Perhaps the crowning achievement of mature democracies is the peaceful acceptance of the ballot box as the primary instrument for deciding who should hold power in society. We do not have to go far back in the history of most democratic states, however, to find a distinct role for political violence. Moreover, many inhabitants of the globe still remain at risk of falling prey to widespread viol...

Until recently social change processes were usually studied at a macro level, focusing on social, political and economic phenomena such as changes in social institutions, political power, or economic disparities. However, such changes are not independent of individual behaviour (or vice versa). Therefore, the interrelations between social change and individual action need to be studied in more ...

The history of scientific progress is marked by a process of conceptual integration: Different fields of inquiry become intertwined and interconsistent as they grow. Evolutionary psychology is a continuation of this process and, like previous integrations, has generated substantial resistance from different social and political circles. Looking into the future, we can outline the nature of the ...

This paper reviews a variety of criteria which have been proposed for legislative and congressional redistricting in the US and discusses the political and legal factors which have shaped 1980s redistricting. Particular attention is paid to the conflicts of interest between incumbents (seeking re-election), party organizations (seeking aggregate partisan advantage), minority interests (seeking ...

Rooted in ideology critique, this dissertation studies the construction of democracy in the coverage of Venezuela during the era of President Hugo Chávez. The aim of this endeavor is twofold. First, the dissertation aims to understand the relationship between ideology and the construction of democracy in journalism on foreign political phenomena. Second, it attempts to explore the ways in which...

General outline In the Renaissance, astrology provided a compelling explanation of human and natural phenomena. !rough an elaborate system of correspondences, humans and their social world were connected to the movements of the heavens and especially the motions of the planets. !is general worldview was shared by people across all registers of society, from the illiterate peasant to the Renaiss...

rences are no longer attached to the preferences of a certain political party. Individuals decide who they will vote for by assessing politicians’ appearance, personal characteristics and nonverbal behaviour instead of arguments and policy-issue standings. Moreover, this personalization is not exclusively related to voters but also dominates the behaviour of politicians and the media. In order ...

According to standard rational choice theory, as commonly used in political science and economics, an agent’s fundamental preferences are exogenously fixed, and any preference change over decision options is due to Bayesian information learning. Although elegant and parsimonious, such a model fails to account for preference change driven by experiences or psychological changes distinct from inf...