The literature on authoritarian politics emphasises the threat unexpected shocks such as economic downturns or political and security challenges pose for regime stability. However, we know relatively little about how incumbents can influence the process by which citizens evaluate government performance and attribute blame in non-democratic regimes. To gain insights into these questions, I study how government responses to collective shocks to citizen income and security influence support for electoral authoritarian regimes, i.e. those that combine authoritarian practices with multiparty elections. I propose that when shocks make information about government performance publicly observable, illiberal governments can take action that moderates or ameliorates their effect on the levels of support they enjoy. Little constrained by constitutional rules, critical media or coalition partners, electoral authoritarians can use tactical redistribution to appease the discontented electorate on the one hand and propaganda to manipulate attributions of responsibility for the shock on the other. Repression against opposition parties and activists in this context is used rarely, and only after targeted transfers and propaganda have failed to prevent support from eroding and crowds from taking to the streets. The thesis illustrates arguments with the case of contemporary Russia - an electoral authoritarian regime with high levels of personalist rule - and leverages evidence from government and citizen responses to natural disasters, economic downturns, terror attacks and electoral protests. Empirical analysis combines original datasets on the framing of economic news in Kremlin-controlled media, the forced dismissals of government actors, the provision of tactical redistribution, and the use of repression against opposition parties and activists with over 60,000 responses from nationally and regionally representative public opinion surveys. Bringing new data and evidence from individual-level surveys to bear on the debate of how non-democratic governments manage public opinion, the thesis makes an original contribution to scholarship on authoritarian vulnerability and resilience.

The philosophy of Francis Bacon has an important and often overlooked place in the development of American political thought. John Dewey cites Bacon as the forefather of his own highly influential philosophical school, American pragmatism. I argue that, though Dewey is in many ways correct to look to Bacon as his predecessor, he overlooks or collapses certain crucial tensions in Bacon’s philosophical project. This causes Dewey to misinterpret the political implications of the philosophic project to which he himself is an heir. By exploring the tensions that Bacon maintains, and Dewey collapses, between human knowledge and human power, science and democracy, and progress in the sciences and progress within states, I hope to shed light on the true implications of Bacon’s philosophical project for American political thought. / text

Thesis (M.A.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-139). Also available via the Internet.

This thesis shows that despite the rhetoric of universalism and internationalism used by the Royal Society, especially after the onset of Cold War, its policies and actions in the period 1945-75 remained closely allied to the interests of the British state. More specifically, in its foreign relations the Society mainly operated within a network of Western intergovernmental organisations that were a response to, and operated in similar ways, to Eastern Bloc organisations. While financially dependent on a Parliamentary grant-in-aid, they effectively carved out a role in the sphere of international scientific relations which was built upon an image of independence from the state. Thus, Society Officers and staff were able to mobilise a double-sided discourse of utility to, and independence from, the state. The association between the government of the day and the Society was at its most effective when a consensus existed between like-minded government administrators and Officers of the Society. A culture of collaboration and informal networks allowed them to build relationships and share ideas. The Society was perfectly designed to facilitate this culture, as its Fellows permeated government networks as individuals as much as they did as direct representatives of the Society. The status of Fellows conferred on them eligibility for a variety of positions, both formal and informal, within the elite infrastructure of national life. The thesis also shows that party political and ideological motivations often prefaced associations between Fellows and like-minded politicians or civil servants, but these associations were principally between economic liberals to the exclusion of far left scientists. However, the Society’s connections with the government were also motivated by reasons beyond party politics. The Society had an overarching aim to preserve the United Kingdom’s position as a scientific ‘Mecca’. In the shifting post-war landscape, in which the country became more dependent on outside help and conscious of its relative decline in economic and political power, the Society looked beyond national borders to stay in the competition. The thesis shows that Officers of the Society responded creatively to the changing geopolitical landscape as old spheres of influence waned, such as the Empire-Commonwealth, and new ones opened up, such as the European Community and the special relationship with America. The Society pursued these new opportunities with patriotic ambition, often prioritising relations that promised scientific rather than political gains, but always within a Western framework.

In this dissertation, I deconstruct the commonly held assumption that the intrauterine device (IUD) is an unsafe and/or obsolete contraceptive method that has been used mostly to impose population control on women in developing countries. Simultaneously, I explore the changing meaning of the device over the last 40 years in varying socio-historical contexts. Capitalizing on the analytical tradition of science and technology studies that regards technology as socially constructed, I analyze the IUD as a technology that transformed through a series of material and discursive negotiations. Negotiations over the IUD took place in multiple layers, most notably in the social and political domains that defined the meaning of the contraceptive technology, but also in the domain of science, in which claims about the device's technical features and its relationship with the biological body were made. This work is divided into the examination of four major domains – global population politics, American contraceptive market, American antiabortion politics, and scientific research – within which the IUD took shape both materially and discursively. The historical development of the scientific research and discourse of IUDs are juxtaposed with the prevailing socio-political background to illustrate the intricate relationship between scientific research of contraceptive technology and the politics of fertility control. The final chapter addresses the agency of IUD users, introducing the ways in which women in developing countries have manipulated the IUD to achieve reproductive self-determination. / Ph. D.

How do authoritarian stales foster civil society growth while keeping unruly organizations in line? This governance dilemma dogs every state that attempts to modernize by permitting civil society to pluralize while minding its potential to stir up restive social forces. This dissertation's main finding is that the Chinese party state the world's largest and arguably the most resilient authoritarian regime-has engineered a flexible institution of state control in which the "rules of the game" arc created, disseminated, and enforced outside of institutionalized channels. This dissertation demonstrates how the coercive apparatus improvises in an erratic manner, unfettered by accountability mechanisms. The regime does not necessarily pull the levers of hard control mechanisms-the tanks, guns, and tear gas-whenever dissenters cross a line of political acceptability. Instead, in keeping with its decentralized political system and its tradition of experimental policy-making, the Chinese state continually remakes the rules of the game which keeps potential rabble-rousers on their toes. Although the regulatory skeleton of state corporatism remains intact, flexible repression is the informal institution-the set of rules and procedures-that structures state-civil society interactions. Specifically, this institution is made up of three key practices: a) decentralization b) ad-hoc deployment c) mixed control strategies. These three practices manifest in two concrete strategies used to govern aboveground and underground civil society: fragmented coercion and controlled competition. Flexible repression enables the Chinese party-state to exploit the advantages of a flourishing third sector while curtailing its threatening potential. Through participant observation, interviews, and comparative case studies of aboveground and underground independent labor organizations, this dissertation accomplishes three goals. First, it identifies the within-country variation in state control strategies over civil society, which includes the above-ground sector as well as the underground sector of ostensibly banned organizations. Secondly, it traces the patterns of interactions between the state and civil society, generating hypotheses about the mechanisms of change. Finally, it identifies new concepts relevant for studying organized contention in authoritarian regime.. .... Overall, this dissertation contributes to the study of authoritarian state control and civil society contention, with an emphasis on the nexus between the two.

Thesis advisor: Robert Faulkner / Over the past century we have witnessed and benefitted from a technological boom. Issues ranging from how science should progress to how it should be used continually gain prominence in public debates. This raises the question: what is the ideal relationship between the state and the scientific institutions? I attempt to explain how Francis Bacon, one of the founders of the modern era, answers this with his New Atlantis. Bacon’s realpolitik nature allows the New Atlantis to achieve what very few utopias can, actualization. By looking at New Atlantis’s fictionalized country, Bensalem, we can see Bacon’s ideal relationship between the scientific institution (Salomon’s House) and the state. First, I examine the state and Salomon’s House independently of each other, and then how they interact. Eventually, Bacon shows us that a strong and independent scientific institution is necessary to establish perpetuity to a well ordered state. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

p. 1 - 117 / Submitted by Santiago Fabio (fabio.ssantiago@hotmail.com) on 2013-01-22T18:03:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 111.pdf: 609059 bytes, checksum: 74cf162aac29475652a3beadd6fee6e2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-01-22T18:03:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 111.pdf: 609059 bytes, checksum: 74cf162aac29475652a3beadd6fee6e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Este estudo buscou desenvolver duas dimensões em torno da categoria teórica do Poder, quais sejam a Legitimidade e a Dinâmica, observáveis na esfera política, a partir da avaliação dessas dimensões nos municípios de Água Fria e Irará, no interior do estado da Bahia. Para apoiar o entendimento sobre esses conceitos foi esboçada a natureza do Poder, descrevendose a sua gênese e suas transformações ao longo dos tempos, amoldando-se às formas das organizações sociais. Em seguida desenhou-se um panorama com várias óticas sobre Poder, coletadas na literatura utilizada nessa investigação, a partir dos teóricos que dedicaram-se a esse objeto. Para definir o enquadramento teórico adotado na pesquisa o Poder foi detalhado na sua dimensão política e assim realizou-se a aproximação com o objetivo geral que foi identificar como é avaliada, atualmente, a Legitimidade do poder e a Dinâmica do Poder em Água Fria e Irará, no interior da Bahia, confrontando as avaliações emitidas por integrantes da administração municipal, membros da sociedade civil e os políticos. A pesquisa teve um caráter descritivo-analítico na medida em que se ocupou de elucidar teoricamente o fenômeno estudado e analisou os resultados encontrados depois de tabulados os dados coletados através de instrumento desenvolvido para esse fim. A metodologia para coleta de dados utilizada foi do tipo levantamento, ou survey, os quais foram obtidos através de consulta direta a uma amostra da população escolhida por adequar-se ao escopo da pesquisa. Foi construída, pois, uma métrica adaptando-se indicadores já existentes, para comprovar, numericamente, o pressuposto estabelecido de que a Legitimidade e a Dinâmica do poder são avaliadas de forma divergente pelos funcionários da administração municipal, por integrantes da sociedade civil e pelos políticos. Esse pressuposto foi comprovado tomando-se os municípios de Água Fria e Irará separadamente ou em conjunto. As avaliações da Legitimidade e da Dinâmica do poder feitas pelo atores sociais foram diferentes e, em alguns casos, divergentes. / Salvador

The thesis which follows is, as the title suggests, a general study of the Right in Spain from the beginning of the Second Republic in April 1931 until the outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936. Pride of place has been given to the <u>CEDA</u> (and its antecedents <u>Acción Nacional</u> and <u>Acción Popular</u>) because this was the biggest and most important of the parties of the Right during the Republic. The terra 'Right' has been taken to signify those parties which did not proclaim themselves Republican, i.e. principally the Catholic CEDA, the Monarchist groups and the 'Fascist' <u>Falonge</u>. Consideration has also been given to two important institutions usually believed to be 'on the Right': the Church and the Army. Although some information on the Right has appeared in various books, no attempt at a comprehensive study has hitherto been made. Galindo Herrero's <u>Los partidos monárquicos bajo la aegunda República</u> (1936) deals inadequately with the Monarchist parties. Professor Payne'a study of the <u>Falange</u> does not satisfactorily place the movement in the context of the other Rightist movements with which it quarrelled or was from time to time connected. The same author's work on the Army (<u>Politics and the Military in Modern Spain</u>), was published just before this thesis went to the typist, as were the biographies of Franco by Crosier and Hills. Professor Sánchez's book on the Church and the Republic, <u>Reform and Reaction</u>, appeared in 1964, two years after work on this thesis began. Concentration on the <u>CEDA</u> in this thesis is felt by the writer to be fUlly justified, not only because of that party's size and importance for the history of the Republic, but also because it has hitherto been so neglected by historians. Only one book in any language deals with it - Monge Bernal's <u>Acción Popular</u> - and it is an 'authorized' history written by a party member at the end of 1935. Neglect of the party's history is perhaps attributable to the fact that its leaders were <u>personae non gratae</u> both to the Left and to the victors in the Civil War. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to try and provide a comprehensive study of the Right during the Republic. The thesis endeavours to explain why the various parties existed, to trace the development of each of them and to give an account of relations between them. The attitude of each to the Church and to the Army (and <u>vice versa</u>) is also discussed. An attempt is also made to examine and explain the policies, ideology and strength of each and, so far as is possible, to indicate socially and geographically whence came their supporters. The absence of adequate biographical information has however hindered a proper study of the economic interests represented by them. This thesis also constitutes an attempt to set the Right's activities firmly within the broader context of the history of the Republic and the events leading up to the Civil War. For this reason the chronological approach adopted would seem to be justified: the events of the years 1931-1936 in Spain are comparable in their complexity to those of, for example, the years 1789-1799 in France. Furthermore, the activities and development of the Right were to a considerable extent dictated by this kaleidoscopic sequence of events in which, by and large, the Left held the initiative.

Congress has become infamous for its lack of understanding of technology, particularly with the Facebook and Google hearings in 2018. To improve this understanding, this thesis argues for the return of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional support agency created in 1972 that provided science and technology expertise to Congress until its termination in 1995. It also considers potential changes that might be made to the old OTA model and the political environment in which a new OTA would need to survive.