Changes of ownership, a seeming lack of interest in history, several deaths, and a fire prompted this study into the history of The Weatherford Democrat. Data for the thesis came from back issues of The Democrat, Ayer Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals, letters from former publishers, and personal observations and experiences of the writer, who worked on the paper 14 years. All but about a dozen years of the back issues are available. The thesis is written in chronological order, dating from the beginning in 1895 to 1967, when the Donrey Media Group gained control, ending local ownership. The Democrat is the survivor of more than 20 newspaper ventures in the city and is still the principal county paper.

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<p>This is a case study on the functioning of political parties and the aim was to explain “how” and “why” the Swedish social democratic party changed their policies in the Middle East politics. I wanted to explain this process of change by using Angelo Panebianco’s framework for the analysis of political parties. Angelo Panebianco´s hypothesis is that all parties must be viewed as organizations to understand their functions. With time they become more institutionalized and depending on their historic development they will end up as more or less institutionalized. If this change showed that the social democratic party acted as a bureaucratic and institutionalized organization, Panebianco’s organizational theory would explain the change of their Middle East politics. In my case study I have used a qualitative analysis of the content to interpret my material of measuring parties’ institutionalization level as “high” or “low” within the two different areas; organizational dilemmas and the dominant coalition. My conclusion is that the social democratic party has indications both of a “high” institutionalized organization and as a “low” institutionalized organization, still they have a relatively dominant coalition. My study demonstrates that Angelo Panebianco´s organizational theory can not fully explain “how” and “why” the Social democratic party changed their Middle East politics.</p>

Participating in peace support operations has been and remains a significant part of the Swedish defense and security politics. Since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish national defence has been more and more dismantled, in favor of international peace support operations which have become an increasingly important task for the Swedish defence. Why then, is Sweden so engaged in conflicts so far from home? Using two classic theories of international politics, realism and liberalism, this study aims to shed light on arguments from the Swedish parliament on why it is important for Sweden to participate in international peace support operations. After analyzing arguments of the Social Democrat Party, the Moderate Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Party concerning three different peace support operations which Sweden has participated in, the result shows that although both realism and liberalism are influencing the parties’ argumentation, liberalism is the theory which is used more often. Thus, the answer to why Sweden participates in peace support operations is to be found in arguments that clearly express views of liberalism, rather than views of realism.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how conservatism affects a person's perception of everyday details. It is hypothesized that there will be a positive correlation between the participants' conservative ratings and the amount of details from the readings they recall that are also conservative. This will also mean that there will be a negative correlation between the participants scoring higher on the conservatism scale and the amount of liberal details they recall. A similar pattern is expected to be discovered pertaining to participants that identify as more liberal. How is this measured? The participants will be asked to rate the their political views on a scale of 1-6, 1 being extremely liberal, and 6 being extremely conservative. A transcript of a political debate will contain views that are both conservative and liberal. Each view will be backed up by details supporting each of a candidate's policies. The transcript will include minor grammatical errors including punctuation, spelling, and tenses, all of which the participant will be asked to correct. Following this will be a mathematical task which will include converting mixed numbers to improper fractions at the difficulty of a fifth grade level. A memory recall task will then be administered to the participants asking them to recall as many of the details from the debate as possible.

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Ce travail propose une sociologie historique du Parti démocrate turc, qui est fondé en 1946, arrive au pouvoir en 1950, et y reste jusqu’à un coup d’Etat de l’armée, en 1960. La sociologie de ce parti permet d’éclairer la compréhension du passage d’un régime de parti unique à un système de compétition partisane en Turquie. Pour cela, nous avons choisi une séquence chronologique longue, qui va de la fondation du parti en 1946 à sa chute en 1960. En effet, observer la création, puis la structuration du Parti démocrate nous permet de voir le rôle qu’il joue dans l’acculturation à la civilisation électorale, la promotion de nouvelles élites, mais aussi les continuités avec le parti unique, et le verrouillage progressif du champ politique, pour retourner à une situation autoritaire vers la fin des années 1950. Une sociologie fine du parti nous permettra ainsi de comprendre comment il se constitue en parti dominant. Pour ce faire, nous étudions le parti à travers ses implantations locales dans quatre départements de Turquie, Adana, Diyarbakır, Erzurum et Izmir, en portant une attention aux aspects informels de son fonctionnement. A partir de sources variées, archives de la presse locale, mémoires d’hommes politiques locaux, rapports diplomatiques, et divers témoignages, nous montrons que le Parti démocrate s’est imposé comme parti dominant sur la scène politique, en s’appuyant sur divers groupes sociaux, dont les hommes d’affaires et les petits commerçants conservateurs (esnaf). Dans ce processus, la capacité du parti à recruter des hommes politiques locaux, qui pouvaient mobiliser une large clientèle, a joué un rôle essentiel. / The aim of this study is to make a social history of the Turkish Democrat Party from 1946 to 1950. There are many essays about the Turkish Democrat Party in political history. Mainly, these works are based on macro and state-centered sources: state archives, national press, and parliamentary debates. Very few studies attempt to assess the social dynamics that led to the Democrat Party coming to power and holding it for a 10-year period. My claim is that to understand the social dynamics that led to the Democrat Party’s rise, we must look at its grassroots organizations and local recruitment. Therefore, I examine four different areas of Turkey—Izmir, Erzurum, Diyarbakir, and Adana—in order to better understand the Democrat Party’s social base. I use sources like the local press and memoirs of local politicians, as well as diplomatic reports, sociological works, and oral interviews with eyewitnesses from the period. This work aims to paint a comprehensive picture of the Democrat Party’s social base by revealing the important role that rural elite, artisans, and small-town shop-keepers played in shaping the party's conservative character.

This thesis discusses the working class formation, particularly the class consciousness formation of the working class during the Democrat Party period. Class consciousness formation is evaluated as a dimension of class formation process. Getting organized, trade unionization and collective action, especially calling a strike are among the significant aspects of class consciousness formation. During the DP period, right to strike is the most controversial and noteworthy issue. It is the basic debate in the trade union newspapers. This is the reason of discussing class consciousness with reference to right to strike as handled by the trade union newspapers. According to this study, class consciousness should be perceived as a phenomenon composed of different levels. In addition, class struggle can take place in different ways and class consciousness can have different forms. Although, it is hard to say that there is a class consciousness in the Leninist sense of the term, it is possible to talk about an economic-corporate consciousness with Gramsci&rsquo / s words. Trade unionization during the DP period and trade union publications are important experience of the workers in class consciousness formation process. Working classes do not generally taken into consideration in the studies of the DP period and also in the researches on Turkish labor history. The study also asserts that, experiences of trade unions or the workers in general during the DP period are worth to analyze for the Turkish labor history.

The Tea Party’s influence in the recent 2010 elections suggests that the group is making an impact within American politics. This project seeks to identify the cultural forces at work and ground them within Antonio Gramsci’s framework of hegemony. Taking a cue from Michael Bérubé’s recent book The Left at War, I perform a close analysis of the Tea Party’s project for hegemony. I focus on the media discourses of the Tea Party movement, performing a close reading of two key Tea Party websites and unpacking two important televised moments relating to the Tea Party’s rise as a grassroots movement. I argue that the Tea Party uses the practice of articulation to persuade the American public that Tea Party members are the rightful heirs to the project of “America” that the Founding Fathers began centuries ago by using the theories of Bérubé, Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as reference points. Finally, I use my analysis of the Tea Party’s articulatory practices to begin exploring a way forward for the American Left, building on the groundbreaking cultural work of Bérubé, Hall, and Laclau and Mouffe. / text