This research examines the effects of democratization and political performance on the functional distribution of income in Argentina and Brazil from the end of their authoritarian periods to the present. The existing literature tends to focus on the impacts of democratization and political performance on the economic growth of the country as a whole or on changes to per capita income. This analysis focuses on the equality of economic development in less developed countries because growth is not necessarily distributed equally and poverty and inequality are both endemic to many less developed countries and also negatively impact development as a whole as well as the consolidation of democracy. To examine the effects of democratization and political performance on the shape of economic development, this thesis utilizes the Polity IV index as a measure of democracy, Relative Political Extraction as a proxy for political performance, and labor's share of national income as a measure of income inequality. Theoretically, a more democratic regime should enact policies that allow for a more equitable distribution of income because democratization increases popular representation and makes the provision of public goods preferable to the provision of private goods. Similarly, a regime with higher political capacity should be better equipped to enact whatever policies and development strategies it chooses, thereby reducing income inequality if the regime deems equitable development a priority. The main finding of this research is that political performance has had a significant impact on the shape of economic development in Argentina and Brazil, whereas the effect of democratization on the shape of development is less clear. A stronger, more effectively performing government will be better able to deliver equitable development regardless of its level of democracy than will a poorly performing government of any type.

One of the central pillars of the new developmental agenda of the 1990s is a vibrant and plural civil society. It has been argued that civil society is not only crucial to safeguarding democracy but to extending democratic space. The absence of democratic accountability has often been cited in explaining poor levels of development in Africa. Given the resource weakness within civil society organisations in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa many multilateral and bilateral donors have intervened to support and manufacture civil society. While these interventions have been going on little work has gone into theorising the forms of civil society that would broaden democratic space. Donors have largely intervened to implement civil society building programmes that are to their liking. This research paper reviews recent literature. It evaluates the claims and the practice of donor agencies. The paper also identifies key areas of donor interest, the deployment of funding in pursuance of those interests and how these interests are shaping civil society engagement. The paper argues that the structure of funding is acting to exclude certain organisations that may hold the key to ensuring democratic accountability. It also reviews the emerging literature on the ideological changes that have attended the new developmental agenda of the late 1990s and their links with the civil society building process. / Thesis(M.Dev.Studies)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

In 2004 the American Political Science Association ("APSA") published research exploring whether the rising income inequality in the United States had an effect on political equality. Although the APSA found tremendous evidence of a correlation between income and political power, the APSA nonetheless concluded that the issue could not be conclusively determined without further analysis. The intent of this thesis is to argue the position that economic inequality is heavily implicated in both political equality and equality of opportunity, and to propose a political theory that directly addresses - rather than evades - this issue. A conclusion drawn in this paper is that it is necessary in liberal capitalist environments to place constraints on individual economic liberty for the sake of maintaining some degree of economic equality. I show in this paper that this conclusion is consistent with both the liberal tradition and American political culture. This paper accepts - rather than circumvents - the fundamental principle that income inequality is inevitable in a capitalist democracy as is the ability of money to purchase positions, power and assorted privileges. Therefore, it should be the goal of social justice theory to ensure the gap between the richest and poorest be allowed to be great enough to respect individual choice and responsibility, but not great enough to dampen the opportunities available to those born into the bottom of the economic scale or to permit those born into the top of the economic ladder to exert oppressive power over the rest. In the final chapter I propose four methods of narrowing economic inequality. These include a minimum standard, minimum wage and income tax reform, a tax and cap on wealth and an absolute inheritance cap. These four methods of limiting economic inequality are directed at narrowing, if not eliminating political inequality and inequality of opportunity.

This study explores the relationship between economic development, social mobility, elites, and regime formation. I argue that the genesis of regime formation, in general, and of democratic regimes, in particular, is determined by the type of economic structure a society possesses, on the one hand, and on the degree the to which demands from disfranchised groups do or do not pose a substantial threat to the interests of elites who occupy the upper strata of the social and economic status hierarchy. Second I demonstrate that the dynamics of transition to wider political participation, as the core element of a democratic system of governance, and the survival of such change are different. In what follows I illustrate that some factors that have been found to dampen the chances for wider participation or have been found to be unrelated to onset of a democratic system of governance have considerable impacts on the durability of the democratic regimes. In a nutshell, the analysis points to the positive effects of mineral wealth and income inequality on the prospects of a democratic survival. Using a cross-national time series data set for all countries for the period between 1960 and 1999 I put the hypotheses to the test. I use binary logit, ordered logit, and ordinary least squares (OLS) to delineate the link between socioeconomic changes and the transition to wider participation. Survival analyses are employed to test for what factors account for the durability of a democratic regime.

This study examines the impact of Christian religiosity on attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades in the US. The study used data from the General Social Survey on social safety-net policy preferences and levels of Christian religiosity. Simple cross tabulations, correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to assess the data. Contrary to previous related research, the results of this study indicate that Christian religiosity has a very weak association with opposition to social safety-net policies. At the national level, the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social protection policies was largely mediated by other factors such as race, gender, education, family income, and political ideology. These results indicate that Christian religiosity per se does not independently influence social spending preferences. Instead, these results suggest that social divisions in socioeconomic standing and in political ideology, which in turn are closely related to differences in support for social protection policies, permeate American Christianity. The study also examined the relationship between Christian religiosity and social protection policy preferences among Hispanic and Black Americans separately. Although Hispanics and Blacks are generally more supportive of social spending in comparison to White Americans, Christian religiosity was not found to have a strong independent effect on support for social safety-net policies among these two groups. The study did find, however, a markedly different level of support for social safety-net policies among identifiable Christian groups at the national level and in the Hispanic-American population. / Those who self-identified as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist" Christians were much less supportive of social safety-net policies in comparison to "mainline" or "liberal" Christians. Among Hispanics, Catholics were more supp in comparison to Evangelical Protestants. Moreover, the results of this study indicate that religious American Christians have had a tendency to give precedence to moral issues over concerns about social safety-net policies thus facilitating an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition. Lastly, the present work proposes a broad framework through which to interpret the aforementioned findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within American Christianity. / by Emmanuel Alvarado. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.