Analisa o conteúdo do Jornal Nacional na cobertura das eleições presidenciais de 2002 e 2006. Verifica qual foi o papel do maior telejornal do Brasil nas duas eleições. A partir de conceitos e modelos de pesquisa desenvolvidos pelos principais Institutos de Mídia e Política do Brasil, reúne elementos quantitativos e qualitativos para identificar a construção pelo Jornal Nacional do cenário político das eleições. A pesquisa revelou um equilíbrio quantitativo na cobertura do telejornal em 2002 e em parte da campanha de 2006, mas mostrou também a desconstrução de candidatos por meio do noticiário. A discussão em torno do papel do Jornal Nacional começa necessariamente pela discussão do desempenho do noticiário e da Rede Globo durante outros momentos politicamente fortes desde a ditadura militar, portanto a pesquisa relata episódios e mostra aspectos do relacionamento entre televisão e o poder político no Brasil. / It examines the contents of Jornal Nacional in covering the presidential elections from 2002 and 2006. It verifies the role of the major Brazilian TV broadcast news in both elections. It gathers quantitative and qualitative elements to identify the construction of the political scene of the elections made by Jornal Nacional, departing from concepts and research models developed by the main Brazilian institutes of media and politics. The research revealed a quantitative balance in the coverings of the TV broadcasting news in 2002, and part of 2006 campaign as well. However, it also depicted the disarticulation of the candidates image throughout the news. The discussion about the role of Jornal Nacional necessarily starts by analyzing the performance by the broadcasting news and by Rede Globo during the other politically strong periods since the military dictatorship. Therefore the research reports episodes and aspects of the relationship between the television and the political power in Brazil.

A presente dissertação apresenta dois ensaios sobre decisão, incerteza e escolha social no contexto eleitoral. O primeiro ensaio aborda de modo teórico o tema da ambiguidade nos discursos de campanha dos políticos, relacionando-o com a teoria da decisão sob incerteza, e trazendo os seus efeitos para a tomada de decisão individual e coletiva. O segundo ensaio trata de uma análise teórica acerca da liberdade de escolha dos indivíduos durante o processo eleitoral quando há incerteza a respeito das características dos candidatos, utilizando como base duas abordagens axiomáticas de liberdade de escolha presentes na literatura. / This dissertation presents two essays on decision, uncertainty and social choice in the electoral context. The first essay theoretically approaches the topic of ambiguous campaign discourses, relating it to the decision theory under uncertainty, and showing what effects it can have on individual and social decision-making processes. The second essay analyzes the freedom of choice aspects of the electoral process when there is uncertainty about the characteristics of candidates, using two axiomatic approaches of freedom that are present in the literature.

Political parties in the United Kingdom are increasingly focusing their constituency-level campaigns on marginal seats; such a focus has been echoed by academic researchers studying the effectiveness of intense constituency campaigning in boosting local electoral outcomes. Yet there has been little investigation into the impact of the redirection of campaigning resources on safe constituencies; while existing research suggests that intense campaigns are effective in boosting local electoral outcomes, it is possible that a relative lack of campaigning may be harmful. This thesis addresses this gap by exploring in detail the detrimental impact of low level campaigning on both turnout and vote share in safe constituencies by the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. The study is situated within the literature of campaign effectiveness, also drawing on theories of voter behaviour. It offers a critical evaluation of existing research into constituency campaigning, contending not only that a lack of campaigning can be harmful, but also that these effects are impacted by nuances of local incumbency and party differentials. To explore this, the thesis conducts a quantitative examination of the effects of constituency campaigning conducted at UK general elections from 1987 to 2010. It also expands existing literature in two ways; by formulating and applying a refined way in which to measure relative levels of campaigning, and also exploring the potential of leader visits as a measure of local campaigning for the first time in the UK. The focus on rebalancing attention towards safe constituencies places the concept of marginality at the core of this thesis. In exploring the concept in detail, potential explanations for the origins of marginality are considered, drawing on theories of population stability and party support bases. Using a refined measure of relative levels of campaigning, a link is established between marginality and campaigning, which also considers the important role of incumbency. When exploring the impact of low levels of campaigning, the results indicate that in many cases there is a harmful impact on both turnout and vote share, although the effects are greater for the latter. The findings suggest that local incumbency is a central factor in deciding the detrimental impact of low levels of campaigning, with such campaigns run by opposition parties resulting in far greater declines in their vote share when compared to equivalent campaigns run by incumbents. In an era of increasing focus on marginal constituencies during election campaigns, this thesis explicitly considers the impact of a lack of campaigning in safe constituencies, the role of incumbency and also applies new measures. In doing so, new empirical insights are produced into the importance of constituency campaigning in the UK, through an approach both rooted in and building upon existing studies.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study investigates workers’ perceptions of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) practices on elections and living wage issues from a social movement perspective from the Apartheid (South Africa) and Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Zimbabwe) eras to 2009. The trade union social movement perspective refers to labour movements that develop a socio-political character, and concern themselves not only with workplace issues but with broad social and political issues. A study of COSATU and ZCTU practices in South Africa and Zimbabwe at this time in the field of social movements is consistent with current calls for a conceptual shift, away from looking for invariant causes and effects to looking for mechanisms and processes that occur in many different kinds of movements and that lead to different outcomes depending on the specific contexts within which they occur. The study draws insights from social movement unionsm theory to understand mechanisms and processes pursued by COSATU and ZCTU in seeking to influence policy outcomes. This study used a qualitative approach and a case study strategy. In the study, questionnaire and in-depth interview responses were drawn from COSATU secretariat, two affiliates, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) and National Union of Mine Workers (NUM). Questionnaire and in-depth responses were also drawn from the ZCTU secretariat, two affiliates, the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GPWUZ) and the Zimbabwe Urban Municipal Workers Union (ZUMWU). The objective was to gain insights from a broad cross-section of union members – blue-collar workers, professionals, state or semi state institution workers and ordinarily low income farm workers. The study concludes that workers’ perceptions of the two labour social movements is that they can influence changes in the political system (through elections) as a means to securing living wages by engaging in five practices, namely, disruption mechanisms, public preference mechanisms, political access mechanisms, judicial mechanisms and international access mechanisms. However, while the study noted that workers perceive COSATU and ZCTU practices as essential in influencing elections and living wage issues, the popularity of the mechanisms was lower in Zimbabwe where workers often face persecution. In South Africa, utilisation of these practices is also affected by the less militant public sector affiliates and non- standard forms of work such as subcontracting, casualisation, informalisation, externalisation and the ballooning informal sector. Given these problems, social movement trade unionism remains a viable means of representing the interests of the working poor. Establishment of these challenges leads to areas of possible further research such as how the unions can effectively represent the unorganised workers of the informal sector. A broader research on the impact of the exponential growth of non-standard forms of work is also relevant at this time in the two countries.

The following study is comprised of three essays, each examining a different manner by which race and party impact political participation. Through the analysis of both intra-party primary and inter-party general elections, I find that candidates are more likely to run, and voters are more likely to turn out, when the social groups they belong to comprise a larger portion of the electorate. While race often serves as the key social identity in determining rates of participation, these effects are contingent on partisan forces governing the broader electoral process.

(p. 1) The Ciskei homeland, which is a 'sub-state' of the Republic of South Africa, attained a semi-autonomous status as a result of the implementation of the Bantustan policy of the Government of the Republic of South Africa. This semi-autonomous status introduced a Westminster type of parliamentary system which in turn brought into being a political party system. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate, amongst other things, the roles played by these political parties:- i) What role would the political parties play in the struggle of the Ciskeians for equal political rights vis - a-vis white South Africa? ii) Whose interests would those political parties serve? iii) This semi-autonomous status has resulted in the juxtaposing of traditional and modern political institutions. The political institutions that have emerged, include inter alia, legislative assemblies and political parties. These modern political institutions have been superimposed on traditional political institutions. What effect(s) would the one have on the other? iv) Would the development of political parties lead to the establishment of a one, two or dominant party system? In order that the above questions may be answered, i) An attempt will be made to define a political system, illustrating the concept with examples taken from the Republic of South Africa political scene and at the same time, attention will be directed to the relationship between the Republic of South Africa and the Ciskei. ii) When investigating the political party and the political party system, the role played by the political parties and the political party system in the relationship between the Republic of South Africa and the Ciskei will be defined. / Ciskei (South Africa) -- Politics and government / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

In the recent years, majority of African countries have been faced by conflicts during election periods. Some of the electoral related conflicts escalated into violence, and they have been transformed or managed. While other electoral related conflicts have just been prevented during the election periods but remain latent conflicts that would escalate triggered by future elections. This study focuses specifically on electoral conflicts in Kenya and its conflict management perspective from 2002-2013. To transform and manage the conflict, peacebuilding initiatives have been integrated in the study. The prime actors in Kenya electoral conflict includes the; the ruling party coalition, the leading opposition coalition and ethnic groupings affiliated to the ruling party and opposition. Other peripheral actors include: the Independent, Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the judiciary. Triangulation (the combination of two or more methods of collecting and analysing data) has been adopted both in data collection and analysis. Focus group interviews, selected individual interviews, and literature reviews were used to collect data, while research findings were analysed systematically using the constructivist grounded theory. Moreover, the liberal peace theory, Institutionalisation before Liberalisation (IBL) and findings from other researchers like (Elder, Stigant and Claes 2014:1-20), and the Afrobarometer research findings (Kivuva 2015) have been used to authenticate the research findings. Research findings indicates that claims of election rigging, numerous institutional failures, negative ethnicity and economic disparity, among other factors heighten the fear and anxiety that escalates during elections. Towards achieving peacebuilding and sustainable peace, the following reforms were undertaken: constitutional changes and reviews, electoral body reform, judicial reform, pursuit of transitional justice, extensive range of local initiatives reforms and police reforms. However, findings in the study also reveal that despite the latter reforms, peacebuilding measures have been short-term, temporal, and not fully successful, leaving behind a latent conflict that could be triggered again with future electoral conflicts. Besides that, negotiation, dialogue and mediation played a role in restoring trust and confidence in the democratic structures after escalated elections. We also recommend that multi-ethnic composition for electoral coalitions should also be adopted as a means to mitigate ethnic triggered conflicts.

The use of political marketing represents a more and more important part of election campaigns. This thesis is concerned with analysis of the campaigns of two largest Czech political parties - Civic Democratic Party and Czech Social Democratic Party - in the parliamentary elections 2006. The analysis is based on the comprehensive political marketing model that has been developed by Jennifer Lees-Marshment. In this model three kinds of political parties are distinguished: Product-Oriented Party, Sales-Oriented Party and Market-Oriented Party. The political marketing process which is different for each of them has a significant influence on the party behaviour during the campaign.

M.A. (Communication Studies) / SABC television coverage of general and municipal elections is regularly subjected to close scrutiny. The analyses made in these instances often concentrate on quantitative research of the time allocated to political parties, or analyses of the content of news reports, and items which are either ignored or used by the SABC. The controversy surrounding approaches such as this (and hence the motivation for this dissertation) is emphasised in Adams et al (1986: 155): "The irony of television news research in the social sciences is, that instead of producing studies of the audiovisual content of newscasts, it has largely resulted in research on verbal content alone." It is readily apparent, as attested by Adams that a lack of visual media research is a general phenomenon throughout the world. Quantitative research is practised with the use of stop watches and verbal analysis of content, but an important element of bias, viz. visual manipulation, is largely neglected. This study endeavours to create a broad framework for the analysis of visual bias. The handling of the 1987 and 1989 election campaigns on television by the SABC serves as material. Initially, the concept "propaganda" is discussed. It is noted that universally, "propaganda" has a negative. connotation in both research and practice. Due to the negative connotation of "propaganda", it is altogether underrated in the field of communication: it describes a phenomenon that occurs in totalitarian regimes and very seldom, it is assumed, in liberal democracies. The methods, applications, history and definitions of the term "propaganda" are discussed. Semiology and the possibilities of visual manipulation are subjects of discussion. It is noted that the viewer's experience of visual signs is naturally subjective. Andre (1984: 21) suggests that television can communicate truth or it can serve to present an aesthetic code, but it never engages the viewer directly with reality: "the camera never lies"; but the humans who manipulate it may do so...

This paper applies event study analysis on stock and bond market data in 14 European countries between 1990 and 2012 in order to assess market reaction to key economic policymaker changes. The analysis relies on methodological framework is based on article of Kuttner & Posen (2010) and on an original database of political events. The empirical results show that policymaker changes are not reflected in markets as single-day events, rather they are associated with several days of increased volatility following the event. Furthermore, elections are shown to be linked with market volatility on the event day as well as in postevent period.