This dissertation argues that the Alberta Progressive Conservative organization constructed a rural political monopoly that facilitated a general provincial political monopoly. It will argue that rural Alberta was vital for the rise of the Progressive Conservatives and accounted for much of its success over the subsequent twenty-five years. The argument also challenges the theories of ‘responsible party government’ that have traditionally explained the perpetuation of the quasi-party system and tradition of one-party dominance in Alberta. It argues that a more comparative approach, specifically the thesis of democratic quality, be integrated into this field of study. The employment of democratic quality biases and the consolidation of economic power in rural Alberta contributed heavily to Conservative political success between 1971 and 1996. Over this period, the Conservatives perpetuated a system of electoral malapportionment that overrepresented rural constituencies and underrepresented urban ridings. At the same time the Conservatives actively challenged independent rural/agrarian civil society organizations and any policy contrary to the party’s political interests. Alberta’s once considerable independent rural and agrarian lobby is today predominantly mediated by their position within or in relation to the Progressive Conservative Association. The decline of general farm organizations (GFOs) and agrarian civil society organizations, facilitated in part by government complicity and a changing agricultural economy, resulted in a ‘political monopoly’ in rural areas. During this period malapportionment underpinned a general political monopoly with rural overrepresentation shoring up collapses of urban support (i.e. Edmonton) in the 1980s and 1990s. This work will provide evidence of participation, competition and other democratic quality biases through a construction of this theoretical framework in terms of a broader comparative perspective based on the evaluation of ‘democratic quality’.

What conditions give rise to and nurture ethno-nationalist terrorist movements in India? Specifically, can geography create grievances and be beneficial in a terrorist campaign? I investigate how geography prevented historical development in certain locations in India. I theorize that rugged geographic features prevented economic, social, and political development. Underdevelopment and isolation created grievances in the population. Aggrieved groups then utilized the same geographic features that prevented development to launch effective terrorist campaigns. I conduct a district level analysis of terrorism in India using statistical and GIS analysis. I supplement the analysis with case studies from the Indian states of Uttarkhand, Tamil Nadu, and Assam. I also include a case study from Nigeria to demonstrate the applicability of my theory outside of Asia. I find that geographic features, specifically forested terrain, and proximity to international borders impeded development and increased the likelihood of terrorism.

This dissertation argues that the Alberta Progressive Conservative organization constructed a rural political monopoly that facilitated a general provincial political monopoly. It will argue that rural Alberta was vital for the rise of the Progressive Conservatives and accounted for much of its success over the subsequent twenty-five years. The argument also challenges the theories of ‘responsible party government’ that have traditionally explained the perpetuation of the quasi-party system and tradition of one-party dominance in Alberta. It argues that a more comparative approach, specifically the thesis of democratic quality, be integrated into this field of study. The employment of democratic quality biases and the consolidation of economic power in rural Alberta contributed heavily to Conservative political success between 1971 and 1996. Over this period, the Conservatives perpetuated a system of electoral malapportionment that overrepresented rural constituencies and underrepresented urban ridings. At the same time the Conservatives actively challenged independent rural/agrarian civil society organizations and any policy contrary to the party’s political interests. Alberta’s once considerable independent rural and agrarian lobby is today predominantly mediated by their position within or in relation to the Progressive Conservative Association. The decline of general farm organizations (GFOs) and agrarian civil society organizations, facilitated in part by government complicity and a changing agricultural economy, resulted in a ‘political monopoly’ in rural areas. During this period malapportionment underpinned a general political monopoly with rural overrepresentation shoring up collapses of urban support (i.e. Edmonton) in the 1980s and 1990s. This work will provide evidence of participation, competition and other democratic quality biases through a construction of this theoretical framework in terms of a broader comparative perspective based on the evaluation of ‘democratic quality’.

In the years preceding the Third Wave of democracy, the prevailing belief was that democracy in Africa will not flourish unless it delivers the crucial economic goods its citizens live and die for. In an area of the world where poverty is highlighted, the individual pursuit of improved living conditions is more likely to drive citizen faith in democracy as opposed to the political process itself. By this popular belief, society will support democracy, or not, mainly for its perceived economic benefits. In this study, I revisit the assumptions of the theory of `politics and poverty' espoused over 20 years ago using recent data on individual attitudes and scores of democratic development in Africa. I find citizen support for democracy overwhelmingly a function of political performance factors, as opposed to the expectations of material returns as once believed. This finding runs contrary to conventional wisdom, even among citizens who reside in lesser developed democracies where one would suspect more ambivalence to regime type in the face of pressing economic concerns. If poverty is no more the root source in explaining democratic commitment in Africa, then, what is? I probe further into the specific instances of Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria and find commitment to democracy closely tied to government policy aimed at promoting democratization. The ambitious policies arranged in struggling democracies of today, such as Mali and Nigeria, attempted to emulate policy of the West but failed at cultivating democracy from the ground up, subsequently creating tentative democrats. Policies in successful democratic cases such as Ghana, however, reflected a keen attentiveness to context through the inclusion of citizens in deliberative practices between society and state, creating an empowered, committed populace. Politics and policy, not poverty, best explains democratic commitment, or lack thereof, in Africa. The implications, of course, fall on the significant responsibility of policy makers in crafting bottom-up strategies for further democratization and on politicians in delivering upon their promises when elected.

This dissertation argues that the Alberta Progressive Conservative organization constructed a rural political monopoly that facilitated a general provincial political monopoly. It will argue that rural Alberta was vital for the rise of the Progressive Conservatives and accounted for much of its success over the subsequent twenty-five years. The argument also challenges the theories of ‘responsible party government’ that have traditionally explained the perpetuation of the quasi-party system and tradition of one-party dominance in Alberta. It argues that a more comparative approach, specifically the thesis of democratic quality, be integrated into this field of study. The employment of democratic quality biases and the consolidation of economic power in rural Alberta contributed heavily to Conservative political success between 1971 and 1996. Over this period, the Conservatives perpetuated a system of electoral malapportionment that overrepresented rural constituencies and underrepresented urban ridings. At the same time the Conservatives actively challenged independent rural/agrarian civil society organizations and any policy contrary to the party’s political interests. Alberta’s once considerable independent rural and agrarian lobby is today predominantly mediated by their position within or in relation to the Progressive Conservative Association. The decline of general farm organizations (GFOs) and agrarian civil society organizations, facilitated in part by government complicity and a changing agricultural economy, resulted in a ‘political monopoly’ in rural areas. During this period malapportionment underpinned a general political monopoly with rural overrepresentation shoring up collapses of urban support (i.e. Edmonton) in the 1980s and 1990s. This work will provide evidence of participation, competition and other democratic quality biases through a construction of this theoretical framework in terms of a broader comparative perspective based on the evaluation of ‘democratic quality’.

Presidential approval ratings are a political resource that presidents and their advisors hope to influence through strategic action in order to achieve their policy goals (McAvoy 2008, 284). Through 1999, scholarly literature had largely ignored the president's use of unilateral powers. Since Moe and Howell (1999a, 1999b), however, the literature on the unilateral presidency has expanded rapidly. Despite the rapid growth of literature examining the unilateral presidency, and 45 years of presidential approval ratings literature, literature examining the link between the president's use of unilateral powers and subsequent presidential approval ratings is virtually nonexistent. Existing research has not statistically examined what effect, if any, the president's issuing executive orders has on subsequent job approval ratings. This thesis seeks to address that research gap. By modeling aggregate and individual-level presidential approval ratings, using fixed-effect models, OLS regression, and binary logistic regression, this thesis finds evidence indicating the president's issuing of executive orders has a negative impact on the subsequent presidential job approval ratings that individuals report. If an executive order is salient to the public, presidents receive lower presidential approval ratings from persons of all political parties; however, if the executive order is non-salient then presidents only receive lower presidential approval ratings from members of their own political party. Members of the opposition party report higher presidential approval ratings when the president issued non-salient executive orders. Thus, this thesis concludes that the president's issuing of executive orders has significant effects on subsequent presidential job approval ratings, and future research should be conducted to explore this relationship further.

Since the transitions to democracy in Latin America, women in the region have undergone major changes in their roles in society. From traditionally only present in the home to participating in collective action efforts, and finally participating at increasing numbers in governments, women have made incredible strides in the Latin American region. Latin American countries have successfully advocated for the inclusion of women in government, but few studies in academia focus on determining whether their inclusion has made a difference in government processes or in society. Borrowing from the literature positing that women are behaviorally different from men as well as their identification with motherhood and as wives in their collective action efforts in Latin America, I argue that women have different concerns from men both outside and inside of the public sphere and therefore make a difference in government with regards to policy priorities and government budget allocations. Studying 18 Latin American countries, I find that there is a gender gap in public opinion, which demonstrates that women are more concerned with social welfare matters than men. I also find that female concerns are carried into their behavior once in government as observed by female legislators’ heightened support for social welfare policies. Furthermore, I find that women in legislatures affect government behavior differently from their male counterparts as observed with female legislators’ positive effects on the allocation of the budget towards social welfare areas.

This thesis updates and expands upon the developmental theory of the gender gap in party and ideological identification originally posited by Norris and Inglehart (2000) to explain why women in advanced industrial nations are more likely to hold more leftist ideological identification than men. A comparative cross-national analysis using data from the World Values Survey (2004-2008) extends Norris and Inglehart's study, with an examination of the gender gap in advanced industrial, post-communist and developing nations. To further explore the nature of the gender gap in the United States, data from the American National Election Study (Cumulative File and 2012 cross-section) are used to explain the evolution of the ideological and partisan gender gap over time. Moreover, such a focus can also help explain any subnational difference in the gender gap in the two regions that have experienced a partisan realignment: the South toward the Republican party and the Northeast toward the Democratic party. Findings from the comparative analysis support the notion in advanced-industrial nations the gender gap has persisted, and indeed grown, with women identifying more with the left than men. This gender gap is robust as it remains significant even when utilizing a multivariate analysis to control for variables that measure social structure and cultural attitudes. However, in post-communist and developing nations a gender gap is less evident although some evidence shows that women in post-communist societies are experiencing a secular realignment and are slowly moving toward leftist ideological orientations. Findings from the analysis of the U.S. demonstrate little regional differences, with women in the South being more liberal and increasingly more Democratic, while women in the Northeast are also more liberal and increasingly Democratic in their party identifications.

<p>My research examines the political role of unions, as the collective voice of Canadian cultural workers, in connection to the cultural policies that shape their memberships’ personal and professional lives. I examine the policy advocacy strategies of Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists; the Directors Guild of Canada; the Writers Guild of Canada; the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada; and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees IATSE, as members of federal and provincial cultural policy networks.</p> <p>I argue that changes in cultural policy influence the level of participation and the political strategies of the unions and guilds in federal and provincial cultural policy networks. Shifts in organizational and political strategies affect the ways that unions articulate their interests as policy problems; this, in turn, affects the ways in which issues and problems are understood and acted upon by decision-makers in policy reforms. While most of the unions and guilds, particularly at the federal level, have been active in cultural policy networks for several decades, unions at both federal and provincial levels are increasingly partnering with the employers – the independent producers – in their policy interventions. Analysis of my case studies leads me to conclude that this strategy is paradoxical for unions. While a partnership approach from a “production industry” standpoint arguably increases union access to and credibility with policy decision-makers, it can compromise or obscure how unions articulate cultural policy problems as <em>labour</em> problems. When unions engage in policy advocacy either independently or as a labour coalition, the direct relationship between cultural policy and its specific impact on labour markets and working conditions is most evident.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Voter frustration in the US is driven largely by partisanship and gridlock in Congress. This paper seeks to understand the root causes of gridlock and look at alternative methods for eliminating it. I find that while the media focuses on polarization as the root cause of gridlock, the checks and balances system plays an equally significant role, and that the interaction between the party system and the governmental structure of the US government creates incentives that cause gridlock to form. Recent reforms have failed to successfully address gridlock because they do not change the polarized party system or the barriers to policy-making in government. After acknowledging the failure of recent reforms, I consider a new set of reforms: electoral system reform. The field of electoral systems provides many policy alternatives with profound tradeoffs, many of which make gridlock obsolete. Majoritarian systems create single-party majorities and reduce checks on majority power, allowing the majority party to implement their platform tempered through voter approval rather than checks on their power. Proportional systems retain checks and balances through the creation of governing coalitions, but the parties in power have stronger incentives to cooperate and compromise than under the current polarized US system. I propose a system for evaluating electoral systems and compare them in terms of accountability, legitimacy, effectiveness, representativeness, and complexity. Finally, I propose two electoral reforms, informed by the study of electoral systems, that are both feasible and increase the ability for third parties to gain seats in the legislature. The first, proportional representation for House members, creates small to medium-sized proportional Congressional districts at the state level to reduce the threshold for party entry. The second, Alternative Vote (ranked-choice) for Senate, proposes switching to a preference ranking system for Senate elections further remove barriers to third parties. These reforms should undermine the polarized two-party system and create new incentives for cooperation in Congress.