Abstract not available

(in English): This work deals with the formation of party historiography in fifties and sixties of the twentieth century. It examines this issue in two ways. The first level is the institutionalization of party historiography at Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Establishment, development and abolition of the department of the History of the Communist party (History of Working class movement) is explored with focusing on key turning points in 1953 (establishment of the department), 1958 (restriction of teaching staff), 1964 (reorganization, merger and establishment of the department of the History of Working class movement) and 1970 (abolition of the department). Teaching staff is examined and attention is paid to the efforts to create typological profile of chair historians, who were part of emerging generation of party historians. The second level of the research is the participation of party historians in shaping and formulating new historical narratives, that provided legitimazing framework of communist project to social transformation. Attention is paid to possibilities and limits of party historiography in social and political context and its methodological base is also examined. The development of party historiography is divided into three phases - the phase of stalinist discourse, the...

“The post-apartheid Left is a group of people whose values and visions go way beyond apartheid, in fact, go right back to the 19th century Europe, in the final analysis, and perhaps even earlier, to people like Marx and Engels and so on, to a vision of an industrial and even post-industrial world, in which human beings would live in harmony without exploitation, without oppression, and not merely without racial exploitation, in other words also without class exploitation, without gender oppression and so on.” - Dr Neville Alexander, May 1997.

American Political Thought has presented somewhat of a challenge to many because of the conflict between the ideals found within the "American Creed" and the reality of America's treatment of ethnic and social minorities. The various forms of marginalization and oppression facing women, blacks, Native Americans, and Asian-Americans have been as much a part of the story of America as have been natural rights and the Constitution. Taking this into account, this thesis is an effort to argue that the radicalism on display in the Black Panther Party, a group that emerged in the turmoil of the 1960' s, was a direct descendant of the ideas found within the Black Power movement. It will be argued that these militant critiques of American society were radical, but were not so radical as to be viewed as outside of the context provided by the ideals found in the American Creed. In order to do so, it will be necessary first to present and analyze the various approaches toward explaining the content and nature of the American Creed. The Creed will be presented as separate from American political reality, as an ideal type. As a result it appears to be a rather amorphous tool which can be used both by supporters of a more robust realization of the Creed's ideals and those who wish to limit the scope of these ideals. Having discussed these approaches toward the American Creed, a discussion of radical political ideas will serve to introduce the Black Power movement and the later Black Panther Party. It will be argued that the radical ideas on display were born out of a frustration with American society, but were at the same time an endorsement of the American Creed. It will be concluded that the American Creed is a powerful force acting upon American political thought, so powerful that even those who should rationally reject the Creed forcefully embrace it.

Populism has been an integral part of the Finnish political system since the late 1950's. At that time the Agrarian Populist Party, better known as The Rural Party, emerged and thrived for decades until the party financially broke down in the 1990's. Reemerging on the political scene as the True Finns, the party is more radical and more influential than ever, gaining enough support to be the third largest party of the 2011 parliamentary election. Sweden, Finland’s neighbor, in contrast has a history with very little populist presence or radical right populist parties (RRP-parties). However, during the 2010 parliamentary election the Sweden Democrats attained seats in the parliament for the first time in history. In this thesis, these cases, with their different historical backgrounds, are analyzed to explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Many political scientists have tried to answer this question before, focusing on system-oriented and contextual factors, but often neglecting factors that incorporate the political actors themselves. What this thesis adds to the previous research is a perspective on the rise and growth of RRP-parties based on the dynamism between system-oriented factors and actor-oriented factors. The theoretical discussion indicates that some system-oriented and contextual factors are significant when explaining the rise and growth of RRP-parties. At the same time, actor oriented factors such as the legacy of the RRP-party and the mainstream party strategies prove to be influential on the electoral strength of the RRP-party. These theoretical approaches are then used and combined in a comparative analysis, which imply two important things. First, the legitimacy of the RRP-party itself is an aspect that does explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Second, in the case of Sweden, the system-oriented and contextual factors alone were not able to explain the rise and growth of the Sweden Democrats. Together these findings stress that the dynamic perspective between system-oriented and actor-oriented factors truly is meaningful when trying to explain rise and growth of RRP-parties.