This thesis examines how Afghan women from the professional social class have negotiated the patriarchy in that country and claimed their agency and public life during different political regimes. Resisting the Western representation of Afghan women as passive victims, it uses the life story method, based on interviews with a wide range of women in public life during the period of US-sponsored democracy and intervention, to analyse the complex factors involved in enabling women to access public life. From a historical sociological viewpoint it examines the shifts in the forms of patriarchy and their sustaining gender regimes from 19th century to the present, and draws on Walby’s six structures of patriarchy in order to understand how those shift affected the ability of women to access public life and employment. Those structures – culture, religion, education, employment, family – are explored through the experiences and life histories of my interviewees. The thesis also pays attention to the involvement of external, foreign actors in the affairs of Afghanistan and the impact of those interventions on the possibility for women’s agency and participation in professional and public life through different political regimes. It thus challenges a simplistic view 9/11 was a water-shed moment for women’s empowerment, and notes that the economic is-sues, an aid-dependent economy and political regimes, security and safety, poverty and psychological trauma, corruption and power struggles among different forces (local and foreign) in many ways undermined women’s prospects in public life. The finding of the research shows that the rights and position of women in Afghanistan have fluctuated over the last 100 years depending on the patriarchal cultural, political and religious ideology and practice of the political regimes, and in no small part due to the influence and interference of external actors in the country.

<p>The study explores how struggles for social justice by Guatemalan and Ecuadorian indigenous peasant movements are affected by ethno-politics (the strategic political use of ethnicity), by using a comparative historical approach incorporating structural change and strategic agency. The analysis revolves around the partly enduring, partly changing oligarchic structures. The choice of the countries rests primarily upon the composition of their respective oligarchic classes. In Guatemala, the despotic agrarian oligarchs have dominated for much of the past century; whereas in Ecuador, the oligarchy was divided into an agrarian and a modernist fraction.</p><p>Scholars often locate ethnic politicisation in Latin America within the context of a shift from ‘national popular’ and ‘corporatist’ political orders toward political and economic liberalisation. This shift supposedly unleashed ethnic identities which were previously subordinated by the way indigenous communities were politically incorporated. This study shows that dramatic openings for ethnic politicisation in the 1990s occurred where corporatism had been weak and oligarchic structures persisted. But the elites were unable to use ethnicity as a tool for hegemonic control. Due to the oligarchic legacy, class discourses could not be prevented from being reproduced, and ethnic ones were politicised in a way that is dysfunctional to the elites’ effort to politically disarm the rural poor. Another finding is that the persisting influence of the agrarian oligarchy made the Guatemalan movement more focused on the land struggle and more unwilling/unable to integrate into the political arena prescribed by those in control of the state. In Ecuador, the demise of the agrarian oligarchy and the rise of a strong neo-liberal fraction constituted the context within which the movement moved away from the land struggle. It accessed the ethno-political spaces more firmly but resembled the Guatemalan movement in keeping its strategy of mass mobilisation.</p>

Cette thèse cherche à comprendre pourquoi Aron juge essentiel d’étudier la question du meilleur régime politique à l’épreuve des relations internationales. Il s’agit de s’interroger sur l’ampleur et le sens politique de ce que Raymond Aron appelle le drame humain, en précisant la nature de la distinction entre l’intérieur et l’extérieur, entre la politique domestique et les affaires étrangères qu’il juge essentiel, tout en examinant les rapports complexes qui se nouent entre ces deux domaines de la vie politique. Nous tâchons d’éclairer la signification que revêt aux yeux d’Aron la primauté de la politique dans l’organisation des choses humaines, alors que pourtant l’organisation politique des sociétés modernes lui apparaît essentiellement indéterminée. Ceci nous amène à nous interroger sur la conception aronienne singulière de la démocratie et du libéralisme, au regard des tensions fondamentales de la vie politique entre les réquisits du bon gouvernement et les contraintes du jeu international. L’étude des antinomies de l’action politique, nous conduit à revenir sur les principaux débats entre réalistes et idéalistes au sujet du problème de la guerre et de la paix, qu’Aron examine à travers ses réflexions sur le « problème machiavélien » et « le « problème kantien ». Il s’agit de préciser le sens de la prudence politique selon Aron, en s’interrogeant sur les limites inhérentes à la recherche du meilleur ordre politique qui soit et en tenant compte du défi que représente la menace thermonucléaire. / This dissertation explores the reasons why Raymond Aron deems it essential that the question of the best regime be framed in the context of international relations. In doing so, it seeks to draw out the full scope and political meaning of what Raymond Aron calls "the human drama" by specifying the distinction he makes between domestic politics and foreign affairs, whilst also examining the complex interactions through which he connects these two essential domains of political life. I take as a starting-point the apparent dissonance between Aron's belief in the primacy of politics as an organising principle for human affairs and his perception of modern political societies as essentially indeterminate. From there, I move on to question the singular nature of the Aronian conception of democracy and liberalism in light of the fundamental tension between the imperatives of good governance and the constraints imposed by the international system. The study of the antinomies of political action leads me to revisit the main debates between realists and idealists on the problem of war and peace, as addressed by Aron in his reflections on the Machiavellian problem and the Kantian problem. The aim here is to clarify the meaning Aron gives to political prudence by taking account of the limits inherent to the search for the best possible political order, especially in light of the existential threat raised by the prospect of thermonuclear warfare.

The study explores how struggles for social justice by Guatemalan and Ecuadorian indigenous peasant movements are affected by ethno-politics (the strategic political use of ethnicity), by using a comparative historical approach incorporating structural change and strategic agency. The analysis revolves around the partly enduring, partly changing oligarchic structures. The choice of the countries rests primarily upon the composition of their respective oligarchic classes. In Guatemala, the despotic agrarian oligarchs have dominated for much of the past century; whereas in Ecuador, the oligarchy was divided into an agrarian and a modernist fraction. Scholars often locate ethnic politicisation in Latin America within the context of a shift from ‘national popular’ and ‘corporatist’ political orders toward political and economic liberalisation. This shift supposedly unleashed ethnic identities which were previously subordinated by the way indigenous communities were politically incorporated. This study shows that dramatic openings for ethnic politicisation in the 1990s occurred where corporatism had been weak and oligarchic structures persisted. But the elites were unable to use ethnicity as a tool for hegemonic control. Due to the oligarchic legacy, class discourses could not be prevented from being reproduced, and ethnic ones were politicised in a way that is dysfunctional to the elites’ effort to politically disarm the rural poor. Another finding is that the persisting influence of the agrarian oligarchy made the Guatemalan movement more focused on the land struggle and more unwilling/unable to integrate into the political arena prescribed by those in control of the state. In Ecuador, the demise of the agrarian oligarchy and the rise of a strong neo-liberal fraction constituted the context within which the movement moved away from the land struggle. It accessed the ethno-political spaces more firmly but resembled the Guatemalan movement in keeping its strategy of mass mobilisation.

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Submitted by Ana Valéria de Jesus Moura (anavaleria_131@hotmail.com) on 2014-08-26T15:23:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 MAURÍCIO SOUZA SAMPAIO.pdf: 1302755 bytes, checksum: 880764e58ccedd0cd25b39d55b21f50a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Valéria de Jesus Moura (anavaleria_131@hotmail.com) on 2014-08-26T15:24:07Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 MAURÍCIO SOUZA SAMPAIO.pdf: 1302755 bytes, checksum: 880764e58ccedd0cd25b39d55b21f50a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-26T15:24:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 MAURÍCIO SOUZA SAMPAIO.pdf: 1302755 bytes, checksum: 880764e58ccedd0cd25b39d55b21f50a (MD5) / Essa dissertação tem como proposta uma análise da Democracia Semidireta no Brasil pautada numa suposta crise, causada pelos problemas atuais da representação política e pelos limites dos instrumentos de participação direta. Para iniciar, faz-se necessário fazer uma abordagem do que é estado e seus elementos estruturais: formas de governo; povo, participação e cidadania; regimes políticos, aludindo-se com especificidade à Democracia Semidireta, que é o caso brasileiro, suas características, conceitos, histórico, institutos etc. Diante disso, caberá uma análise mais específica e profunda da representação política e suas características, voltando-se principalmente à demonstração da grave crise por que passa essa parte da Democracia Semidireta, além de abordagens acerca dos mecanismos propostos pela legislação à participação popular, especificamente, nas atividades legislativas: o plebiscito, o referendo e a iniciativa popular e suas limitações, tanto as formais quanto as materiais, impostas pela legislação à participação direta da população, o que gera, desta forma, a contestação do Brasil como verdadeira Democracia, em virtude da falta de uso efetivo, como deveria ser, dos institutos acima mencionados e do desvirtuamento da representação política. O objetivo do texto é, portanto, tentar demonstrar que, em razão da excessiva gama de limitações aos mecanismos de participação direta da população e de toda problemática da representatividade, a definição do Regime Político da Constituição Federal brasileira, de 1988, como Democracia Semidireta, ou mesmo como uma Democracia, torna-se discutível e contestável.

Existing literature on foreign aid does not indicate what type of political regime is best to achieve human development outcomes or use aid funds more efficiently. I contend that political leaders of different regime types have personal incentives that motivate them to utilize foreign aid to reflect their interests in providing more or less basic social services for their citizens. Using a data set of 126 aid-recipient countries between the years of 1990 and 2007, I employ fixed effects estimation to test the model. The overall results of this research indicate that foreign aid and democratic institutionalization have a positive effect on total enrollment in primary education, while political regime types show little difference from one another in providing public health and education for their citizens.

René Capitant (1901-1970), professeur de droit public, résistant, député et ministre gaulliste, lègue une œuvre constitutionnelle qui n’a jamais fait l’objet d’une analyse juridique exhaustive. Souvent critiques et parfois précurseurs, ses écrits doctrinaux et politiques présentent un intérêt qui réside autant dans les développements théoriques questionnant l’origine du droit positif à travers sa réception par les consciences individuelles que dans les aspects pratiques portant sur l’évolution des régimes français. Par une approche dynamique du droit constitutionnel où s’entremêlent histoire constitutionnelle, pratiques institutionnelles et doctrines philosophiques et politiques, le droit constitutionnel de René Capitant invite à dépasser les textes pour s’interroger sur la légitimité constitutionnelle de la démocratie française. / René Capitant (1901-1970) was professor of public law, involved in the Resistance movement during the Second World War, deputy, and Gaullist minister. He bequeaths a constitutional work that has never been subjected to exhaustive legal analysis. Often critical and sometimes precursor, his doctrinal and political writings are of interest as much in the theoretical developments questioning the origin of positive law through its reception by individual consciences as in the practical aspects of the evolution of French regimes. Through a dynamic approach to constitutional law in which constitutional history, institutional practices and philosophical and political doctrines intermingle, René Capitant's constitutional law invites us to go beyond the texts to question the constitutional legitimacy of French democracy.

The thesis deals with the topic of the development of presidential political clans in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It covers the entire rule of the first two presidents (Nursultan Nazarbayev and Islam Karimov) from their ascension to their posts shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and declarations of independence of both states, and also the current rule of their respective successors (Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Shavkat Mirziyoyev). It predominantly focuses on the power and social status of their closest relatives in these clan- based structures. Special attention was paid to their potential roles in state affairs after the resignation (or death) of their patrons.

Le régime politique démocratique est souvent plébiscité dans le discours général reproduit par les institutions internationales et assumé par les principaux acteurs politiques dans le monde, comme étant l’arme par excellence pour l’éradication de la corruption et une bonne gouvernance. L’analyse de deux pays africains le Bénin et le Rwanda, semble toutefois indiquer que c’est le pays avec le système le moins démocratique, à savoir le Rwanda qui réussit le mieux le pari de la lutte contre la corruption. Contre toute attente en effet, le Rwanda malgré l’autoritarisme souvent décrié de son gouvernement surclasse le Bénin, souvent applaudi pour la réussite de sa transition démocratique, en matière de lutte contre la corruption. Cette tendance est confirmée par la plupart des indicateurs de la corruption. Ce constat vient remettre en question les postulats de départ, et nous oblige alors à nous interroger sur les sources de la performance du Rwanda. Le présent mémoire vient justement démontrer que la relation entre la nature du régime politique et l’efficacité de la lutte contre la corruption est loin d’être automatique. Les règles du jeu politique à l’intérieur du régime ainsi que la qualité des institutions de lutte contre la corruption mises en place peuvent avoir une influence majeure sur le succès ou l’échec des mesures de lutte contre la corruption. / Democratic regimes are often praised in the general discourse reproduced by international institutions and assumed by the main political actors in the world as a great weapon for the fight against corruption and good governance. However, the analysis of two african countries, Benin and Rwanda, seems to indicate that it is the country with the least democratic system that succeed the best in the fight against corruption. Against all expectations, in fact, Rwanda despite the often decried authoritarianism of his government, outperforms Benin, often applauded for its successful democratic transition. This trend is confirmed by most indicators of corruption. This finding, challenges the starting assumptions, and then forces us to wonder about the source of the performance of Rwanda. This memory precisely demonstrates that the relationship between the nature of the political regime and the effectiveness of the fight against corruption is far from automatic. The rules of the political game within the regime and the quality of anti-corruption institutions implemented can have a major influence on the success or failure of measures against corruption.