This dissertation explores the potential for community benefits agreements (CBAs) to serve as instruments towards a more democratic approach to situating urban redevelopment projects into residential neighborhoods. To aid my analysis, I utilize the lens of democratic political theory to describe their most intractable shortcomings as well as prescribe reforms that can better enable them to bridge the oftentimes conflicting ends of economic growth and social justice. Moreover, I consider the conditions that are most favorable for residents to maximize their bargaining power against developers and the conditions where developers are least likely to negotiate with the locals. Drawing from a range of sources including interviews, audio recordings, documents, and investigative reporting, I illustrate their common failings by using three case studies of CBAs from major American cities. I find that the most recurring problem facing CBAs is their susceptibility to co- option by powerful political and economic elites who manage to subvert them into devices for private gain. Up to this point, municipalities have been largely reluctant to regulate them, and this lack of regulation has led to agreements being shaped more by informal networks of powerful interests rather than the wants and needs of everyday residents. This informality leading up to an agreement is a major contributing factor to their failings. Thus, in the absence of a structure that actively promotes inclusive and transparent procedures leading up to the forging of an agreement, residents lack the power to meaningfully influence its terms and conditions. This observation leads critics to contend that their vulnerability to elite influence should force us to rethink, and ultimately abandon CBAs as reliable instruments for popular control over the built environment. However, I argue that this conclusion is misguided; given their proliferation across American cities and increasing salience in land-use debates, a more effective alternative is to find institutional designs that curb the excesses of such projects while also making them more responsive to local concerns. If policy makers, activists, and residents are going to continue to look to CBAs to extract concessionary gains from developers, then it is crucial to devise safeguards that effectively minimize opportunities for abuse while also enhancing residential voice in shaping the resulting agreement. / Political Science

Insofar as the postcolonial project is one of the elaboration of “the plurality of modernity, and the agency multiplying its forms”, my project is a contribution to this larger one in the form of a postcolonial theory of multiculturalism (Ashcroft, 2009, p. 85). Drawing from minority standpoints, arguments, and narratives, I focus on the lives and perspectives of a few broad groups in particular: indigenous peoples in Canada, Muslim women, and East Asian “immigrant” minorities. I take up a critical theory approach to framing multicultural theory and the questions it asks from the standpoints of minorities themselves, foregrounding the challenges and perspectives of racialized groups for whom their ethno-culture is morally salient and central to their own understanding of their identities and aims. This framework draws on the insights of feminist theorists of deliberative democracy but also departs from them in the crucial respect of affirming a conception of culture and identity that accepts some basic “communitarian” ideas of morality and culture, while conceiving these within a postcolonial project of cultural reclamation rather than a republican framework of the public sphere. My project is organized into two parts: The first section systematically critiques the dominant liberal multiculturalist model based on Canadian multicultural policy and theorized by Kymlicka, which is oriented by the liberal state’s perspective in its aims of integrating minorities. In the first chapter, I reject his universalist principle of liberal neutrality as the standard for justice in favour of a pluralist democratic standard that accommodates “thin” theories of the good. In the second and third chapters, I reformulate Kymlicka’s categories of “national minorities” and “polyethnic minorities” respectively in order to take account of postcolonial indigenous sovereignty and the transnational scope of ethnic identity. The second section develops a pluralist account of agency in its descriptive (Chapter 4), normative (Chapter 5), and prescriptive (Chapter 6) aspects (Deveaux 2006 p. 179). This is developed as a constructive critique of liberal standards of autonomy, particularly feminist proposals for a standard of procedural autonomy, as unable to adequately describe and assess heteronomous agency.

Mountaintop removal is an aggressive form of strip mining practiced almost exclusively in Central Appalachia, and since 1977 has been regulated by state and federal laws. Beginning in the late 1990s, considerable controversy erupted in coal mining states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee over the adverse social and environmental impacts of the practice. The analysis of mountaintop removal presented here is restricted to its effects in West Virginia during roughly the last decade. Relying on theories of democratic practice developed by pragmatic philosophers like John Dewey and G.H. Mead, this work studies the standard practices of state and federal regulatory agencies and elected officials in an effort to determine what, if any, social goods they work to defend. Pragmatic theories of democracy suggest that a government can be considered representative only when it acts on behalf of the public good. Chapter 1 of this thesis introduces the reader to the practice of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia. Chapter 2 lays the theoretical groundwork for determining an individual's or institution's values through an analysis of its habitual actions. In chapter 3, I examine the consequences of mountaintop removal for the state of West Virginia, its citizens, and the coal interests that operate within its borders. Chapter 4 is dedicated to an analysis of regulatory responses to the conflicting interests of the various groups affected by the practice. Finally, in Chapter 5, some conclusions are drawn about the extent to which the regulation of mountaintop removal in West Virginia can be considered democratic. / Master of Arts

This project examines the development of renewable policy in California and Germany through the theoretical lens provided by John Dryzek's democratic theory of social movement engagement with the liberal democratic nation-state. Specifically, this thesis considers the impact of social movements on what the theory identifies as five core imperatives of state. The argument uses a qualitative, comparative, process tracing methodology, supported by critical discourse analysis, to analyze environmental social movement engagements with the state in relation to the development of renewable energy policymaking in the state of California and in the Federal Republic of Germany between 2000 and 2017. Whereas Dryzek and colleagues argue that environmental movement activism may have prompted a new, sixth, environmental conservation imperative of state, this thesis differs. Rather, the analysis finds that if indeed such a sixth imperative is emergent, it might better be defined as a resource conservation imperative. That is, in California and in Germany, it is not so much the environment but rather access to abundant and economically sustainable natural resources that states aim to conserve. / Master of Arts / This thesis explores the influence of the relationship between social movements and policymakers on renewable energy policy in California and Germany. Social movements are, for the most part, groups who wish to change government policy without necessarily winning elections or otherwise entering into public office. As such, this research examines how social movements, particularly environmental social movements, interact with government policymakers to affect renewable energy policy. This project’s analysis is based on evidence collected from newspapers and online news sources from California and Germany through 2000 to 2017. The findings suggest that environmental movements, as well as policymakers, use the language of what are called state imperatives in order to justify changes to renewable policy. These state imperatives are basically the main duties or goals that governments need to satisfy or accomplish. The findings also suggest that if a new duty or goal of the state is arising, it has to do with saving or conserving resources. This research is important as environmental issues such as global climate change continues to increasingly become a threat to society, and it also helps to further understand how renewable energy policy is developed.

Essa dissertação tem dois objetivos. O primeiro é fazer uma genealogia da mais popular concepção de representação na ciência política: a do accountability eleitoral. A teoria do accountability eleitoral é um produto da reflexão teórica e normativa da ciência política de meados do século XX em diante, especialmente de duas literaturas. Uma é a de congruência ou responsividade, que adota a congruência entre as preferências por políticas ou a ideologia do representante e aquelas do representado como ideal normativo. A outra é a do voto retrospectivo, que encontra sua versão mais sofisticada nos modelos de agência política. Para essa literatura, normativamente atraente é a seleção de representantes competentes, que entreguem bons resultados. Ambas especificam a relação entre eleições e representação: por meio das eleições, o representado consegue fazer o representante lhe entregar o que ele quer. A primeira parte do trabalho reconstrói a trajetória dessas duas literaturas, ressaltando seus impasses. O principal desses impasses envolve a bem documentada desinformação do eleitor: como eleitores desinformados podem controlar seus representantes? O segundo objetivo é avaliar a teoria do accountability eleitoral à luz das evidências empíricas pertinentes. Para tanto, o trabalho investiga as evidências sobre o problema da desinformação do eleitor, e de sua competência em geral. O saldo das evidências recomenda ceticismo a respeito do accountability eleitoral. Diante disso, o que podemos então esperar da representação política? O trabalho sugere que um caminho é inverter a perspectiva do accountability eleitoral e enxergar a representação política como uma relação em que o representante é quem mobiliza, de cima para baixo, o representado. O apoio político do representado é um recurso que o representante tenta angariar para perseguir seus próprios objetivos políticos. Esse pode ser um caminho para reconciliar a teoria da representação com o fenômeno da liderança política. / This thesis has two goals. The first one is to put together a genealogy of the most popular conception of representation in political science: that of electoral accountability. The theory of electoral accountability is a product of theoretical and normative reflection of political science from mid-20th century on, and especially of two different literatures. One is the literature on policy congruence or policy responsiveness, which takes congruence between the representatives and the constituents policy preferences or ideology as a normative ideal. The other one is the retrospective voting literature, which finds its most sophisticated version in political agency models. For this literature, what is normatively appealing is the selection of competent representatives, who are able to deliver good results. Both literatures specify the connection between elections and representation: through elections, constituents can get representatives to deliver what they want. The first part of this work retells these literatures trajectories, point out their impasses. The main one regards voters well documented lack of information: how can uninformed voters control their representatives? This works second aim is to assess the theory of electoral accountability in light of the pertinent empirical evidence. In order to do so, the work investigates the evidence on the problem of voters lack of information and voter competence in general. The balance of the evidence suggests skepticism towards electoral accountability. Given this, what can we expect from political representation? The thesis suggests that a possible path is to reverse the point of view of electoral accountability and see political representation as a top-down relationship in which representatives mobilize constituents. Constituents political support is a resource that representatives try to gather in order to pursue their own political objectives. This can be a way to reconcile the theory of representation with the phenomenon of political leadership.

Many Latin American countries which underwent democratic regime transformations within the last thirst years have seemingly stalled. Unable to meet the demands of their citizens, which grow increasingly restless and confrontational, they have become subjected to a series of economic and political crises. Contemporary democratic theorists are at a loss to explain why this region has failed to deepen over time. The purpose of this paper is threefold: it questions the analytic utility of contemporary liberal and representative models, it argues for the inclusion of an alternative process-oriented model provided by Charles Tilly (2007), and tests this model through a partial application to Bolivia from 1993-2009 in hopes of elucidating a clearer state of democratization than contemporary models offer. The analysis portion focuses on the incorporation of networks of trust into public politics, and determines what effect(s) this had on Bolivian democracy during the time period under review. It is hypothesized that an increase in the integration of interpersonal trust networks with public politics will result in democratization, which is measured through changes in demand incorporation, protection, equality, and state-society accountability. A diachronic analytical narrative is constructed to identify the mechanisms and signs associated with the emergence and incorporation of trust networks into public politics and then evaluated in terms of state-society transformation. The findings suggest that new trust networks were created following the political restructuring done during the Sánchez de Lozada presidency, deepened over the next four presidencies, and integrated in their fullest capacity during the first part of Evo Morales's term. This process affected the contemporary representative and structural nature of the state itself, and shows positive changes in demand incorporation, protection, equality, and state-society accountability. Finally, it is concluded that when compared with popular measures of democracy, this model has more explanatory power, and Bolivia did democratize within the period of analysis.

Essa dissertação tem dois objetivos. O primeiro é fazer uma genealogia da mais popular concepção de representação na ciência política: a do accountability eleitoral. A teoria do accountability eleitoral é um produto da reflexão teórica e normativa da ciência política de meados do século XX em diante, especialmente de duas literaturas. Uma é a de congruência ou responsividade, que adota a congruência entre as preferências por políticas ou a ideologia do representante e aquelas do representado como ideal normativo. A outra é a do voto retrospectivo, que encontra sua versão mais sofisticada nos modelos de agência política. Para essa literatura, normativamente atraente é a seleção de representantes competentes, que entreguem bons resultados. Ambas especificam a relação entre eleições e representação: por meio das eleições, o representado consegue fazer o representante lhe entregar o que ele quer. A primeira parte do trabalho reconstrói a trajetória dessas duas literaturas, ressaltando seus impasses. O principal desses impasses envolve a bem documentada desinformação do eleitor: como eleitores desinformados podem controlar seus representantes? O segundo objetivo é avaliar a teoria do accountability eleitoral à luz das evidências empíricas pertinentes. Para tanto, o trabalho investiga as evidências sobre o problema da desinformação do eleitor, e de sua competência em geral. O saldo das evidências recomenda ceticismo a respeito do accountability eleitoral. Diante disso, o que podemos então esperar da representação política? O trabalho sugere que um caminho é inverter a perspectiva do accountability eleitoral e enxergar a representação política como uma relação em que o representante é quem mobiliza, de cima para baixo, o representado. O apoio político do representado é um recurso que o representante tenta angariar para perseguir seus próprios objetivos políticos. Esse pode ser um caminho para reconciliar a teoria da representação com o fenômeno da liderança política. / This thesis has two goals. The first one is to put together a genealogy of the most popular conception of representation in political science: that of electoral accountability. The theory of electoral accountability is a product of theoretical and normative reflection of political science from mid-20th century on, and especially of two different literatures. One is the literature on policy congruence or policy responsiveness, which takes congruence between the representatives and the constituents policy preferences or ideology as a normative ideal. The other one is the retrospective voting literature, which finds its most sophisticated version in political agency models. For this literature, what is normatively appealing is the selection of competent representatives, who are able to deliver good results. Both literatures specify the connection between elections and representation: through elections, constituents can get representatives to deliver what they want. The first part of this work retells these literatures trajectories, point out their impasses. The main one regards voters well documented lack of information: how can uninformed voters control their representatives? This works second aim is to assess the theory of electoral accountability in light of the pertinent empirical evidence. In order to do so, the work investigates the evidence on the problem of voters lack of information and voter competence in general. The balance of the evidence suggests skepticism towards electoral accountability. Given this, what can we expect from political representation? The thesis suggests that a possible path is to reverse the point of view of electoral accountability and see political representation as a top-down relationship in which representatives mobilize constituents. Constituents political support is a resource that representatives try to gather in order to pursue their own political objectives. This can be a way to reconcile the theory of representation with the phenomenon of political leadership.

As the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship ended in 1986, the emergence of Mouvement Lavalas out of the grassroots organizations of Haiti's poor majority, and election of charismatic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990, challenged efforts by Haitian political parties and the U.S. foreign policy establishment to contain the parameters of Haiti's democratic transition. This dissertation examines the politics of Lavalas to determine whether it held a particular conception of democracy that explains the movement's antagonistic relationship with the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters. Using the qualitative methodology of process-tracing outlined in the works of Paul F. Steinberg (2004) and Tulia G. Falleti (2006), this study analyzes primary and secondary sources associated with Aristide and the grassroots organizations across the period of contested democratization from 1986 to 1991, with emphasis on four critical junctures: 1) the rule of the Conseil National du Gouvernement; 2) the government of Leslie Manigat; 3) the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril; and 4) Aristide's 8 months in power before being overthrown on September 29, 1991. This study concludes that there were systematic differences in how Lavalas pursued democracy in Haiti, as contrasted to the political parties and U.S. foreign policy-makers. Evidence indicates that while Lavalas placed emphasis on popular mobilization to challenge Haiti's legacy of authoritarianism, the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters emphasized processes of negotiation and compromise with Haiti's anti-democratic forces. Lavalas was rooted in the long historic struggle of the country's poor masses to, not simply establish procedural democracy, what noted political scientist Robert Dahl calls polyarchy, but to expand the parameters of politics to guarantee the right of all Haitians to participate directly in the process of governing, in order to share more equitably in the distribution of national resources, in what critical scholar William I. Robinson calls "popular democracy."

Abstract The central argument in this MA research report is that arguing for a compromised or depleted political culture or space is extremely difficult if we consider the complexity of the public sphere. This involves firstly arguing that by re-interrogating the concept of the public sphere underpinning orthodox critical perspectives on democratic functioning from deliberative democratic theorists, we find notions of the critical public sphere have been corrupted by the idealism that accompanies this nonetheless important concept. By illuminating this flaw in the orthodox critical democratic perspective and applying it to critiques of South African democracy, I argue that critiquing South African politics and policy making should in general be done with more care, since what is under-contemplated in these critiques by way of the actual nature of the public sphere, is not negligible. Critics, who often start by characterising the political space as dominated by one party which allegedly renders the political space unfit for its critical purpose, ought to be fairer in their accounts. The end result of this increasingly consensual critical position is that we inhabit only a relatively meaningless formal democracy. The exploratory case study of the Human Sciences Research Council which I go on to consider was chosen on the basis of the considered guess that it was likely to throw up evidence of interesting illustrative tendencies in what I argue may constitute a ‘new’ public sphere. The theoretical possibilities I aim to highlight are arguably deserving of more focused appraisal in themselves, but the aim of this dissertation is to introduce the theoretical possibility of an under-theorised public sphere through highlighting how that situation came about, and less so, what would constitute evidence of the nascent theory’s correctness.

Empirical findings about political behaviour cast doubt on prevailing theories of democracy. The overwhelming majority of democratic theories either implicitly or explicitly imply the necessity of widespread public participation. However, this involvement is more frequently referred to as public participation in the democratic process than as popular support. This paper questions if democracy can even be discussed without considering how popular support affects democracy. According to research, a healthy democracy system will give people a bigger say in deciding on the important issues that affect their lives. To react to the needs and views of their populace, democracies all over the world need a more robust democratic theoretic model of democracy measurement, which includes a normative criterion of popular support for democracy. Democracy should be viewed as requiring widespread support in order to be defined as democratic.