A tese discute a transformação dos discursos político-criminais sobre a pena de prisão no Brasil, no período que compreende os debates para a elaboração da Parte Geral do Código Penal e da Lei de Execução Penal, que reformaram o sistema penal em 1984, e os dispositivos penais e processuais penais discutidos na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte e contemplados na Constituição de 1988. Utilizando conceitos da literatura político-criminal anglo-saxã, as teorias tradicionais da pena e analisando os debates legislativos dos principais marcos legais do período escolhido, pretendeu-se verificar se o processo de superencarceramento brasileiro está inserido no contexto ocidental de valorização da prisão no final do século XX, ou se as peculiaridades do caso nacional indicam tratar-se de um fenômeno com causas endógenas. O trabalho parte da hipótese de que a virada punitiva brasileira está ligada ao processo de redemocratização, que atribuiu ao sistema de justiça criminal o papel de instrumento de resolução de problemas sociais complexos. Em um curto período, partiu-se de uma concepção de pena criminal como ultima ratio, instrumento de um sistema mais amplo de ressocialização e inclusão social, para um direito penal essencialmente punitivo. Nesse processo, a pena criminal foi revalorizada tanto por setores conservadores que se aproveitaram da utilidade eleitoral da política criminal para construir a narrativa da pena como instrumento de exclusão dos indesejáveis, em detrimento dos direitos humanos dos condenados quanto por setores progressistas que viram no potencial simbólico da prisão uma forma de assegurar pautas e de buscar direitos sociais. Assim, de maneira paradoxal, a pena de prisão assumiu o papel de síntese das demandas contraditórias que se apresentaram durante as disputas políticas nos anos 1980. Ao final, conclui-se que a prática contemporânea do sistema penal brasileiro está ligada à função atribuída à pena de prisão a partir da abertura política. O recurso a penas cada vez mais altas, o perene apelo a restrições processuais penais e a indiferença quanto à situação dos cárceres (agora concebidos como meros instrumentos de exclusão) refletem a lógica de colonização do sistema de justiça pelo aparato de segurança pública, característica constitutiva do antimodernismo penal no país. / The thesis presents a discussion about the transformation of criminal policy discourses on imprisonment in Brazil, from the 1984 criminal justice reform laws to the debates on the constitutional framework of the criminal justice system during the National Constituent Assembly, in 1988. Using concepts developed in the Anglo-Saxon criminology and the traditional justifications for criminal sanctions, the work analyses the legislative debates in order to verify if Brazilian overincarceration is part of the punitive turn wave which took place in the Western world in the late 20th century, or if its peculiarities should rather be explained by endogenous causes. It goes to illustrate how, in few years, Brazilian punitive turn departed from a welfare penal agenda to one essentially based on punitive sanctions. The hypothesis investigated along the work is that this phenomenon has direct links to the democratization process which attributed to the criminal justice system the role of solving complex social problems. Both conservatives, who discovered the electoral potential of penal populism, and new social movements, who relied on the symbolic nature of criminal law to support and organize civil rights demands, reinvigorated imprisonment. Paradoxically, prison became a synthesis of contradictory political forces and demands raised at the decline of military regime. The work concludes that contemporary practices of Brazilian criminal justice system are determined by the role assigned to imprisonment since democratization. Ever-higher prison sentences, limits on procedural rights for the accused and indifference towards inhumane prisons (now merely defined as a neutralization tool) reflects colonization of the criminal justice system by crime control apparatus, which is a constitutive feature of penal late modernism in Brazil.

L'objet de la présente thèse concerne l'étude de l'impact économique de trois modalités démocratiques, à savoir (i) l'agenda électoral, (ii) l'affiliation partisane des dirigeants en place dans un cadre de multipartisme, et (iii) les changements de gouvernance constitutionnellement définis. Afin d'introduire notre étude, nous décrivons la relation qui existe entre les modalités démocratiques et la démocratie directe d'une part et la politique budgétaire d'autre part, aux Etats-Unis sur la période 1790-2014 dans l'Introduction Générale. Dans le Chapitre 2 nous étudions l'effet authentique et potentiellement néfaste des cycles politico-budgétaires. Notre méta-analyse suggère que les dirigeants nationaux manipulent effectivement le budget dans un but de réélection mais l'ampleur du phénomène est largement exagérée par la littérature. Toutefois, le biais de publication mis en lumière s'est significativement réduit lors des 25 dernières années de recherches. Dans le Chapitre 3 nous étudions comment l'affiliation partisane des gouverneurs américains affecte le statut de pauvreté des immigrants, aux Etats-Unis, sur la période 1994-2014. Pour ce faire, nous comparons le niveau de pauvreté des immigrants dans les Etats gouvernés par les Démocrates au niveau de pauvreté des immigrants constaté dans les Etats gouvernés par les Républicains. En accord avec la littérature sur l'affiliation partisane, nous trouvons que les immigrants ont plus d'opportunités de sortir de la pauvreté sous les Démocrates que sous les Républicains. Une analyse formelle de médiation révèle que nos résultats empiriques sont médiatisés par un meilleur accès au marché du travail et possiblement de meilleures rétributions du travail, pour les immigrants. Dans le Chapitre 4 nous cherchons à vérifier l'évolution des notations souveraines lors des périodes d'inauguration des nouveaux dirigeants sur un échantillon de 18 pays d'Amérique Latine et des Caraïbes ayant des systèmes présidentiels. A partir de données de panel journalières s'étendant du 1er janvier 1994 au 31 décembre 2014, nous trouvons que les notations souveraines sont de meilleure qualité durant les périodes d'inauguration anticipées comparées aux autres périodes d'inauguration. En outre, nos résultats montrent que durant ces périodes d'inauguration anticipées, les notations sont encore meilleures lorsque le dirigeant entrant (i) est économiquement de droite, (ii) dispose d'un diplôme universitaire d'un pays de l'OCDE, (iii) a un parcours professionnel traditionnel, (iv) a une approche non populiste, et (v) dispose de marges électorales de victoire importantes. Il apparaît également un biais de genre potentiel à la faveur des nouveaux dirigeants de sexe masculin. En prenant avantage d'un modèle de durée et de régressions de Cox -- modèle à risque proportionnel, nous mettons en lumière que les périodes d'inauguration des dirigeants affectent également la probabilité instantanée de dégradation des notations souveraines. Enfin, dans la Conclusion Générale nous explorons les racines des pensées antisystèmes en Occident, puis nous discutons des avantages et inconvénients de quelques formes alternatives de démocratie, à savoir (i) la démocratie directe, (ii) le tirage au sort, et (iii) le développement participatif comme bien public. Finalement, nous explorons les controverses concernant les formes alternatives de démocratie sur l'agora virtuelle que constitue Twitter. / The aim of the present dissertation is to empirically investigate the economic impact of three democratic modalities, namely (i) the electoral agenda; (ii) the partisan affiliation of incumbents in a multipartism framework; and (iii) constitutionally defined leadership changes. To introduce the scope of the dissertation we describe the democratic modalities and direct democracy behind the U.S. fiscal policy from 1790 to 2014, in the General Introduction.In Chapter 2 we study the genuine detrimental effect of political budget cycles. Our meta-analysis suggests that national leaders do manipulate fiscal tools in order to be re-elected, but to an extent that is significantly exaggerated in the literature. The publication selection bias highlighted has nonetheless been reduced during the past 25 years of research. In Chapter 3 we investigate how governors' partisan affiliation affects the poverty status of immigrants to the U.S for the period 1994-2014. To this end, we compare the poverty outcomes of immigrants in states ruled by Democratic governors relative to the outcomes for those in states ruled by Republican governors. Consistent with the literature on partisan affiliation, we find that immigrants are more likely to get out of poverty in states with Democratic governors than states with Republican governors. A formal mediation analysis reveals that the empirical results are mediated through better access to the labor market and possibly through higher wages and labor earnings for immigrants. In Chapter 4 we assess whether sovereign credit ratings change during the inauguration periods of incoming leaders, on a sample of 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries with presidential systems. Building on a daily panel dataset covering the period from January 1, 1994 to December 31, 2014, we find that credit ratings are better during anticipated inauguration periods compared to other inauguration periods. Moreover, our results reveal that, during anticipated inauguration periods, incoming leaders with (i) an economically right-wing orientation; (ii) an OECD college degree; (iii) a traditional professional background; (iv) a non-populist approach; and (v) large electoral margins of victory are associated to even better ratings. There also appears to be a potential gender bias effect in favor of male incoming leaders. Last but not least, the quality of the credit rating also matters. In the General Conclusion we explore the roots of anti-systemism in the West, then we discuss some alternative forms of democracy, and we explore the controversies regarding the alternative forms of democracy on the virtual \emph{agora} of Twitter.

Anti-corruption movements play a vital role in democratic development. From the American Gilded Age to global demonstrations in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, these movements seek to combat malfeasance in government and improve accountability. While this collective action remains a constant, how government elites perceive and respond to such agitation, varies. My dissertation tackles this puzzle head-on: Why do some democratic governments respond more tolerantly than others to anti-corruption movements? To answer this research question, I examine variation across time in two cases within the world’s largest democracy: India. I compare the Congress Party government's suppressive response to the Jayaprakash Narayan movement in 1975, and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government’s tolerant response to the India Against Corruption movement in 2012. For developing democracies such as India, comparativist scholarship gives primacy to external, material interests – such as votes and rents – as proximately shaping government behavior. Although these logics explain elite decision-making around elections and the predictability of pork barrel politics, they fall short in explaining government conduct during credibility crises, such as when facing nationwide anti-corruption movements. In such instances of high political uncertainty, I argue, it is the absence or presence of an ideological checks and balance mechanism among decision-making elites in government that shapes suppression or tolerance respectively. This mechanism is produced from the interaction between structure (multi-party coalition) and agency (divergent cognitive frames in positions of authority). In this dissertation, elites analyze the anti-corruption movement and form policy prescriptions based on their frames around social and economic development as well as their concepts of the nation. My research consists of over 110 individual interviews with state elites, including the Prime Minister, cabinet ministers, party leaders, and senior bureaucrats among other officials for the contemporary case; and a broad compilation of private letters, diplomatic cables and reports, and speeches collected from three national archives for the historical study. To my knowledge this is the first data-driven study of Indian politics that precisely demonstrates how ideology acts as a constraint on government behavior in a credibility crisis. On a broader level, my findings contribute to the recently renewed debate in political science as to why democracies sometimes behave illiberally.

In this minithesis I conduct a critical discourse analysis to take on a double-pronged task. On the one hand I explore the social phenomenon of the contestation between supporters of then-ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma and supporters of his rape accuser. The trial, which took place in the Johannesburg High Court between mid-February and early May 2006, stirred intense public interest, both locally and internationally. The performance of thousands of Zuma’s supporters and a far smaller number of gender rights lobby groups, both of whom kept a presence outside the court building throughout the trial, received similar attention. Second, I examine how the Sowetan, a national daily tabloid with a black, middle-class readership, mediated the trial through pictures of the theatre outside the court and letters to the editor. The study is informed by post-Marxist and cultural studies perspectives, both approaches that are concerned with issues of power, ideology and the circulation of meaning within specific sociocultural contexts. A rudimentary thematic content analysis draws out some of the main themes from the material, while the critical discourse analysis is located within a theoretical framework based on concepts from Laclau & Mouffe’s theory of meaning, which assumes a power struggle between contesting positions seeking to invalidate one another and to either challenge or support existing hegemonies. This is further informed by, first, Laclau’s theorisation of populism, which assumes that diverse groupings can unite under a demagogue’s banner in shared antagonism towards existing power, and second, by concepts from Mamdani’s theorisation of power and resistance in colonial and post-colonial Africa, which explicates three overarching ideological discourses of human rights, social justice and traditional ethnic practices. The study, then, explores how these three discourses were operationalised by the localised contestations over the trial.

A tese discute a transformação dos discursos político-criminais sobre a pena de prisão no Brasil, no período que compreende os debates para a elaboração da Parte Geral do Código Penal e da Lei de Execução Penal, que reformaram o sistema penal em 1984, e os dispositivos penais e processuais penais discutidos na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte e contemplados na Constituição de 1988. Utilizando conceitos da literatura político-criminal anglo-saxã, as teorias tradicionais da pena e analisando os debates legislativos dos principais marcos legais do período escolhido, pretendeu-se verificar se o processo de superencarceramento brasileiro está inserido no contexto ocidental de valorização da prisão no final do século XX, ou se as peculiaridades do caso nacional indicam tratar-se de um fenômeno com causas endógenas. O trabalho parte da hipótese de que a virada punitiva brasileira está ligada ao processo de redemocratização, que atribuiu ao sistema de justiça criminal o papel de instrumento de resolução de problemas sociais complexos. Em um curto período, partiu-se de uma concepção de pena criminal como ultima ratio, instrumento de um sistema mais amplo de ressocialização e inclusão social, para um direito penal essencialmente punitivo. Nesse processo, a pena criminal foi revalorizada tanto por setores conservadores que se aproveitaram da utilidade eleitoral da política criminal para construir a narrativa da pena como instrumento de exclusão dos indesejáveis, em detrimento dos direitos humanos dos condenados quanto por setores progressistas que viram no potencial simbólico da prisão uma forma de assegurar pautas e de buscar direitos sociais. Assim, de maneira paradoxal, a pena de prisão assumiu o papel de síntese das demandas contraditórias que se apresentaram durante as disputas políticas nos anos 1980. Ao final, conclui-se que a prática contemporânea do sistema penal brasileiro está ligada à função atribuída à pena de prisão a partir da abertura política. O recurso a penas cada vez mais altas, o perene apelo a restrições processuais penais e a indiferença quanto à situação dos cárceres (agora concebidos como meros instrumentos de exclusão) refletem a lógica de colonização do sistema de justiça pelo aparato de segurança pública, característica constitutiva do antimodernismo penal no país. / The thesis presents a discussion about the transformation of criminal policy discourses on imprisonment in Brazil, from the 1984 criminal justice reform laws to the debates on the constitutional framework of the criminal justice system during the National Constituent Assembly, in 1988. Using concepts developed in the Anglo-Saxon criminology and the traditional justifications for criminal sanctions, the work analyses the legislative debates in order to verify if Brazilian overincarceration is part of the punitive turn wave which took place in the Western world in the late 20th century, or if its peculiarities should rather be explained by endogenous causes. It goes to illustrate how, in few years, Brazilian punitive turn departed from a welfare penal agenda to one essentially based on punitive sanctions. The hypothesis investigated along the work is that this phenomenon has direct links to the democratization process which attributed to the criminal justice system the role of solving complex social problems. Both conservatives, who discovered the electoral potential of penal populism, and new social movements, who relied on the symbolic nature of criminal law to support and organize civil rights demands, reinvigorated imprisonment. Paradoxically, prison became a synthesis of contradictory political forces and demands raised at the decline of military regime. The work concludes that contemporary practices of Brazilian criminal justice system are determined by the role assigned to imprisonment since democratization. Ever-higher prison sentences, limits on procedural rights for the accused and indifference towards inhumane prisons (now merely defined as a neutralization tool) reflects colonization of the criminal justice system by crime control apparatus, which is a constitutive feature of penal late modernism in Brazil.

Populism has been an integral part of the Finnish political system since the late 1950's. At that time the Agrarian Populist Party, better known as The Rural Party, emerged and thrived for decades until the party financially broke down in the 1990's. Reemerging on the political scene as the True Finns, the party is more radical and more influential than ever, gaining enough support to be the third largest party of the 2011 parliamentary election. Sweden, Finland’s neighbor, in contrast has a history with very little populist presence or radical right populist parties (RRP-parties). However, during the 2010 parliamentary election the Sweden Democrats attained seats in the parliament for the first time in history. In this thesis, these cases, with their different historical backgrounds, are analyzed to explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Many political scientists have tried to answer this question before, focusing on system-oriented and contextual factors, but often neglecting factors that incorporate the political actors themselves. What this thesis adds to the previous research is a perspective on the rise and growth of RRP-parties based on the dynamism between system-oriented factors and actor-oriented factors. The theoretical discussion indicates that some system-oriented and contextual factors are significant when explaining the rise and growth of RRP-parties. At the same time, actor oriented factors such as the legacy of the RRP-party and the mainstream party strategies prove to be influential on the electoral strength of the RRP-party. These theoretical approaches are then used and combined in a comparative analysis, which imply two important things. First, the legitimacy of the RRP-party itself is an aspect that does explain the rise and growth of RRP-parties. Second, in the case of Sweden, the system-oriented and contextual factors alone were not able to explain the rise and growth of the Sweden Democrats. Together these findings stress that the dynamic perspective between system-oriented and actor-oriented factors truly is meaningful when trying to explain rise and growth of RRP-parties.

Notre thèse d’analyse des idées politiques retrace l’histoire intellectuelle de larevue de pensée critique étasunienne Telos de 1968 à 2001. A travers notre travail denarration critique, nous cherchons à comprendre, au sens wébérien, l’évolution idéologiquesignificative de la publication-organisation, qui est passée en moins de trente ans d’unpositionnement néo-marxiste affilié à la Nouvelle gauche américaine à un populisme prochede la Nouvelle droite européenne. Notre hypothèse de travail est que le rapport que Telosentretient avec la Théorie critique de l’Ecole de Francfort est déterminant pour comprendreson évolution et écrire son histoire. Nous défendons ici la thèse que Telos constitue unorgane dissident de « théorie critique nord-américaine » (Mooney, Calhoun) qui s’exprimesous la forme d’un « traditionalisme critique » qui tient lieu de synthèse entre différentesbranches de théorie critique contemporaine. En tant que synthèse, la théorie telosiennedépasse l'héritage de la vieille Théorie critique francfortoise, dans un double rapportd’intégration et de négation. In fine, Telos produit sa propre critique, une autre théoriecritique. / Our doctoral dissertation traces the intellectual history of the American criticalthought journal Telos from 1968 to 2001. Through our critical narrative, we intend tounderstand, in the weberian sense, the significant ideological evolution of the publicationorganization,which, in less than thirty years, moved from a neo-Marxist position affiliatedwith the American New Left to a populism related to the European New Right. Our workinghypothesis is that the link between Telos and the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School isdecisive to understand its evolution and write its history. Our thesis is that Telos is adissenting organ of “North-American Critical Theory” (Mooney, Calhoun) expressed as a“critical traditionalism” that acts as a synthesis between various trends of contemporarycritical theory. As a synthesis, the telosian theory overcomes the legacy of the old Criticaltheory in a dual relationship of integration and negation. Ultimately, Telos produces its owncriticism, another critical theory.

La justice pénale a historiquement, et à juste titre, été l’affaire de l’État. Octroyer à l’autorité publique le monopole de l’administration de la justice permet entre autres d’harmoniser les rapports sociaux tout en assurant une réponse structurée et dépersonnalisée au phénomène criminel. La confiance du public dans sa capacité d’accomplir judicieusement cette tâche est cruciale au maintien de ce monopole. Certaines réalités découlant du contexte médiatique moderne mettent toutefois en lumière une certaine crise de confiance du public dans l’appareil judiciaire et contribuent à déposséder l’État de son monopole sur l’administration de la justice pénale. Nous estimons que la télédiffusion des procédures judiciaires pénales de première instance est un des moyens par lesquels l’autorité publique peut rapatrier ce monopole. Ce mémoire s’intéressa à certains aspects de ces questions. / The State has historically overseen criminal justice, and with good reason. Delegating to state authorities full and exclusive administration of criminal justice ensures social harmony and allows for a structured and depersonalised response to crime. Public confidence in its ability to effectively do so is however crucial. The current media environment has contributed to a crisis of confidence in the system, depriving the State of its monopoly. We believe televising court proceedings and making them widely available to the public is one of the ways by which the State can strengthen confidence and reaffirm its legitimate control on the administration of criminal justice.

The current situation in politics is defined by the success of new political parties and movements, which are developed as a result of economic recession combined with European migration crisis. However, can we consider them as extreme right? Are these parties and movements ideologically empty, populist and demagogic or they forming a completely new kind of political groups? This issue interferes with current Western world but also the countries of middle and Eastern Europe. Thus, although it might appear to be a well-known topic, it is worth further research. This thesis is focused on new subjects in the territory of Czech Republic (ÚPD, ÚNK, SPD, BPI, BPi, IMK, 7. Republika, ApČR, ČS). The aim of this thesis is prediction of the future of these subjects in Czech environment and whether or not they could be identified as extreme right. The theoretical framework is extreme right by C. Mudde, the theory of islamophobia by A. Quellien enriched by the view of F. Lopez. Then also the definition of populism by P. Taggart and F. Pianizzo, completed with identification signs by V. Havlík and A. Pinková. In this thesis, quality and quantity content analysis of parties documents, web pages and profiles on Facebook is performed. Also, the author uses semi-structured questionnaires and interviews with chosen...

The key research question of my diploma thesis deals with the problem of whether the President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman creates the same discourse as far-right political parties in the Czech Republic. The research concerns the social discourse surrounding the current migration crisis facing Europe. In this connection, there is a discourse analysis of the themes of migration, Islam, terrorism, external and internal actors. This research is conducted on the basis of the theory of binaries from Teun Van Dijk, which can be applied to a populist political style characterized by President Zeman and extreme right-wing political parties, among which are analyzed the Workers' Party of Social Justice, National Democracy, Dawn - the National Coalition, Freedom And Direct Democracy - Tomio Okamura and the Citizens' Rights Party. Research data is collected from President Zeman's official communications channels and political parties, including official websites and social networks. Based on a discourse analysis of their political views, it is possible to compare President Zeman and the extreme right-wing parties to each topic and to conclude whether they speak the same or differently about these themes.