This dissertation examines President Barack Obama as a symbol and his rhetoric through an Afrocentric analytical lens. The problem that prompted my research was the current process (and future probability) of President Barack Obama's image and legacy being drastically revised from the current perceptions held by most who observe him daily. In this study, the researcher utilized an empirical, symbolic, and rhetorical approach to conduct an Afrocentric data analysis. This process included a review of the foundational terms and concepts utilized to express the Afrocentric idea (including Afrocentricity, location, and agency), and ultimately led to new concepts, analytical tools, and theories based on the evidence manifested over the course this study. This text represents an attempt to seize the magnitude of the "Democratic day" that Barack Obama was elected in a way that it could strengthen understanding of the Afrocentric idea. Based upon the analytical foundation of Afrocentricity I presented a methodology described as Beneficial Extraction method that will highlight the information, examples, strategies and attributes that can be utilized, salvaged and implemented for the uplift of African people. My findings include, the need for an increase in the appreciation for incremental progress in the African/African American community and the need to refine the ability to recognize and benefit from multiple and diverse methods of struggle throughout the African Diaspora. / African American Studies

The purpose of this research is to show how the idea of presidential security is a construct that has taken on several different meanings and rationalities in the American context due to shifting power relations, new practices of presidential security, and the constant re-formulation of the friend/enemy distinction. The United States Service has had to continually think and re-think the concept of presidential security in order to provide suitable protection for the President of the United States. In creating these spaces of protection, the practices of the Secret Service have slowly contributed to re-constituting the sovereign to fit the agency's particular logics and rationalities. The capturing of the Chief Executive Officer does not only rest on disciplinary techniques that restrict, but are also founded on the truth production of the Secret Service: presidents begin to accept and internalize the modus operandi of the Secret Service. They begin to self-monitor their own desires and actions related to security concerns. The walls of protection are coupled with a conscious capitulation to accept the barriers of protection. The cage is no longer only imposed from without, but also emerges internally. By problematizing how this evolving security bubble encapsulates the president, this dissertation is able to examine how the Secret Service begins to reshape and reformulate key democratic governance values by protecting the public and private body of the president through a disciplinary apparatus that seeks to control and contain as well as display and deliberate. Democratic norms that privilege openness have to be challenged, if not curtailed, to adequately protect the Chief Executive Officer. Everyone and everything is a risk that must be inspected, catalogued, and watched, even the president cannot be trusted with his own safety. With its mission to protect, the Secret Service has constructed an organizational operation to ostracize the other, permanently put the president behind protective procedures, and present a pleasing public persona fitting to the status of the POTUS. These overt actions have allowed an administrative agency to redefine key democratic governance values. The agency has been able to delineate who is a suspicious other, justify the placement of barricades that separate the president from the people, instill a preventive/security ethos in the Office of the President, and display the president as the apex of a constitutional order. Because of its successes and failures, presidential protection has become normal, acceptable, legitimate, and absolutely necessary, which has provided the Service the ability to give shape to a particular rationality concerning what the president can and cannot do. This constitutive role of a public agency has had a dramatic impact on how the people come to experience and interact with the POTUS. The development of the Secret Service and its protective procedures, however, has been sporadic and tenuous. For the past 100 years, this emerging rationality was produced by a multitude of sources that have helped construct the idea and practice of presidential security. The subjects of insecurity and security mutually created the idea of POTUS endangerment and safety. Enemies of the state have helped mold state action while friends of the president have sought to project an image of presidential grandeur. In this context, the Service has had to secure territorial spaces in order to conceal and confuse threats while simultaneously having to display and disclose the presidential body to the public. The capacity to control threats and to coordinate the presidential spectacle has enabled the Service to direct the body and mind of the POTUS. With this disciplinary apparatus in place, the Secret Service is able to construct bubbles and bunkers that are designed to protect and trap the president's two bodies. / Ph. D.

A study of the foreign policies of Theodore Roosevelt.

Diploma thesis "The Head of State in the constitutional system of the Czech Republic: de iure and de facto" discourses both provisions, which integrate the institution of the president of the republic in constitution, and the virtual implementation of this uppermost authority in the state. At the beginning, the thesis deals with the historical dimension of the issue. It speaks of the general development and history of the office in Czech lands. Hereupon a depiction of the theoretical extent of this office follows. A large verge is devoted to the placement and the powers of the president in the constitution. The pragmatic part of the thesis consists of two case studies. The first one deals with the presidency of Václav Havel. The second one deals with the execution of the office by Václav Klaus. An extra attention is paid to the analysis of the accordance between the theoretical and pragmatic pursuance of the office of president of the Czech Republic.

La présente thèse dit ce qu’est le Président de la République Portugaise, elle le nomme. Pour ce faire, elle montre comment la figure présidentielle s’est construite depuis 1986, depuis que la démocratie portugaise n’est plus « à l’ombre des épées ». A cette fin, la thèse examine d’abord la légitimité particulière du Chef de l’Etat lusitain, directe mais apartisane. Celle-ci doit être comprise à la lumière de l’histoire politique et constitutionnelle du Portugal qui a connu le parlementarisme éclaté et la dictature personnelle. Elle examine ensuite la position du Président de la République au sein de l’architecture constitutionnelle portugaise au moyen de ses pouvoirs et de ses relations avec le Gouvernement en tant que fonction et en tant qu’organe. Si la présidence portugaise ne détermine pas la politique générale du pays, les différents titulaires de la charge présidentielle ont su participer à la formation de la volonté politique de l’Etat grâce au développement d’une magistrature qui leur est propre. Leurs prises de parole et leurs actions de terrain ont permis au Président de la République d’avoir une réalité par-delà le dispositif constitutionnel. De ces différents éléments, la thèse infère enfin la qualification du régime politique portugais et se clôt sur la dénomination de la figure présidentielle portugaise, telle qu’elle a été et s’est construite. / This doctoral dissertation tells what the President of the Portuguese Republic is and gives it a name. To this end, it shows how the Portuguese presidential figure has built itself since 1986, since the Portuguese democracy has no more been under the “shadow of swords”. To reach this goal, the dissertation begins by focusing on the president’s legitimacy, direct but unpartisan. Its particular legitimacy cannot be understood without referring to Portugal’s political and constitutional history which went through fragmented parliamentarism and personal dictatorship. Then it considers the presidential position within the Portuguese constitutional framework using its powers and looking into its relations with the Government as a function and as an organ. If the Portuguese presidency does not fix the country general policy, it does take part in the State’s will formation due to the emergence of a proper magistracy. Speech and field acts have given a reality to the President beyond the constitutional purview. Finally, this doctoral dissertation infers the qualification of the Portuguese political regime and ends by naming the Portuguese presidential figure, as it has been built and as it has been built itself.

Orientador: Armando Boito Junior / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T18:18:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Martuscelli_DaniloEnrico_D.pdf: 3767563 bytes, checksum: 2ec523b4abcbd3daa0e07be6d9b1e7a4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Esta tese analisa as crises políticas ocorridas no capitalismo neoliberal brasileiro, a saber: a crise do governo Collor (1992) e a crise do partido do governo (PT), vulgarmente conhecida como crise do "mensalão" (2005). Propomo-nos a discutir essas crises, enfatizando a dimensão das contradições de classe engendradas pelo processo de implementação da política estatal e pela própria iniciativa das classes e frações de classe nas conjunturas de transição ao capitalismo neoliberal e de reformas deste no país. A crise política de 1992 caracteriza-se como uma crise do governo a qual emergiu de um processo de instabilidade hegemônica e na qual a hegemonia política foi exercida sob a forma de condomínio entre as frações do grande capital, tendo como resultado a destituição do Presidente da República do cargo por um movimento dirigido pela burguesia interna e contando com a base social de apoio predominantemente de setores das classes médias, descontentes com os efeitos gerados pela política estatal. Muito distante de esse processo encerrar a hegemonia política dessas classes que compunham o movimento contra o governo federal, essa crise política poria em evidência os limites da oposição ao neoliberalismo no país. Esta logrou tão somente fazer resistências pontuais e seletivas a alguns pontos do programa neoliberal ou, na melhor das hipóteses, a lutar contra os efeitos dessa política. A crise política de 2005 caracteriza-se como uma crise do partido do governo, surgindo de um processo de crise de representação política do PT, que passou a sustentar, no governo, os interesses da grande burguesia interna e a acomodá-los no núcleo hegemônico do bloco no poder, sem, com isso, colocar em xeque o poder político da grande burguesia financeira internacional. Trata-se, portanto, de um contexto de reformas no capitalismo neoliberal, no país, criando condições favoráveis para a realização de mudanças na política estatal. Nesse caso, tanto o governo federal quanto a grande burguesia interna sairiam vitoriosos da crise / Abstract: This thesis analyzes the political crises that occurred in Brazilian neoliberal capitalism, namely the crisis of the Collor government (1992) and the crisis of the ruling party (PT), commonly known as "mensalão" crisis (2005). We propose to discuss these crisis, emphasizing the dimension of class contradictions engendered by the process of implementation of the state policy and the own initiative of classes and class fractions in the transition conjunctures to the neoliberal capitalism and its reforms in the country. The political crisis of 1992 is characterized as a government crisis which emerged from a process of hegemonic instability and in which political hegemony was exercised in the form of condominium between fractions of the great capital, resulting in the dismissal of the President of Republic from office by a movement driven by interior bourgeoisie and enlisting the social base of predominantly sectors of the middle classes, discontent with the effects generated by state policy. Far from this process constitute the political hegemony of these classes that made up the movement against the federal Government, this political crisis would highlight the limits of opposition to neo-liberalism in the country. This succeeded in doing so only occasional and selective resistance to some points of the neoliberal program or, at best, to fight against the effects of this policy. The political crisis of 2005 is characterized as a crisis of the ruling party, arising from a process of crisis of political representation of the PT, which now sustain in the government the interests of the great interior bourgeoisie and accommodate them in the core of the hegemonic power bloc, without, however, putting into question the political power of large international financial bourgeoisie. It is therefore a context of reforms in neoliberal capitalism in the country, creating favorable conditions for the realization of changes in state policy. In this case, both the federal government and the great interior bourgeoisie would be victorious from that crisis / Doutorado / Ciencia Politica / Doutor em Ciência Política

Previously threats were conceived as being connected to wars and armed attacks on other countries. But if we observe the world today there are financial situations that, if they got out of hand, could cause severe problems for large parts of a countries population. The environment is another area where severe consequences can be expected. Buzan, Waever and de Wilde (1998:2) work from the premises that security can, and should, be applied to a wider selection of areas in society. From this stand point this Bachelor thesis will cover the discourse of threats in the inaugural addresses of USAs five most recent presidents: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump. The inaugural address` were chosen because it is the presidents opportunity to outline their strategy and ‘set the tone’ for their term in office (Brownell 2016).Throughout the analysis there is a focus on the five sections outlined in Buzans (1991:116) analysis model: military, politics, economy, ecology and societal. The analysis frame is based on both traditional realism and more alternative security theory. There is also a comparing element to examine whether there have been any changes in the discourse, connected to threats, since the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, the study sets out to see if any of the subjects have shown signs of becoming securitized.The result of this study shows that the discourse of threat is mainly focused around the military section. There has been a general increase in the number of threats mentioned since 9/11, although some sections have decreased. Terrorism and immigration are the two questions that meets the criteria to have undergone securitization.

This diploma thesis focuses on constitutional conventions in the Czech Republic. Its aim is to analyze their role in the Czech constitutional system. The work focuses on five areas where the influence of constitutional customs is often spoken. Priority is given to exploring the places where several constitutional institutions are interwoven because it is precisely on them that the power of constitutional conventions is best documented. It focuses in particular on how the practices have been observed in the past and how other constitutional actors have responded. The thesis examines the influence of introducing the direct election of the president to constitutional conventions. A directly elected president may feel more legitimate, and in order to gain a stronger position for himself, he may tend to violate some constitutional conventions or try to introduce new ones. As a result, the finding that the Czech constitution is still a relatively new document and that there was not enough time to fully establish most of the constitutional conventions. However, some constitutional conventions are already becoming an integral part of the constitutional order, whose strength will be decided by the following years. If the constitutional actors - and especially the directly elected presidents - will continue to...

The Biden-Harris administration’s discussion of climate change is analyzed during the transformative time of the administration’s first hundred days in office. The theoretical framework of the Copenhagen School of Security Studies (CS) is used to develop the coding frame to perform a qualitative content analysis of empirical material consisting of speeches and other documents of the administration. Several securitization moves have been identified and climate change has been presented as a security issue and an existential threat by the Biden- Harris administration. A wide range of referent objects are identified, which is the people and things presented to be threatened by climate change. The whole world, ecosystems, the American people and future generations are a few of the identified referent objects. International and national solutions are presented, though the solutions are not interpreted as extreme measures as discussed by the CS. Therefore, this study supports the critique of a too narrow definition of securitization by the CS.

The Diploma Thesis is based on the Case study of the direct election of the President of the Czech Republic. Due to this Case study it examines expertise of the Czech political parties. Is there any expertise in political parties represented in the Parliament of the Czech Republic? Why analytical capacities have (or not have) influence on policy decisions? In theoretical concept including democracy, policy work, expert capacities, elections etc. the Thesis examines the relationship between the expertise of political parties and enactment of the direct presidential elections.