Le présent ouvrage cherche à démontrer comment le néo-populisme, un mouvement radical très populaire au cours de la Grande Dépression, se manifesta au Congrès des États-Unis lors des débats sur le New Deal ayant eu lieu de 1933 à 1935. Celui-ci préconisait des solutions drastiques à la Crise, soit une inflation massive, la saisie des grosses fortunes suivie de leur redistribution, ainsi que l'élimination d'une influence attribuée à Wall Street et à l'Europe sur le gouvernement fédéral, dans le but de restaurer la prospérité et de sauvegarder les bases traditionnelles du rêve américain. À la suite d'une consultation attentive du Congressional Record, il semble probable que le discours néo-populiste des parlementaires, directement inspiré de l'argumentaire populiste datant de la fin du XIXème siècle, traduisait surtout les craintes latentes de la classe politique devant le programme interventionniste du New Deal qui modifiait durablement les relations entre les Américains et leur gouvernement. / Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2014

Le mouvement initié le 6 mars 1957 par l’indépendance du Ghana de la Grande-Bretagne balaya l’ensemble de l’Afrique australe jusqu’à culminer en 1960 – « année de l’Afrique ». La décolonisation et la résultante émergence d’une troisième voie dans le conflit idéologique entre les Etats-Unis et l’URSS provoqua l’irruption du continent africain sur l’échiquier politique international. Parallèlement, dans le Sud des Etats-Unis, les Noirs luttaient pour obtenir la reconnaissance de leurs droits civiques. Dès lors, les connections entre ce combat et la lutte internationale pour la décolonisation apparurent, échos modernes aux liens déjà tissés plus tôt entre les Afro-Américains et leur continent d’origine. Le changement dans les relations raciales s’accompagna par un regain de conservatisme aussi bien aux Etats-Unis qu’en Afrique subsaharienne. L’élection du républicain Nixon en 1968 faisait écho au maintien de régimes dirigés par la minorité blanche en Afrique du Sud, en Rhodésie et dans l’ensemble de l’Afrique lusophone. C’est dans ce contexte « globalisé », où politiques intérieure et internationale, race et nation commencèrent à fusionner que les relations raciales émergent sur la scène internationale comme enjeu politique. Les Etats-Unis durent faire face à la ségrégation et à la discrimination dans leur propre pays ainsi qu’à la décolonisation à l’étranger. L’émergence des relations raciales en tant qu’enjeu global se posait comme un obstacle aux tentatives américaines de construire une coalition internationale et multiraciale contre le communisme. L’émergence d’un corps politique noir américain à la fin des années 1960 dans ce contexte pose la question des Représentants afro-américains au Congrès et de la politique africaine des Etats-Unis. Se situant dans ce contexte, cette thèse examine le rôle que le Représentant Charles C. Diggs a joué dans les politiques de Washington vis-à-vis de l’Afrique subsaharienne de 1955 à 1980. Représentant démocrate du Michigan, « Mr. Africa » devint le premier Afro-Américain nommé à la Commission des Affaires étrangères de la Chambre basse en 1959. Il présida, sous l’Administration Nixon, la Sous-commission aux Affaires africaines, orchestra la fondation du lobby parlementaire noir, le Congressional Black Caucus, en 1971 et fut l’architecte de TransAfrica – un lobby non-institutionnel visant à sensibiliser les Américains à la situation raciale en Afrique – en 1977. De par sa carrière, ses engagements politiques et sa nature même de Représentant noir, Charles Diggs a incarné une vision transnationaliste des relations raciales. Notre propos vise à analyser le rôle de Diggs dans la reconnaissance nationale de problèmes raciaux globaux à travers sa définition de ces problèmes en des termes transgressant le simple intérêt racial. / The movement which began on 6th March 1957 with Ghanaian independence from Great Britain swept through the rest of southern Africa, culminating in 1960, hailed the ‘Year of Africa’. Decolonization and the resultant emergence of a third way in the ideological conflict between the United States and the USSR led to the sudden appearance of the African continent on the international political stage. At the same time, in the southern United States, blacks fought for recognition of their civil rights. From this point on, contemporary resonances of the links already woven by Afro-Americans with their continent of origin allowed the connections of their combat with the international struggle for decolonization to become apparent. Changes in race relations were accompanied by a rise in conservatism as much in the United States as in sub-Saharan Africa. The election of the Republican Nixon in 1968 was mirrored in the preservation of regimes of minority white rule in South Africa, Rhodesia and the whole of Portuguese speaking Africa.It is in this ‘globalised’ context, in which domestic and international politics, race and nation began to fuse that race relations emerged on the international scene as a political issue. The United States had to confront segregation and discrimination in their own country, as well as decolonization abroad. The emergence of race relations as a global issue acted as an obstacle to American efforts to construct a multiracial international coalition against communism. The emergence of a Black American political body at the end of the 1960s raises, within this context, the question of the status of Afro-American Representatives at Congress and the African politics of the United States as a whole. Rooted in such a context, this thesis examines the role that Representative Charles C. Diggs played in Washington politics in relation to sub-Saharan Africa from 1955 to 1980. Democrat Representative for Michigan, Diggs, later to be known as ‘Mr Africa’, became, in 1959, the first Afro-American appointed to the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the lower house. Under the Nixon administration, he presided over the Subcommittee on Africa, orchestrated the foundation of the black parliamentary lobby the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, and was the architect in 1977 of TransAfrica, a non-institutional lobby aiming to raise American awareness of the racial situation in Africa. Through his career, his political engagements, and the very fact of being a black Representative, Charles Diggs incarnated a transnationalist vision of race relations. Our intention is to analyze Diggs’ role in the national recognition of global racial problems, through the terms he used to define them, terms which exceeded straightforward racial interest.

This research project seeks to explore aspects of the post-reporting phase of the public inquiry process. Central to the public inquiry process is the concept of legitimacy and the idea that a public inquiry provides and opportunity to re-legitimate the credibility of failed public institutions. The current literature asserts that public inquiries re-legitimise through the production of authoritative narratives. As such, most of this scholarship has focused on the production of inquiry reports and, more recently, the reports themselves. However, in an era of accountability, and in the aftermath of such a poignant attack upon society, the production of a report may represent an apogee, but by no means an end, of the re-legitimation process. Appropriately, this thesis examines the post-reporting phase of the 9/11 Commission’s public inquiry process. The 9/11 Commission provides a useful research vehicle due to the bounded, and relatively linear, implementation process of the Commission’s recommendations. In little more than four months a majority of the Commission’s recommendations were passed into law. Within this implementation phase the dominant discursive process took place in the United States Congress. It is the legislative reform debates in the House of Representatives and the Senate that is the focus of this research project. The central research question is: what rhetorical legitimation strategies were employed in the legislative reform debates of the post-reporting phase of the 9/11 Commission’s public inquiry process? This study uses a grounded theory approach to the analysis of the legislative transcripts of the Congressional reform debates. This analysis revealed that proponents employed rhetorical strategies to legitimise a legislative ‘Call to Action’ narrative. Also, they employed rhetorical legitimation strategies that emphasised themes of bipartisanship, hard work and expertise in order to strengthen the standing of the legislation. Opponents of the legislation focused rhetorical de-legitimation strategies on the theme of ‘flawed process’. Finally, nearly all legislators, regardless of their view of the legislation, sought to appropriate the authoritative legitimacy of the Commission, by employing rhetorical strategies that presented their interests and motives as in line with the actions and wishes of the Commission.

The mass media's role in informing the American public is critical to public support for government policies. The media are said to set the national agenda. This view is based on the assumption of selective coverage they give to news items. Media coverage also influences the salience the public attaches to issues. However, media agenda effect has been challenged by Lang and Lang (1983). These scholars, in their media agenda-building theory, argued that the success of media effect on national agenda is dependent on group support. In order to test this theory, time-related data on South Africa crises, media coverage"of South Africa, American public reactions, congressional, and presidential apartheid-related activities, between 1976 and 1988, were analyzed. Congressional anti-apartheid policies were the dependent and others, the independent variables. The theory made analysis of the data amenable to the additive adopted to test for the significance of the interactive variables, indicated that these variables were negatively related to congressional anti-apartheid policies. The additive model was subsequently analyzed. The time series multiple regression analysis was used in analyzing the relationships. Given autocorrelation and multicollinearity problems associated with time series analysis, the Arima (p, d, q) model was used to model the relationships. This model was used to indicate support, or nonsupport, for the time series regression analysis. The result of the additive model indicated that South African political crises were negatively related to congressional anti-apartheid actions. It also showed that the relationship between the American public reactions and congressional anti-apartheid policies was greater in comparison to all other independent variables. The presidential actions taken against South Africa were negatively related to Congress' anti-apartheid actions. Television had the greatest relationship with congressional anti-apartheid actions compared to newspapers and magazines.

Dans un système constitutionnel fondé sur la souveraineté de la nation, le pouvoir constituant fait figure de phénomène ambivalent, difficilement analysable en termes juridiques. Par définition réfractaire à tout encadrement impératif, le pouvoir suprême au sein de l’Etat n’en doit pas moins revêtir une forme organisée pour exprimer une volonté normative. Les acteurs de la Révolution française agissent aux confins du droit, tirant profit des ressources de la philosophie politique et de l’histoire pour établir une constitution, principe fondamental du système juridique qu’ils cherchent à établir. Ils se dotent d’outils pour parvenir à leurs fins : le concept de « convention nationale » en est un, auréolé du succès des réalisations américaines. Plutôt qu’à une transposition institutionnelle, les révolutionnaires français procèdent à une adaptation. En devenant « extraordinaire », la représentation constituante qu’ils conceptualisent perd son caractère révolutionnaire pour devenir pleinement juridique. Elle offre une alternative à l’insurrection. Un tel processus présente cependant un revers. Ce pouvoir, en accédant à l’existence investi de l’exercice de la souveraineté, est dégagé de toutes contraintes juridiques autres que celles qui découlent de son organisation. Ces contraintes pèsent sur ses membres, exacerbant les tensions qui déchirent un corps collectif doté des pouvoirs les plus étendus. Les dérives sanglantes qui frappent la Convention nationale ne sont pas inéluctables ; elles découlent de l’exploitation politique des failles inhérentes au fonctionnement d’une représentation souveraine dont les membres ne doivent jouir d’aucun privilège. / In a constitutional system founded on the sovereignty of the nation, constituent power is an ambivalent phenomenon, difficult to analyse in juridical terms. By definition resistant to mandatory regulation, the supreme power in the state must necessarily take a form which enables it to express a normative will. The actors of the French Revolution push the confines of the law, taking advantage of the resources of political philosophy and history to establish a constitution, fundamental principle of the juridical system they seek to institute. They create tools to achieve their ends: the concept of “national convention” being one, taking inspiration from the success of American achievements. Rather than an institutionnal transposition, the French revolutionaries proceed with an adaptation. By becoming “extraordinary”, the constituent representation which they conceptualize losses its revolutionary character to become fully juridical. It offers an alternative to the insurrection. By coming into existence invested with the capacity to exercise sovereignty, this power is released from all legal constraints other than those arising as a result of its organization. The process, however, is two-sided, and internally produced constraints weigh on its members, exacerbating tensions thar tear a collective body endowed with the broadest powers. The bloody excesses that strike the National Convention are not inevitable. They arise from political exploitation of flaws inherent to the organization of a sovereign representation whose members must not have any privilege.

Aux Etats-Unis, les années 1990 ont été marquées par l’émergence de nouveaux débats politiques sur le libre-échange. Une large coalition de syndicats et d’organisations pour la protection de l’environnement et des consommateurs s’est pour la première fois mobilisée dans le but de redéfinir les règles de la politique commerciale américaine. Quel est le bilan de leurs activités politiques, près de quinze après leur première bataille législative contre l’Accord de libre-échange nord-américain (ALENA) ? Ce travail de recherche s’appuie sur une série d’entretiens avec des acteurs politiques, des documents internes de groupes d’intérêts (syndicats, écologistes, patronat, etc.) et les registres du Congrès pour analyser les conflits entre les défenseurs du libre-échange et les partisans d’une « équité des échanges » à travers cinq études de cas entre 1991 et 2005. L’analyse conclut que la « relation spéciale » entre le patronat et l’exécutif a été l’un des principaux obstacles aux progrès de l’alliance entre syndicalistes et écologistes depuis l’origine du processus de décision jusqu’à la ratification au Congrès. Non seulement les institutions américaines ont limité l’influence des groupes de la société civile à l’origine des négociations commerciales, mais le président a également fortement assisté les organisations patronales dans leurs efforts de lobbying, leur permettant de remporter la plupart des batailles législatives entre 1991 et 2005. / The 1990s marked the emergence of the “new politics of American trade.” A large coalition of labor, environmental and consumer organizations fought to broaden the narrow economic scope of American trade policy and change the rules of globalization. More than fifteen years after their first legislative battle against the North American Free Trade Agreement, what is the legacy of their political mobilization? What factors constrained their progress? Drawing from interviews with political actors, lobbying materials from labor, environmental and business organizations, and congressional records, this dissertation analyzes the clash between “fair” and “free” traders in five major legislative battles from 1991 to 2005. It reveals that the “special relationship” between the business community and the executive branch was the key obstacle to the achievements of the “blue (collar)-green” alliance from the beginning to the end of the policy process. Not only did the private sector enjoy privileged access to the negotiations phase, but the president also assisted free trade coalitions in their lobbying efforts, allowing them to win most legislative battles.

This thesis aims to contribute to the current academic debate on contemporary polarization in the U.S. Congress. The paper provides a brief overview of the relevenat existing literature and schools of thought on the issue. As part of the thought direction which steers away from definining roots and causes of polarization among the general public but rather sees them as issues of the political elite, this thesis highlights the need to focus on individual Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) in the House of Representatives and their connection to polarization. By applying an existing dataset accepted among political science scholars as the key tool for measuring polarization, the thesis seeks to affirm the presumed ideological differences among the individual CMOs (or caucuses). The main part of this thesis which adds value to further discussion is the case study of all roll call votes of the 114th House of Representatives examining voting cohesion of the studied caucuses. The aim of this study is to show to what extent the CMOs are in fact consistent voting blocs and how influential they can potentially be within the political elites in the House of Representatives and to what level they may be contributing to the contemporary polarization.

[pt] Nós mostramos que um fator político que explora a variação cross-section em retornos individuais de ações pode prever o resultado de eleições nacionais, incluindo o ganho líquido de assentos no congresso e o presidente. Usando eleições presidenciais dos Estados Unidos desde 1928, nós também encontramos que esse portfolio long-short construído ao redor da eleição entrega informação sobre aprovação presidencial por um longo período depois da eleição. / [en] We show that a political factor that exploits cross-sectional variation in individual stock returns can forecast national election results, including net House seat gains and the president. Using US presidential elections since 1928, we also find that this long-short portfolio constructed around the election period delivers information on presidential approval for a long period after the election.

Si, durant la Guerre Froide, les dépenses militaires américaines colossales étaient justifiées par une menace existentielle contre les États-Unis et leurs alliés, l'effondrement du camp et de l'idéologie communistes, suivi de la désintégration de l'Union soviétique, devrait inciter à une révision à la baisse de ces budgets militaires ou, à tout le moins, à les ramener à des niveaux proportionnels aux exigences du nouveau paysage sécuritaire international. Cette étude qui s'insère dans le cadre théorique de l'Economie de la Défense, est axée sur une exploration de la nature et des fondements réels des dépenses militaires américaines post-Guerre Froide. Elle suggère qu'elles semblent servir des finalités autres que la fonction constitutionnelle (besoin) de la défense de la nation américaine, qui sont celles de la préservation des intérêts politiques et matériels des élites politiques, économiques et militaires (une alliance d'intérêts créant une situation de dépendance chronique irréversible de l'économie américaine vis-à-vis des dépenses de défense). Ainsi, ces dépenses sont axées sur la projection de la puissance militaire à l'extérieur, servent à réaliser une hégémonie géopolitique et géoéconomique globales et non pas à pourvoir «la défense commune». / If, during the Cold War, the colossal U.S military expenditures were justified by an existential threat against the United States and their allies, the collapse of the communist camp and ideology, followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, should have pushed to revising downward those spending or, at least, brought them down to proportional levels, commensurate with the new international security landscape. This study, which falls within the scope of Defense Economics and which is centered on exploring the genuine rationales and determinants of the U.S. post-Cold War military spending, suggests that they seem serving purposes (needs) other than the constitutional function of defending the American Nation, which are those linked to preserving the interests of the political, economic and military elites (an alliance of interest creating a state of chronic and irreversible dependency of the U.S. economy on the Defense spending). Henceforth, those spending are articulated, in our own point of view, on the projection of the military power abroad, serving to achieve a global geopolitical and geo-economic hegemony and not the “common defense”.

Initially proposed in 2001, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) continues to be relevant after nearly 20 years of debate. The year 2010 was significant because there seemed to be some possibility of passage. This study investigated the ways in which the DREAM Act discourse was framed that year by supporters and opponents. Selected Congressional speeches of three supporters and three opponents were analyzed using the approach to frame analysis developed by Schön and Rein. Accordingly, attention went to each individual's metacultural frame (i.e., culturally shared beliefs), policy frame (i.e., identification of problem and presentation of possible solution), and rhetorical frame (i.e., means of persuading the audience). Attention also went to the shared framing among supporters and the shared framing among opponents as well as differences in framing across the two groups. Although speakers varied in framing the issue, there were commonalities within groups and contrasts between groups. For supporters, the metacultural frame emphasized equity/equal opportunity, fairness, and rule of law; for opponents, the metacultural frame stressed rule of law, patriotism, and national security. For supporters, the policy frame underscored unfairness as the problem and the DREAM Act as the solution; for opponents, the policy frame emphasized the DREAM Act as the problem and defeating the DREAM Act as the solution. Rhetorical frames also differed, with the supporters making much use of testimonial examples and the opponents making much use of hyperbole. The study illustrates (1) how the same named values and beliefs can have dramatically different interpretations in metacultural framing, as were the case for rule of law and American dream in this discourse; (2) how the crux of an issue and its intractability can be seen by looking at how the problem is posed and how the solution is argued, and (3) how speakers strengthen their claims with particular kinds of rhetorical devices. Through descriptions of political positioning on the DREAM Act, the study contributes to understandings of ongoing issues regarding the lives of undocumented young people who have received and are receiving education in the U.S.