This thesis argues that civil war has a significant, lasting impact on the formation, development and institutionalization of parties and party systems. Through in-depth examination of the cases of El Salvador and Cambodia it shows that dominant party systems and uneven institutionalization of individual political parties prevalent in post-war societies can to a not insignificant extent be attributed to war-related factors such as war-time origins of parties, the way in which war ended, the nature of the peace agreement, and post-war design of electoral, media and other public institutions. Its focus on party and party system institutionalization is rooted in the Western-oriented party politics literature, which suggests that the nature of electoral competition, the impact of societal cleavages and the workings of formal political institutions are primary explanatory factors. By contrast, this thesis argues that in non-Western developing countries affected by civil war, war-related factors and post-war security, socio-economic and political conditions are equally if not more important for understanding post-war party development. Through a structured focused comparison of party and party system institutionalization in El Salvador and Cambodia based on extensive interviews and field research, the thesis demonstrates that the war-time origins of the main Salvadoran and Cambodian parties have left a deep imprint on their organizational structures and leadership style, just as war-time political exclusion set the tone for unbalanced party competition after the war. Although El Salvador’s party system is more institutionalized than Cambodia’s and there are many other differences, there are also clear cross-national patterns of unequal individual party institutionalization and ruling party dominance that are a product of the war. Given that institutionalized parties and a competitive party system are important ingredients for a healthy democracy these findings are important for understanding the challenges and prospects of democratization in these and other post-war countries.

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The Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) emerged in 1997 in reaction to the advance of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) neo-liberal agenda. As a transnational coalition integrated by trade union organisations, social movements and NGOs from all over the continent, the HSA denounced the detrimental social, economic and environmental consequences of the FTAA project on the most vulnerable sectors of the populations of the Americas. This thesis examines the role of the HSA in the construction of counter-hegemonic alternativest o the FTAA project. The analysis encompassesth e time period that starts with the formation of the HSA in 1997 until the halting of the FTAA process in 2005 and draws on the political process approach of social movement theory - particularly on its notion of political opportunity structures as factors conditioning the capacity of social movements to access and control political resources for the advancement of collectively defined political goals. It is argued that the actions pursued by the HSA to construct an alternative to the FTAA have led to moderate, albeit significant, results. Considerable progress was achieved in fostering a political climate of distrust and opposition to neoliberalism throughout the Americas, which contributed to the stalling of the FTAA process in 2005. In spite of this, the HSA continues to face the challenge of building political alternatives that reflect and expand a commitment to deeper forms of democracy and sustainable development in the region.

The Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution has provoked researchers to find new ways of engaging with the emergence of popular organizations and movements who are highly mobilized and seeking new forms of popular power and the deepening of democratic practices both within the country and for the Latin American region. This research project argues that at the core of the Bolivarian Revolution is an urban revolution in which barrio residents play a key role in the transformation of the country. Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith, Doreen Massey, and Edward Soja, among others, it is argued that a spatial analysis of urban social relations, while usually reserved for the study of capital’s role in producing contemporary cities, also allows research to visibilize how popular organizations act as agents in the production and transformation of urban space in their own right. At the center of this study is the Urban Land Committee movement, which by drawing on what Lefebvre has called ‘lived space’ knowledges, has evolved from an organization that primarily sought land titles for barrio inhabitants to a national movement that is currently pursuing the ‘right to the city’, that is, decision-making power over urban space. Through an investigation of the movement’s strategies, and with an understanding that these strategies are inherently spatial in nature, it is possible to ask how the movement is transforming urban space in Venezuela. Ultimately, the work of the Urban Land Committee movement has implications both for theories about the production of urban space and for the construction of popular power in the Bolivarian Revolution.

<p>We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting for: Pan-African Consciousness Raising and Organizing in the United States and Venezuela, draws on fifteen months of field research accompanying organizers, participating in protests, planning/strategy meetings, state-run programs, academic conferences and everyday life in these two countries. Through comparative examination of the processes by which African Diaspora youth become radically politicized, this work deconstructs tendencies to deify political s/heroes of eras past by historicizing their ascent to political acclaim and centering the narratives of present youth leading movements for Black/African liberation across the Diaspora. I employ Manuel Callahan’s description of “encuentros”, “the disruption of despotic democracy and related white middle-class hegemony through the reconstruction of the collective subject”; “dialogue, insurgent learning, and convivial research that allows for a collective analysis and vision to emerge while affirming local struggles” to theorize the moments of encounter, specifically, the moments (in which) Black/African youth find themselves becoming politically radicalized and by what. I examine the ways in which Black/African youth organizing differs when responding to their perpetual victimization by neoliberal, genocidal state-politics in the US, and a Venezuelan state that has charged itself with the responsibility of radically improving the quality of life of all its citizens. Through comparative analysis, I suggest the vertical structures of “representative democracy” dominating the U.S. political climate remain unyielding to critical analyses of social stratification based on race, gender, and class as articulated by Black youth. Conversely, I contend that present Venezuelan attempts to construct and fortify more horizontal structures of “popular democracy” under what Hugo Chavez termed 21st Century Socialism, have resulted in social fissures, allowing for a more dynamic and hopeful negation between Afro-Venezuelan youth and the state.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the importance of sharing information when dealing with activities related to international terrorism in Latin America, especially in the aftermath of the terrorist events against the United States on September 11, 2001. The importance of information on international terrorism is critical in the war against terrorism, particularly in the region due to the potential for those activities associated with the already existent organized crime. The importance of information includes organizations. Therefore, the proposed organizational process makes it possible to facilitate the sharing of information considering the complexity involved. At the same time, the necessity of information about the threat of terrorism can be demonstrated through the use of game theory. This model can drive the states to use all means necessary to obtain relevant information. The requirement for information sharing must be solved based on the relevance of the threats and the need for increased security for the states in the region.

This thesis attempts to demonstrate how Reverend and Professor Hubert Herring’s dedication to Congregationalism motivated him to advocate for the autonomy of Latin American nations through the pursuit of non-interventionist policies, an approach the U.S. government ultimately adopted when it best suited its interests during World War II.

In this thesis, I use the concept of state capacity to account for cross-national levels of variation in policy effectiveness in Latin America between 1996 and 2006. In doing so, I make four contributions to the literature. Firstly, I develop a theoretically-grounded conceptualization and an empirically systematic measurement of policy effectiveness for 18 Latin American countries along security, welfare and economic policy dimensions. Secondly, I develop a novel conceptualization and operationalization of state capacity along three key dimensions – infrastructural power, bureaucratic capacity and political capacity. By disaggregating state capacity into these three distinct (but mutually reinforcing) constituent dimensions, I integrate different strands of the literature on state capacity and purport to increase the explanatory power of state capacity as a conceptual variable. Thirdly, I develop a simple but theoretically differentiated model of policy effectiveness which maps out and incorporates different kinds of politics-centred explanations of effectiveness, while situating state capacity as a direct (but not exclusive) cause of effectiveness. The final contribution is empirical: I triangulate statistical methods, crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis and an extended qualitative comparison of two countries (Argentina and Chile) along three policy areas (health, citizen security and economic regulation) to provide a rich analysis of the influence the different dimensions of state capacity have on each policy effectiveness dimension. My results suggest, firstly, that state capacity differences are indeed large and important for explaining within-region differences in effectiveness; secondly, that the use of this disaggregated approach provides important theoretical and empirical payoffs for understanding the multiple ways in which states affect outcomes; and thirdly, that differentiating ‘institutions as organizations’ (such as the state) from the standard understanding of ‘institutions as rules’ allows us to improve on standard institutionalist accounts of the influence of politics on development.

This thesis seeks for an explanation of social mobilisation by examining the nuts and bolts of the institutional design of democracies. Since the nature of executive-legislative relations in democracy is an important influence on the distribution of policy outcomes between actors in society, and consequently on the extent of support (or inclusion) of citizens to the way power is exercised, the present work investigates how pure presidentialism (and the whole range of institutional accessories that can be combined with this particular executive) affects the opportunities and constraints for social mobilisation. This is done by conducting a within-format comparison across pure presidential regimes in Latin America, where most pure presidential regimes are located. The thesis is grounded in both quantitative and qualitative methods of research. Quantitatively, protest events are measured across time and space and the parameters are estimated through pooled cross-sectional time-series models for count data. Qualitatively, three case studies are examined: Bolivia (electoral rules), Ecuador (non-legislative and legislative presidential power) and Venezuela (party system). The main findings of this study are: Within presidential systems social mobilisation is more likely to occur whenever: (1) presidents are selected in runoff elections in the assembly, and (2) constitutions allow the immediate re-election of the president. However, the prospects for social mobilisation are not significantly affected by the extent to which electoral formulae promote the entry of parties to the assembly. As regards to the relative powers of the presidency and the legislature, the extent of the decree and veto powers of the president do not affect the occurrence of social mobilisation. Instead, the probability of contentious action is greater whenever (3) the capacity of legislatures to censure and sanction the members of the executive is low; and (4) legislatures have weak authority over public spending. Lastly, it is shown that the probability of social mobilisation does not vary across majoritarian and minority governments; neither is social mobilisation susceptible to the levels of electoral volatility in the legislature. Rather, (5) social mobilisation is highest whenever the pro-presidential contingent in the legislature is dominated by one large political party. The thesis thus concludes by strongly advocating for the inclusion of the format of the executive as an important variable in the comparative study of social mobilisation and of the substantive outputs of a democracy, in general.

This study examined the connections between cognitive functioning in individuals with dementia and caregiver burden, burden and mental health, mental health and quality of care. One hundred two dementia caregivers from San Lucas, Argentina completed questionnaires assessing these constructs. Caregiver burden, depression, anxiety, and satisfaction with life explained 18.8% of the variance in quality of care – respect and 14.7% of the variance in quality of care – provide. An SEM with generally adequate fit indices uncovered that cognitive functioning in individuals with dementia was inversely associated with caregiver burden, caregiver burden was inversely associated with mental health, and mental health was positively associated with quality of care. These findings suggest that the cascade may also be reversed with the development and use of dementia caregiver interventions that improve caregiver burden and mental health and as a result, the quality of care for individuals with dementia.