Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-325).

Orientador: João Augusto Gentilini / Coorientador: Raquel Almeida Moraes / Banca: Edson do Carmo Inforsato / Resumo: Este trabalho focaliza a política de Informatização na Educação Brasileira, mais especificamente no município de Araraquara, na rede estadual, onde foi implantado o programa de informática na educação do governo, o ProInfo - Programa Nacional de Informática na Educação. A motivação principal foi a intensa publicidade oficial com relação ao referido Programa, enfatizando o fato de que a introdução do computador na escola seria um dos fatores "transformadores" da melhoria da qualidade do ensino e acesso do aluno ao mundo do conhecimento face às grandes mudanças tecnológicas da sociedade do fim do século XX. O trabalho trata da política oficial de Informática na Educação no Brasil e procura constatar se, de fato, a introdução desta tecnologia produz os resultados esperados e está em consonância com os objetivos que o Ministério da Educação anunciou com tanta ênfase. Utiliza como metodologia um estudo teórico, centrado nas categorias conhecimento, informação, democratização e reificação técnica e, posteriormente, uma pesquisa de campo, em duas escolas públicas de Ensino Médio no município de Araraquara. Verificou-se a utilização dos computadores em outras atividades que não as pedagógicas (fora do período de aula) e restrito interesse dos professores em utilizar esta tecnologia, apesar da expectativa dos alunos quanto à utilização das SAI - Salas de Ambiente de Informática e pouca adesão, nas unidades escolares, a todas as propostas indicadas nos objetivos do ProInfo / Abstract: This work focuses the politics of Computerization in the Brazilian Education, more specifically in the city of Araraquara, the state net, where the program of computer science in the education of the government was implanted, the ProInfo - National Program of Computer science in the Education. The main motivation was the intense official advertising with relation to the related Program, emphasizing the fact of that the introduction of the computer in the school would be one of the factors "the transforming" of the improvement of the quality of the education and access of the pupil to the world of the knowledge face to the great technological changes of the society of the end of century XX. The work deals with the official politics of Computer science in the Education in Brazil and looks for to evidence if, in fact, the introduction of this technology produces the results waited and is in accord with the objectives that the Ministry of the Education announced with as much emphasis. It uses as methodology a theoretical study, centered in the categories knowledge, information, democratization and technique and, later, a research of field, in two public schools of Average Education in the city of Araraquara. It was verified use of the computers in other activities that not pedagogical them (it are of the period of lesson) and restricted interest of the professors in using this technology, despite the expectation of the pupils how much to the use of them IT LEAVES - Rooms Environment of Computer science and little adhesion, in the pertaining to school units, to all the proposals indicated in the objectives of the ProInfo / Mestre

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China and Mexico present an intriguing case for comparison. In 1990, the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner described Mexico as “the perfect dictatorship”. By 2000, just a decade later, Mexico’s peaceful transition to a democracy culminated in the victory of Vicente Fox, and the unseating of the PRI’s seventy-one year rule over Mexico. China, or more specifically, People’s Republic of China, on the other hand, has been under the one-party leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for sixty-seven years, since it was founded in 1949, and remains an authoritarian regime today. Since the Third Wave of Democratization swept the world’s developing countries, there have been heated discussions about the potential of democratization in China. Much of the buzz surrounds the direct village elections in China, in which Chinese citizens have the opportunity to vote directly for their village leaders. Although it makes no pretense of hosting national elections, China has held village elections that seem to be a step towards democratization. Or is it? Despite the focus on village elections and the extent to which they are democratic, there has been little work comparing China’s local elections to that of other countries that have been through similar experiences, namely Mexico. This thesis will compare the cases of Mexico and China in order to explore the conditions for democratization, and hypothesize the future of China’s democracy. By examining scholarly works, historical trends, and recent events, this thesis will argue for the importance of local elections on the process of democratization in both Mexico and China.

This doctoral thesis examines the impact of moderate Islamist parties on party system institutionalization in Turkey. Its focus is on the political emergence of ‘Muslim-Democrat’ parties. This term was coined by the scholar Vali Nasr and refers to a new sub-type of party actor in the spectrum of political Islam that employs Islamic religiousity in its electoral appeal but operates within the normative framework of liberal democracy. The central question driving this thesis is to uncover how Turkey’s Muslim-Democrat parties have had a positive effect in advancing the institutionalization of Turkey’s party system. This thesis attempts to contribute to the broader debate regarding the compatibility of Islamist parties and democratic politics in demonstrating that the former, when adopting a moderate format akin to the ‘Muslim-Democrat’ ideal type, can have a positive effect in advancing processes of party system institutionalization. This effect would then be critically discussed within the context of its impact on broader democratic consolidation. The AKP, Turkey’s incumbent party, is chosen as the case study of a Muslim Democrat party. The theoretical basis for the empirical element of this thesis is informed by the research framework for party system institutionalization that was formulated by Mainwaring and Scully in the context of Latin American ‘third-wave’ democracies. They posit four specific factors to examine the institutional strengths of democratic party systems. This framework is used to examine the development of the Turkish party system and the impact of the Islamist parties, especially Muslim-Democrat parties, on these processes. The bulk of this thesis uses statistical analyses of aggregate electoral as well as attitudinal survey data as well as examining the political discourse of the election manifestoes of Turkey’s Islamist and Muslim-Democrat parties using content analysis as well as discourse analysis. The findings of this analysis conclude that Muslim-Democrat parties like the AKP have indeed contributed towards party system institutionalization in Turkey both in terms of stabilizing inter-party competition and social rootedness as well as increasing the legitimacy of democratic civilian politics. In that sense, their effect on party system institutionalization has had a beneficial effect on Turkey’s democratic consolidation.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / In the post-Cold War era, two major trends illustrate the evolution of the international security environment: the spread of democracies and the emergence of asymmetric threats. The former focuses on freedom, the latter on security. New democracies must pay close attention to fundamental values and norms that stand at their core, such as respect for human rights and civil liberties, rule of law, and civilian and democratic control. At the same time, they need effective and efficient intelligence to fight the new threats. Regulating intelligence activities is one of the greatest challenges of a democratic regime because there is a fundamental clash between the democratic culture, based on individual freedom, openness, transparency, accountability, and the secrecy and security-oriented intelligence culture. A fundamental question is raised: How to democratize intelligence and maintain its efficiency and effectiveness at the same time? The conundrum of intelligence reforms requires a trade-off between the need for good intelligence and the respect and promotion of democratic values. This thesis analyses the impact of democratization on intelligence in four major areas: mandate, structure, control, and professionalization. It studies the major academic debates on the matter and then applies the theoretical framework to the Romanian case. / Outstanding Thesis

Repression is a function of many types of states, employed from autocracies to democracies, and anything in between. However, transitional states, those between autocracy and democracy show significantly higher levels of repression than other states. In other studies, research has been done to understand what can be a limitation to repressive activity, and promote democratization. In the case of the post-Soviet state, there have been significant systemic issues that have stalled democratization and allowed it to avoid these limitations. Corruption, consolidation of power into one supermajority party, reliance on electoral manipulation, and passionate development of a national identity all contribute to this problem. As Russia pursues its goals of being a great power, it has exposed itself to globalization and moderating factors. In fact, Russia has accepted western principles on certain rights topics, and implemented positive policies domestically, and supported some human rights legislation at the UN. From this involvement in globalization, Russia may experience the transformative pressures it needs to overcome systemic and structural problems.

This thesis explores the resurgence of anarchism in the current context of Santiago through the use of ethnographic work. Research focuses on anarchism among university students and anarchists that did not grow up in the dictatorship, but either during or after the establishment of democracy. I argue that in conjunction with reflecting a larger trend of increased popularity of anarchism worldwide, anarchists in Santiago also are positioned to make a specific critique of authoritarianism and the continuities of state oppression between dictatorship and democracy. Interviews with anarchists from varied backgrounds and perspectives on anarchism provided an array of differing views on pertinent social and political concerns, but the common threads woven through contemporary anarchism in Santiago are formative experiences within the context of an emerging democracy that has fallen short of reinvigorating many Chileans with faith in the state. Anarchism provides a meaningful critique of the state as an institution that upholds oppression, regardless of who controls it. This provides a framework to understand the continuities anarchists view between Chilean dictatorship and Chilean democracy. Of particular note in this work is the use of the anti-terrorist law by the state to imprison anarchists. The law was passed under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet to prosecute political dissidents, and has been expanded upon after the shift to democracy in 1990. The use of the anti-terrorism law is of interest in this work both because it is a direct legal continuation of the practices of state repression from the dictatorship, and because its use against anarchists seems to have given credence to anarchist claims about the function of the state independent of what its current articulation may be. By analyzing the politicization of anarchists, their critiques of the current state of politics, and state use of the anti-terrorist law a more thorough understanding of political repression, the contradictions of democracy, and contemporary Latin American resistance movements can be attained.

Conventional wisdom portrays ethnic minorities as likely victims of democratization who often fall prey to nationalist aggression fueled by power-seeking elites. Yet, history is replete with newly democratic states that have not only avoided targeted violence against ethnic "others" but also sought to reconcile with aggrieved ethnic minorities through concessions over self-determination. In light of conventional wisdom, this picture is puzzling and raises two important questions: 1) Why is self-determination reform so frequently observed during democratization periods? 2) Why do some democratizing states accommodate minority demands for self-determination while others continue to neglect minority grievances, or worse, become a breeding ground for exclusionary nationalism and minority repression? This dissertation is dedicated to addressing these questions. To answer the first question, I develop a novel theory of self-determination reform that explains the conditions under which government leaders develop both the capacity and incentives to introduce policies that devolve some degree of autonomy to separatist minorities. The theory pinpoints early democratization as a critical juncture where two key conditions necessary for self-determination reform - limited institutional constraints to rule and threats to elite survival - are most likely to be observed together. During early democratization, newly democratic governments are able to push forward radical policy changes without the meddling of institutionally empowered veto players, who typically gain more leverage as the democratic regime consolidates. Matching this capacity for reform are democratizers' strategic incentives to co-opt ethnic separatists. The source of these incentives, I argue, is the emergence of threats to elite survival during the early democratization period, which may be posed by a number of anti-democratic forces including the loyalists of the authoritarian regime and coup-plotting military factions. Amidst political instability, extending an olive branch to separatist minorities helps threatened democratizers strengthen their hand vis-a-vis imminent threats to their survival by containing separatist violence in the periphery and preventing tactical alliances between center-seeking and separatist rebel groups. In certain paths to democracy, democratizers also develop reputational incentives for self-determination reform, which helps establish democratic credentials through signaling a clean break with authoritarian practices. I test my hypotheses using a mixed-method research design, combining statistical analyses of large-N data with a detailed case study of the Philippines-Moro relations during the country's transition to democracy in the mid-1980s. The quantitative findings confirm my hypotheses about the domestic political conditions that are most conducive to minority accommodation, as well as the relationship between democratization and self-determination reform. The Philippines chapter illustrates how strategic and reputational incentives for minority accommodation drive self-determination reform in early democracies, drawing on evidence from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted during fieldwork in Manila. In later chapters, I turn to my second research question and explore the variation in transition outcomes for separatist minorities across democratizing states. The key insight is that conciliatory steps towards ethnic separatists is a likely outcome in all types of transition paths marked by political instability, with the exception of coerced incumbent-led transitions where the incumbent views electoral competition as the primary threat to its survival prospects. In addition to this exception, non-conciliatory outcomes may also be observed in top-down transitions led by powerful autocrats who democratize voluntarily and do so without allowing the transition process to generate any threats to their survival. Case studies of Spain, Nicaragua and Turkey introduced in the last chapter help probe the generalizability of the theory and illustrate how different transition paths shape democratizers' policies towards separatists disputes. Altogether, my dissertation project presents a novel theory of self-determination reform, as well as undertaking the first systematic analysis of the conditions under which democratization paves the way for state-minority reconciliation. More broadly, the theory and findings also add nuance to current thinking about democratization and ethnic minorities, providing evidence that transition processes are not closely associated with minority victimization and ethnic violence as is commonly assumed.

This is a study of democratization in Egypt through the lens of labor organization in the period following the fall of Hosni Mubarak. As a vehicle for collective action that is perpendicular to the Islamist-secular divide, labor organization produced cross-cutting cleavages that transcended intractable identity-based divisions. The suspension of prior constraints on political mobilization opened up spaces for the construction of autonomous working class organizations. An important subset of democratization theory has emphasized the role of working class organizations and political conflict over resource allocation in the institutionalization of democratic orders. The double-negative of the non-emergence of an autonomous organization of the working class and the failure of democratic transition in Egypt steers this study away from a macro-level assessment of the impact of labor autonomy on democratization towards an expository account of the forms of political action undertaken in the pursuit of political autonomy. Taking the assembly of political actors as projects, I examine how various groups sought to mobilize available resources in those projects. In consecutive chapters I consider the impact of available tools, and gravitational constraints of economic legacies, institutional vestiges, the media environment and the legal apparatus on the failures and success of these efforts. What remains of these projects should impact future efforts to construct autonomous political actors, which in this study are defined as political subjects capable of a destructive withdrawal from alliances, the credible threat of which institutionalizes the vulnerability of a governing regime.