ABSTRACT From the 18th century, a considerable element of legislative democracy has been that of national budgeting. This has been substantially critical in assuring legislative statute over the government which has been controlled by kings. Predictably, the notion of public participation in budgetary processes has been disparate by governments in Africa. Due to its technocratic and elitist design, it is mostly a complex issue to recognise the making of national budgets by ordinary citizens in South Africa. However, topical developments have shown that the processes of creating national budgets should consider civil society’s role particularly in evaluating the impact of budgets on the poor. It is against this technocratic and elitist architectural backdrop of the state, regarding public budgeting and implementation, which this study employs the People’s Budget Campaign as a unique civil society organisation advocating for an alternative budget process in South Africa. This research has used a qualitative method in analysing data collected from primary and secondary sources, semi-structured interviews, as well as direct and participant observation of PBC activities.

Candidates for public office expend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and financial resources in the hopes of connecting with voters. And because voters differ in their levels of political involvement, candidates need to utilize various avenues to make these connections with the electorate. One way that candidates convey their personal values and characteristics is by showcasing themselves as being involved in and knowledgeable about sports. This thesis utilized an experimental design to analyze whether a candidate's involvement in sports actually has an impact on how voters evaluate the candidate's image. Results indicated that voters' gender, as well as their levels of political knowledge, helps predict how they will evaluate a political candidate's image.

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This dissertation contends that to appropriately address the state of political equality and pursue democratic interest(s) in an increasingly commodified world, we must understand the more complex, socio-legal, and interdependent actions, actors, discourse, laws, and ideas which have grown increasingly important within campaign finance judicial out-comes, as these impact political equality and democratic governance. Consequently, this dissertation examines the largely underexplored factors that shape judicial outcomes and practical application of campaign finance policy which are explanatory of the distribution of electoral participatory power. This electoral participatory power is a key indicator of political equality in democratic nation states. The underexplored factors that I examine include corporate identity as an analytical concept and power resource, commodification of political speech, constitutional constraints, intergovernmental dialogue, regulatory ac-tors, and varied judicial and legislative commitments to democracy. To do so, the thesis utilizes and modifies insights from historical institutionalism, power resources models, neopluralism, and dialogue theory literature, to contribute to knowledge about how and why campaign finance policies and electoral participatory power of individuals, groups, and corporations have changed over time through judicial outcomes, practical administration, and related reforms. Through this demonstration, the analysis of this thesis opens up space to explore and identify sources and modes of gradual institutional change within the context of campaign finance judicial outcomes. Specifically, this thesis documents and critically examines the actions, actors, discourse, laws, and ideas which have permeated judicial conflicts in Canada and the United States over several decades and illustrates how they have determined the scope of corporate constitutional rights and freedoms, potential for money in politics, and the distribution of political equality in these two advanced democracies. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation examines the sources and modes of gradual institutional change within the context of judicial campaign finance conflicts and related reforms. It argues that the scope of corporate constitutional rights, the commodification of political speech, and the distribution of electoral participatory power are best understood through an analysis that utilizes and modifies insights from historical institutionalism, power resources models, neopluralism, and dialogue theory literature. To demonstrate this, this thesis critically examines the complex, socio-legal, and interdependent actions, actors, discourse, laws, and ideas which have grown increasingly important within campaign finance judicial out-comes, as these impact political equality and democratic governance. Consequently, this thesis illustrates how the scope of corporate constitutional rights and freedoms, potential for money in politics, and the distribution of political equality in the context of elections in Canada and the United States have changed over time, and the reasons for which they have.

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The utilisation of collaboration and collaborationism as a strategy to address the Kurdish question in Iraq and the involvement of the collaborators in the perpetration of mass violence and genocide is a subject that has not been thoroughly investigated.  The objective of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying motivations that drove a specific subset of the Kurdish population to engage in collaboration and collaborationism with the Iraqi regime. Additionally, the study seeks to comprehend the factors that contributed to the behavioural changes within those collaborationists “Jashes”, as they shifted from a collaborative role to assuming a rescue role during the Anfal Campaign.  This study employs the theoretical frameworks of collaboration and collaborationism, as well as altruism and egoism, to analyse data obtained from in-depth interviews with the Jashes. By employing qualitative content analysis, this research could be able to gain insights into the motivations underlying their actions.  This study posits that the collaborative activities observed in southern Kurdistan can be most accurately categorised as collaborationism. The motivations behind participating in these activities were varied, encompassing factors such as evading conscription and punishment, tribal conflict, economic incentives, and internal political disputes within the Kurdish political parties. Moreover, this research contends that the incentives behind behavioural changes within jashes encompassed both egoistic and altruistic motivations.

State legislative campaign finance reform varies considerably among states and over time. Over the past 35 years states have adopted increasingly stronger reform policies; however, many disparities between states still exist. Current state legislative campaign finance laws range from disclosure only to clean elections programs. All states have disclosure laws, while only three have clean elections regulations. Many studies of state campaign finance reform examine the regulatory effects on campaigns and elections (e.g., Thompson and Moncrief 1998; Francia and Herrnson 2003) but none consider the causes of such reforms. This dissertation employs a unique research strategy by individually analyzing the specific types of state legislative campaign finance reform: 1) disclosure, 2) contribution limits, and 3) expenditure limits and public funding from 1970-2005. What emerges from these analyses indicates the conditions under which states have adopted more and less stringent types of legislative campaign finance reform. It examines the extent to which legislative professionalism, Democratic control of government, political scandals, and the initiative affect the stringency of campaign finance reform in the states. Just because a state requires legislative candidates to disclose campaign finance figures does not mean that the requirement is strong when compared to what other states are doing. Measuring the type of campaign finance reform based on a unique stringency scale allows us to understand the conditions under which a state supports strong or weak campaign finance laws. / Political Science

Previous studies of media bias generally do not consider intra-campaign shifts in the composition of the coverage, leaving unanswered the question of whether coverage is consistently balanced or merely appears so when all the ups and downs of the election are tallied up. Even this aggregate assessment of balance frequently reveals imbalance in coverage, but there are few studies that test for effects of media imbalance. A lack of comprehensive content analysis data makes substantive work in this area challenging and frequently dependent upon single-election studies or those that examine a single variable over multiple years. This project takes advantage of a highly detailed, project-generated content analysis of all NBC Nightly News broadcasts and New York Times articles during the general election period (from just prior to the national party conventions through Election Day) for four election years (1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008) to address the question of whether aggregate and intra-campaign imbalance exists along three axes: volume of coverage (total coverage of the campaign and candidates), share of coverage (percentage of coverage received by each candidate on a given day, not conflated with volume), and tone of coverage (average daily valence score of coverage, positive or negative). Share of coverage is not stable at any point of equilibrium, but swings back and forth, favoring one candidate then the other throughout the general election. Analysis of tone of coverage reveals a surprising correlation between the positive/negative coverage of the candidates, with tone of coverage of the candidates correlating to a statistically significant degree. With this data it is possible to test whether shifts in the composition of coverage cause shifts in electoral support as measured by trial heat polls. Analysis of the data shows a significant relationship between changes in share and tone of coverage and changes in levels of electoral support. The corollary question, "what attracts media attention?" shows that media outlets are attracted by conflict as determined by a qualitative and quantitative analysis of headlines and share of coverage, and a further test shows a significant correlation between media coverage of an issue and both candidates' mention of that issue in their remarks, though not between media coverage and a single-candidate mention of the issue. The end result is a more-comprehensive picture of political reporting, its effect on the electorate, and the ways in which candidates may attract attention than is currently available in the literature. The combination of a multi-election measure with a high degree of intra-campaign diagnostic sensitivity provides a useful benchmark for the further study of media coverage of campaigns, as well as more than sufficient justification for its substantive significance as an area of political study, by virtue of the observed relationship between coverage and levels of electoral support. / Political Science