This dissertation aims to investigate the bases of partisan differentiation and degree of polarization since Taiwan's 2000 presidential election. By employing American concepts and theories of partisan polarization, I analyze Taiwan's party politics at both the elite and mass levels. At the elite level, I examine whether inter‐party antagonism has become more intense in Taiwan's legislature and what types of issues contribute most to party conflict since 2000. At the mass level, I examine public perceptions of the parties, analyze whether any political issues divide the Taiwanese public along partisan lines, and explore the social and demographic bases of partisan divisions. The findings suggest that political elites became polarized along partisan lines after 2000, as observed in roll‐call voting behavior in the Legislative Yuan. This resulted from the formation of a divided government and the confrontation of two party coalitions after the 2000 presidential election. Furthermore, this polarization is mainly due to the opposite positions of the two party coalitions on the issue of the relationship with China. The pan‐blue party coalition favors reunification and closer interaction with China, whereas its counterpart, the pan‐green party coalition, favors Taiwanese independence and limited interaction with China. The issues of social reform vs. stability, social welfare vs. lower taxes, and environmental protection vs. economic development are less polarizing and less consistently divisive than the issue of Taiwan's relations with China. Partisan polarization is less evident among ordinary citizens than among political elites. The only issue dividing Taiwanese significantly is the China relationship issue (independence or unification with China). In addition, demographic factors may lead to partisan division among citizens. Nevertheless, this polarization is more moderate than that of political elites because the number of partisan independents is high and has not decreased significantly. In short, partisan polarization in Taiwan is not as intense as some political scientists claim. Taiwan's partisan polarization at the mass level is closer to the concept of "sorting", referring to the process of people gradually affiliating with the party that best reflects their policy preferences, even if those preferences are more moderate than extreme.

In today’s business world, it appears to be impossible for companies to survive without expanding through deals that result in mergers and acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions represent a favourable medium of growth. However, studies indicate a high rate of failure in these operations. Evidently, there are areas that are mismanaged during the course of a merger or acquisition.   If organizations make a decision to go through a merger or acquisition, it is vital that they devote significant attention and resources to understand and deal with opportunities and challenges presented during its processes. Through our research we have come to identify four important aspects as integral to a successful merger and acquisition. These components: culture, synergies, leadership and politics, each independently and together when mismanaged become the source of a merger or acquisition failing.  If we are to envision the newly formed organization post a merger or acquisition as the structure, we see these four components as the pillars of this structure.  The strength or weakness of these pillars will determine the future of the newly formed organization.  At the other end of the spectrum, the very core aspects that result in success, we believe when mismanaged can spell catastrophe for the organization. However, lessons in mismanagement in these very four strategic areas can be the game changer that could possibly turn a merger and acquisition failure into success. It is only through an analytical study of the mismanagement pertinent in these four individual areas that we arrive at answers so that we may change this dominant trend of failure in mergers and acquisitions.

Review of A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe edited by Stuart Leibiger

In recent years, there has been a noticeable rise in the use of walking in artistic practice. Artists explore, map, narrate, draw, follow and procrastinate through the use of pedestrianism. This rise in an artistic output that uses the walking body has coincided with a burgeoning literature in this field; a literature that, I argue, has yet to find its feet, frequently repeating, and so depoliticising, the dominant narrative that casts walking as a strategy of resistance to the high-speed technological demands of late capitalism. Beyond its role as emancipatory gesture, I show, walking is enmeshed in histories of gender, labour, punishment, power and protest; something that a focus on the art of the 1960s and ‘70s can help to uncover. Accordingly, this thesis seeks to place the recent rise of ‘walking art’ in a specific historical context, positing that the uses of walking by artists today find the key to their legitimation in moving image and performance work of the 1960s and ‘70s. Through chapters on the work of the Judson Dance Theater (1962-7) and Trisha Brown (early 1970s), Bruce Nauman’s studio films and videos (1967-9) and Agnes Martin’s only film Gabriel (1976), I argue that these artists used walking not only to deconstruct the mediums out of which they worked (dance, sculpture, painting), but also to negotiate the wider socio-political issues of the era, from protest marching and the moon landings to much more clandestine concerns such as surveillance and controlled viewership. These chapters reveal a walking body as supported by technology, subject to self-discipline, and negotiating a new relationship with the natural world. A final chapter on Janet Cardiff’s audio walks, which she first developed in the late 1990s, makes explicit a feminist problematic, as I ask where the female body resides in a long history of male walkers, and explore the broader question of how we write the history of ‘walking art’. Via Cardiff, I reflect on the place of the 1960s and ‘70s in our historical imagination today, arguing for a more uneasy reading of the art of these decades than we have previously been used to.

A presente pesquisa tem por objeto de estudo a crescente incorporação ao sistema de justiça de métodos que visam a obtenção da solução dos conflitos de interesses de forma consensual. Nesta direção, percebe-se um contínuo esforço doutrinário e normativo direcionado para incentivar a utilização de métodos autocompositivos. Destaca-se, em termos normativos a edição da Resolução 125 do Conselho Nacional de Justiça, ao instituir a Política Judiciária de tratamento adequado dos conflitos de interesses, e também, as previsões normativas constante na lei 13.105/2015, que instituiu um novo Código de Processo Civil, entre as quais, a que prevê a realização de uma audiência prévia destinada exclusivamente para uma tentativa de conciliação. Diante deste quadro a proposta da pesquisa é por meio de levantamento bibliográfico e empírico realizado a partir de uma observação estruturada não participante de audiências designadas com o intuito de se obter uma conciliação, analisar a forma como se procede atualmente as tentativas de estabelecer uma solução consensual para o conflito, especificamente, as realizadas no bojo de um processo judicial por meio da técnica da conciliação, e verificar, se o seu uso, atende a finalidade precípua de entrega de uma prestação jurisdicional justa e adequada. O objetivo é investigar fatores que podem comprometer a utilização do referido instrumento como alternativa para uma justa-composição dos conflitos, evitando que se preste apenas para conjugar os interesses de politicas judiciárias para desafogo do sistema e sua utilização como instrumento de acomodação social. / This research has the object of study the growing incorporation of methods that aim the achieving of solution of conflicts by consensus form into the justice system. In this direction, we can see a continuous doctrinal and normative effort directed to encourage the use of conciliation methods. Stands out, in normative terms, the issue of Resolution 125 of the National Council of Justice, that establishes the Judicial Policy of proper handling of conflicting of interests, and also the norms forecasted in the law 13,105 / 2015, which institutes the new Procedure Civil Code, among which the one that provides for a prior hearing dedicated exclusively to an attempt of conciliation. Given this framework, the aim of this research is, through bibliographic and empirical survey, to analyse the way it currently happen the attempts to establish a consensual solution to the conflict, specifically those in the midst of a judicial court through, using conciliation techniques and, by research, assure if the use of these means meets the main purpose of delivering a fair and appropriate legal result. The objective is to investigate factors that may compromise the use of the conciliation means as an alternative to a justcomposition of conflicts, preventing its work just to combine the interests of a judicial policy for outpouring of the system and its use as social accommodation tool.

Quais as reações do Supremo Tribunal Federal quando acionado pelos pequenos partidos políticos? A literatura constitucional costuma definir a Corte como a terceira arena para o debate de interesses daqueles que perderam na deliberação de decisões relevantes, tomadas pelas maiorias legislativas. Nesse sentido, o Tribunal funcionaria como uma balança no jogo democrático, a fim de proteger minorias, revertendo as decisões das maiorias políticas. A presente pesquisa propõe uma estratégia empírica, a fim de verificar se, de fato, o STF é ativista e reverte as decisões das maiorias, atuando em favor dos pequenos partidos. Foram selecionadas as ações diretas de inconstitucionalidade propostas entre 1988 e 2015 pelas pequenas agremiações, submetendo-as a uma análise qualitativa-quantitativa tanto no que se refere aos temas submetidos à justiça constitucional quanto às respostas da Corte, a como ela decide. Variáveis categóricas foram escolhidas e, posteriormente, a elas aplicados instrumentos de estatística básica. Há algumas diferenças nas preferências de submeter alguns temas entre os pequenos partidos e o PT e o PMDB, porém, de uma maneira geral, a pauta das pequenas agremiações muito se assemelha à dos grandes partidos. O quantitativo da taxa de improcedência corresponde a quase o quádruplo do número das ações julgadas como procedentes. / What reactions does the Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal STF) have when called upon by the small political parties? The constitutional literature often defines the Court as the third arena for debating the interests of those who have lost in the deliberation of relevant decisions, made by the legislative majorities. This way, the Court of Justice would work as a balance point in the democratic game, in order to protect the minorities, reversing the decisions made by the political majority. The present research proposes an empiric strategy, with the purpose of verifying if, in fact, the STF is an activist Court and reverts the decisions made by the majorities, acting in favor of the small political parties. The research selected lawsuits, called ações diretas de inconstitucionalidade (ADINs), proposed by the small parties between 1988 and 2015 and submitted them through a qualitative-quantitative analysis in either aspects of the topic submitted to the constitutional justice and the Court's responses. It chose categorical variables and, subsequently, applied to them basics statistical instruments. There are some divergences in the preferences of submitting some topics between the small parties and the PT and PMDB, although, in a generic way, the agenda of the small parties has many similarities with those from the bigger parties. The not upheld rate corresponds to almost four times the upheld rate.

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My doctoral thesis analyses the political ideology of Islamism by taking the case study of a major Islamist organization, namely the Jamaat-e-Islami in contemporary India and Bangladesh. In doing so, I try to understand the similarities and differences of the ideological articulations of Islamism in a Muslim minority context of India and in a Muslim majority context of Bangladesh. The thesis is written from a political theory perspective in general and within the realm of ideology studies in particular. The study analyses how and why the Jamaat is responding to the economic and cultural issues of neoliberal India and Bangladesh. One cannot possibly ignore the neoliberal context within which Islamists are generating markedly new kinds of political articulations with an unprecedented set of political demands, never seen before in the history of Islamist movements. The ideological articulations of Jamaat have been studied by analyzing various primary sources—organisational literature, the party constitution, policy resolutions, press releases, election manifestos and political pamphlets of Jamaat-e-Islami. In addition, this dissertation has also relied on field interviews with the Jamaat leadership in India and Bangladesh. Magazines and internet sources have been also helpful for this study. My thesis analyses Islamist responses to neoliberalism by discussing the contrasting conditions of contemporary India and Bangladesh. In doing so, I conclude that in India, Jamaat is opposed to neoliberalism whereas in Bangladesh, it has a ambiguous character vis-à-vis neoliberalism. However, Islamists in both these countries are opposed to cultural issues like atheism, ‘blasphemous’ views, live-in relationships and homosexuality, which they construe as the products of ‘western cultural globalization’. In this respect, I try to analyse why the Islamists are opposed to ‘western cultural globalization’. Finally, I also explain how Islamism, as a politico-ideological project of populist mobilization is facing a crisis in contemporary India and Bangladesh.

O presente trabalho examina a questão dos limites da intervenção judicial sobre os atos políticos. Para tanto, parte de um apanhado histórico que abrange o desenvolvimento da political questions doctrine junto à Suprema Corte dos Estados Unidos e da teoria dos actes de gouvernment junto ao Conselho de Estado francês, até chegar ao Brasil. Após, examina como o Supremo Tribunal Federal vem enfrentando o tema ao longo dos anos, fazendo uso de três questões pontuais, quais sejam, o controle dos atos administrativos discricionários, a participação do Poder Judiciário na definição e implementação das políticas públicas e o controle jurisdicional dos processos político-disciplinares. Ao final, esboça uma solução em que se define a amplitude da atividade política do Estado e traça os limites das esferas de atribuições dos poderes do Estado, fiel ao disposto pelas normas constitucionais. / The current paper examines the field of the limits of the judicial intervention in political decisions. To do it so, it starts with a historical overview that covers the development of the 'political questions doctrine' by the United States Supreme Court and the 'actes de gouvernment' theory by the French State Council, until it arrived in Brazil. After, examines how the Brazilian Supreme Court has been deciding the matter throughout the years, using three punctual questions, namely, the control of discretionary administrative acts, the participation of the Judiciary in the definition and implementation of public policies and the jurisdictional control in political-disciplinary cases. In the end, suggests a solution that defines the amplitude of the political activity by the State and indicates the limits of attributions of the State powers, faithful to the dispositions of the Constitution.

This thesis scrutinises how regular mathematics teachers are expected to deal with empowerment in mathematics classroom practice. Inspired by a socio-political perspective, the aim of the study is to problematise how to empower mathematics students in inclusive classroom practice, as implicitly understood in a nationwide professional development programme, i.e., the Boost for Mathematics, in Sweden. The aim is addressed by the following research question: What types of empowering ideas are conveyed in the Boost for Mathematics? The data of the study were collected from supporting materials for teachers, published within the Boost for Mathematics. Data processing consists of two steps. Step 1 is a thematic analysis of how to promote student empowerment as discerned in the data of the study. In a nutshell, Step 1 clarifies that the data give prominence to ways of empowering students from a cognitive point-of-view while social difference is disregarded. Step 2 undertakes a critical approach and discusses an alternative way of treating empowerment; this alternative way is restricted to the design of participatory activities in inclusive classroom practice.