台灣地區自從一九八○年代以來，產生了一連串的社會運動與自力救濟事件，而其中有甚多是與公共政策的運作有關，這些頻繁發生的運動和事件，常使得民眾感覺似乎社會變得無秩序，亂象叢生。進而對國民黨政府的施政能力產生了質疑，也引發了「信心危機」。因此，為求瞭解其發生原因、影響以及思考如何減少類似事件發生，故從威權政體民主轉型過程中參與者互動情形來探討。並進而透過歷史性觀察，找出國民黨維繫政權的基本理念，以及運作的方法。在本論文亦經由反核四環保自力救濟事件個案分析，以明瞭在國內外政治、經濟、社會環境的影響下，政策參與者呈現出何種的互動情形和結果，和引用的理論與分析，作一對照。從論文分析中，吾人看到了一種內戰態勢下的互動。在中共軍事上、外交上、政治上及近年年來經濟上的威脅，使得國民黨政府為維繫其政權，戮力追求國家安全與生存，如加強國防戰備、維持外交關係、採行威權統治以及促進經濟發展等方面。而其中，經濟發展隨著國內外環境的變遷，更成為國民黨政權生存維繫的核心政策。在研究發現中，吾人看到了政策參與者互動關係的轉變，如：(1)失去絕對權威的總統。(2)感受立委壓力的行政院。(3)泛政治化的政黨競爭。(4)突破言論管制的大眾傳播媒介。(5)遊說活躍的利益團體。(6)權力意識高漲的民眾。而對於政策建議方面，由於經濟發展是國民黨決策階層的核心施政理念，但此種理念容易導致泛經濟化的決策模式，呈現出由上而下的菁英取向的政策制訂模式。為彌補其不足，有必要採取以由下而上的諮商系統，贏得多數民眾的政治支持。另外，從核四個案分析中，得知反核乃是由於不信任國民黨政府的行政決策。因此，國營事業單位在推動重大早邀集社區居民參與議題的決策過程，以減低民眾的疑慮慮、恐懼及被剝奪感。

This thesis examines the transition to democracy in South Africa through the use of case study methodology. The nature of political participation and the form of democracy to emerge at the end of the transition process are the central subjects of inquiry. They are examined through an in-depth study of the African community of Kwazakele, a township in the Nelson Mandela metropolitan area in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The study covers the period from 1993 to 2000, and uses as a primary data source five surveys conducted among residents of Kwazakele during that period. The emphasis of the study lies on the experience of political participation of ‘ordinary people’ – in particular, the African urban working-class in South Africa who make up the core support base for the governing African National Congress. The primary findings of the thesis are as follows: * Representative democracy has been successfully consolidated in the community under study. * Levels of political participation by urban Africans in the Eastern Cape are consistently high, both in formal political institutions (primarily elections) and in institutions of civil society. * As politics has normalised at the end of the transition period, forms of direct democratic participation have declined. * Despite the structural constraints on development, there is still potential for a high level of participation by citizens in effecting change at local level. * Drawing on the experience of ordinary people in structures of direct democracy, this level of participation can result in a deeper and stronger form of democracy than exists in many established representative democracies.

Après la Guerre civile espagnole et le franquisme, apparut une nouvelle génération d’intellectuels phalangistes. Dionisio Ridruejo était le modèle de l’intellectuel fasciste, qui avait accédé très jeune à un poste de pouvoir et qui croyait en un homme et en un État nouveaux. Mais ce dernier rompit bruyamment avec le régime franquiste et abandonna son poste de Chef de la Propagande. Il estima que le pouvoir personnel de Franco trahissait l’idéal phalangiste. Cette rupture fut le début d’une longue période d’assignation à résidence, qui le mena à réfléchir sur ses propres convictions. Cela ne signifiait pas que Ridruejo était devenu démocrate, contrairement à ce que prétendent rétrospectivement certains de ses amis, convaincus d’avoir été des libéraux depuis les années 40. Il importait de comprendre la cohérence de l’itinéraire de cet intellectuel, qui passa de l’idéal phalangiste aux normes démocratiques, au point d’inspirer le combat des artisans de la Transition vers la démocratie. / After Spanish Civil War and Francoism, a new generation of Falangist intellectuals appeared. Dionisio Ridruejo was the example of a Fascist intellectual, who rose very young to the power and believed in a new Man and in a new State. But he loudly broke with the Francoist regime and deserted his head of Propaganda post. He thought that Franco’s personal power was betraying the Falangist ideal. This breaking off was the beginning of a long period of house arrest which led him to think about his own beliefs. It does not mean that Ridruejo was a democrat, contrary to what are claiming retrospectively his friends who are convinced that they were liberals since the 1940s. It is important to understand the coherence of this intellectual’s path who changed from Falangist ideal to democratic beliefs, inspiring the fight for transition to democracy.

Diploma thesis "Transition to Democracy in Czechoslovakia in 1989 from a Transition Theory Perspective" is an analysis of the Czechoslovak transition to democracy in the year 1989. The author analyses the character of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and the further development of the country after the year 1989 dealing with some of the more general politological aspects such as the strategies of the participants, analyses of the most important agents and factors of the change, etc. Therefore, various politological theories are introduced in the theoretical part (theory of non-democratic regimes, theory of transition, used theories by Juan J. Linz, Carl J. Friedrich, Alfred Stepan, Samuel Huntington and of other relevant authors). The theories are later applied to the Czechoslovak communist regime and to its transition to democracy. The diploma thesis focuses on the application of the theories of transition on Czechoslovakia with regards to the number of transitions. The work aims at explaining that more transitions took place in Czechoslovakia - not only the political one, but also the economic and nationalist, the latter leading to the Czechoslovakian split. Therefore, the last part of the diploma thesis deals with the development of the Czech-Slovak relationship; the link between the...

Práce se zabývá vývojem ekologického hnutí v Československu. Svoji pozornost zaměřuje především k vývoji ekologických iniciativ a ekologického diskurzu v době komunistické nesvobody a v době celospolečenských změn v listopadu 1989 do období rozpadu Občanského fóra v roce 1991. Nedílnou součástí je rovněž analýza vzniku a vývoje Strany zelených, která se stala předmětem scénářů a pokusů o provedení politických reforem v rámci komunistického režimu. Cílem práce je zjistit, jak téma ochrany přírody rezonovalo především v oblasti opozičních a režimních struktur a jaký osud jej následoval v období porevolučního vývoje následovaný otázkou, proč došlo k postupnému úpadku ekologického povědomí ve společnosti. Ke splnění cíle práce byla využita metoda orální historie, jež zprostředkovává pohledy oslovených narátorů - pamětníků problematiky úlohy ekologické karty. Tímto přístupem se snaží nahradit především chybějící archivní materiály. Formou obsahové analýzy a komparace se práce pokouší srovnávat procesy probíhající v západní Evropě s ekologickou tématikou v Československu. Práce se oborově nachází na pomezí historie, politologie, ale také sociologie, přičemž zdůrazňuje akcent historicko-politologický. Ze závěru práce vyplývá, že ekologická karta v rámci československé společnosti získala silnou tradici,...

This diploma thesis addresses the issue of assassination as a potential tool of political struggle, focusing on the assassination of senior state officials as a way to change the political regime. In the theoretical part the thesis deals with the theoretical topics such as: regime change, political violence, anarchism. The practical part focuses on three specific cases of assassinations in the history of modern political regimes during the 19th and 20th century. Selected leaders who have been attacked are represented by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, Adolf Hitler and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Was it possible by using assassination as a method of political struggle to overthrow the regime, that each of these leaders represent? Through above mentioned cases in this diploma thesis we can also observe the role of the individual in the political system, not only in terms of the state leader as a representative of the political regime, but also in terms of individuals, who have decided to change the regime by their act.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis studies police reform in El Salvador and South Africa. While both countries differ considerably in geographic size, culture, location, population, and economic and military strength, they share common security concerns. Under authoritarian rule, their primary security concerns were not military threats from other states, but rather internal threats due to economic, political, and social weakness. Civilian police forces became highly politicized and militarized, incapable of controlling crime, lacking accountability and oversight, and exhibiting total disregard for human rights. This thesis compares El Salvador and South Africa, two cases of negotiated war transitions. Although both countries faced similar militarization of internal security forces, South Africa seemed in a much better position to face challenges of consolidation. First, South Africa's military did not pose any opposition to police reform because the military and police had a long history of being organizationally separated. In contrast, El Salvador's police had a history of being controlled and directed by the military and they fell organizationally under the Defense Ministry. Second, in South Africa, the opposition group (ANC) rather than the rightist government won the foundational elections. Increased domestic support for internal security reform is more likely as the previous rightist government is discredited. Conversely, in El Salvador, the rightist ARENA government won the foundational elections indicating that it would more likely lead to lack of domestic support. The continuance of power would likely mean that the government would prefer the continuance of status quo to far-reaching reform. Finally, the international community was available to aid in the implementation and consolidation of reform in both countries. However, because domestic support was likely to be greater in South Africa, the international community's ability to influence the implementation of reform would also be greater. Yet, the outcome of reform efforts in both countries was surprisingly similar. This can best be explained by the overwhelming obstacles to the consolidation of police reform posed by the conditions of post-conflict societies. / Major, New Hampshire Air National Guard

Cette thèse porte sur le renouvellement du réalisme dans la production narrative espagnole des années 2000, à partir d’un corpus de quatre romans, et se demande : en quoi consiste l’esthétique réaliste actuelle, quelle est son épistémologie et quel lien entretient-elle avec d’autres discours de savoir ? Quel rôle jouent les récits réalistes dans la configuration des imaginaires sociaux, alors que sont remis en question l’héritage de la transition démocratique et le récit de la modernisation espagnole ? Sont d’abord examinées les conditions de possibilité historiques, socio-économiques et culturelles d’un renouveau du réalisme – cartographié dans le champ littéraire des vingt dernières années. Hypothèse centrale : le réalisme ressurgit du fait que les débats de mémoire historique depuis 2000 et la crise économique, sociale et politique depuis 2008 engagent une révision du mythe de la Transition et du projet de la modernité qui structurait les imaginaires sociaux espagnols depuis les années 1960. Trois parties proposent des études de poétiques réalistes, en diachronie et en synchronie, pour mettre en valeur l’évolution des modes de référentialité réalistes entre le début des années 2000 et le début des années 2010, avec la crise de 2008 et ses prémices pour point d’inflexion. La première partie porte sur deux romans (Antonio Muñoz Molina, Sefarad, 2001 et Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Enterrar a los muertos, 2005) qui dialoguent avec la fabrication sociale de documents et l’historiographie pour réinterpréter la guerre de 1936, de la dictature et de la transition. Les deuxième et troisième parties (Rafael Chirbes, Crematorio, 2007, et Isaac Rosa, La mano invisible, 2011) analysent l’élaboration d’un récit collectif de l’Espagne développementaliste, à l’aube de la crise, par des romans qui dialoguent avec la théorie économique et la sociologie historique. Au carrefour du littéraire, des discours sociaux, de l’histoire et de la sociologie contemporaine de l’Espagne, cette thèse soutient que la réappropriation du réalisme dans les années 2000 participe à la remise en question d’une identité nationale démocratique et moderne, au resurgissement d’une réalité problématique et d’imaginaires sociaux paramodernes après l’écroulement du métarécit d’une transition modèle. Si les romans cherchent tous à prendre en charge le réel social selon ses représentations, ils se différencient par leur traitement de la question politique de ce que « réel » veut dire, par le choix du chemin selon lequel le décrire, et par l’évaluation de la nature des causes historiques et matérielles de la réalité qu’habitent les écrivains. / This thesis studies new forms of realism in Spanish prose in the 2000s, from a corpus of four novels. It contemplates what makes the contemporary reality aesthetic, what its epistemology is, and what links it bears to other forms of knowledge. What roles do realist narrations play in the configuration of social imaginaries, when the heritage of the democratic transition and the narration of Spanish modernisation are called into question? We first examine the conditions of historical, socio-economic and cultural possibilities of a renewal of realism, which is mapped throughout the literary field of the last twenty years. The central hypothesis is that realism springs back up from the fact that debates around historical memory in the 2000s, and since 2008, the economic, social and political crisis prompt the revision of the transition myth and the project of modernity which had been structuring Spain’s social imaginaries since the 1960s. Three parts offer different studies of realist poetics, diachronically and synchronically, to highlight the evolution of the modes of realist referentiality between the start of the 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s, the crisis of 2008 and its beginning as an inflexion point. The first part tackles two novels (Antonio Muñoz Molina, Sefarad, 2001 and Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Enterrar a los muertos, 2005), which discuss the social fabrication of documents and historiography to reinterpret the 1936 war, the dictatorship and the transition. The second and third parts (Rafael Chirbes, Crematorio, 2007, and Isaac Rosa, La mano invisible, 2011) analyse the elaboration of a collective narrative of developmental Spain, at the dawn of the crisis, through novels which interact with the economic theory of liberalism and historic sociology. At the crossroads of literary studies, social discourse, history and the contemporary sociology of Spain, this thesis argues that the appropriation of realism in the 2000s questions a national identity that is democratic, modern, and takes part in the reappearance of a problematic reality after the meta narration of a model transition collapsed. If the novels all try to tackle the social reality according to its representations, they differ through what « reality » means to them, through the nature of its historic and material causes, and through the ways they describe it.

The object of this study is the creation, activity and termination of Občanské fórum (OF) in the central Bohemia city Slaný. The OF in Slaný was established after the general strike on 27th November 1989 at home of one of the founders. Other OF were created spontaneously in the workplace and in schools and gradually merged into the urban OF. In the early days the dialogue was the priority, members of OF Slaný called for discussion by their deputies in the local national committee. The main objective is to clarify the activities of OF and its influence on events in Slaný in November and the days following. Many different people with different interests, motivations and desires came and left the OF. And it influenced his future direction and impact on the political scene in Slaný. Without the establishment of the OF it would be more difficult to put pressure on city officials to allow access to the administration for the non-communist parties. The parties and movements have been isolated. The OF was able to unify the parties and joint efforts have produced results. The functions of the OF were primarily informational, coordination and control. Strategy that both parties (the Communist Party and Občanské fórum) chose was a compromise. It took place the so-called round table and finding the program...

The thesis Democracy in Iraq? firstly considers difficulties in establishing democracy in Iraq between 2003 and 2010. It proceeds from two hypotheses. The first hypothesis concerns the causes of these problems. The assumption is that the problems there were historically - the fact that until the establishment of Iraq after the First World War kept the Ottoman Empire fragmentation into three administrative separate areas in which lived Shic as, Sunnis and Kurds. British colonization and postcolonial authoritarian regime did not overcome this ethnic-religional fragmentation. The second hypothesis concerns the type of democracy that the post-Saddam elites are trying (not very successfully) to establish in Iraq. The assumption is that is a consociational democracy.