The democratic deficit in the U.S. becomes strikingly evident as statistics show that only half of the population actually votes in elections. Seeing that many who do not participate in the electoral processes are also generally members of socially marginalized groups then this is an increasing social issue. The effects of this become deepening socio-economic inequalities, greater marginalization and a weakened democracy. This study argues that social workers can contribute to solve this democratic deficit by using social work to reach and include socially marginalized groups in the democratic process of electoral participation. Focusing specifically on San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, I have used qualitative method to interview representatives from non-profit organizations that provide different kind of social service and academic professors from the disciplines of Social Work and Political Science in order to investigate how social work can include marginalized non-voting groups in the electoral process. The result is analyzed together with a theoretical framework built from research on democracy, welfare research, empowerment theory and theories on community practice. The findings show that social work has an important role in creating belonging among these marginalized groups and to bring them into the political process by using social mobilizing and advocacy social work with an empowerment perspective.

This thesis examines the justificatory basis of the right to candidacy, otherwise referred to as the right to stand for election, and assesses the implications of characterising political candidacy as a human right. It examines the extent of the right's legal recognition in international, regional and domestic human rights law with specific focus on the jurisprudence of the United States, Canada and the ECtHR. This dissertation then offers a theoretical justification for the existence of a moral right to candidacy in all liberal democracies. This justificatory account highlights how the following values and interests underlie the right to candidacy: dignity (as social recognition of one's equal moral status), autonomy, self-expression and self-development. It further examines the derivative justifications for the right to candidacy by outlining the extent to which it is necessary for the effective exercise of the right to vote, freedom of association and the maintenance of a common liberal culture. The correlative duties to which the right gives rise are also examined. It is argued that the right entails duties to respect, protect and fulfil. The duty to respect imposes a negative obligation on the State to refrain from imposing unjustifiable disqualifications or eligibility requirements for elective office. The duty to protect entails an obligation to safeguard against infringements of the right by political parties in their candidate selection processes. Thirdly, the duty to fulfil involves a positive obligation to organise and administer free and fair elections with a reasonably level playing field in which candidates may compete. This thesis subsequently explores the institutional implementation of these duties and how the values and interests underlying the right should help inform the scope and content of such duties in the jurisdictions specified above.

[pt] Esse artigo examine se eleitores reagem a informação sobre a qualidade dos serviços públicos. Exploramos um experimento natural no Brasil, no qual divulgou-se uma medida objetiva de qualidade para algumas escolas públicas, mas não outras. Isso cria variação na quantidade de informação disponível dentro de um município. Para explorar essa variação, olhamos para locais de votação localizados em escolas municipais e comparamos resultados eleitorais em eleições municipais em grupos de eleitores informados e não informados, antes e depois da divulgação de informação. Os resultados indicam que, quando os eleitores recebem boas notícias, o apoio pelo incumbente aumenta. Para as escolas com pior desempenho em nossa amostra, divulgar informação sobre qualidade das escolas leva a uma redução na proporção de votos recebida pelo prefeito incumbente concorrendo a reeleição. Esses efeitos são maiores em municípios com menor cobertura de mídia local. Não há heterogeneidades interessantes com relação a escolaridade dos eleitores. / [en] This paper examines if voters act upon information about the quality of public service delivery. We explore a natural experiment in Brazil, which provided an objective measure of quality for some public schools, but not others. This creates variation in the availability of information to voters about the quality of schools inside a municipality. To use this variation, we look at polling stations located in municipal schools and compare electoral outcomes in mayoral elections in informed and non-informed groups of voters, before and after the information release. We find that, when the information received by voters is good news, the support for the incumbent increases. For the worst performers in our sample, providing information about school quality implies a decrease in the vote-share of the incumbent. We find that these effects are stronger in municipalities without local radios and/or newspapers. We do not find relevant heterogeneities when decomposing our effects according to schooling.

A teoria do ciclo político orçamentário tradicional sugere que os governantes são tentados a manipular os instrumentos de política fiscal aumentando o gasto público ao seguirem o calendário eleitoral. A percepção, por parte do eleitorado, de que o governante mais capaz corresponde àquele que provê o maior número de bens públicos através das funções governamentais, apresenta a evolução recente da teoria. O presente estudo objetiva testar a hipótese de ocorrência do ciclo político orçamentário tradicional nas variáveis representantes de bens públicos, identificando aquelas onde parece haver evidência de manipulação eleitoral, nos municípios brasileiros, entre os anos de 2002 e 2015. Foram utilizados métodos econométricos de regressão de dados em painel nos anos que precedem às eleições, nos anos eleitorais e nos pós-pleitos. Os resultados não descartam a hipótese de que o ciclo político orçamentário no gasto ocorreria e que se privilegiariam algumas funções, possivelmente, alterando a percepção do eleitorado sobre a competência dos prefeitos. / The theory of the traditional budgetary policy cycle suggests that rulers are tempted to manipulate fiscal policy instruments by increasing public spending by following the electoral calendar. The perception by the electorate that the most capable ruler corresponds to the one who provides the greatest number of public goods through governmental functions, presents the recent evolution of the theory. The present study aims to test the hypothesis of the occurrence of the traditional budget political cycle in the variables representing public goods, identifying those where there seems to be evidence of electoral manipulation in Brazilian municipalities between 2002 and 2015. Econometric regression Panel Data Models were used in the years leading up to the elections, electoral years and post-election. The results shows the hypothesis that the political budget cycle in spending would occur and that some functions would be privileged, possibly changing the perception of the electorate on the competence of mayors.

During the late 1970s Ghana was described as a collapsed and failed state. In contrast, today it is hailed internationally as beacon of democracy and stability in West Africa. In light of Ghana’s drastic image change from a fragile and even collapsed polity to a resilient state, this thesis contributes to the statebuilding debate by analysing the social change that occurred. Grounded in a critical theory approach the thesis applies a political settlement analysis to explore how power is distributed and changed over time between contending social groups; exploring the extent to which this is embedded in formal and informal institutional arrangements. Ghana’s 2012 elections serve as an empirical basis and lens to observe the country’s current settlement. This approach enables a fine grained within-case comparison with Ghana’s collapsed post-independent settlement. The analysis illustrates that while there has been no transformation of the Ghanaian state, however, continuous incremental structural change has occurred within it, as demonstrated by a structurally altered constellation of power. While internationally propagated (neo-)liberal economic and political reforms had a vital impact on the reconstruction process of state-society relations, Ghana’s labelling as “success story” evokes the distorted idea of a resilient liberal state. The sustainability of Ghana’s current settlement characterised by electoral competitive clientelism depends on a continued inflow of foreign capital. So far the mutually beneficial interest of portraying Ghana as a resilient state by its elites and donors ensures the flow of needed financial assistance to preserve the settlement.

Submitted by Maria Medeiros (maria.dilva1@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-08-08T13:41:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 GABRIELLA MAYARA TAVARES ALVES - DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGCC) 2017.pdf: 721866 bytes, checksum: 1804c46ebbf2ab8091f8ac9197014812 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T13:41:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GABRIELLA MAYARA TAVARES ALVES - DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGCC) 2017.pdf: 721866 bytes, checksum: 1804c46ebbf2ab8091f8ac9197014812 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-10 / Com o crescimento da utilização de práticas ágeis, as atividades de teste devem adaptar-se à agilidade na absorção e implementação antecipada dos requisitos. Com base nisso, normalmente a automação de testes de sistema para aplicações web, desktop e mobile, é amplamente utilizada e desenvolvida para melhorar a qualidade do software, permitindo executar mais testes de forma mais frequente, quando comparado com a execução manual. No entanto, o custo da manutenção dos scripts de testes automatizados é considerado alto e, normalmente, as equipes não possuem pessoas especializadas em automação de testes de sistema. Sendo assim, existem poucos relatos na literatura referentes às lacunas que impedem a utilização das vantagens oferecidas na automação de testes de sistema em sua plenitude no contexto de equipes que utilizam métodos ágeis. Desta forma, este trabalho, através de um estudo empírico com entrevistas semi-estruturadas e da Teoria Fundamentada, busca coletar e analisar dados acerca de práticas utilizadas em equipes ágeis na automação de testes de sistema para elencar práticas que indiquem o melhor momento para iniciar a criação dos scripts de automação de testes de sistema. Além disso, busca contribuir com a literatura e consequentemente, possuir uma base teórica para que propostas de melhorias sejam realizadas futuramente. Como resultado, foram identificadas práticas comuns de automação de teste de sistema utilizadas nas equipes de desenvolvimento, como: iniciar a criação dos scripts de teste automáticos após algumas execuções manuais dos casos de teste, e até o requisito funcional tornar-se estável; a criação dos scripts de teste automáticos são planejados para iniciar a partir das funcionalidades que possuem os casos de testes manuais executados no Sprint anterior; e gerenciamento das alterações solicitadas pelo cliente para replanejar caso a solicitação tenha impacto nas funcionalidades já implementadas. Para estruturar os resultados obtidos, utilizamos os princípios da Teoria Fundamentada através da análise das entrevistas realizadas para coleta de dados. / With the increasing popularity of agile practices, test activities must adapt to agility in special test automation and anticipated implementation of requirements. Based on this, typically the automation of system tests for web, desktop and mobile applications is largely used to improve software quality, allowing for more frequent testing, when compared to manual execution. However, the maintainance cost of automated tests is high, and teams normally do not have specialized people in test automation. Therefore, the literature lacks reports related to the gaps that prevent the use of the advantages offered by the system testing automation in its fullness in agile teams. This work, through an empirical study with semi-structured interviews and the Fundamentated Theory, aims to collect and to analyze data about practices used in agile teams in the system testing automation to list practices that indicate the best moment to start the creation of the system test automation scripts. In addition, it seeks to contribute to the literature and consequently a theoretical basis, so that suggestions for improvements can be made in the future. The collected data allowed us to identify system testing automation practices used in typical agile teams, such as starting the creation of automated test scripts after some manual executions of the test cases, until the functional requirement becomes stable; the activities of creationing automatic test scripts should be planned to start from the features that have the manual test cases executed in the previous Sprint; and the management of the changes requested by the client to replanning quickly if the request causes a major impact on the features in validation status. To structure the obtained results, the principles of the Grounded Theory were used through the analysis of the interviews conducted for data collection.

En la actualidad, las redes sociales se han convertido en las plataformas preferidas de los políticos para transmitir mensajes, principalmente en periodos electorales. Hasta hace unos años, tanto en países del mundo como en nuestro país, los electores sólo recibían y procesaban mensajes políticos a través de medios tradicionales como los periódicos, la radio y la televisión. Hoy en día, el uso de las redes sociales utilizadas como canal para la emisión de mensajes con fines políticos y recepción de información por parte de los electores, va en aumento. La presente investigación comprende el análisis crítico, cualitativo y cuantitativo, de los mensajes producidos y estrategias utilizadas, por parte de las candidatas, con mayor preferencia entre los votantes, a ocupar la alcaldía de Lima, Susana Villarán y Lourdes Flores, durante la campaña electoral municipal llevada a cabo en el año 2010, vía las redes sociales Facebook y Twitter, . El objetivo general es demostrar si el empleo de Twitter y Facebook por las candidatas a la alcaldía de Lima, así como la participación espontánea de su audiencia, a través de estas redes, incidieron o no en el triunfo de una de ellas durante las elecciones municipales de Lima del 2010. Entre los objetivos específicos principales destaca el demostrar si las candidatas a la alcaldía de Lima manejaron una adecuada estrategia político-digital durante su campaña, verificar si utilizaron o no las redes sociales en función de sus candidaturas, estimar cualitativa y cuantitativamente el tipo de mensajes emitidos por ambas e identificar al grado de feedback que entrega la audiencia a cada una de ellas. Entre las principales conclusiones a las que se llegó luego del presente trabajo de investigación resalta que el uso, por ambas candidatas, de las redes sociales se caracterizó por: la improvisación, la creencia de que las redes sociales son sólo plataforma de propaganda política y la falta de diálogo e interacción que existió con el público. También posibilita afirmar que, tanto Lourdes Flores como Susana Villarán, asumieron que debían estar presentes en estas redes pero no diseñaron para ello las estrategias político – digitales correspondientes. No usaron correctamente las redes sociales en función de sus candidaturas planificando con debida anticipación qué mensaje emitir, cómo, para qué (objetivo), cuándo y a qué tipo de público electoral dirigirse. También, se comprueba que el carácter viral de las redes sociales ayudó a instalar ideas en los usuarios. Si bien el presente análisis demuestra la improvisación en la falta de conocimiento del uso de Facebook y Twitter, ambas candidatas usaron estas plataformas como medios de difusión, hecho que se logró gracias al carácter viral de algunos de sus mensajes que fueron retuiteados o compartidos, según fuese el caso. Asimismo, se logra demostrar que el empleo de Twitter y Facebook por ambas candidatas, así como la participación espontánea de su audiencia, a través de estas redes, incidieron parcialmente en el triunfo de una de ellas: Susana Villarán. / Tesis

This thesis considers the differences in the political relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples as established in Treaty Six (1876) by Alexander Morris and that of the Indian Act (1876) as driven by David Laird and Electoral Franchise Act (1885) by John A. Macdonald. Through using historical and contemporary sources related to Treaty Six, and House of Commons debates related to the two Acts, this thesis argues that the relationship as established in Canadian policy and conceived of by Canadian politicians of Treaty Six was akin to a “nation-to-nation” relationship, and that the Indian Act and Electoral Franchise Act represent a turning away from this toward a less equitable relationship that placed Canada above Indigenous polities. This thesis also shows that within the Canadian political mainstream there was considerable dissent to this turning away from more equitable relationships, as shown by the continued opposition by politicians less well-known today such as William Paterson. / Graduate / 2019-08-28

Muito se tem discutido a respeito de uma suposta consolidação do regime democrático no Brasil. O que deve se ter em mente é que essa consolidação sempre será falaciosa se não forem levados em conta alguns obstáculos ainda não superados pela democracia no país. Tais obstáculos são formados não apenas por alguns aprimoramentos institucionais ainda necessários, mas principalmente pela demanda por inclusão de segmentos da sociedade que, atualmente, se encontram tolhidos da esfera política. Na linha de frente desses excluídos estão os cidadãos com baixa escolaridade e os que sofrem com os percalços da pobreza, que, juntos, são protagonistas de grande parte dos déficits de participação política no país. No Brasil, pobreza e baixa escolaridade estão longe de serem problemas residuais, atingindo parcela considerável de seus cidadãos. A participação política, entretanto, pode ser um dos primeiros passos para que o excluído se liberte dessa condição que resulta na sua alienação política. Impossível imaginar qualquer tipo de solução para sanar os déficits de participação política sem o estímulo ao desenvolvimento de uma cultura cívica. A participação gera a oferta de políticas direcionadas ao grupo politicamente ativo, a alienação política, por sua vez, emudece as demandas dos alienados que, em grande parte, são os que mais precisam de políticas públicas específicas. O estímulo a uma cultura cívica participativa se apresenta como alternativa para a quebra do círculo vicioso gerado pela alienação política, pobreza e analfabetismo. / Much have been argued regarding a supposed consolidation of the democratic system in Brazil. What it must to had in mind is that this consolidation always will be fallacious if will not be taken in account some obstacles not yet surpassed by the democracy in the country. Such obstacles are formed not only by some still necessary institutional improvements, but mainly by the demand for inclusion of segments of the society that, currently, are finded hindered of the political sphere. In the front line of these excluded they are the citizens with low school time, and the ones that suffer with the demages of the poverty, that, together, are protagonists of great part of deficits of political participation in the country. In Brazil, poverty and low time of school is far from being residual problems, reaching considerable parcel of their citizens. The political participation, however, can be one of the first steps for the excluded set it free of this condition that results in their political alienation. Impossible to imagine any type of solution to cure deficits of political participation without stimulation for the development of a civic culture. The participation generates offers of politics directed to the politically active group, the alienation politics, in turn, it silences the demands of the alienated that, to a large extent, are the ones that more need specific publics political. The stimulation of a participated civic culture presented as alternative for broke of vicious circle generated by the alienation politics, poverty and illiteracy.

A pesquisa analisa o papel de dois debates televisivos centrais na eleição presidencial de 2006, o debate da “Cadeira Vazia” organizado pela TV Globo, no primeiro turno, e o “Duplo Combate” debate promovido pela TV Bandeirantes, no segundo turno. A disputa presidencial, em 2006, foi marcada por crises, denúncias e escândalos políticos. Apesar de todos os acontecimentos, que envolveram sua candidatura, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) foi reeleito. Nesse sentido, o estudo parte da concepção de que os debates políticos televisivos são espaços estratégicos de visibilidade política intermediados pela estética televisiva, objetivando-se a busca por credibilidade junto ao eleitor, além disso apresentam-se como elementos importantes da disputa eleitoral em uma eleição presidencial. O estudo procura entender o que faz dos debates televisivos formatos estratégicos para o processo eleitoral brasileiro. A metodologia utilizada nesta dissertação contempla pesquisa bibliográfica, pesquisa documental, análise histórico-descritiva e estudos de discurso combinados a referências da semiótica utilizados nas análises dos debates e sua respectiva repercussão. O objetivo geral deste estudo é identificar quais são os elementos que tornam os debates televisivos centrais para a campanha eleitoral brasileira, em 2006. O debate político televisivo, apesar de ser um evento de curta duração, envolve um complexo processo de preparação técnica e investimento por parte dos promotores, emissoras de TV, e demanda um indispensável planejamento de estratégias por parte das candidaturas. Para os eleitores, é um momento único para observar os candidatos no embate direto configurando-se, assim, em importante fonte de informação. / This research analyses the role of two main television debates in the 2006 presidential elections. The “Empty Chair” debate, organized by Globo TV networks, during the first round, and the “Double Debate”, promoted by Bandeirantes TV networks, during the second one. The presidential competition was punctuated by crises, denouncement and political scandals. Despite all events surrounding his candidacy, the president Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) was reelected. This way, this study starts from the point that the television political debates are strategic spaces of political visibility mediated by the television esthetics, focusing on the voters credibility. Besides that, they also represent important elements in the electoral scene in a presidential election. The study searches for an understanding of what makes the television debates strategic frameworks for the Brazilian electoral process. The methodology used in this dissertation includes bibliographic research, documental research, historicaldescriptive analysis and discourse studies combined to semiotics references used in the analysis of the debates and their repercussion. The general aim of this study is to identify which elements are the ones which make the television debates fundamental for the Brazilian electoral campaign, in 2006. The television political debate, despite being a short-term event, involves a complex process of technical preparation and investment by the promoters, TV broadcasters, and demands a fundamental strategies planning by the candidacies. As to the voters, it is a unique opportunity to observe the candidates in a direct confront, becoming, this way, an important source of information.