Samuel P. Huntington has argued that political stability is dependent on the degree of institutionalization of participation in the political system. Critical analysis of hypotheses reveals serious flaws in his logic. His concepts were shown to be very hard to make operational and to test. The main hypothesis of a direct relationship between institutionalization and stability was shown to be influenced most likely by additional intervening variables. This study seeks to survey and analyze some of the problems which have arisen with the present state of theory in comparative politics. However, this thesis is particularly interested in .Huntington's work which covers the evolution of his thinking regarding the relation of violence and of political stability, i.e., the degree of government and not the form, with the institutionalization of participation.

This thesis demonstrates that the discursive strategies that characterise the political struggle of the Zapatista (EZLN) movement are produced in response to the political and economic realities of Mexico and the southeastern state of Chiapas. The EZLN�s intentionally ambiguous discourse of dignity epitomises these strategies. By deploying various incarnations of dignity to counter the Mexican Government�s strategic political manoeuvres, the EZLN destabilises the political, economic and social hegemonies of the nation. This destabilisation creates a space for the EZLN to suggest the possibility of an alternative political logic to the Mexican populace. However, the marginalised social location and ethnic diversity of the movement�s indigenous constituents impedes their ability to effect significant political change. This impediment is overcome when they coalesce around the politically advantageous subjectivity of indigenous Zapatistas and engage with the mestizo Subcomandante Marcos to produce the EZLN. The movement enacts a progressive coalitional politics that articulates radical political alternatives for Mexico through the strategic practice of translation. Thus, translation is posited as a powerful political practice for marginalised groups engaged in resistance struggles in the contemporary global conditions.

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<p>What is the political role of risk? What is its role in the power structures of today’s societies? And how can understanding its role lead to a better understanding of political change? This research is inspired by the students of late modernity who argue that the way we are dealing with risk is nowadays structuring culture, society and politics. According to these conceptions of late modernity, risk and political change are closely intertwined through the idea of reflexivity, a process of self-confrontation of a society with its own rules and institutions. This study builds on this theorization of risk and aims to discover why France and Canada, even though they were facing similar technological challenges, were progressively taken along different paths when it comes to regulating GMOs. This study has found that major differences in risk related discourse and in the strategies adopted to manage social risks are factors in explaining different policy outcomes. In addition, it shows that differences in institutional risks management also contribute to the explanation. The comparison of the French and Canadian cases has indeed revealed that, if risks can create significant pressures in favour of institutional and political change, governments may in turn possess the necessary leverage to prevent reflexivity. This comparative analysis exposed that this capacity to manage institutional risk by controlling discourse and preventing reflexivity is related to the characteristics of such core democratic institutions as the parliament, the public administration, the press, and civil society.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The "incorporation" of the GDR into FRG's existing system of institutions after 1989 has led to a dynamic process of change in the living situation of East Germans. In the following paper stability and change of various dimensions of individual coping strategies are to be examined. To do this, I analytically distinguish four elements: frames, habits, utilisation of available resources, and framing.

Ph.D. Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / This study analyses the manner in which animals are represented in selected poetry from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It discusses the various modes of animal representation the poets draw on, and the ideological influences on their manner of animal representation. It explores the kinds of poetic forms the poets employ in their representation of animals and examines the manner in which ecological or environmental issues are reflected in the poetry. Further, the study determines the extent to which the values expressed in the poems are consistent with, or different from, current ecological orthodoxies and the ways in which the metaphors generated in relation to animals influence the way we treat them. The study shows that in the selected poetry animals occupy a significant position in the poets’ exploration of social, psychological, political, and cultural issues. As symbols in, and subjects of, the poetry animals, in particular, and nature in general, function as tools for the poets’ conceptualisation and construction of a wide range of cultural, political, and philosophical ideas, including among others, issues of justice, identity, compassion, relational selfhood, heritage, and belonging to the cosmos. Hence, the animal figure in the poetry acts as a site for the convergence of a variety of concepts the poets mobilise to grapple with and understand relevant political, social, psychological and ecological ideas. The study advances the argument that studying animal representation in the selected poetry reveals a range of ecological sensibilities, as well as the limits of these, and opens a window through which to view and appreciate the poets’ conception, construction and handling of a variety of significant ideas about human to human relationships and human-animal/nature relationships. Further, the study argues that the poets’ social vision influences their animal representation and that their failures at times to fully see or address the connection between forms of abuse (nature and human) undercuts their liberationist quests in the poetry.

This thesis examines how the Kamoro (also known as the Mimika) people of the south-west coast of Papua (former Irian Jaya), Indonesia have adapted to major political and economic changes over a long history of interactions with outsiders. More specifically, it is an ethnohistorical analysis of Kamoro strategies of engagement dating back to the seventeenth century, but focusing on the twentieth century. Taking ethnohistory to most generally refer to the investigation of the social and cultural distinctiveness of historical consciousness, this thesis examines how perceptions and activities of the past shape interpretations of the present. Though this thesis privileges Kamoro perspectives, it juxtaposes them against broader ethnohistorical analyses of the “outsiders” with whom they have interacted. For the Kamoro, amoko-kwere, narratives about the ancestral (and eternal) cultural heroes, underlie indigenous modes of historical consciousness which are ultimately grounded in forms of social reciprocity. One key characteristic of the amoko-kwere is the incorporation of foreign elements and their reformulation as products of indigenous agency. As a result of this reinterpretation expectations are raised concerning the exchange of foreign material wealth and abilities, both classified in the Kamoro language as kata. Foreign withholding of kata emerges as a dominant theme in amoko-kwere and is interpreted as theft, ultimately establishing relationships of negative reciprocity between the Kamoro and the powerful outsiders. These feelings are mirrored in contemporary Kamoro conceptions of their relationships with the Indonesian State and the massive PT Freeport Indonesia Mining Company who use a significant amount of Kamoro land for deposition of mining waste (tailings) and for the development of State and company infrastructure.

This study investigates how the structure and activities of states shape societies in different ways during processes of economic development. The analysis explores how the particular institutional configurations of developmental states in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore shaped trajectories of social change in ways which impacted processes of political change at later points in time. Using a path dependency approach, the study argues that a critical juncture took place in these three countries at various points in their early post-colonial periods, during which time state elites undertook a comprehensive program of reorganizing the state, society, and the organizational and institutional connections between the two, for the purpose of pursuing a strategy of rapid export-oriented industrialization. Differences in the way this critical juncture took place across these cases shaped important variations in institutional patterns of state-society relations. These differences, in turn, conditioned subsequent variation in the mode and type of political change in these countries.

This is a project that takes inequality as its starting point to ask not why it persists in all its myriad forms, but rather how we might better understand its resiliency in order to re-orient our responses. It asks how we can re-imagine one another and work across asymmetrical divides in ways that move us towards substantial forms of social justice, actively disallowing the entrenchment of hierarchical valuing systems, and how we can engage with literature as part of reconfiguring ‘equality’ in the process. These questions are traced through Indigenous women’s literatures in Canada and black South African women’s literatures as sites of deeply textured resistance and re-imagined relationality. My analysis focuses on select texts from the 1980s to present in two primary archives: from Indigenous Canada, The Book of Jessica: A Theatrical Transformation (Maria Campbell in collaboration with Linda Griffiths) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson); and from South Africa, Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa). I use conversation as my methodological and thematic compass for seeking modes of enabling comprehension across perniciously unequal systems of making meaning and considering the possibilities for transformative knowledge production and textual interpretation at sites of unequal intersubjective exchange. I employ an uneasy comparative practice that I base on horizontal forms of juxtaposition within conversational structures, and I argue that conversation’s generative instability and risky uncertainty open onto hopeful possibilities for transformative change. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project examines a small selection of the literatures by Indigenous women writers in Canada and black South African women writers to conceptualize anti-oppressive approaches to working across differences in both literary/scholarly and activist/lived contexts. It uses conversation as a critical methodology for engaging four primary texts and practicing an uneasy comparative method based on horizontal forms of juxtaposition rather than vertical relations of evaluative power: Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and The Book of Jessica (Maria Campbell and Linda Griffiths); and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson). The overall aim is to re-imagine forms of engaging across difference along a range of registers – racialization, gender, nation, class, language, and geographical location – that create conditions for more expansive and substantive forms of social justice than are currently visible. The project draws on feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, critical race, and related areas of scholarship with an orientation towards social justice.

Recent years were marked by a major transformation in human and social communication, owing to the advances in ICT and thus social media technologies. Social media have introduced new communication practices, provided newfound interaction patterns, created new forms of expressions, stimulated a wide civic participation, and so forth. They are rapidly evolving and their significance is increasing while their role is changing in social and political processes. Moreover, they are increasingly becoming an instrumental approach to, and power for, social change due to their potential in bringing new dynamics to its underlying processes such as public mobilization. Indeed, more recently, they played an important role in what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. Particularly, in the recent Egyptian revolt, social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, have been transformed into effective means to fuel revolt and bring about political transformation. This marked a victory for social media and corroborates that they are an enduring resource for the successful mobilization of bottom-up, grassroots movements and leaderless collective actions. This, in turn, has stimulated discussions about their impact on political change, giving rise to a new discourse, what might be identified as ‘social media for social change’. This discourse is gaining an increased attention in the media and the academia: many journalists and authors talk and write about it. Particularly, research and publications by journalists emphasize the fundamental role the online media play in the reproduction of the role of social media in the Egyptian revolution and political change. The aim of this study is to establish, by means of a discourse analysis, how and with what purpose in mind, the online media report on – represent – the relationship between social media and the Egyptian uprising and political transformation, a social relationship that seems to be overstated and constructed in various ways by different journalists. This critical reading reveals what is undervalued, overvalued and excluded, as well as the intersection between the media discourse, subjects and ideology. To achieve this aim, the discourse analysis approach was used to examine the set of selected media texts. The media representation is deterministic as to the role of social media in the Egyptian revolution and political transformation, i.e. it exaggeratedly depicts the power of social media by describing the Egyptian revolution as a Facebook revolution. It also tends to be rhetorical and exclusionary. The event of the revolution and the reality of political change in Egypt are far more complicated than how it is reconstructed by most journalists. Further, it plays a role in constructing a positive image of different corporate players, namely Facebook, Twitter and media companies, as well as in constituting their identities. A great highlight is given to represent these actors. In addition, the media representation does ideological work. It sustains and serves corporate power as well as advances ideological claims. This discursive research enhances the current understanding of the phenomenon of social media in relation to revolution and political change, although the findings may not be generalizable.