The main frame of this research is ¡§Economic Modernization¡¨ categorized modernization theory, and the objective of this research is TVEs to analyze the characteristics of Mainland China¡¦s economic modernization. TVEs is a kind of special enterprise style of China. TVEs integrate rural resources, collective ownership, and modern business management into the main power of the development of rural economy. Moreover, also the particularities of TVEs¡¦ system are the emphasis of this research. The members of TVEs which are villagers, local government officers, managers, and party cadres form a kind of special mutual-dependence relationship between rural communities, CPC (Communist Party of China), and governments. Finally, the extending question is economic modernization transiting to political modernization, also China with the different development from western nations.

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This is a master thesis centering around democratization in Taiwan and South Korea. The aim has been to reach a greater understanding of how Taiwan and South Korea could democratize and their respective democratization process. Related to the research gap, two theories were applied in the analysis. The theories are also reflected in the two research questions. The theories are modernization theory and Dahl’s democracy theory concerning the concept of polyarchy.  The thesis is comparative in its nature, and it is a two-case study. For the treatment of material, qualitative content analysis has been used. Following the literature review, a concise historical background to the two countries was written to provide context for the readers and as a background to the analysis which covered the period after World War Two.  In the analysis, the two theories were applied to Taiwan and South Korea. First, the four variables of economic growth from modernization theory and then the seven institutions of polyarchy from Dahl’s democracy theory. The analysis showed steady progress in both countries during the application of modernization theory. The seven institutions of polyarchy have been reached in both states, and the time for that is spelled out in the analysis. The conclusion found that modernization theory is facilitating understanding of the democratization in the countries and that Dahl’s democracy theory provided a framework for the timeline of democratization. It also showed that other perspectives such as culture, external influence, strategic culture, geopolitics, and in the Taiwanese case, ethnicity, are providing a greater knowledge of this subject.

Motivated by recent claims from youth that older generations are jeopardizing their future, the purpose of this thesis is to study potential explanations for the variation of intergenerational blame attribution among Swedish youth. Ordinary least squares regression analysis is conducted on survey data, especially focused on young participants, to test several hypotheses about how perceived economic threats and one’s value orientation can impact young people’s motivation to blame elderly generations for economic difficulties. The thesis does not find statistical support that one’s birth cohort - used as a proxy for childhood socialization during different economic conditions - moderates the effect of perceived threat on intergenerational blame attribution. However, when a person’s value orientation is explicitly measured in a regression model, the findings indicate that characteristics acquired earlier in life can alter a person’s reaction to presently perceived threats. The result shows that authoritarians are more prone to attribute blame towards older generations as a matter of habit, but also that libertarians are susceptible to changing their attitudes to liken authoritarians given a tangible threat. Furthermore, the study provides empirical evidence suggesting that libertarians and authoritarians react to perceived economic threats differently. These findings are evaluated in relation to measuring perceived threat in a survey context and the linear interaction effect assumption in multiplicative linear models.

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Master of Arts / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / In the 1960s, modernization theory became an important analytical tool to conceptualize change in the Third World. As opposed to rebuilding societies that had already attained industrialization as was done with the Marshall Plan, modernization theorists focused on creating a total theory that encapsulated the entire arc of development from a traditional agricultural society to a modern industrial society. Aware that a colonial relationship subordinating nations on the periphery to the West was impossible, modernization theorists sought to create an amicable bond based on consent. Modernization theory served as the underlying logic of the Alliance for Progress, Peace Corps, and the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam. This thesis argues that although modernization theory certainly had novel aspects, notably its social and psychological elements, much of the theory simply consisted of the coalesced logic, assumptions, and methods acquired from three previous American experiences with development, particularly the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Point Four Program, and occupation of Japan after World War II. I argue that thought concerning development from the 1930s through the 1960s should be seen as a continuum rather than view modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s as completely novel. Modernization theorists both intentionally and unknowingly incorporated into modernization theory the logic, assumptions, and methods developed in previous development schemes. Chapter Two examines how the democratic decentralized structure of the TVA became embedded in post-World War II thought about development as an alternative to communist models of development. The chapter also explores TVA director David Lilienthal’s and modernization theorists’ emphasis on technology as both harbingers of modernization and evidence of modernity. Chapter Three investigates how Chester Bowles, the director of the Point Four Program in India, and modernization theorists used Keynesian economics in their development model, arguing that modernization could be induced by government spending in agriculture, education, infrastructure, and health and sanitation. Chapter Three also explores how Bowles and modernization theorists used an evolutionary theory of development derived from America’s past to guide their development in the Third World. Chapter Four examines the similarity between what officials of the Japanese occupation and modernization theorists considered traditional and modern. The chapter also explains that both groups believed in the universal applicability of the principles of American society.

This paper analyzes the utilization of repression and democratic institutions by a non-democratic government striving for political power and private rents. We find that economic development has different impacts on policy choices, depending on whether it appears in the form of rises in income or in education: A higher income level reduces democracy, whereas more education leads to both more democracy and more repression. These theoretical findings are corroborated by panel data regressions.

In the 1950s, scholars in Europe and the United States announced the end of political ideology in the West. With the rise of affluent welfare states, they argued, ideological movements which sought to overthrow prevailing liberal democracy would disappear. While these arguments were questioned in the 1960s, similar ideas were presented after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Scholars now claimed that the end of the Cold War meant the end of mankind’s “ideological development,” that globalization would undermine the left/right distinction and that politics would be shaped by cultural affiliations rather than ideological alignments. The purpose of No alternatives is to compare the end of ideology discussion of the 1950s with some of the post-Cold War theories launched at the time of, or in the years following, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Juxtaposing monographs, essays and papers between 1950 and 2000, the dissertation focuses on three aspects of these theories. First, it analyzes their concepts of history, demonstrating that they tended to portray the existing society as an order which had resolved the conflicts and antagonisms of earlier history. Second, the investigation scrutinizes the processes of post-politicization at work in these theories, showing how they sought to transcend, contain or externalize social conflict, and at times dismiss politics altogether. Third, it demonstrates how the theories can be understood as legitimizing or mobilizing narratives which aimed to defend Western liberal democracy and to rally its citizens against internal threats and external enemies. As the title of the dissertation implies, the end of ideology discussion of the 1950s and the post-Cold War theories of the 1990s sought to highlight the historical or political impossibility of any alternatives to the present society.

This paper analyzes the utilization of repression and democratic institutions by a non-democratic government striving for political power and private rents. We find that economic development has different impacts on policy choices, depending on whether it appears in the form of rises in income or in education: A higher income level reduces democracy, whereas more education leads to both more democracy and more repression. These theoretical findings are corroborated by panel data regressions.