Political culture

This work examined the role of the craft brewers of Florida in creating alternative
economies. This work argues that craft brewers function in ways that they can create a
space in which other, smaller entities might then take advantage. Craft breweries'
expansion, and continued success rests on the ability of the brewer to harness the power
of transformation, the prism effect, or the refaceting of a space with different meanings.
Craft breweries meet many of Jacobs' (1961), as stated in her seminal work, conditions
for diversity in the city, especially in the role of self-government. Craft brewers function
as informal forms of government for communities, by making smaller entities more
visible, by serving as a warrior and weaver for political action in the city, and offering
subversive defiance, by which they subtly challenge the dominant disconnected economic
structure. Craft breweries serve as a way to create an embedded economy, or as a way of
grounding local businesses, social issues, and individual actors together. In this way, the
research addressed deeper ethical issues that transcend the idea of craft brewing in general, that the success of craft brewers reflects a form of activism, and a visible way for
individuals to circumvent the global processes which left them disengaged in their
community.

This thesis examines the relationship between the political opposition and populism. The goal is to identify when, how, and under what circumstances an opposition to a populist leader affects change to the political system. A comparative historical analysis is employed as five case studies from South America are examined. The evidence presented in these case studies demonstrates that the political oppositions in each country were unsuccessful in affecting change to their respective political systems. They were unable to demobilize the support base that the populist leaders had created. Change came to the political systems in four out of the five case studies only when the populist leader's actions demobilized his support and not from the actions of the opposition.

The media has a significant influence on any political process. In Venezuela, particularly, the media plays an important rold in defining the electorate's political opinion and attitude toward the political process. This thesis analyzed how the media's preference for conflict and individual personalities exacerbated overall societal tensions and polarization in Venezuela since 1999. I suggest a framework for a future content analysis of news coverage of the 2012 presidential election in order to quantify and qualify the evolution of bias and balance in Venezuela's mass media.