Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2006. / Thesis research directed by: Public Affairs. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed May 22, 2007). PDF text: 162 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 3.48 Mb UMI publication number: AAT 3237061. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

A capitalist society has two defining features. The first is well-known. A capitalist economy leaves coordination of exchange and production largely to private authority. The dissertation investigates a second feature. In a capitalist economy, individuals and firms coordinate exchange through contracts that involve obligations to pay money. Financial contracts allow individuals to defer payment and save money for expenditures at a later point in time. My dissertation assigns a crucial role to the structure of institutions and to the rules that create and define the authority over money. I refer to such a structure as a monetary constitution. In existing capitalist societies, money is not entirely under public control, as proponents of socialism or full reserve banking require. Nor is it entirely in private hands as libertarian free bankers would ideally have it. Instead, the supply of money to the economy takes place through a hierarchical order of money creation. Money issued by the central bank stands at the top of the hierarchy. Below it, private financial institutions issue different forms of credit money. In this sense, the monetary constitution is a hybrid of both public and private authority over money. Political philosophy has said virtually nothing about the authority over money. I aim to persuade the reader that this is a grave neglect. The three main claims of the dissertation are: 1. Money and finance are central to any account of distributive justice that is adequate for a capitalist society. 2. There are five objections to unregulated private money creation. 3. Existing monetary constitutions need fundamental reform. In support of the first claim, I argue that money is a crucial metric for any theory of distributive justice that is adequate for a capitalist society. I also put forward a new account of the crucial role of credit and saving in realising a fair intertemporal distribution. Finally, the second and third claims support the first claim where it concerns the authority over money. In support of the second claim, I argue that unregulated private money creation leads to (1) financial instability, (2) macroeconomic instability, (3) unsustainable use of natural resources, (4) an unfair distribution of economic means, and (5) an undemocratic concentration of political power. I also put forward a new account of why financial instability matters from the perspective of distributive justice. In support of the third claim, I argue for the incremental abolition of private money creation. Although the delegation of public money creation to an independent central bank is not objectionable in principle, I go on to argue that existing mandates are insufficiently democratic and need reform.

201f. / Submitted by Suelen Reis (suziy.ellen@gmail.com) on 2013-05-24T14:07:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissert Francisco Marques.pdf: 1886296 bytes, checksum: 06849b989ec74ed7b34135df9b405b18 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-24T14:07:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissert Francisco Marques.pdf: 1886296 bytes, checksum: 06849b989ec74ed7b34135df9b405b18 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2004 / Esta dissertação visa examinar teoricamente algumas das dimensões da interface entre democracia e tecnologias de comunicação e informação, suas potencialidades, problemas e perspectivas de maior destaque. Admitir que as novas tecnologias de comunicação revolucionam a compreensão de democracia não é apenas aderir a uma perspectiva triunfalista. Implica, também, aceitar que a democracia passa por carências que comprometem sua superioridade contemporânea enquanto forma de governo. Por outro lado, negar o potencial destas tecnologias para concertar diferentes formas de manifestação política, inclusive por parte da esfera civil, não parece uma saída satisfatória. São examinadas cinco classes de fenômenos manifestos nas redes telemáticas com implicações no campo político, a saber, Governo Eletrônico, Voto Eletrônico, Ativismo Digital, Comunicação Políticopartidária e Esfera Pública Virtual. A hipótese central deste trabalho entende que a forma democrática de governo tem nas redes telemáticas um canal complementar para fomentar a participação dos cidadãos e conformar espaços de debate e informação, além de indicar mudanças nas relações entre agentes políticos institucionais (governo e agremiações partidárias) e esfera civil. / Salvador

This dissertation argues for a dialogic grounding for deliberative democracy. Building on Habermasian theories of communication and discourse, deliberative democrats think better (more just, fair, and rational) democratic politics is possible because communication itself (in whatever form it takes) provides the legitimate mechanism for the transformation of citizens' opinions and political will. However, this is a problematic foundation for unleashing the normative potential inherent in citizen engagement. There are good reasons to suspect that a politics based in rational communication cannot actually produce the kinds of changes deliberativists insist are possible. Practical limitations of scale and scope make deliberative democracy difficult to envision. And the Habermasian claim about the inherent rationality in communication is challenged by postmodern notions of language and by conceptions of the embodied processes of reasoning. However, there is another normative foundation hinted at within the deliberative literature. Some theorists gesture toward a theory of transformation rooted more directly in the experiences associated with interpersonal relations, rather than in the language that is exchanged within these interactions. Following this lead, I turn to the work of Martin Buber to outline a dialogic theory that can better explain the intuitive sense that when citizens meet and speak, they are (at least potentially) opened up to new understandings. This theory, based in Buber's "I-Thou relation" and conception of "genuine dialogue," offers an account of the phenomenon located in an interpersonal relation of a particular type in which partners in dialogue are opened up to one another. I argue that a politics rooted in this dialogic experience provides a better account of the transformative potential in citizen engagement. Building on this new orientation towards dialogue, I then demonstrate some practical institutional innovations that are well equipped to take advantage of a politics anchored in dialogue. Along these lines, the dissertation culminates in a discussion of the Restorative Listening Project in Portland, Oregon, where dialogic meeting was a central focus of the institution's efforts to deal with the problem of gentrification in the city's NE neighborhoods.

Deliberative democracy and conflict management models have been given increasing attention for their potential consistency and similarities, which is useful knowledge given the opened possibilities of interdisciplinary work. I argue that this debate ought to be broadened to include how conflict transformation and a pragmatic strand of deliberative democracy are aligned with regard to orientation to conflict. First, I offer an account of why conflict transformation’s key values should be seen as valuable for democratic theory to emulate. Second, I show how a pragmatic strand of deliberative democracy is consistent and similar with respect to those key values. Together, these build a framework which offers the ability for practitioners and theorists to pursue interdisciplinary work between two particular strands of deliberative democracy and conflict management which to date have not been given adequate attention.

Orientador: Antonio Carlos Mazzeo / Banca: Marcos Tadeu Del Roio / Banca: Virgínia Maria Gomes de Mattos Fontes / Banca: Paulo Douglas Barsotti / Banca: Jason Tadeu Borba / Resumo: O presente trabalho analisa a consolidação da social democracia no Brasil. O período discutido diz respeito aos dois mandatos de Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) e ao primeiro mandato de Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003- 2006). Observamos que a social democracia, tal como esta forma de organização sociometabólica do capital se concretizou no país, absorve e reproduz os elementos condicionantes da particularidade histórica brasileira, conformadas em torno da via prussiano-colonial de objetivação do capitalismo. Ao absorver, ampliar, aprofundar e reproduzir, sobre novas bases e condicionantes históricos, os contornos característicos dessa particularidade, o projeto social-democrata apresenta um caráter anômalo e tardio, sendo o responsável pelo resgate da ortodoxia liberal como fundamento de sociabilidade. Assim, o bloco histórico capitaneado pela social democracia representa a hegemonia da burguesia, cuja fração financeira determina a lógica da reprodução capitalista em sua atual fase de internacionalização. A social democracia não rompe, pelo contrário, reproduz aperfeiçoando a autocracia burguesa no país. Esta autocracia se expressa através de um conteúdo político-institucional legalizado, que lhe é atribuído pelo parlamento brasileiro. A autocracia burguesa é, portanto, autocracia do parlamento, que se desenvolve a partir da consolidação do colonial-bonartismo, fenômeno político próprio da organização de governos burgueses em períodos abertamente conservadores e/ou reacionários. Dessa forma, o Sentido da Colonização se reproduz no Brasil através do projeto social-democrata que, ao promover uma modernização de caráter conservador, resgata e reafirma os elementos essenciais da particularidade brasileira, transmutadas e metamorfoseadas em Sentido da Modernização. / Abstract: This work analizes the consolidation of the social democracy in Brazil. The period we discuss is related to both mandates of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) and to the first mandate of Luiz Inácio Lula da Siva (2003-2006). We observed that the social democracy, as this way of socialmetabolic organization has been consolidated in Brazil, absorbs and reproduces the conditioning elements of the Brazilian historical particularity, conformed around the Prussian-colonial way of capitalism objectification. As it absorbs, amplify, deepens and reproduces, on the new historical basis and conditioning, the characteristic outlines of this particularity, the social democrat project presents an anomalous and late character, which is the responsible for the redemption of the liberal orthodoxy as a sociability substance. This way, the historical bloc, capitained by the social democracy represents the bourgeoisie hegemony, whose financial fraction determines the logic of the capitalist reproduction in its current step of internationalization. The social democracy doesn't break, on the contrary, it reproduces, improves the bourgeoisie autocracy in the country. This autocracy is expressed through a legalized political and institutional content which is attributed to it by the Brazilian parliament. The bourgeois autocracy is, therefore, parliament autocracy which is developed from the consolidation of the colonial bonapartism, a political phenomenon that belongs to the bourgeoisie governments in periods openly conservative and/or reactionary. This way, the Sense of the Colonization is reproduced in Brazil through the social democrat project that, when promotes a modernization of the conservative character, redeem and reaffirm the essential elements of the Brazilian particularity, transmuted and metamorphosed in Sense of the Modernization. / Doutor

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The present dissertation reconstructs the notion of legitimacy in Ecuador between 1996 and 2007 in order to re-think our measurements and understanding of Latin American democracies. Empirically, the analysis is centered on the country`s puzzling tendency to survive institutional volatility, bad economic performance and social unrest, while the theoretical section underlines the importance of the vertical and horizontal participatory components of legitimacy. After exploring different plausible explanations of Ecuador`s puzzling mixture of political turmoil and regime endurance, this dissertation concludes that legitimacy helped democracy to endure in Ecuador. The main conclusion is that the horizontal components of political participation and the enactment of democratic values by social movements as well as new political parties played a key role in the survival of democracy. The dissertation contributes to the democratization literature by encompassing the normative elements of democracy, while at the same time contributes to democratic theory by pushing further the boundaries of a notion and a case that requires further attention. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate