Abstract After the martial law was repealed, Taiwan has been embarked on the transformative process of political democratization and economic liberalization. As the first party turn-over in 2000 election changed radically the strategic environment of social welfare resource distribution, especially impacted the welfare for civil service and teachers, it is worthy of our reexploration furtherly on the status quo of Taiwan¡¦s social welfare resource distribution after democratization. Taking civil service and teachers for example, the author comprehensively worked up, compared and analyzed the allocational transition of social welfare resources respectively in the period of authoritarian rule and the transformative period of democratization, then presented policy and suggestion of social welfare resource distribution for civil service and teachers after democratization. The study surveyed the approaches of allocating social welfare for civil service and teachers by the research methods of analyzing the ideology of each party and the aspect of benefit transference by welfare policy, as well as expounding the supply side of government¡¦s welfare expenditure, then putting all the data above analyzed under the environmental veins of politics, economics and society so as to present an integrated skeleton of research. Moreover, the author chose 8 years before and after democratic transformation in Taiwan as research cases to engage in comparing and analyzing the social welfare resource distribution for civil service and teachers, i.e. the periods of DPP ruling (2000~2008) and KMT ruling (1994~1999). The research found that the social welfare resources laid particular stress on civil service and teachers in the period of authoritarian rule which possessed a savor of favor and grace. Secondly, there were full of variables and uncertainty in reformative policy of social welfare resource distribution for civil service and teachers during transformational period of democratization, but it would only turn the issue of welfare-alloctation to become an instrument among parties for exchanging political loyalty and consolidating their regime. Futhermore, while observing the situation before and after the transformative period of democratization, there was no significant difference in the expenditure items of welfares for civil service and teachers, but the allocation and beneficiary of social welfare tended to be generalized. The thesis suggested that the social welfare resource distribution should follow the principles of democracy and the rule of law, and build up the concepts of legalized welfare as swift as possible, i.e. such issue should be regulated, supervised and controlled by public opinions, then would the reasonable reform of welfares for civil service and teachers would be fulfilled gradually. Key words: Social Welfare Resource Distribution, Civil Service and teachers, Authoritarian Rule, Democratization

This thesis addresses how government in Rwanda plays out in practice and how it affects lived experiences of state power and citizenship. Two decades after the genocide, Rwanda has come to be associated both with security, development, and stability, on the one hand, and with state repression and coercion, on the other. In 2007, a nationwide programme was launched to teach all Rwandans about the politically dominant vision of the model Rwandan citizen – an ideal that is today pursued through remote trainings camps, local village trainings, and everyday forms of government. The thesis is based on ten months of anthropological research in Rwanda, oriented around three ethnographic spaces: the life and workings of the Itorero training sites, the voices of two dozen Rwandans living in Kigali, and the daily government of a local neighbourhood in Kigali. The findings highlight how certain government practices in Rwanda engender in people experiences of being exposed to the state’s power and violent potential. As such, they represent an authoritarian mode of rule, reproduced through the way experiences of exposure guide everyday actions and behaviour vis-à-vis the state. The thesis starts from the Foucauldian assumption that all relations of power depend on the acceptance and agency of both those holding power and those who relate to themselves as their subjects. In Rwanda, the terms of acceptance are partly grounded in local social realities. Personal memories of mass violence, for example, justify for many the state’s tight social control. Such memories are also actively nurtured by the government itself, by associating the loosening of state control with the risk of renewed violence. Furthermore, in light of Rwanda’s attraction of foreign aid, authoritarian rule needs to be understood in relation to international terms of acceptance, which are embedded in liberal understandings of good, or at least good enough, governance.

The primary focus of this study is the analysis of constitutional amendment-making processes following transitions from authoritarian regimes. Based on an extended longitudinal comparative case study of Chile and Turkey, the body of the work focuses on the experience of constitution-making during military rule and amendment-making following the transition to elected civilian governments. While both countries suffered a breakdown of democracy and ensuing new military-imposed constitutions, their amendment-making processes after the restoration of democracy were quite different. Chile developed a largely consensual approach while Turkey moved increasingly toward dissonance and confrontation. Extensive field research and personal interviews in both countries found that the procedural rigidity of amendment-making processes is insufficient to explain the extent and direction of constitutional change adopted under elected civilians after the transition from military rule (Chile in 2005, Turkey in 2010). Therefore a central feature of this study is the development of an analytical framework to explore both demand and supply side factors. This framework deconstructs the amendment making mechanism by examining such demand-side factors as shifts in the balance of power; societal forces and external actors; political, social and cultural context; characteristics of the constitution; and constitutional tradition. Supply-side factors addressed are the procedural and informal institutional elements, including the role of veto powers; informational constraints; and the content of the proposed amendments themselves. This dissertation contributes to the expanding literature on authoritarian constitutions and amendment-making processes and breaks new ground by systematically comparing the experience of Chile and Turkey, as key actors attempted to gradually amend their military-imposed constitutions. The different outcomes in these two cases, this study argues, were shaped by variations in historical context, the balance of power, the number of veto players, and different incentives for reform, i.e., the reassertion of democratic practices in Chile and a reactive response to political and constitutional crises in Turkey.

With the rapid growth in the number of new media platforms in China, a large number of Internet users have been turned into citizen journalism accounts. With the digital transformation of official media, many citizen journalism accounts are often pulled into news production by official media to co-produce content. On the Chinese Internet, citizen journalism not only plays the role of challenging and influencing agenda-setting and public opinion, but also takes on the task of propagating ideology and values. This thesis explored this phenomenon of journalistic practice by using generic news frames and propaganda theories as theoretical foundations. Meanwhile, this study used mainly quantitative content analysis as research method, exploring the characteristics of news videos produced by Chinese citizen journalism accounts in collaboration with official media, and what propaganda techniques were used to help legitimize authoritarian rule. This study examined 432 collaborative videos on bilibili published by CCTV between 2020 and 2023. The findings suggest that collaborative videos tend to produce soft news with positive human interest and morality frames, while negative news mainly targets foreign countries' conflicts. Furthermore, collaborative videos mainly use soft propaganda and public opinion guidance to disseminate values and ideologies that are in line with the national interest and lead the audience to support the CPC and the government's political governance, which legitimizes authoritarian rule. These results illustrate how Chinese citizen journalism in the propaganda field contributes to the propaganda strategy of the party and the government, how it has been used to legitimize authoritarian rule, and why its characteristics are significantly different from those of the Western scholars.

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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.

Despite promising prospects to transition towards a democracy after attaining its independence in 1980, Zimbabwe somehow fell into authoritarian rule and became increasingly undemocratic compared to other countries in southern Africa. Therefore, this thesis seeks to understand why a “most likely” case of democratization in the region failed and instead slipped into authoritarianism between 1980 and 2000. The single case study investigates a set of elite level dynamics, using components of process tracing and case study techniques. The analysis is built upon a theoretical framework focusing on dimensions of power dynamics in terms of Bratton’s power capture, power division and power sharing along with Svolik’s politics of authoritarian rule and the dominant party system. The research indicates that the political party Zanu-Pf, under the leadership of Mugabe, has dominated the political arena since the first democratic elections of 1980. With the help of the party’s majority, the ruling elites captured, divided, shared and controlled power; to serve authoritarian ends that ensured regime survival at the expense of democracy.

本文的研究主旨在於 ： 從中央與地方政治權力關係變動的主軸來探 討台灣威權政體的轉型過程。在概念的界定上，早期（ 1972 年前）或狹 義的中央與地方政治權力關係，主要係指涉國民黨與地方派系的結盟關係 ，後期（ 1972 年後）或廣義的意涵，則主要係指涉中央政治勢力和地方 基層間的關係，其中，國民黨、反對運動及地方派系三者間的關係，乃是 著重焦點所在。至於分析架構的安排，首先，本文先敘述國民黨威權政體 形成的歷史背景，繼之分析國民黨威權政體的建構，包括國民黨威權政體的控制與支配，及其內在脆弱性。其次，本文將中央與地方政治權力關係的演變劃分為三個時期：第一個時期是 1949-1972 年， 主要劃分的依據在於 1972 年增額選舉的舉辦（象徵中央大門的開啟），分析焦點則是國民黨與地方派系依侍結盟的建立； 第二個時期是 1972-1986 年，主要劃分的依據在於民進黨的成立（象徵中央政治權力的分化），分析的焦點則是本土地方勢力（包括反對運動和地方派系）的向中央挺進，及其和外來政權之間的互動、激盪；第三個時期是 1986 年後，分析的焦點在於黨國體制的瓦解 -- 國民黨的轉化、國會的全面改選 -- 立法院的轉型及地方派系的變與不變 -- 政經結合體。再者，在分析的流程中，本文援引了兩 個貫穿上述三個時期的環境仲介變數：一是意識的發展，主要係指「大中國意識」和「台灣主體意識」彼此間的消長；二是選舉機制的發展，包括選舉角色和選舉層次的改變。

This work narrates a qualitative sociological exploration with auto-ethnographic underpinnings. It deals with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) as a contextual case among others. The thesis seeks to answer the question of whether countries following a TRC route did better than those that did not use TRCs, when it comes to establishing civil control over the military. The author's exposure and involvement in the process as participant, participant observer, observer participant and observer inform the study. With the SATRC as one cornerstone other cases reflected upon include Argentina and Chile (Latin America), Spain and Portugal (Southern Europe), Namibia, Nigeria and Rwanda (Africa). / Sociology / D.Litt. et. Phil. (Sociology)

This work narrates a qualitative sociological exploration with auto-ethnographic underpinnings. It deals with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) as a contextual case among others. The thesis seeks to answer the question of whether countries following a TRC route did better than those that did not use TRCs, when it comes to establishing civil control over the military. The author's exposure and involvement in the process as participant, participant observer, observer participant and observer inform the study. With the SATRC as one cornerstone other cases reflected upon include Argentina and Chile (Latin America), Spain and Portugal (Southern Europe), Namibia, Nigeria and Rwanda (Africa). / Sociology / D.Litt. et. Phil. (Sociology)