UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2004 - 200912010 - 20131

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    Emancipation from Doublethink? Post-Soviet Political Parties and Leadership
    (2013) Voitsekhovsky, Peter; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study examines the phenomenon of doublethink as a core feature of the "mental software" that continues to define the character of post-Soviet societies. It is revealed in patterns of prevarication and equivocation that characterize the thinking and behavior of both the elites and the masses. Doublethink is also manifested in incongruous values and duplicitous rules that prevail in society. It accounts for the perpetuation of simulative and fake institutions of "façade democracy." Political parties in post-Soviet Ukraine are analyzed as a major example of simulative and imitative institutions. Here, traditional ideology-based party taxonomies prove misleading. Political parties are quasi-virtual entities with the character of "post-Orwellian political machines": they operate in a topsy-turvy world of imitated supply and deluded demand. The study employs three levels of analysis: macro (surveys data and "Tocquevillean" observations); meso (biographical data and political discourse analysis); and micro (in-depth interviews).
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    MOVEMENT MATTERS: AMERICAN ANTIAPARTHEID ACTIVISM AND THE RISE OF MULTICULTURAL POLITICS
    (2004-06-07) Hostetter, David L.; Gilbert, James B.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    American organizations that opposed apartheid in South Africa extended their opposition to racial discrimination in the US into world politics. More than three decades of organizing preceded the legislative showdown of 1986 when Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan's veto to enact economic sanctions against the apartheid regime. Drawing on the tactics and moral authority of the civil rights movement, the antiapartheid movement mobilized public opinion with familiar political symbols while increasing African-American influence in the formulation of US foreign policy. Three conflicts in particular shaped American antiapartheid activism: the debate between those holding an integrationist vision of the civil rights movement versus the advocates of a Pan-Africanist view as expressed in the Black Power movement; the tension between the antiracist credibility American leaders sought to project to the world and the anticommunist thrust of American foreign policy which led to a tacit alliance with South Africa; and the dispute over whether nonviolence or armed liberation provided the best strategy for ending apartheid. Three antiapartheid organizations that debated and dealt with these conflicts were the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and TransAfrica. Each group worked against apartheid for more than a decade, combined direct action with other tactics, and included antiapartheid activism in larger efforts concerning Africa and US foreign policy. The efforts of these organizations provide a window through which to examine the conflicts that marked the antiapartheid struggle. Cultural expressions reinforced public sentiment against apartheid. Novels, plays, movies and music provided a bridge for Americans who strove to understand the struggles of those who lived under apartheid. Via the page, stage, screen, and recording studio, apartheid's opponents found a platform to transmit their message to a broad audience of Americans. The similarity of apartheid to American racial segregation provided activists with metaphors to mobilize constituencies that had opposed American racism. Direct action in particular helped dramatize American entanglement with apartheid. By extending the moral logic of the civil rights movement, the antiapartheid movement was able to invoke the themes of equality and freedom central to American civil religion.