Thesis advisor: Nasser Behnegar / Political ideology can be described in terms of value pluralist theory. Much of the variation between political ideologies can be explained by the fact that the principles that are essential to society--liberty, equality, fraternity, peace, loyalty, and civilization--are incommensurable and often conflict forcing each person and community to emphasize some principles over others leading to an imperfect society. Each political ideology is a combination of interests and the selected balance of principles and thus can be essentially defined according to the level of preference for each of these six principles. This paper studies major political ideologies throughout the globe and develops a model for understanding them in these terms. This paper further argues for a pluralist democracy, with constantly shifting ideological dominance in a community as the next best thing to an impossible utopia and the only means of preventing the collapse of society due to a lack of essential principles. This model makes clear the fallacy of understanding political ideology in terms of "left" and "right," which not only oversimplify political ideology but also fundamentally misrepresent it. It also leads to narrowing visions of politics that prevent significant changes to a political system and undermine the possibility for pluralist democracy. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Esta pesquisa visa fornecer uma explicação para o quadro de ampla desconfiança em partidos políticos no Brasil. Mobilizando modelos culturalistas e racionalistas para entender esse fenômeno, o trabalho se inicia com uma discussão teórica sobre o lugar da desconfiança numa democracia representativa, passando para o debate pormenorizado de como a literatura tentou tratar do objeto dessa dissertação, nacional e internacionalmente. Por sua vez, os capítulos empíricos, fundamentados sobre testes de qui-quadrado, análises de correspondência e regressões logísticas ordinais, revelam os efeitos assimétricos das principais variáveis elencadas pela literatura, em que seu efeito negativo sobre a desconfiança é maior do que seu efeito positivo sobre a confiança. Argumenta-se que o quadro ilustra a consolidação de uma cultura de desconfiança em partidos políticos no Brasil, com consequências e importância incertas atualmente para a compreensão da intrincada relação entre partidos políticos e sociedade civil. / This research aims to provide an explanation to the broad distrust in political parties in Brazil. Using culturalist and racionalist models to assess this phenomenon, this work starts with a theoretical discussion about the place that distrust has in a representative democracy, going through a detailed discussion on how the literature tried to study this dissertations object, nationally and internationally. The empirical chapters, grounded in chi-square tests, correspondence analysis, and ordinal logistic regressions, reveal asymmetric effects from the main variables brought out by the literature, where its negative effects on distrust are bigger than its positive effects on trust in political parties. It is argued that this scenario illustrates the consolidation of a culture of distrust in political parties in Brazil, with unknown consequences and importance for the comprehension of the intricate relation between political parties and civil society.

Les partis politiques macédoniens ont été relativement peu étudiés. Les problèmes de la construction du nouvel Etat, à la fois dans un environnement difficile et quant à l’intégration de l’importante minorité albanaise, ont éclipsé ceux du nouveau système politique. L’attention portée à l’ingénierie constitutionnelle y a contribué. Pourtant, les partis sont au cœur de la démocratie pluraliste.En dehors de la problématique commune de la formation des partis politiques dans les transitions post-communistes, le cas macédonien présente des originalités par le rôle des racines historiques pour les partis relevants et l’importance des partis ethniques, qui ont évolué entre la contestation de l’Etat et du nouveau système et l’intégration politique par la participation grandissante au jeu démocratique, y compris au niveau gouvernemental. / Macedonian political parties have been relatively little studied. In Macedonia, political system transformation has been mainly dominated by state building issues, problems related to Albanian minority integration and the process of designing a new constitutional arrangement. Nevertheless, political parties are considered to be key actors in pluralist democracy. Macedonian parties have their own particularities when compared to general models of post-communist party development. The originality of the Macedonian parties thus lies in the importance accorded to historical legacies in party formation, as well as in the role played by ethnic actors in the process of democratization.

Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / While the Tea Party’s rise in 2009 prompted enormous media attention and subsequent academic inquiry, scholarship that investigates Tea Party ideology is scant. While not a social movement in the traditional sense, the Tea Party had an undeniable influence on the 2010 midterms, especially at the state level. This paper features New Hampshire, a perennial swing state and home to one of the largest legislative shifts to Republican control in recent memory. By exploring four broad issue areas, Constitutionalism, the economy, social issues, and race, the project seeks a clearer understanding of what Tea Partiers believe and what their sympathetic state legislators espouse. The first level of analysis uses opinion polling to demonstrate that while those respondents who back the Tea Party have conservative views on perceptual questions, a plurality agree with most Americans on specific policy positions. The second level of analysis compares opinion poll responses to interviews of New Hampshire state legislators, finding that the latter group is much more rigidly conservative on tangible policies, but lacks Tea Party voters’ distinctive fears of a changing America. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

Nas cidades, historicamente, são realizados eventos de diversos portes em praças públicas ou locais alternativos, como vazios urbanos, estacionamentos de automóveis, descampados, campos de futebol, faixas de areia das praias, entre outros. Tais festas são categorizadas genericamente como eventos ao ar livre e muitas vezes atraem uma grande concentração de público, o que gera a necessidade de aporte de uma logística com aparatos de suporte para garantir sua boa realização. Outro suporte importante é o staff, ou seja, a equipe de realização do evento. Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo entender como se dá a relação entre o sítio de realização, a qualidade do evento e os profissionais envolvidos. / Historically, cities have held events of different sizes in squares or alternative places such as vacant terrains parking lots, open fields, sports fields, beaches etc. Those events are generically categorized as open air, and often find a high concentration of public, which creates the need of a logistic apparatus to support the event and ensure its proper execution. Another important aspect is the support staff. This research tries to understand how the professionals involved, location and quality relates to each other in such events.

A Festa em Louvor à Nossa Senhora do Rosário é uma parte da identidade de moradores do interior de Goiás no Brasil, mais especificamente da cidade de Catalão. A Festa é realizada, primeiro apenas por descendentes de escravos, que usavam a festa para manterem vivas suas tradições no espaço do outro, o colonizador; anos mais tarde, para firmar-se na cidade, os dançadores que eram em sua maioria pobres que lutavam todos os anos, não apenas para sobrevier, mas também para fazer a festa na cidade do outro, levar seus grupos à Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário. A Festa sobrevive através da religiosidade, da Congada e do comércio na/da festa, aqui analisado na feira as barraquinhas. Mais tarde, tornou-se uma festa de todos, com interesses diversos. É uma festa com dimensões sagradas e profanas onde observa-se o embate entre o global e o local, bem como as estratégias que aqueles que fazem a Festa têm que adotar para continuar existindo. É uma festa social, espetacularizada e em processo de mercadificação, de apropriação do trabalho de homens e mulheres, alienando-os em suas práticas festivas. A prática socioespacial da Festa do Rosário justifica a realização dessa pesquisa pela contribuição para uma Geografia Urbana que seja parte de um projeto do direito à cidade para todos. A festa é um direito dos que a fazem e dos que hoje acompanham-na, seja para rezar, para dançar na Congada ou para comprar nas barraquinhas. As transformações, as persistências e as deteriorações mostram a resistência dessa prática festiva às estratégias do econômico na reprodução da cidade para a troca capitalista, revelando a cidade para a reprodução da vida, da troca, do encontro, da fé e da cultura popular. / The party in honour of Nossa Senhora is a part of the identity of people that live in the state of Goiás in Brazil, more specifically in Catalão. The festival is held, first only by descendants of slaves, who used the party to maintain their traditions in space of the others, the colonizer, years later, to establish himself in the city, the dancers who were mostly poor who fought all year, not only to survive but also to \"make the party\" in the city of another, take their groups to the Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário. The Feast survives through the religiosity of the Congada and the trade to / from the party, party of all, with diverse interests. It\'s a party with dimensions sacred and profane where there is the clash between the global and local like as the strategies that those, who make the festival must take to continue to exist. This is a social process of trade and appropriation of the men and women work, alienating them in their celebration practice. The socioespacial practice of Festa do Rosário, justifies the realization of this research into contributing to the Urban Geography one that will be part of a project to give the right to a city of everyone. The party is a right to the people that make it and to the people that follow it, only for praying, for dancing in the Congada, or just for buying in the barraquinhas. The changes, the persistence and deterioration show us the resistance of this festive practice strategies to the economic reproduction of the city to the capitalist exchange, revealing the city for the reproduction of life, of exchanging, of understanding, of faith and popular culture.

The thesis aims primarily to analyse the communication strategies of radical right parties. More specifically, the research examines three cases of radical right parties in Western Europe during the first decade of the twenty-first century with particular emphasis on the political communication along with marketing and branding techniques used to engage with the electorate to gain and maintain electoral support. These case studies comprise the Greek Popular Orthodox Rally (LA.O.S.), the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and the Italian National Alliance (AN). Different forms of content analysis are used in order to pinpoint the characteristics that identify the parties as members of the radical right family. Through this approach the thesis provides evidence that the parties, in their effort to become more appealing to their audiences, avoid direct engagement with issues, which reflect traditional ideological tenets of the radical right issues such as fascism, racism or xenophobia. Rather, they attempt to present a more mainstream and competitive profile in the political arena. From a market-oriented perspective, the thesis addresses questions on marketing and related explanations which focus both on how the parties choose to communicate with the electorate, what is their message and, through comparative analysis, whether there are similarities in communication techniques among the three parties and whether it can be argued that parties in the radical right family project a common profile in terms of their communication strategies. Furthermore, the application of such an approach to the use of political communication techniques of the selected radical right parties can contribute to a wider understanding of how the concept of ‘consumption’ has come to be applied increasingly in activities undertaken in the political arena.

Les crises actuelles, sous leurs multiples aspects, mettent en lumière la responsabilité des entreprises dans notre société, bousculant ainsi l'un des dogmes néolibéraux résumé par la célèbre formule de Milton Friedman (1970) : « La responsabilité sociétale de l’entreprise est d’accroître ses profits». C’est en réaction à ces crises et grâce au rôle actif de la société civile qui condamne désormais certaines pratiques, que le concept de responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (ci-après RSE) a émergé. L’enjeu est donc, aujourd’hui, de mettre en place un marché responsable entre l’entreprise et ses parties prenantes. Le législateur, par la loi Grenelle I, dispose que la médiation sera un des outils de mise en oeuvre de la RSE. Il en appelle donc au développement du droit processuel qu’est la médiation pour mettre en oeuvre ce droit substantiel qu’est la RSE. La médiation, à la fois préventive et curative, est donc un outil de mise en oeuvre de la RSE. Le couple RSE et médiation permet ainsi de combiner efficacité économique, respect social,sociétal et environnemental / Current multifaceted crises bring to light the importance of corporate responsibility in our society, thereby challenging a neoliberal tenet summarized by Milton Friedmand’s famous saying (1970): “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”.It is in response to these crises and thanks to the active role played by civil society who now condemns certain practices that the concept of corporate social responsibility (“CSR”) has emerged.Today’s challenge is thus to put in place a responsible marketplace between the company and its stakeholders.In the so-called Grenelle I Law, the French legislator specifies that mediation should be a toolto implement CSR.He therefore advocates the development of mediation as a procedural tool to implement CSR as an integral part of substantive law.Mediation, from both a preventive and a remedial perspective, is accordingly an instrument toimplement CSR.The CSR / mediation nexus successfully combines economic efficiency and social, societal and environmental respect

The first wave of stateless nationalist mobilisation triggered decentralisation processes in several Western European states. Political autonomy provided European stateless nations with sub-state institutions with significant competences to manage their own affairs. Multinational federalism scholars have long debated whether political decentralisation to accommodate stateless nations appeases demands for secession or rather exacerbates them. Autonomous institutions created a new sub-state political system which political entrepreneurs, most significantly Stateless Nationalist and Regionalist Parties, are able to exploit to put forward demands for further empowerment of sub-state institutions. In the last decade territorial demands have been progressively raised by political parties in some Western European stateless nations, thus casting doubt on the effectiveness of political decentralisation as a valid mechanism to prevent secession. Scotland voted on independence on September 2014 whereas Catalan nationalist parties have been attempting to hold their own referendum since 2013. By looking specifically at the effects of political party competition at the sub-state level, this research aims at providing an explanation for the dynamics of territorial demands that have led to a high saliency of the territorial question in many Western European multinational states. An in-depth qualitative analysis of party competition in Catalonia aims to provide a successful explanation for the escalation of territorial demands in that country, also taking into account the role played by central institutions and the increasing support that secession shown amongst the population. The Catalan case is compared to Flanders and Scotland to test whether the dynamics of party competition can tell us a bit more about the ongoing territorial demands put forward by political parties in these three countries. The territorial accommodation of multinational states have tended to be analysed from an institutionalist perspective whereas multi-level party competition has kept a blind eye on constitutional change. This research aims at contributing to the growing literature of sub-state party politics and its capacities to explain constitutional change processes.

This thesis looks at five case studies of attempted co-operation between British political parties. The objective is two-fold: to provide an explanatory framework to better understand instances of potential cooperation within the institutional context of British politics, and to build analytical narratives that shed light on the inter- and intra-party dynamics when co-operation between parties has been mooted in Westminster. It addresses a lacuna in the study of British Politics by providing a temporal comparison of understudied examples of attempted co-operation. This comparison inductively draws out what lessons can be learnt about why co-operation is attempted, and the factors that inhibit it. This framework suggests that these examples of mooted co-operation constitute disruptions of the majoritarian norms which inform the British Political Tradition. It does so through a historical institutionalist lens: the cultural norms of Westminster provide a strategic context, but elite political agents strategically interact with this institutional environment. This tradition is manifested through intra-party pressure against co-operation, and a belief that co-operation is electorally disadvantageous. Equally, actors' interpretation of what is possible or desirable within the perceived constraints of Westminster party politics really matters. This suggests a role for situated agency and strategic leadership, captured through the concept of a disruption/defence of existing institutional equilibrium derived from heresthetics. This thesis contends that the discourse around co-operation holds a rhetorical and performative purpose beyond the success or failure of formal co-operation. Institutional context and memory create incentives for actors to either accentuate or downplay the effect of co-operation, but do not determine the shape and aims of cooperation. As a result, both culture and calculus are all-important to inter-party co-operation.