions drawn is that Putin’s actions today are heavily influenced by his first presidency. Furthermore he extensively use the soft powers, and they have a significant influence on how the Russian authoritarian regime manage to consolidate power. Moreover the proficiency shown while manipulating these arenas leads to Putin being able to further legitimise his political agenda.

This thesis examines the reasons for the survival of Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe over more than thirty years. Approaching this question from comparative politics perspective the author examines the type of regime, its capacity (including capacity of the state and of other institutions) and strategy of survival that can be found in Zimbabwe, in the context of relevant historical events before and after Mugabe's seizing of power. Thereby the author devaluate those aspects taking into account all the broader context of sub-Saharan African regimes.

The study is mainly to comprehend the historic background and status quo of Taiwan¡¦s labor welfare policy. Since the structure of welfare allocation was not accorded with equity and justice under the time of authoritarian regime and the content/structure of Taiwan¡¦s social welfare allocation were changed, the author would explore the substantive connotation of how KMT and DDP allocating the resources of labor welfare after democratization in Taiwan by way of integrately researching both parties¡¦ ideology of social welfare, the expenditure of welfare budge and policy measures, and using the definition of labor welfare¡¦s category based on the concept of social security as the research constructure to analyze how both parties allocate the resources of labor welfare while they were in power. During the process of democratic politics in the meantime, the policy of labor welfare is one of the national policies valued by each party. The democratic politics, economic development and power of civil society were emerged after the society and politics were liberalized in 1980s and the martial law was lifted in 1987. Regarding politics, the initial shape of party competition was forming as the advantage of KMT¡¦s dominant rule has been challenged and DPP was established. Therefore, during the process of party competition in 1990s, many policies of labor welfare were presented, especially in the compaign of election, each party suggested a lot of appealing policies of labor welfare to attract votes and win the election. Taiwan experienced the first party turnover in 2000 when DDP substituted for KMT to be the party who led Taiwan society which carried significance to Taiwanese. Whether the development of Taiwan labor¡¦s welfare would go on to become systematized, high-qualified and high-efficient, it depends on many variables of political/economic systems and social change. Overall, the welfare politics of democratic system with pluralistic competetion could be gradually fulfilled by representative politics, but such kind of multi-construct would be the paradise for vested interests, while the field which people could join in competing with adequate capacities will determine whether the allocation of social welfare resources and such consensus would be lifted or established. If such social consensus could be built up, then, the general welfare of welfare state and indiscriminate reallocative system would be achieved naturally without effort and there would also be an opportunity to promote national unity.

That authoritarian regimes adopt various strategies of societal control to secure their resilience has been widely explored in comparative politics. The scholarship has emphasized regimes’ reliance upon tactics as diverse as cooptation, economic and social policy reforms, and multiparty elections. Yet, existing comparative studies have predominantly focused on formal institutions, largely ignoring authoritarian states’ resort to informal rules as effective governance and regime preservation strategies. Local governments in China have tolerated underground Protestant churches, and in doing so, they have failed to enforce the central government’s policy of religious cooptation. This dissertation explores the reasons underlying local government tolerance of underground churches. I argue that accommodative informal institutions emerge out of a bargaining process involving agents (state and society) with a mutually compatible set of interests. Both parties need to reduce uncertainty about the other’s political intentions, and for that reason, they are likely to choose to cooperate strategically with one another. On the one hand, local officials view policies of religious cooptation as ineffective to curb the expansion of underground religion, and as increasingly risky to enforce in a context where an extensive use of coercion could be subject to severe professional sanctions. On the other hand, underground pastors seek to maximize their autonomy under authoritarian constraints; to that extent, they have used informal compliance as a strategy to earn local government acceptance. Compliance manifests itself in four ways: openness to dialogue with local authorities, the proactive sharing of sensitive information about church affairs, gift-giving and -receiving, and the maintenance of a low profile in terms of church size and rhetoric. Strategic cooperation brings benefits to both parties. It provides local public security officials’ with a stable source of intelligence about the underground space, which is key to ensuring an effective management of religious affairs. Moreover, it allows underground churches to remain autonomous from the state and decreases risks that they face coercion. Yet, inasmuch as informal arrangements are self-enforcing and rule-bound, they ultimately serve regime interests by increasing the costs of political mobilization for the compliant clergy, and by accentuating divisions between the latter and politicized pastors.

That authoritarian regimes adopt various strategies of societal control to secure their resilience has been widely explored in comparative politics. The scholarship has emphasized regimes’ reliance upon tactics as diverse as cooptation, economic and social policy reforms, and multiparty elections. Yet, existing comparative studies have predominantly focused on formal institutions, largely ignoring authoritarian states’ resort to informal rules as effective governance and regime preservation strategies. Local governments in China have tolerated underground Protestant churches, and in doing so, they have failed to enforce the central government’s policy of religious cooptation. This dissertation explores the reasons underlying local government tolerance of underground churches. I argue that accommodative informal institutions emerge out of a bargaining process involving agents (state and society) with a mutually compatible set of interests. Both parties need to reduce uncertainty about the other’s political intentions, and for that reason, they are likely to choose to cooperate strategically with one another. On the one hand, local officials view policies of religious cooptation as ineffective to curb the expansion of underground religion, and as increasingly risky to enforce in a context where an extensive use of coercion could be subject to severe professional sanctions. On the other hand, underground pastors seek to maximize their autonomy under authoritarian constraints; to that extent, they have used informal compliance as a strategy to earn local government acceptance. Compliance manifests itself in four ways: openness to dialogue with local authorities, the proactive sharing of sensitive information about church affairs, gift-giving and -receiving, and the maintenance of a low profile in terms of church size and rhetoric. Strategic cooperation brings benefits to both parties. It provides local public security officials’ with a stable source of intelligence about the underground space, which is key to ensuring an effective management of religious affairs. Moreover, it allows underground churches to remain autonomous from the state and decreases risks that they face coercion. Yet, inasmuch as informal arrangements are self-enforcing and rule-bound, they ultimately serve regime interests by increasing the costs of political mobilization for the compliant clergy, and by accentuating divisions between the latter and politicized pastors.

- Transformační proces v Alžírsku (1988-1999) Předkládaná práce analyzuje politické změny v Alžírsku po roce 1988, kdy byl po nepokojích v hlavním městě zahájen liberalizační proces a urychleny ekonomické tržní reformy. Politické reformy měly posílit postavení prezidenta Bendžedída a jeho spojenců na úkor konzervativních oponentů a zároveň obnovit legitimitu režimu. Autoři reforem každopádně nepočítali s výraznějším sdílením moci. Nečekaný úspěch islamistické strany mobilizoval konzervativce a protiislamisticky zaměřené armádní velení. Zrušení voleb kvůli jednoznačnému vítězství islamistů v lednu 1992 vedlo k eliminaci islamistické i sekulární opozice. Obnovený autoritářský režim dokázal dostat pod kontrolu islamistické povstání a s pomocí MMF i kritickou ekonomickou situaci. Návrat k ústavnímu režimu proběhl bez účasti islamistické i sekulární opozice, která byla fragmentovaná a režim ji dokázal částečně kontrolovat. Po roce 1996 byl nastolen autoritářský režim s omezenými pluralitními prvky s dominantním postavením prezidenta, které je však oslabováno výrazným vlivem armádního velení. Politické strany mohou působit, ale jejich vliv je omezen. Jisté limity má i svoboda tisku. Došlo k posílení soukromého sektoru, postavení státu je však stále výrazné a ekonomika je závislá na vývozu ropy a zemního...

For studies of social movements, media is the most crucial aspect when it comes to understanding the movement. And for a civil society choosing to protest under an authoritarian regime, the media is more than crucial, it is key. Based on the social media attention the protests in Iran after Mahsa Aminis death received, this study intends to see how the Swedish daily newspapers SvD and DN framed the protest, focusing on message, political actors and local voices- the key aspects to include when framing a protest. The empirical data for this study consists of articles published between September 16, 2022 and November 16, 2022, making it up to 124 articles to examine. By using a coding scheme for the content analysis, it is based on previous studies regarding the protest paradigm, which is a theory applied to understand the focus on spectacle in media's portrayal of protests. This study developed two coding schemes where the first one is for the aim of identifying the overall portrayal and the second intends to identify frames that further contribute to the constructions of the political actors. Along with the content analysis, framing theory and the protest paradigm, the study adopts the social constructivist view of language to be able to understand the role of news in shaping public perceptions. Analyzing news coverage through this perspective allowed this study to gain a deeper understanding of how knowledge is constructed and how it shapes our understanding of the world. Lastly, by applying discourse analysis the study was able to examine the language within the frames and how it was used to construct reality and political actors in different ways. It was helpful in finding out the influence of the articles in creating as well as changing political and societal discourse around the issue. The study revealed a result that challenged the protest paradigm as well as confirming some results in previous research. Violence frames were in previous literature the main frames, which it was in this study too, however, in this study the violence frames did not get interpreted as in the protest paradigm theory since protest under authoritarian regimes needed another analytical eye focusing more on the context and the way in which the violence was directed towards.

The role of unfair elections in breakdown or maintenance of electoral authoritarian regimes has been subject to debate in recent research. On the one hand, the conduct of elections may serve to enhance popular legitimacy and deter challenges to the regime. On the other hand, electoral manipulation may contribute to grievances that fuel mass protest. However, empirical research on the consequences of electoral manipulation for popular support has been limited by the availability of appropriate survey data and has mostly focused on summary or process-based assessments of electoral unfairness. The premise of this study is that electoral manipulation is difficult to assess due to its inherent complexity and ambiguity. As a result, citizens are likely to use cognitive shortcuts to interpret electoral manipulation. Applying psychological theories of justice and motivated political reasoning in this context, this project aims to investigate how both process- and outcome-based assessments of election unfairness influence summary judgments of election quality, regime support, and support for electoral protest. It further seeks to determine how voters' political preferences bias, or condition, the impact of election unfairness evaluations. These propositions are tested using novel data from the XIX New Russia Barometer survey, conducted shortly after the controversial 2011 Russian State Duma election that triggered mass electoral protests. This study finds that perceived election outcome unfairness affects reactions to elections alongside assessments of the electoral process; it also shows evidence of partisan reasoning in evaluations of election unfairness. Ultimately, this project points to some factors that may explain the diverging consequences of electoral manipulation for popular support.

一九九0年代的台灣，社會福利政策突然成了輿論的焦點。儘管政府、學術界或社會團體，對如何規劃台灣的社會福利藍圖，有不同的看法，但對於加強福利保障此一發展目標，則有普遍的共識。身為福利發展的後進國，西方福利國家的發展經驗值得我們借鏡；而往後福利政策的計劃與實施，更必需面對四十年來威權體制下的福利發展歷史，及所遺留下來的種種問題。 　　本論文研究一九四九年到一九九0年間，台灣地區威權體制下的福利政策。就如所有社會科學的研究一般，除了資料的蒐集外，作者如何表達、呈現出問題的意義，往往決定了一篇論文的面貌。筆者基本上認為，要了解某一政策的產出，必需將其放在國家機關與民間社會的關係脈絡中分析。這種關係在相當程度上，是受國內外政經結構的變化所制約的；而且，政策並非獨立地存在。無論是在決策或實踐階段，不同政策間往往存在若干有機的聯結，彼此互相競合及影響。因此，本文的研究步驟，首先是分析威權體制下，國家機關與民間社會的特殊關係；接著將焦點放在福利政策與政治、經濟、社會政策問的關聯方面。希望藉由此種方式，了解在威權體制下福利政策的意義。 　　在內容方面，本論文共分七章：第一章論述威權體制的分析途徑、關於福利國家發展的研究成果，以及本論文的架構；第二章對台灣社會福利的現況作重點式的整理，也是對威權體制下福利發展結果的概述，第三、四、五、六章分別分析軍公教人員、勞工、農民與弱勢群體的福利政策；第七章結論部份，則是整合前述各章節，對四十餘年來台灣的福利發展，作一總體性的分析。