This thesis evaluates the impact of the Brazilian Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program, Bolsa Família, on educational outcomes with special attention to student performance. In Brazil, CCTs in education first appeared in 1995 in the Federal District of Brasília and in the city of Campinas, São Paulo with the Bolsa Escola Program. In 2004, Bolsa Escola and other social programs were collapsed under the comprehensive poverty alleviation initiative, Bolsa Família. As of 2011 there were 12 million families participating in the Bolsa Família Program making it the largest CCT Program in the world. This thesis demonstrates that since the implementation of Bolsa Família, students in the lowest income quintiles, the target population of Bolsa Família, have shown improved performance on the national achievement test, the SAEB, also known as Prova Brasil. This thesis suggests the inclusion of an additional transfer contingent on improved performance on exams or improved final grades to further stimulate the desire for academic achievement among recipient children and their families. In conclusion, this thesis finds that Bolsa Família has improved the educational outcomes for students of low socioeconomic status while simultaneously stimulating a much-needed discussion about the equity and quality of public education in Brazil.

In 1822 Haiti annexed the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo through effective rhetorical persuasion. The petition of Dominican municipalities for Haitian tutelage in the early 1820s and Spains refusal to object to the Haitian presence on the Spanish side, confirms that Port-Au-Princes twenty-two year administration over Santo Domingo was not an outright occupation. Haiti and the municipalities developed a profitable economic partnership. The city of Santo Domingo chose to exclude itself from the relationship and thereby became a political outcast on the island. President Jean Pierre Boyers administration from 1818 to 1843 succeeded in engendering a local peasantry, abolishing slavery, and producing significant economic growth in the Cibao. But he was deposed for failing to eradicate state-sponsored racial discrimination and for implementing unpopular and ineffective economic policy. The subsequent union between the two communities failed in 1844 not because of linguistic and cultural differences but rather due to the eastern sides increasing political and economic marginalization and the increased racial tensions destabilizing the western side. Although most Dominicans at the time agreed that separation from Haiti should be realized in 1844, they disagreed on whether to assemble a sovereign republic or reinstitute a protectorate over Santo Domingo. Considering that the ruling party there favored a French protectorate, the Dominican Republic was born in 1844 because no world power would agree to protect it. At its core, Dominican nationalism was handicapped because the ruling class was not invested in its preservation.

This project analyzes the disparate images of women produced during the period of Getúlio Vargas Estado Nôvo from 1937-1945, discussing their significance in the state-driven process of identity formation during the period. Using a variety of popular media sources and state-produced propaganda materials, I illustrate the paradoxical and dynamic socio-political space that women occupied in the national imaginary, the extent to which this space expanded or limited the realm of political and social action within Brazilian patriarchy, and how these contrasting images of Brazilian femininity produced at home and abroad affected notions of brasilidade. I argue that the Brazilian state ultimately did not effectively integrate women into the nationalist project, including them in the national imaginary, yet denying them full political rights and mobility. Furthermore, the Vargas regimes definition of brasilidade contradicted the more progressive images and modes of behavior promoted in the public sphere through popular media, as epitomized by Carmen Miranda.

In 1968, a military coup surprised Panama, placing political power in the hands of populist leader General Omar Torrijos Herrera. Recuperation of the Panama Canal remained a high priority to the government, and Torrijos repeatedly articulated that the means to territorial sovereignty only existed through a unified Panamanian nation. Thus, the Torrijos government embarked on the task of incorporating the marginalized masses into the government, including the notoriously autonomous Kuna. As pluriethnicity became a crucial tenet of Panamanian national identity, the Kuna struggled to preserve their culture but simultaneously adopted governmental development programs and capitalized on opportunities for political participation. This project studies the relationship between the Kuna and the Torrijos government, which lasted from 1968-1981, focusing on issues of nationalism, ethnicity, and identity.

Propertius 3.20 is a poem that has received relatively little critical attention for its merits as a poem or its relationship to the poets larger poetic project and to the turbulent era in which it was written. Here, the poem is placed into its literary and cultural context and subjected to a gendered reading influenced by modern feminist theory. Propertius 3.20 uses the language of fidelity and contracts that was traditionally associated with solemn legal ceremonies and agreements in his depiction of a socially illegitimate relationship between a lover and his mistress. The destabilization of relationships caused by the application of this language to the demimonde leads to a problematization of the gender roles of the actors in the relationships. Propertius 3.20 raises issues relevant to the construction of gender in the Propertian corpus and the crisis of masculinity triggered by the rise of Augustus.

<p>Colombia has historically been known as a fragmented country because of its poor territorial integration. This dissertation intends to transcend the traditional way in which this (dis)integration process has been studied, principally linked to geographical determinism. Based on the theories developed by Henry Lefebvre, David Harvey and Milton Santos regarding the production of space, geographical determinism is confronted in two ways: on one hand Colombian spatial problematic is inserted within a global context, which highlights that the production of space is dependent in peripheral areas, and on the other hand, the role of the symbolic field in the production of space is studied through the conformation of a genealogy of Colombian geographical imaginaries.</p><p>This is a restricted genealogy in the sense that it focuses only on three historical periods: the nation-state building process in the nineteenth century, the period known as La Violencia (1948-1965), and the "triple war" that has been active since the seventies. The sources studied for each respective period are: travel literature and travel illustrations, testimonial novels, and testimonies. Chapter one focuses on the production of the national space, and through an inter-artistic approach of the textual and visual components of the Comisión Corográfica (1850-1859), it highlights this project's influence on the construction of the country as a regionalized country. Chapters two and three focus on how different types of violence have emerged as agents of deep spatial transformations, and highlight that the cultural field not only constructs discursively the "spaces of terror" produced by violence, but by doing so, it contributes to the inclusion of those spaces in the nation's geographical imaginaries. Finally, the conclusion comprises the spatial transformations brought about by the Constitution of 1991, which inevitably refer to the first chapter's view on how national space was constructed in the nineteenth century. This genealogy highlights both the role of the cultural field in the production of space, and in the diffusion of "alternative spaces" (Lefebvre), as it contributes to insert them within the geographical imaginaries. </p><p>Resumen</p><p>Colombia se ha caracterizado históricamente por ser un país fragmentado a raíz de su reducida cohesión territorial. Esta tesis se propone trascender la forma tradicional en la que se ha abordado el proceso de (des)integración nacional, caracterizada por estar fuertemente anclada en el determinismo geográfico. Partiendo de las teorías de Henry Lefebvre, David Harvey y Milton Santos acerca de la producción del espacio, se confronta el determinismo geográfico por dos vías: por un lado se inserta la problemática espacial colombiana dentro de un marco global, con lo cual se resalta el carácter dependiente de la producción del espacio en la periferia, y por el otro, se estudia el papel de lo simbólico en la producción del espacio, mediante la construcción de una genealogía de imaginarios geográficos colombianos. </p><p>Esta es una genealogía restringida en la medida en que sólo se enfoca en tres periodos: la construcción del Estado-nación en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, el periodo de La Violencia (1948-1965), y la "triple guerra" que viene sucediendo desde finales de los setentas. El tipo de fuentes que se estudian en cada periodo son libros e imágenes de viaje, novelas testimoniales y testimonios respectivamente. En el primer capítulo se estudia la forma en que se construyó el espacio nacional, y mediante el estudio inter-artístico tanto del producto textual como visual de la Comisión Corográfica (1850-1859), se resalta la importancia de este proyecto en la construcción del país como un país de regiones. Luego, en el segundo y el tercer capítulo se aborda la forma en que diferentes tipos de violencia se convierten en agentes de profundas transformaciones espaciales, y se resalta que el campo cultural no sólo construye discursivamente los "espacios del terror" generados a raíz de la violencia, sino que al hacerlo contribuye a insertarlos dentro del imaginario geográfico de la nación. Finalmente en la conclusión se abordan las transformaciones espaciales suscitadas por la Constitución de 1991, lo cual inevitablemente conlleva a retomar las reflexiones planteadas en el primer capítulo con respecto a la forma en se construyó el espacio nacional en el siglo XIX. A través de esta se resalta el papel activo que ha cumplido el campo cultural tanto en la producción del espacio, como en la difusión de "espacios alternativos" (Lefebvre), al contribuir a insertarlos dentro del imaginario geográfico nacional.</p> / Dissertation

This research addresses the question under what conditions will rank and file legislators favor or oppose changes in a legislature’s internal rules of order. The study deviates from previous approaches to the study of legislatures in four primary ways: 1) the study moves from advanced democratized cases of the U.S. Congress and British House of Commons to cases of neo-democracies; 2) the study considers the interaction between the design of the electoral system and its impact on legislature organization; 3) in addition to chamber level factors, party and individual level factors are considered; and 4) the theory considers when legislators will rebel against attempts by party leadership to alter the internal rules of order. The central question focused on is what factors influence legislators’ willingness to speak out or vote against changes in the internal rules of order following a change in the electoral system design. The theory proposed that when it comes to changing the internal rules of order of a legislative chamber, the effective number of parties in the chamber, the effect of proposed changes in the rules of order on legislator behavior, party discipline, and the nature of legislator ambition affect the probability that change occurs. Experimental and statistical methodologies are used to test the hypotheses derived from the theory. Original data were collected from experiments conducted on undergraduate pupils at Texas A&M University. For the statistical analyses, a data set of proposed changes in the rules of order were compiled using archived data from the Colombian Senate and Peruvian Congress. This multi-method approach was used because of the nature of the question under examination and to minimize limitations of the individual methodologies. The experimental analyses demonstrate that the operations of the theory are supported in the controlled environment of the experiment. The results from the statistical analyses were, within the restrictions imposed by the data, consistent with both theoretical expectations and the experimental findings. The most consistent factor influencing change in the rules of order is the effect of the proposal followed by party discipline.

Let G = {g1, ¡K,gn} be a finite abelian group, and let LG = [gij ] be the Latin square defined by gij = gi + gj. Denote by k(G) the largest number of mutually orthogonal system containing LG. In 1948, Paige showed that if the Sylow 2-subgroup of G is not cyclic, then LG has a transversal. In this paper, we give an constructive proof for this theorem and give some upper bound and lower bound for the number k(G).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 24, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0719. Adviser: Peter Guardino.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Freiburg in Breisgau, 1993. / Bibliogr. p. 190-202.