Diploma thesis Single-Party Regimes in Comparison: China, Malaysia and Singapore is devoted to non-democratic regimes in which one party dominates and which legitimize by the concept of Asian values. The first part deals with the most important typologies and to approaches to explore single-party regimes. The second part introduced changes and the very concept of Asian values according to which democracy is unsuitable for Asian countries because of cultural differences. Other parts are devoted to describe the regimes in China, Malaysia and Singapore, which are classified into different typologies. The aim of the work is to show that Asian values don't explain the genesis of these regimes or their forms of non- democratic governance.

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This dissertation aims to enrich the discussion about the role of social movements in the process of democratisation, ie. to assess their role in the transformation from authoritarian to democratic regime. In particular, it tries to find the way how to assess the impact of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) and related movement on the Mexican transition to democracy in 1990s. The analysis tries to identify possible impacts on three different levels -- political (which means regime transition), social (which is related with the change of the nature of the relations between state and society, once described as corporatist) and economical (which means the end of neoliberal policy promoted by recent Mexican governments and the introduction of more equal, "more democratic" policy in zapatista logic). It looks both at the formal (direct through bargaining) and informal (influence) impact of the zapatista movement. From the methodological point of view, the study is case analysis, in some parts it uses historical analysis. The text is structured into five chapters. The first chapter shows main theoretical and methodological approaches to the social movements with special focus on Latin American context. It is followed by explaining the principles of methods used to assessment of the zapatista impacts. The second chapter presents main approaches to social change and process of democratic transition. The third chapter contains the historical analysis of transformation of relation between state and society during 20th century, from the introduction of (state) corporatist model in 1930s to its gradual dismantling in the late 20th century. The fourth chapter analysis the evolution of EZLN from its beginning in Lacandon jungle in southern Mexican state of Chiapas. In relation with the emphasis of movement's goals, the period from 1994, when zapatista uprising in Chiapas started, to 2010 is divided into four stages. In the fifth chapter, theoretical findings are applied on EZLN and zapatista movement and formulated hypotheses are tested.

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