Thesis (PH. D.)--Columbia University, 1936. / Without thesis note. "Prepared under the auspices of the Columbia university Council for research in the social sciences." Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (M.A. (Political and International Studies))--Rhodes University, 2005. / A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Political Studies.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1966. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Louisville, 2009. / Department of Urban and Public Affairs Vita. "May 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-121).

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Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / A partir de um enfoque antropológico, baseado na ideia de que a política não é um dado a priori e que precisa ser compreendida a partir das práticas e das formulações dos atores em contextos específicos, discutirei como a política é vivenciada pelos moradores do loteamento Boa Terra, situado em Guaratiba na Zona Oeste carioca, através de pesquisa qualitativa realizada entre os anos de 2008 e 2010. Além de acompanhar festas, atividades ordinárias e extraordinárias do centro comunitário local e campanhas eleitorais, visitei o loteamento em diferentes dias da semana com o objetivo de observar o cotidiano desses moradores. Embora tenha conversado e acompanhado as atividades dos moradores comuns, analisei com mais atenção as práticas desenvolvidas por aqueles que disputam o direito de falar em nome que, em geral, fazem (ou fizeram) parte de alguma associação local. Qual é o papel dessas associações? A que noções de bem público recorrem? Como se dá a relação entre os representantes locais e os moradores do loteamento? Que tipo de distinção existe entre eles? Como tais representantes se articulam no sentido de garantir as demandas de sua base? De que forma costuram relações no interior das agências estatais e com políticos em geral? / From an anthropological approach, this thesis discusses how politics is experienced by Boa Terra dwellers, an allotment located in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro. The research is based on the idea that "politics" should not be taken as a priori data and have to be understood through the analysis of actors? practices and formulations in specific contexts. A qualitative research was conducted between 2008 and 2010 in Boa Terra allotment. Over this period I have followed and participated in parties, ordinary and extraordinary activities of community center and election campaigns. I have visited the neighborhood in differents days of the week in order to observe the dwellers everyday life. In the course of my investigation, although I have observed the activities of "ordinary people" who live in Boa Terra allotment, the main focus of my analysis were the practices developed by those who do (or did) part of local association and dispute the right to represent the dwellers. Following are some of the main questions that I have tried to answer through this investigation: What is the role of local associations? With which concept of public resort do they work? How is the relationship between "local politicians" and the ordinary residents of the allotment? What kinds of distinctions are there between them? How do local representatives articulate themselves in order to answer what local people demand? How is the relation between local representatives, the government and the politicians of Rio de Janeiro?

A presente dissertação apresenta dois ensaios sobre decisão, incerteza e escolha social no contexto eleitoral. O primeiro ensaio aborda de modo teórico o tema da ambiguidade nos discursos de campanha dos políticos, relacionando-o com a teoria da decisão sob incerteza, e trazendo os seus efeitos para a tomada de decisão individual e coletiva. O segundo ensaio trata de uma análise teórica acerca da liberdade de escolha dos indivíduos durante o processo eleitoral quando há incerteza a respeito das características dos candidatos, utilizando como base duas abordagens axiomáticas de liberdade de escolha presentes na literatura. / This dissertation presents two essays on decision, uncertainty and social choice in the electoral context. The first essay theoretically approaches the topic of ambiguous campaign discourses, relating it to the decision theory under uncertainty, and showing what effects it can have on individual and social decision-making processes. The second essay analyzes the freedom of choice aspects of the electoral process when there is uncertainty about the characteristics of candidates, using two axiomatic approaches of freedom that are present in the literature.

Over the past decades, European democracies have experienced diminishing trust in their political representative institutions leading to a decline in party membership as well as both reduced electoral turnout and overall political participation (Van Biezen et al., 2012). In response, many European parties began reforming themselves allowing for the direct participation of party members or even non-members in various intra-party arenas, such as leadership selections through primaries. Parties claim that such reforms increase intra-party democracy (IPD) by making internal organisation more inclusive and by providing all party members or even non-members with decision-making power perilously reserved to the party elites (Hazan and Rahat, 2010). However, the positive effect of increased IPD on membership is highly contested and surprisingly few relevant empirical and comparative studies exist. The central research question of this thesis is what are the (different) consequences of adopting different types of primary rules for party members? Hence, my aim is to examine whether the introduction of primaries is in fact as negative for party members as outlined by Katz and Mair (1994), Lefebvre (2011) or Hopkin (2001) or, alternatively, whether it represents a chance to revitalize parties as membership organizations (Macpherson, 1977; Ware, 1979; Bille, 2001). Primaries are defined as selection process for party leaders and candidates in which the final vote rests with either party members in closed primaries, or loosely defined group of party supporters or the wider electorate, open primaries. Thus, introducing a primary leads to a change in the level of intra-party democracy, as it shifts power from a more exclusive selectorate to either of the two selectorates outlined above. While this project focuses on primaries that select top-executive candidates, the theory and conceptual framework developed can be applied to primaries more broadly. The general argument put forward is that to capture the differentiated effects of party primaries we have to study the interplay between the rules determining who can vote (selectorate) and who can run (candidacy requirements) in primaries. This thesis answers its central research question by developing a conceptual framework that combines these two dimensions for party primaries that select the party leader in public office. First, it outlines the underlying logic of the conceptual framework that links the two dimensions and then provides a theoretical discussion of its consequences for party members looking specifically at the interaction between the two. To assess the consequences of different primary reforms, the thesis focuses on four dimensions of party membership: the party membership level, the turnout in primaries, the quality of membership and the attitude towards the leadership. This perspective highlights that different combinations of selection rules and candidacy requirements in primaries result in four distinct types of intra-party democracy from the perception of party members. In turn, these types lead party members to respond in a distinct fashion. Using a mixed-method case study approach, the second part of the thesis tests the theoretical framework for various Western European parties. The analysis will mainly use primary and secondary document analysis as well as new and existing survey data complemented by qualitative in-depth membership surveys. The main conclusion is that only some combinations of primary rules can lead to a positive effect for members while others do not. For example, closed primaries with open candidacy requirements will lead to more active participation of members, while open primaries with open candidacy requirements will reduce membership participation considerably.

This diploma thesis is primarily focused on the issue of voters' behaviour in the city of Ceske Budejovice. The main goal of the thesis is the synchronic and diachronic comparative analysis of the election preferences of political parties standing in an election in the municipality. Three types of the elections are compared: the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, the elections to the regional councils in the Czech Republic and the municipal elections. The next primary goal is to analyse whether the breaking points in the parliamentary party system from the years 2010 and 2013 were reflected in the preferences of the electors in the city of Ceske Budejovice, and whether the local party system followed them as well. The secondary objective lies in the comparison of aggregated preferences at the state and regional level with the behaviour of residents of Ceske Budejovice. This comparison is done for the particular political parties in all analysed types of elections. The diploma thesis consists of two main parts, which are the theoretical part and the analytical part. The theoretical part is focused on the general principles of the electoral process as well as three mentioned types of elections. Furthermore, there is a description of the parliamentary, regional and local party system development in the Czech Republic. The last chapter of the theoretical part deals with the theory of the voting behaviour at large and the factors that might influence it as well. The analytical part of the thesis is split into chapters according to the sorts of the research elections. Each chapter contains the analysis of the results and polls as well as the relative deviation from the national and regional preferences. In the last chapter of the analytical part, the links between the voters' behaviour and the social-economic factors, which might influence it, are contemplated.

In this study, I examine how congressional candidates present gendered identities on their campaign websites. In my theory of candidate gendered identity, drawn from literature on presentation of the self and gender performativity, I argue that candidates construct their personal identities in relation to universally understood archetypes, which stand for ideal representations of real-world characters or roles. Through an in-depth content analysis of the biographical pages of 2010 U.S. House of Representatives candidate campaign websites, I examine how candidates construct and perform a range of gender-based archetypal roles in various electoral contexts. Specifically, I look at how such factors as electoral context, candidate partisan identification, and incumbency status (or challenger status) determine the range of archetypal roles a candidate might choose to perform. What I find is that candidate gender matters, but only for some candidates in some contexts. For many candidates, these factors have an interacting effect on the manner in which a candidate presents his or her gender-based identity. This study contributes to our current understanding of how political candidates behave and present themselves in their political campaigns. In their efforts to connect with and gain the trust of potential voters, candidates present their personal identities through the performances of familiar archetypes with which those voters can easily identify.