Through a content analysis, the proposed thesis examines instances of social and verbal aggression within the 2016 US presidential primary and general election debates. Previous studies regarding social aggression have shown that its primary use has been to "œget ahead" in competitive and hostile environments. While acts of social and verbal aggression have been analyzed in interpersonal behavior and mediated entertainment scholarship, it has yet to be examined in the political spectrum, where candidates engage in clash to suppress their opponents. The current study argues that analyzing social and verbal aggression in televised political debates will help broaden the concept of political clash and provide foundational material to the study of this behavioral and rhetorical trend in American political communication. Additionally, examining social aggression at the political stage will encourage further research examining voters' attitudes towards similar political discourse and the cognitive effects that social aggression has on audiences.Sampling two debates from each primary debate segment (Republican and Democratic) and general election debates, the study was able to compare results across debate segments, as well as longitudinally within debate segments. The analysis found that aggression increased longitudinally. Although the Republican primary debates featured more aggression than the Democratic debates, forms of social and verbal aggression were very similar between the two. As was expected, the general election debates included more aggression than the two primary debate segments combined. Donald Trump was the greatest perpetrator of aggression among all primary and general election candidates.

I use the military march of Union general William Sherman during the American Civil War to estimate the effects of wartime violence and destruction on post-war voting behavior and personal identity. First, I examine how the march influenced the support for the Democrats throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Second, to proxy for the strength of Southern identity, I construct several variables from both historical and contemporary sources. These variables include the share of individuals likely named after famous Confederate generals, the relative frequency of streets likely named after Confederate figures, and the presence of Confederate monuments. The results show mostly small and statistically insignificant effects of the march on Democratic vote share. For some outcomes proxying for Southern identity, I find a significant positive effect; however, these results are not robust across different model specifications. Overall, the results suggest that Sherman's march did not have a transformative impact on the politics and personal identity in the US South. vii

Football is the biggest sport in Sweden with the most spectators and the biggest amount of generated money. Sweden though has the longest and most violent history of footballviolence compared to its Scandinavian neighbours, however not many studies exist about this topic in Sweden. This study focuses on the regular footballsupporters who use violence connected to football. The six persons in this study are not hooligans, they do not seek violence as a footballhooligan, still they admit that they have used violence in connection to footballseveral times. The purpose of this study is to get a broader understanding for the culture of violence within the Swedish footballsupporters. How come that individuals step inside a violent culture and what can we learn from their own stories in how they got in to participating violence and sustaining it. The study has together with three theoretical frameworks and previous studies explained how the culture of violence exist in Swedish supporterculture. It also gives an broader explanation to what it does to the individuals existing in the culture. The three theoretical framworks are Bourdieu’s habitus, Goffman’s dramaturgical theory and Elias’s the established and the outsiders toghether with previous studies focusing on subculture, policing in football and hooliganism in popular culture. The study consist of interviews with six swedish male footballsupporters in the ages between 23 and 28 years old. With their stories about their own experiences four themes were found in analysis, culture of violence, culture of loyalty, us vs. Them and subculture. The results in the study shows that the supporterculture works as a subculture, with its own norms, behavior and expectations on the individuals existing in the culture.

In the fall of 1921 oil workers of the San Joaquin Valley faced a post-war economic slump, wage cuts across the board and an increasingly hostile attitude of oil operators towards consultation with the federal government on labor relations. They voted to strike, and the next day eight thousand workers walked off the fields. Strikers crafted an image of “patriotic unionism,” underpinned by a faith in the federal government and the ideology of the American Legion. The strike did not end in gruesome class warfare like had been seen months earlier in the coal mines of West Virginia, but rather in ideological confusion and despair. The oil workers movement never fully embraced a class identity; instead it embraced the burgeoning conservative identity of Americanism. This effectively hobbled the growth of the movement. Upon the strike’s conclusion there was no mass pull to the left on the part of oil workers in the San Joaquin Valley, despite the fact that their movement’s design and identity had gotten them nowhere. On the contrary a portion of workers and supporters of the strike turned to the nativism of the Klan. Overall this project looks to complicate the narrative of “us vs. them” in labor history by analyzing workers’ identities, and also looks to contribute to the ever-evolving discourse on how historians should track American conservatism as a social force.

During the span of 27 months, Peace Corps volunteers live and work in different countries and cultures all over the globe. The various projects that Peace Corps volunteers work on together with their host country nationals can prove extremely challenging due to many cultural differences. This research assessed the influences of cultural differences on Peace Corps projects that volunteers experienced while working with Guatemalan nationals. The literature review examined the issues of cultural differences and the effects 6 and influences that they could have on projects of host country nationals and Peace Corps volunteers. I have examined literature focusing on intercultural communication, cultural group membership differences, cultural identities, value orientations, and organizational value dimensions. I have also looked deeply into many of the differences between the collectivist culture of Guatemala and the individualistic culture of the United States. I have compiled data from interviews with Peace Corps volunteers that I served with in Guatemala from August 2007 until November 2009. During their service, the volunteers worked in the programs of Municipal Development and Agricultural Development. I hope for this research to provide detail into the influences of cultural differences between Peace Corps volunteers in Guatemala and Guatemalan nationals. I hope that this study can better prepare Guatemalan nationals and Peace Corps volunteers to have a superior understanding of each other's cultural identities to ensure that positive communication can lead to good outcomes for projects in the future. I also hope that Peace Corps facilitators and trainers can use the findings in this study for workshops and training sessions on intercultural relations not only in the Peace Corps Guatemala program, but for all other countries where volunteers are currently serving.

Trade of South Africa with the rest of the world has changed substantially since the mid-1990s. The United States (US), which used to be the main trading partner of South Africa, is now only the third largest trading partner of the country. South African trade with Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom (UK) are also lower. The key reason is the emergence of China in the world economy. South Africa did not trade with China before 1993, but from 2009 China became the main trading partner of the country. Globalisation and China’s emergence have influenced the trade linkages of many other countries in the world. To incorporate the changes in global trade linkages, the foreign variables of all the models in the study are compiled with trade-weighted three-year moving average data. The foremost objective of the thesis is to determine how the changes in trade linkages affect the transmission of economic shocks originating in the rest of the world on South Africa. The global vector autoregression (GVAR) approach is used since one of its advantages is the incorporation of global trade linkages, which facilitates the analysis of the transmission of shocks from one country to another. As a GVAR model combines many individual country models, the study first estimates such a country-specific model for South Africa to determine whether it displays the expected impact of domestic shocks on the economy. This type of model is known as a vector error correction model (VECM) with domestic variables and weakly exogenous (X) foreign (*) variables, denoted by VECX*. The results from the VECX* for South Africa are in line with expectations, showing the effective transmission of monetary policy. The study then examines the impact of international shocks on the South African economy with a GVAR model. The GVAR, which incorporates country-specific VECX* models for 33 countries, is solved for all 33 countries using global trade weight matrices at different dates. The results indicate that over time South Africa is much more vulnerable to GDP shocks to the Chinese economy, and less vulnerable to GDP shocks to the US economy. These trends are however not confined to South Africa, and as such highlights the increased risk to the South African economy and many other economies, should China experience slower GDP growth. Finally, the thesis determines whether the forecasting performance of GVAR models is superior to that of a country-specific VECX* model. The study compares the out-of-sample forecasts of two key South African variables (real GDP and inflation) for five types of models: a VECX*, a customised small GVAR for South Africa, the more general 33-country GVAR, simple autoregressive models and random walk models. Better forecasts of both the GVAR models compared to the VECX* model at forecast horizons of more than four quarters show that, despite the complicated nature of the GVAR model with the inclusion of many countries and global trade linkages, the additional information is useful for forecasting domestic variables / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Economics / unrestricted

The research will compare the alignment of the remuneration between United States and South African banks with respect to the Economic Value Added, a measure of a firm's economic profit that adjusts profit by subtracting the cost of capital.South African banks have been widely recognised for their high standard of corporate governance and stability during the financial crisis. Executive remuneration based on short-term equity has been recognised by both academic literature as well as bank regulators as one of the causes of the financial crisis. The research seeks to understand the differences in remuneration alignment between the failed and surviving banks.Misaligned incentives within the United States banks are accepted by both academics and regulators as one of the causes of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent economic downturn. This research puts this theory to the test by comparing the alignment of executive remuneration between South African banks that were internationally recognised for successfully navigating the financial crisis, and the largest United States banks, of which three failed catastrophically over the same time period.The remuneration for the largest United States and South African banks is tested for correlation against Economic Value Added (EVA®), share price and return on equity. Correlation between executive remuneration and the constructs is tested between the two countries before as well as after the financial crisis.South African bank executive remuneration correlated strongly with EVA® and this correlation strengthened after the financial crisis. In comparison, the United States sample banks exhibited strong correlation between share price and remuneration before the financial crisis. The failed United States banks had no correlations between executive remuneration any of the constructs, a pattern that has been repeated in the United States Banks that have survived the financial crisis.Practically, the research demonstrated the vast differences in executive remuneration alignment between the United States and South Africa. In South African banks, executive remuneration is far more closely aligned to EVA®, whereas the United States banks only correlated with share price before the financial crisis, raising the question of whether managers are able to exert excessive power. The research demonstrates the magnitude of the gap between the recommendations of regulators and remuneration policies, with South African banks far more closely aligned than their United States counterparts.The research findings concur with theory presented in literature that misaligned incentives based on equity contributed towards the financial crisis. Of particular concern is the change in remuneration correlation after the financial crisis, where South African banks increased correlation with EVA® while United States banks no longer correlated with EVA®, ROE or share price. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Decades of cooperation between the United States and its Middle Eastern partners have come to a turning point. The 2008 Shale Revolution has brought the United States heretofore unknown scale of energy independece. The Revolution has created an unprecedented increase in United States' unconventional cost-effectively extractable energy reserves. It is estimated that within next two decades the United States should change from net importer of hydrocarbons to net exporter. There is a lot of speculation, whether due to possible energy independece, the foreign policy towards its Middle Eastern partners would change and whether the United States would isolate itself. Aim of this work is to explore the impact of the Shale Revolution on energy security of the United States and its implications for future geopolitics towards the Middle East. The main question to be explored is whether it would change United States' geopolitics at all and if yes, how would it look like. Since domestic oil prices are based on global energy prices and since Middle Eastern partners are unique in their capability of supplying global energy markets with large quantities of oil in the long run, even after the Shale Revolution it will be essential for the United States to continue its cooperation with its Middle Eastern partners....

The presented diploma thesis deals with the issue of American immigration policy, with emphasis on the immigration policies of the two former US presidents - George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and their comparison. The main purpose of this thesis is to answer the question, why their comprehensive immigration reform plans failed. KEYWORDS US; Immigration; Immigration Policies; George W. Bush; Barack Obama

CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES INSTITUTE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Islamic terrorism in US film: how we construct our own enemies Master's thesis Author: Bc. Anna Kotvalová Study programme: International Relations Supervisor: Mgr. Jakub Záhora, Ph.D. Year of the defense: 2019 ABSTRACT The presented diploma thesis is concerned with the discourse and narratives of the phenomenon of terrorism in the American cinema, produced after 9/11 and its reflection on the events within the War on Terror. This thesis rests on two major theoretical realms, Critical terrorism studies and the interconnection between popular culture and the world of politics. This thesis addresses three American mainstream films produced after 9/11, Zero Dark Thirty, Lone Survivor and American Sniper in order to analyse the discourse and narratives which refer to the antagonists in these movies (more specifically, the discourse and narratives which portrays justification for the American behaviour within the War on Terror) and to address the political consequences of this kind of discourse. This thesis defines four major repetitive patterns in the discourse: humanization of the "American side", dehumanization of the antagonists, depiction of torture and violence and lack of context and concludes...