O Brasil possui uma característica incomum entre as democracias, seu altíssimo número de partidos políticos. Em sentido clássico, muitos partidos poderiam significar várias clivagens sociais. Na teoria, uma ampla participação partidária na arena política favoreceria uma democracia mais consensual, mais benevolente. Por outro lado, elevado número de atores partidários inibiria a clareza de responsabilidade de quem é governo, dificultando, com isso, a responsabilização eleitoral. Utilizando-se de dados eleitorais, como o índice de volatilidade eleitoral, o índice de coerência partidária e o índice do número efetivo de partidos políticos, o trabalho elabora a seguinte hipótese: no Legislativo, quanto maior a fragmentação partidária, maior a dificuldade do eleitor em identificar o partido governista. Para testá-la, foi criado uma proxy inédita de clareza de responsabilidade e um banco de dados de países presidencialistas do continente americano. Os resultados mostram como países com alta fragmentação partidária e com coalizões de governo dificultam a associação entre o sucesso ou o fracasso do partido governista no Legislativo e no Executivo. Mostra-se, ainda, que o multipartidarismo brasileiro não deriva da fragmentação sócio-cultural e sugere que as instituições políticas brasileiras atuais constrangem os partidos políticos a não sustentarem uma condição de oposição ao Poder Executivo. / The Brazil has an unusual characteristic between the democracies, yours very high number of political parties. In classic sense, many parties can mean multiple social cleavages. In theory, a wide partisan participation in political arena favors a democracy more consensual, more benevolent. By other side, a high number of partisan actors inhibit the clarity of responsibility of who is government, difficulting the electoral accountability. Utilizing electoral data, like the index of electoral volatility, the index of partisan coherence and the index of effective number of parties, the work elaborates the hypothesis: in Legislative, as bigger the party fragmentation, more difficult to the voter identify the government party. To test it, was created an inedited proxy of clarity of responsibility and a database of presidentialist countries of american continent. The results show how countries with high party fragmentation and with government coalitions hamper the association between the success or fail of party government in Legislative and Executive. It also shows that brazilian multiparty system doesn’t derives from social or cultural fragmentation and suggest that the current brazilian political institutions constrains the political parties to not sustain an condition of opposition to Executive Power.

Based on Hobsbawm’s notion of “invented traditions,” this thesis argues that the Serbian warrior tradition, the hajduk, was formalised from the folk oral epic tradition into official state practices. Using reports from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, military histories of Yugoslavia’s Second World War, and case files from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), this thesis shows how the hajduk epics were used to articulate war programs and formations, to construct perpetrator and victim identities, and to help encourage and justify the levels of violence during the Yugoslav wars of succession, 1991-1995. The thesis shows how the formalising of the invented hajduk tradition made the epics an important part of political and military mobilisation for at least the last two centuries. During Serbia’s modernisation campaign in the nineteenth century, the epic hajduk traditions were codified by Serbian intellectuals and fashioned into national stories of heroism. While cleansing territories of undesirable populations during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, the hajduks were portrayed in the tradition of nation builders by the Kingdom of Serbia. The hajduk tradition was also mobilised as Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, with both Draža Mihailović’s Četniks and Tito’s Partisans appropriating the historic guerrilla tradition. During the “re-traditionalisation” period under Slobodan Milošević in the 1980s, the invented hajduk tradition was again mobilised in the service of war. As Bosnian Muslim bodies were flung from the Mehmed Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad in 1992, the Serbian perpetrators dreamed of themselves as avenging hajduks thus justifying a modern ethnic cleansing. / Graduate

In 1945, as the Second World War ended, British troops serving under 5 Corps in southern Austria encountered a number of critical problems which hindered their ability to occupy the region and enact the policy of repatriation as set out in the Yalta Agreement. Fragile lines of supply and communication, and the need to feed and house diverse groups of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and refugees impeded British attempts to administer the area. Further complicating the situation was the infiltration of Yugoslav Partisans, supposed allies, fighting under Josip Broz Tito who claimed northern Italy and southern Austria as part of a “Greater Yugoslavia.” In preparation of an anticipated forceful ejection of these Partisans, the British military prioritized the fighting effectiveness of its troops over a consistent application of repatriation. The British military issued orders which interpreted Soviet citizenship, and therefore liability for repatriation, in very broad terms. This resulted in an inconsistent application of the policy, in which non-Soviets were either retained or handed over, with both courses of action seemingly in keeping with orders. While subsequent authors, most notably Nikolai Tolstoy and Christopher Booker, have written on this topic, none have yet recognized the connection between the chaotic circumstances in the region and the haphazard application of repatriation. By re-examining archival records of communications between military units involved, this thesis rectifies that lacuna and acknowledges for the first time the irregular and inconsistent nature of these repatriations. / Graduate / 2018-08-11

Un intérêt croissant pour les prédispositions individuelles est apparu au cours des deux dernières décennies en psychologie politique. Une grande variété de sujets a été étudiée comme la participation politique et électorale, les connaissances politiques, les attitudes et l'identification partisane. Ces études sont généralement basées sur le modèle du Big Five, avançant que cinq traits résumeraient la personnalité des individus. Ceux-ci sont l'ouverture à l’expérience, l'extraversion, l'agréabilité, la conscienciosité et la stabilité émotionnelle. La plupart des publications évaluant le lien entre la personnalité et la politique se concentrent sur les effets directs. Cependant, le modèle du Big Five suggère clairement que la relation entre les traits et les attitudes, comportements et identités politiques est également indirecte. En utilisant les données de l'American National Election Study de 2012 et 2016, j’analyserai d'abord comment la personnalité affecte la partisanerie, le choix électoral, l'intérêt politique et les attitudes envers le changement climatique. Je confirme que la personnalité a un effet direct sur les points de vue politiques. Deuxièmement, les effets de médiation de trois valeurs seront étudiées: l'idéologie, l'égalitarisme et le traditionalisme moral. L'analyse de médiation permet de décomposer l'effet causal total (ATE) en deux: l'effet moyen de médiation causale (ACME) et l'effet direct moyen (ADE). Je trouve que la plupart des effets sont médiés par l'idéologie, le traditionalisme moral et l'égalitarisme. 80% des associations sont médiées par au moins une valeur. Par conséquent, cette étude fournit des résultats suggérant que la personnalité est un facteur important dans l'explication des attitudes, des comportements et de l'identité partisane, et elle indique que les valeurs sont un mécanisme par lequel la personnalité a un effet. / A growing interest in individuals’ predispositions has emerged over the last two decades in political psychology. A wide variety of topics have been studied, such as turnout, political knowledge, attitudes, participation, and partisan identification. These studies are usually based on the Big Five model, arguing that five traits would summarize the personality of individuals. The five traits are openness to experience, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Most of the literature assessing the link between personality and politics focuses on the direct effects. However, the Big Five model clearly states that the relationship between traits and political attitudes, behaviours, and identities is also indirect. Using the data from the American National Election Study of 2012 and 2016, we firstly analyze how personality affects partisanship, vote choice, political interest, and attitudes toward climate change. We confirm that personality does have a direct effect on political outlooks. Secondly, we focus on the mediation effects of three values: ideology, egalitarianism, and moral traditionalism. The mediation analysis allows us to decompose the total causal (ATE) effect in two: the average causal mediation effect (ACME) and the average direct effect (ADE). We find that most of the effects are mediated by ideology, moral traditionalism, and egalitarianism. 80% of the associations are mediated by at least one mediator. Hence, this study offers evidence that personality is an important factor in the explanation of attitudes, behaviours, and partisan identity, and it indicates that values are an important mechanism through which personality has an effect.

In this dissertation, I examine three major aspects of Germany's education system from an empirical public finance perspective. First, I analyse the effects of strong demographic shifts by considering how the East German Länder responded to the rather dramatic decline in the number of students in primary schools (1993-2002). The demographic shock is a consequence of collapsing birth rates after German Reunification. Previous results from the literature, which rely on data from rather stable demographic periods, suggest that public resources are incompletely adjusted to shrinking cohort size such that large reductions in the student population translate into important increases in spending per student and not in significant reductions of public resources allocated to education. Evidence from a panel of 5 East German Länder over the 1993-2006 period suggests, however, that resource adjustments have been considerable, especially in the years when student cohorts were actually decreasing. Adjustments have been less tight in the period when student numbers stagnated such that the 50% decrease in cohort size has translated into a 25% increase in the teacher/student-ratio. Second, I test whether partisan theory can help to explain the practise of ability-tracking in West Germany. The analysis starts from the empirical observation that in the German education system – where tracking is practised very early compared to other OECD countries – the correlation of parent’s education or income with their children’s track choices is very strong. Thus, students whose parents have a high-education background have significantly higher probabilities of attending a high-ability track. Partisan theory states that political parties when in office pursue the interests of their members and electoral constituencies. Political parties representing highly educated households should therefore support the practise of ability-tracking and advocate higher education spending on the tracks for good students. Evidence from a panel of 10 West German Länder over the 1979-2006 period suggests that German political parties support tracking if they represent high-education households and oppose tracking if they represent lower educated households. The results also suggest that political parties tend to allocate public resources towards the track in which party members’ or party electorate’s offspring is overrepresented. Third, research-oriented higher education in Germany is almost exclusively provided by the public sector, which highlights the importance of measuring university cost efficiency, because market exit and entry – which ensure efficient resource use in the private sector – virtually do not exist (see e.g., Hanushek, 2002). Based on a panel of 70 German public universities over the 1998-2003 period I provide evidence about the factors that benefit efficient resource use in the German higher education landscape. I analyse whether relatively liberal university regulation improves the cost efficiency of public universities as suggested in the literature (see Aghion et al., 2008). The results show that liberal university regulation indeed contributes to more efficient use of resources. Moreover, I find that a prosperous private economic environment seems to reduce university costs.

No description available.

Cette thèse étudie certains des facteurs liés au développement de l'intérêt pour la politique chez les adolescents à l'aide de trois articles. J'utilise des données provenant d'une enquête par questionnaires, conduite durant trois ans auprès de jeunes Montréalais étudiant au secondaire. Le premier article examine le rôle du réseau social (parents, amis et enseignants) dans le développement de l'intérêt. Je démontre que les parents qui discutent souvent de politique sont plus susceptibles d'avoir des enfants intéressés par la politique et dont l'intérêt se développera. Cependant, le rôle des autres agents de socialisation ne devrait pas être sous-estimé. Les amis ont souvent un effet similaire aux parents lorsqu'il s'agit du changement dans l'intérêt, et les résultats suggèrent que les enseignants, à travers certains cours comme ceux d'histoire, peuvent jouer un rôle civique important. Le deuxième article aborde la question de la causalité entre l'intérêt politique et trois attitudes: le cynisme, l'attachement partisan et le sens du devoir. Il s'agit de voir quel effet la présence de ces attitudes chez les adolescents a sur le développement de leur intérêt politique, et inversement, si l'intérêt a un effet sur le changement dans ces attitudes. Je démontre qu'il existe une relation de réciprocité entre l'intérêt et le cynisme, de même qu'entre l'intérêt et le sens du devoir. Cependant, dans le cas de l'attachement partisan, l'effet est unidirectionnel: le fait d'aimer un parti n'est pas lié à la présence d'intérêt ou de désintérêt politique, alors que cette attitude influence le développement de l'intérêt pour la politique. Le troisième article aborde la question du développement de l'intérêt à l'aide d'entrevues. Treize jeunes ayant répondu aux trois vagues de l'enquête par questionnaires ont été rencontrés et leurs commentaires permettent de répondre à trois questions de recherche: les jeunes ont-ils une image négative de la politique? Les jeunes fuient-ils la controverse? Leurs amis occupent-ils une place prépondérante dans le développement de leur intérêt? Ces jeunes expriment une opinion très nuancée de la politique, de même qu'un goût pour les débats et autres images concrètes de la politique. Par contre, leur intérêt ne se reflète pas dans un engagement soutenu. Enfin, leurs parents sont plus importants que leurs amis lorsqu'il s'agit du développement de leur intérêt pour la politique. / This dissertation studies factors linked to the development of political interest among teenagers through three articles. I use panel data from questionnaires distributed each year for three years to Montreal high school students. The first article examines the role of the social network (parents, friends, teachers) in the development of political interest. I demonstrate that parents who often discuss politics have children who are more interested in politics and who are more likely to develop political interest. The effect of other agents of socialization should not be underestimated, however, as friends were often found to be on par with parents concerning their influence on change in political interest, and results concerning teachers suggest that some classes, history in this case, can play an important civic role. The second article addresses the question of causality between political interest and three attitudes: cynicism, party attachment and civic duty. I investigate the extent to which these attitudes have an effect on change in political interest, and, conversely, the extent to which political interest affects change in these attitudes. Analysis of the data shows a reciprocal relationship between cynicism and interest, as well as between civic duty and interest. In the case of party affinity, however, the effect is unidirectional. Party affinity does not emerge as a result of political interest or disinterest, while this attitude was found to influence the development of political interest. The third article uses interviews to address the question of the development of political interest. Thirteen teenagers, each of whom participated in all three waves of the panel survey, were interviewed. Their comments were analyzed in light of three research questions: Do young people have a negative image of politics? Are they conflict-averse? Are their friends central in the development of their political interest? Teenagers express a moderate opinion of politics, often devoid of the cynicism attributed them, as well as a taste for debates and other concrete practices of politics. Their interest, however, does not reflect strong engagement. Finally, their parents are more important than their friends when it comes to the development of their political interest.

This theses analyzes the partisan movement during World War II in the regions of Žďársko a Novoměstsko in the years 1944-1945. It defines the concept of the "partisan" with regard to the matter in question. It further outlines the positions of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on partisan resistance and comments on this type of resistance activity on the Eastern Front. Integral to this thesis is also a survey into the development of resistance organisations in the region of interest. Finally, it devides the partisans and their overall activities into different categories.

This study investigates the Louisiana 2012 Coastal Master Plan’s ability to reconcile conflicting economic and ecological demands on coastal resources. The Louisiana Coastal Master Plan was unique in combining flood control and coastal restoration under one authority. However, the objectives of flood control and coastal restoration can be in conflict. The plan was also unique in its approach of restoration from a working coast perspective. However, the objectives of ecological restoration and economic productivity do not always agree. By conducting semi-structured interviews with major coastal stakeholders, this research will explore how the planning process has accommodated the views and values of key stakeholder parties. This research aims to make more transparent the inherent environmental tradeoffs of restoration from a working coast perspective. A working coast is a compromise between economic and environmental stakeholder needs. The approach requires a balance of power to ensure that the projects selected best serve the needs of all parties. The study found that while there is industry buy in, mechanisms for mitigating economic externalities is lacking in the plan, corporate infrastructure benefits while wildlife resources are in decline.

Während des deutsch-sowjetischen Krieges war ab Herbst 1941 das Gebiet um die russische Stadt Brjansk von der Wehrmacht besetzt. Die 2. Panzerarmee verwaltete dieses Territorium über den Kommandanten des rückwärtigen Armeegebietes 532. Wie überall im besetzten Gebiet verübten die Einsatzgruppen des SD zahlreiche Morde und es kam zum Massensterben der Kriegsgefangenen in den Durchgangslagern. Starke, in den ausgedehnten Waldmassiven versteckte sowjetische Partisanenverbände erschwerten die Beherrschung des ausgedehnten Raumes. Aufgrund des Mangels an deutschen Soldaten wurden zahlreiche Bewachungseinheiten aus Einheimischen und Kriegsgefangenen gebildet. Der Kommandeur der Armee Generaloberst Rudolf Schmidt ging sogar so weit, einen von der russischen Bevölkerung vollständig selbst verwalteten Bezirk zuzulassen. Kollaboration mit den deutschen Besatzern war ein weit verbreitetes Phänomen, während gleichzeitig in den Wäldern die Partisanen herrschten. Die Sicherungsverbände führten zahlreiche Antipartisanenunternehmen durch, die meist ohne anhaltende Erfolge blieben, aber in deren Verlauf zahlreiche Zivilisten als vermeintliche Partisanen getötet wurden. Obwohl die Besatzungsherrschaft der Wehrmacht in diesem Gebiet von der in Berlin beschlossenen Generallinie der Ausbeutung, Unterdrückung und Vernichtung in vielem abwich, wurde nicht für eine ausreichende Ernährung der Bevölkerung gesorgt. Dem Hunger und dem Partisanenkrieg fielen bis zum Rückzug der Wehrmacht im Herbst 1943 tausende Zivilisten zum Opfer. / During the German-Soviet war by autumn 1941 the area around the Russian city Bryansk was occupied by the Wehrmacht. The Second Tank Army administrated this territory through the commander of the backward area of the army 532. Like everywhere in the occupied territories the Einsatzgruppen of the SD committed numerous murders and it came to the widespread deaths of the prisoners of war in the transit camps. Strong Soviet partisan groups hidden in the vast forest massifs complicated the control of the vast area. On account of the lack of German soldiers numerous guarding units from locals and prisoners of war were formed. The commander of the army senior general Rudolf Schmidt went even so far of admitting a district completely administered by Russians themselves. Collaboration with the occupying forces was a widespread phenomenon, while at the same time in the woods the partisans ruled. The guarding troops carried out numerous anti-partisan operations which mostly remained without during success but killed numerous civilians as putative partisans in the course. Although the occupation of the Wehrmacht in this area in many aspects deviated from the in Berlin concluded general line of exploitation, suppression and destruction, it was not provided for a sufficient supply of food for the population. Until the retreat of the Wehrmacht in autumn 1943 thousand of civilians fell victim to hunger and partisan warfare.