Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Policy Explanations'
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Folke, Olle. "Politics and preferences : explanations to policy outcomes in Swedish municipalities /." Uppsala : Dept. of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2008. http://epsilon.slu.se/10862558.pdf.
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Cheng, Kai Ming. "The concept of legitimacy in educational policy-making : alternative explanations of two policy episodes in Hong Kong." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1987. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020176/.
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The Thesis seeks to explain the policy-making process using a legitimacy notion as an alternative to various kinds of rational models. Legitimacy here takes its broadest sense as the recognised or accepted norm or belief that something is appropriate. Based on two ethnographic case studies of policy-making "episodes" in Hong Kong education, the writer argues that policy-actors, in this case policy-advisory bodies, do not necessarily act according to a "means-end" rational model, or interact with one another because of conflicts in interests or power; but that each advisory body has developed within itself some sub-culture which identifies certain legitimacy to making policies. In the first Episode, a policy body on higher education was forced to reject an overall policy proposal which was based on manpower forecasting; or else the body's legitimacy generated from "expert judgement" might be undermined. In the second Episode, an OECD panel caused difficulties because it adopted a "participatory approach" which tended to upset the conventional legitimacy in policy-making. Along similar lines, the writer attempts to explain more briefly a number of dramatic junctures during the two Episodes using the legitimacy explanation as a parallel to the rational model of policy-making. The writer infers that conflicts occur when certain actor is forced to submit to a different kind of legitimacy. The actors have to strive hard to maintain their original legitimacy, or else they may lose their status in making policies. In so doing, the subject under attention is less the policy output than the policy process. The issue again is not so much a matter of the power to make policies, but the way policies are to be made. Overall, it is the process, and not the product, of policy-making that legitimates or de-legitimates the actor.
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O'Leary, Chris. "Who benefits? : comparing public and private interest explanations of professions regulation public policy." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2015. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/who-benefits(952451ab-43d8-40cc-bc8d-d1d15cd2cd18).html.
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What motivates actors as they engage in the professions regulation policy process? Are they motivated to serve their own, selfish interests or the wider, public interests? This key question has been at the heart of policy and academic debate since the first independent regulatory body, the General Medical Council, was established by Parliament in 1858. It is a debate that has affected changes in the professions meta-regulatory framework as well as the regulatory regimes affecting many different professions, aspiring professions and occupational groups. In this thesis, I compare public and private interest explanations of the policy process around professions regulation in the UK. I have explored this question by examining five very different professions – architects, hearing aid dispensers, pharmacists, psychotherapists and teachers - and their relevant regulators as they managed changes in their regulatory regimes. I explored the observable expectations arising from two private interest models, bureau-shaping and rent seeking, as they applied to the motivations of regulators and professional bodies respectively. I also explored public service motivation theory, a theory has seen much academic interest in recent years, particularly in the public administration field. I examined these theories with respect to three key non-political interest groups: regulators, professions and the public. Overall, my research suggests, on balance, private interest theories provide a more convincing explanation of the motivations of regulators and professional bodies as they engaged in these regulation policy developments. But there were differences, over time and between regulators and profession bodies, as to whether private or public interest motivations were more dominant or evident. There was evidence that public interests also motivated these actors. I also draw a number of conclusions about the theoretical validity of both rent seeking and public service motivation theories.
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Wong, M. "The governance of financial derivatives in China : policy convergence and explanations for change." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2011. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1307084/.
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Over-the-counter derivatives, a growing part of the global financial markets, are challenging traditional modes of regulation. With the absence of a global financial regulator, the governance of derivatives is notable for private-sector solutions, especially standards established by self-regulatory organisations. As a consequence, it is of interest how China, a strong state, is responding to these new challenges while it pursues economic and financial market development. This research asks whether China's policies for these types of derivatives are converging to international practices and explores the factors behind this phenomenon. It measures the degree of convergence between Chinese over-the-counter derivatives regulation and documentation with precedents set by the Group of Thirty, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. The key findings establish that there is some convergence taking place over several dimensions, including principles such as their purpose, and practices such as how to approach risk management. This can be explained by several factors, namely financial crises and regulatory learning, the influence of international organisations, lobbying from private actors, and resolving legal uncertainty. The research methodology utilises a combination of process tracing, content analysis and the case study approach. Data consists of primary and secondary sources including government documents, trade journal articles and media reports, and they are supplemented by interviews with market actors. Several contributions to knowledge are made. This research provides a closer look at the policy process in China in the domain of derivatives, which insofar has mostly been limited to the legal profession, and it also adds to the literature on global governance and policy convergence, the latter of which has mostly concentrated on the effects of the European Union on member states or other policy areas such as the environment, health, and banking.
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Alleyne, Derek Mcdonald. "Stakeholders' Explanations of the State of Cricket in Barbados." ScholarWorks, 2019. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/7268.
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Policy processes influence decision-making and when processes are influenced by multiple stakeholders, individual interests can go against the general good of the organization or community. The multiple stakeholders of cricket in Barbados have governed the development of cricket. Over the last 30 years the sport has been on a steady decline evidenced by the low attendance at games and the number of teams and individuals playing the sport. At a time when the sport has been growing at the international level, the decline in the fortunes of the sport in Barbados had led to a climate of mistrust and blame apportioning, which can only lead to further decay. This explanatory case study drawing from 2 focus groups and 15 individual interviews examined the views and perceptions of players, media personnel, officials, administrators, fans and concessionaires, as to the state of the sport, the factors that have contributed to that state and the role of the stakeholders in the process. Data analyzed using thick analysis methods revealed that the stakeholders believed that sport was in decline in Barbados and changes in the social and community structures, competition from other sports, unclear roles and uncooperative relations of stakeholders were key factors that acted against the development of the sport. The implications for positive social change are directed at the collaborative role of stakeholders that places the general good beyond individual pursuits and the need to change the current methods of governance.
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Nguyen, Ngoc Thi Cat. "Vietnam's foreign policy on the Cambodian issue (1978-1989) : neo-realist and ideas-identity explanations." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.438593.
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Thatcher, Mark. "Examining explanations of public policy making : industrial policy in Britain and France in the case of the telecommunications sector 1969-1990." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.386500.
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Eun, Yong-Soo. "Foreign policy analysis : developing a theoretical scheme for fuller causal explanations of foreign policy behaviour and undertaking in-depth, comparative case study." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2011. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/45163/.
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Why do states behave as they do in world politics? Put differently, how can analysts develop a more precise and complete explanation of the causation of foreign policy behaviour? Drawing upon the insights of actor-specific Foreign Policy Analysis scholarship, this thesis argues that we need an approach which posits a human agent as an important analytical category in its own right. However, this thesis also emphasises that the state‘s foreign policy behaviour cannot be fully explained solely in terms of the actions and intentions of individual human agents. While it is indeed conscious human agents who make foreign policies, the parameters of their capacity to do so are constrained and/or facilitated by the structural conditions with which their nations are confronted. The key point here is that structural and agential sources of the state‘s foreign policy behaviour should neither be deemed exclusive nor be granted explanatory priority a priori. In this regard, this thesis presents rationales and guidelines for why and how one should pursue a multicausal approach to the study of foreign policy behaviour. Relatedly, it explores the structure-agent problem in international relations and rethinks currently dominant conceptions of causation in the field of IR. Then this thesis establishes a multicausal framework for the analysis of foreign policy behaviour. The framework consists of three factors associated with human (agential) elements and international structural conditions. With the aim of discerning the fruitfulness of the multicausal approach advocated here and of producing the empirical evidence that shows causation of complex foreign policy actions, this thesis undertakes intensive and comparative case study. The specific question that the case study aims to answer is why South Korea and Australia reacted to the US-led war in Iraq as they did: these two cases have neither received appropriate empirical attention nor been provided with any satisfactory theoretical explanation. The empirical findings gained from the case study leads to a testing and refinement of existing leading IR theories. Also, based on the case study findings and on the multicausal analytical framework built, this thesis creates an integrated theory of a particular type of foreign policy behaviour (i.e. weaker state behaviour vis-à-vis a dominant power) which encompasses both structural and agential perspectives. In a related vein, it discusses the role of theory for IR scholarship and modes of construction of IR. Ultimately it is suggested that a multicausal approach can contribute to the cumulative development and refinement of predictions and generalisations about why states behave as they do on the world stage.
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Mejia, Roberto Ramon. "Warriors of peace--inner city youth who do not join gangs : explanations, causes, and public policy implications." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68772.
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Mikler, John. "Varieties of Capitalism: National Institutional Explanations of Environmental Product Developments in the Car Industry." Connect to full text, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1736.
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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Changing the behaviour of firms to take environmental concerns into account is seen as unlikely without effective regulations. However, corporations are increasingly keen to represent themselves as ‘green’, including those in the world’s largest manufacturing sector: the car industry. Given rising concern for the environment and environmental sustainability since the 1990s this thesis asks: what motivates car firms to actually make environmental commitments? Answering this question has implications for whether these commitments are ‘real’ and if so whether they are occurring in response to material factors (e.g. state regulations and consumer demand) versus normative factors (e.g. social attitudes and internal company strategies). In order to answer it, the thesis applies the insights of the institutional varieties of capitalism approach to the German, United States and Japanese car industries, and specific firms within them, in respect of the environmental issue of climate change from 1990 to 2004. Empirical national data is analysed, as well the environmental reporting of individual firms and interviews with key personnel. The main findings are that what leads the car industry to see environmental issues as central to their business interests hinges on the impact of differing national institutional factors. Specifically, it is a matter of whether firms have a liberal market economy (LME) as their home base, in the case of US firms, or a coordinated market economy (CME) as their home base, in the case of German and Japanese firms. US car firms react more to the material imperatives of consumer demand and state regulations. German and Japanese firms are more mindful of normative factors for their initiatives, such as social attitudes (especially for German firms) and internal company strategies (especially for Japanese firms). They have more of a partnership approach with government. Therefore, car firms have very distinct ‘lenses’ through which they see the environmental performance of the cars they produce. As such, the thesis concludes that the variety of capitalism of nations has implications not just for the type of products that economic actors such as car firms produce, and the competitive advantages they develop, but also the way they address related issues arising as a result of their activities, including environmental issues.
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Kennedy, Janis Louise. "Does the prevalence of poverty, religion or social capital influence the prevalence of HIV? : testing structural, cultural and institutional explanations of HIV diffusion in South Africa." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/3723.
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Park, Sung-Kwan. "A study of foreign policy change in aSoutheast Asian weak state, linking internal and external explanations: the Philippines under Martial law, 1972-1981." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 1994. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/160.
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The purpose of this study is to analyze the foreign policy of a weak state, the Philippines, from 1972 to 1981. The focus of this study is on the Philippines’ authoritarian regime and its foreign policy change toward the United States, the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and the Socialist Bloc. I examined two major factors, internal and external. These are authoritarianism, as exemplified by martial law in the Philippines, and greater power policy in the region, in this case, U.S. policy in Asia. The first explanatory factor, authoritarianism, was chosen as a concept to be examined regarding its relation to foreign policy change. The second explanatory factor, U.S. policy in the region in the late sixties and seventies, was examined on the basis of the existence of an action reaction framework in international relations. In the Philippines’ foreign policy change, it was seen that the external variable, great power policy, was one of the sources for change. The internal variable, authoritarianism, served as an intervening variable between the sources and foreign policy change itself.
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Santamaria, Foley. "Experiencing Racial Profiling: Process, Effects and Explanations." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2004. http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/u?/NOD,134.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of New Orleans, 2004.Title from electronic submission form. "A thesis ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Sociology."--Thesis t.p. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.
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Welker, David Wayne. "POLICE PROGRAMS, CANINES, AND CONTINGENCY THEORY: AN EXPLANATION OF CANINE NUMBERS AMONG LARGE POLICE DEPARTMENTS." OpenSIUC, 2011. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/775.
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AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF DAVID WELKER, for the Master of Arts degree in CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE, presented on OCTOBER 18, 2011, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: POLICE PROGRAMS, CANINES, AND CONTINGENCY THEORY: AN EXPLANATION OF CANINE NUMBERS AMONG LARGE POLICE DEPARTMENTS MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Joseph Schafer Canines have provided services for humans over many centuries. More recently, they have been used for police work. Canines are used to apprehend suspects, track people, and find drugs. They are also seen as a less-than-lethal weapon and can be used in a number of different programs such as D.A.R.E./crime prevention education, S.W.A.T., and drug task forces. But research on canine use and effectiveness is lacking. This study tries to fill that gap using secondary data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey of police agencies. In this study, adoption of canines was predicted by contingency theory based on contingencies such as tasks and structural programs in the various departments. Contingency theory was also used to test the canine's role in enhancing the effectiveness of the police organizations. This study tries to explain the variation of canine use across departments by using contingency theory and the effectiveness of canines by assessing monetary values from drug forfeitures.
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Zusman, Eric Gregory. "The limits to access an institutional explanation for why air pollution regulations vary in East Asia's rapidly industrializing states /." Diss., online access from Digital Dissertation Consortium, 2007. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?3257247.
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Lott, Anthony David. "Neorealism and Environmental Cooperation: Towards a Structural Explanation of International Environmental Matters." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5279.
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The realist tradition in world politics has long been heralded by statesmen and scholars alike as offering an authentic account of the relations between states. Realists consider self-interest, anarchy, and power politics to guide the behavior of states in the international system. The perception that cooperation and amity are now the norm in the international system has raised the possibility of a theoretical shift of focus in the study of international politics. At present, scholars within the discipline of international politics are debating the relevance of realist thought. In particular, neorealism, or the structural variation of traditional realism, is under attack for not providing a rationale for international cooperation. This project undertakes to expand neorealism's ability to explain state behavior in the area of environmental cooperation. Employing the notion of anarchy as a self-help system, it shall be demonstrated that international environmental agreements appear to be influenced by the distribution of power in the international system. Anarchy mandates the need for state actors to cooperate on certain environmental issues, while that same system dissuades cooperation on a number of other important environmental matters. This thesis critiques the theoretical principles in neorealism and makes moderate changes to them. In keeping with neorealist thought, power, the interests of important states, and the position of the hegemon are considered important factors in understanding environmental cooperation. This project also studies three global environmental issues that provide insight into the rewards and limitations of using neorealism to explain cooperation.
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Williams, Helen Marie. "Examining the nature of policy change : a new institutionalist explanation of citizenship and naturalisation policy in the UK and Germany, 2000-2010." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3464/.
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This thesis combines two burgeoning fields – New Institutionalism and migration studies – to explain the process of institutional change. It tests six hypotheses drawn from a hybrid theoretical framework drawn from Historical Institutionalism, Rational Choice Institutionalism, and Sociological Institutionalism, identifying concrete mechanisms of reproduction and sources of endogenous and exogenous change. It applies this framework to changes in access to citizenship in the form of citizenship and naturalisation policy in the United Kingdom and Germany between 2000 and 2010. Its greatest contributions lie in a more comprehensive explanation of endogenous factors and incremental changes, two aspects of institutional change that have received inadequate theoretical attention and empirical investigation. Testing economic, power-based, and ideational explanations for change, it concludes that each of the New Institutionalisms makes an important contribution to a complete understanding of the process of change and the dynamics of this policy area in two very different European countries.
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Schwarzer, Daniela. "Fiscal policy co-ordination in the European Monetary Union : a preference-based explanation of institutional change /." Baden-Baden : Nomos, 2007. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0714/2007398303.html.
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Boke, Cem. "US foreign policy and the crises in Libya and Syria : a neoclassical realist explanation of American intervention." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7995/.
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Third-party intervention in civil wars is a phenomenon that presents a complex research puzzle in the fields of both International Relations (IR ) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA ). While intervention decisions impact the duration and result of a given conflict, they also have broader regional implications and political consequences for those that intervene. The central questions this thesis aims to address are ‘what are the dynamics behind US foreign policy choices vis-a-vis L ibya and Syria's internationalised intrastate conflicts?' and, more specifically, 'What were the components that underpinned the selection of different set of elements from the intervention spectrum at different times and scales during the Libya and Syria conflicts'. The existing literature points towards the relevance of both systemic and domestic level factors. Neo-classical realism (NCR ) is employed as the theoretical framework, and incorporates independent (threats to US interests vis-a-vis the L ibya and Syria conflicts) and intervening variables (elite Ideology/Obama Doctrine, US economic constraints, US elite perception of the opposition in Libya and Syria, congressional dynamics and public opinion) at the system and unit levels respectively. The dependent variable - US foreign policy choices – varies across three main forms: non-intervention, non-military intervention, and military intervention. NCR has proven to be a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand the rationale behind the US's suboptimal foreign policy choices. The results of the research conducted here reinforce the notion that it is problematic to explain foreign policy decisions exclusively from the perspective of a balancing against power or threats without considering the impact of intervening variables at the domestic level. The research also underpins the importance of political leaders and elites' perceptions (regarding opposition groups as well as of domestic political restraints) through which systemic incentives and constraints are filtered and the contours of interests and threats are identified.
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Goldstein, Nicolas P. N. "Disproportionate Premature Birth in Women of Low Socioeconomic Status| A Psychological and Physiological Stress Explanation of Financial Risk Removal." Thesis, University of Rochester, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10824350.
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Objectives: Mothers of low socioeconomic status (SES) and of non-Hispanic black race deliver prematurely more often. The goal of my dissertation was to improve understanding of the mechanism of disproportionate premature birth in low SES women. I tested a psychological and physiological stress explanation of prematurity risk, estimated the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion on gestational age (GA), and estimated how the ACA Medicaid expansion effect was influenced by race. Data and Methods: I developed a conceptual framework of how psychological and physiological stress increase premature birth risk utilizing Appraisal and pathophysiology theory. I generated hypotheses about how financial risk removal would impact GA and tested them utilizing variation in expansions in Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in three matched state pairs and distribution of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). I utilized data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System and performed multivariate ordinal regressions. I also used national birth record data and exploited state variation in ACA Medicaid expansion status to estimate the impact on GA in non-Hispanic black and all other mothers using multivariate linear regressions and linear probability models.
Results: Hypothesis testing based on two of the three Medicaid expansion for pregnant women state pairs and the EITC analyses resulted in significant evidence (one-sided p-values < 0.05) for a direct pathway between psychological stress concerning financial risk, physiological stress, and GA. The ACA Medicaid expansion was associated with an increase in GA for non-Hispanic black mothers (+34 hours), a decrease for all other mothers (–6 hours), and a 3% decrease (95% CI = –5% to –2%) in the incidence of early term or shorter gestation births for non-Hispanic black mothers.
Conclusions: Decreasing financial risk for low SES women with Medicaid or the EITC is associated with increased GA. The higher premature birth risk in this population is likely the result of a direct pathway involving psychological and physiological stress. Other financial risk removal strategies should be investigated. The ACA Medicaid expansion did not meaningfully influence GA on a weekly scale but did moderately decrease overall preterm birth risk in non-Hispanic black mothers.
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Pozzi, E. Robert. "The Flows of Social Capital among Working Parents and Primary Caregivers in School Communities| A Theoretical Explanation." Thesis, The George Washington University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3557499.
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This study confirmed the prediction of Coleman and Hoffer (1987) that a school actively supported by one employer and nested within the parents' workplace could replicate the functional communities surrounding Catholic Schools that raised the academic outcomes of disadvantaged urban youth. Rather than a single `something new' suggested by Smrekar (1990), this small sample suggested that a whole spectrum of school communities had emerged around workplace neighborhood schools sponsored by commercial real estate developers in cooperation with providers from franchisor-operated and national chains of workplace neighborhood schools. It was found that rather than being created in school communities, social capital had become a commodity in the "education marketplace" that was donated, purchased, and bartered. Working parents indicated that schools with high levels of parental involvement made their personal involvement more manageable. Gatekeepers and school cultures that marginalized parents impaired the flow of high quality social capital into school communities. Longitudinal data surfaced that suggested charitable social capital that marginalized the families of disadvantaged urban children had a negative impact on the professional career trajectories of "scholarship kids" in their adult lives. Finally, it was also noted that interracial marriages appeared to promote interracial informal familial bonding among co-workers and within school communities.
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Paterson, Michael T. "Evolutionary Uzbekistan, revolutionary Kazakhstan, an explanation for the differences in fdi policy during the first years of economic transition." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp03/MQ27535.pdf.
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Jo, Nam Kyoung. "A study of the cultural explanation of welfare : the effect of values on social policy within the welfare states." Thesis, University of York, 2010. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/850/.
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Recent years have seen increasing attention on culture within the school of social policy and the development in theorising the relationship between culture and welfare. However, the cultural analysis of welfare has not been sufficiently supported by empirical evidence. Within the existing research, the causal effect of culture on social policy is either abstract (historical) as the cultural foundations of welfare or nebulous as welfare attitudes which are conversely dependent upon welfare policy. This research aims to find and show the empirical evidence for the effect of culture on social policy. A critical review of prominent theoretical arguments and empirical work on the relationship between culture and welfare leads us to a conceptualisation of the cultural context for policy making with the societal values which are neither as abstract as the universal human basic values nor as concrete but situation-dependent as public opinion, and of the effect of culture on social policy as twofold: the ex-ante causal effect and the ex-post legitimacy control effect. Drawing on all three waves of European Values Study and corresponding World Values Survey data we attempt to measure the societal values within 22 OECD countries, which are comparable across time and country, equivalently obtainable both at the individual and collective levels and stable over time. Our data analysis shows that so-called welfare states vary in terms of the cultural context and this variation matter in public opinion on welfare issues and welfare policy decisions. We find that public opinion on the cause of poverty and public attitudes toward policy support for the unemployed are strongly dependent upon the levels of societal values of the corresponding society, and that the level of welfare generosity and welfare policy priorities in terms of the proportion of the welfare budget allocated to different groups and areas are partly predictable by differences in the cultural context. It is suggested that the cultural context has an influence on social policy making. We also find that mothers with children under the age of 5, whose participation in the labour market is strongly supported by family policy, are likely to refer to their traditional family values in making decisions to work. Given that their working would somehow mean their take-up of supports provided by family policy, this implies that their attitudes toward family policy are partly dependent upon their family values. It is suggested that values matter in policy attitudes which are critical not only to the legitimating support of the public for certain policies but also to the take-up/user rate of certain policy instruments. Drawing on the findings, it is suggested that culture matters in social policy not only theoretically but also empirically, that the effect of culture on welfare policy making can be found both at the before and after stages of decision making from the viewpoint seeing the whole policy process and that, more practically, better understanding of the cultural context of society and values of people would contribute to more effective policy making.
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Rudolf-Cibien, Miguel. "Still a stronghold of welfare governance? A Critical Reading of the EU’s Educational Policy in a Neoliberal Era." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23838.
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In the last decades, the EU’s policy on education has become increasingly geared towards serving the economy. While some have been quick to label these changes as neoliberal, this is not such an obvious analysis considering that European education systems are still well-known for their welfare governance. This research attempts to clarify the relation between the EU educational policy and neoliberalism. Inspired by post-foundational discourse theory, we conducted a discourse analysis of three key European Union educational policy documents. Extending on a frame of 20 years, our analysis identifies an incremental neoliberalization of the policy as well as a number of conclusive similarities with neoliberal rationality. We contribute in showing how the economic dimension of the EU educational policy has not so much replaced the other objectives than it has incorporated them. We also show how contemporary educational policy continues the dynamic of neoliberalization, hinting a further dismantlement of the welfare states system in Europe. Our study stands to reinforce the conceptual link between European education and neoliberalism and as such contributes to the understudied ideational perspectives on the topic, complementing some shortcomings left by the mainstream theories, like neo-functionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism.
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Fernandez, Ricardo E. "A Case Study of a Six-Time Convicted Serial Rapist: The Search for Explanation." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2017. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2320.
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This case study discusses rape theories by performing a case study of a convicted serial rapist, hereafter referred to as “Carl Criminal.” This pseudonym has been used throughout this research effort in order to avoid the additional contributing to the celebrity status of the true rapist who has committed these vicious sexual assaults. Locations have also been changed in order to prevent contribution of further clues that may help identify the rapist and avoid embarrassment, humiliation, and further mental anguish for the rape victims.
On January 18, 1999, Carl Criminal, a 38-year-old white male Sheriff’s Deputy with a local sheriff’s office was arrested and initially charged with five counts of aggravated rape. The charges were later amended to include a sixth charge of aggravated rape. At the time of his arrest, Carl Criminal was a veteran law enforcement officer for over nineteen years and had served as a plainclothes sergeant with the Juvenile Division. Carl Criminal’s arrest ended an extensive years-long rape task force investigation into a series of rapes that occurred between 1986 and 1997. Carl Criminal, upon being interviewed at his place of incarceration, admitted that he committed eleven rapes during the period of his criminal activity while serving as a sheriff’s deputy.
This research project explores Carl Criminal’s history and chronicles his career as a law enforcement officer and as a rapist. The project represents a searched for possible explanations, causation, and motivation for his criminal behavior. This study attempts to dissect his aberrant behavior and analyze potential causes related to his nurturing. Furthermore, the study examines his relationships and attempted to discern early patterns of social deviance. Carl Criminal himself stated, “I wish someone could tell me what’s wrong with me.” This research study attempts to furnish answers to his question.
This case study explores Carl Criminal’s current thoughts regarding the trauma he brought to his victims’ lives. Carl Criminal lamented the pain he now realizes his victims experienced. The research identified incidents in Carl Criminal’s youth that may now serve as markers to assist in identifying potential criminal behavior in the lives of other adolescents.
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Iucci, Alessandro. "Explainable Reinforcement Learning for Risk Mitigation in Human-Robot Collaboration Scenarios." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för elektroteknik och datavetenskap (EECS), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-296162.
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Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are highly popular in the robotics field to solve complex problems, learn from dynamic environments and generate optimal outcomes. However, one of the main limitations of RL is the lack of model transparency. This includes the inability to provide explanations of why the output was generated. The explainability becomes even more crucial when RL outputs influence human decisions, such as in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) scenarios, where safety requirements should be met. This work focuses on the application of two explainability techniques, “Reward Decomposition” and “Autonomous Policy Explanation”, on a RL algorithm which is the core of a risk mitigation module for robots’ operation in a collaborative automated warehouse scenario. The “Reward Decomposition” gives an insight into the factors that impacted the robot’s choice by decomposing the reward function into sub-functions. It also allows creating Minimal Sufficient Explanation (MSX), sets of relevant reasons for each decision taken during the robot’s operation. The second applied technique, “Autonomous Policy Explanation”, provides a global overview of the robot’s behavior by answering queries asked by human users. It also provides insights into the decision guidelines embedded in the robot’s policy. Since the synthesis of the policy descriptions and the queries’ answers are in natural language, this tool facilitates algorithm diagnosis even by non-expert users. The results proved that there is an improvement in the RL algorithm which now chooses more evenly distributed actions and a full policy to the robot’s decisions is produced which is for the most part aligned with the expectations. The work provides an analysis of the results of the application of both techniques which both led to increased transparency of the robot’s decision process. These explainability methods not only built trust in the robot’s choices, which proved to be among the optimal ones in most of the cases but also made it possible to find weaknesses in the robot’s policy, making them a tool helpful for debugging purposes.Algoritmer för förstärkningsinlärning (RL-algoritmer) är mycket populära inom robotikområdet för att lösa komplexa problem, att lära sig av dynamiska miljöer och att generera optimala resultat. En av de viktigaste begränsningarna för RL är dock bristen på modellens transparens. Detta inkluderar den oförmåga att förklara bakomliggande process (algoritm eller modell) som genererade ett visst returvärde. Förklarbarheten blir ännu viktigare när resultatet från en RL-algoritm påverkar mänskliga beslut, till exempel i HRC-scenarier där säkerhetskrav bör uppfyllas. Detta arbete fokuserar på användningen av två förklarbarhetstekniker, “Reward Decomposition” och “Autonomous policy Explanation”, tillämpat på en RL-algoritm som är kärnan i en riskreduceringsmodul för drift av samarbetande robotars på ett automatiserat lager. “Reward Decomposition” ger en inblick i vilka faktorer som påverkade robotens val genom att bryta ner belöningsfunktionen i mindre funktioner. Det gör det också möjligt att formulera en MSX (minimal sufficient explanation), uppsättning av relevanta skäl för varje beslut som har fattas under robotens drift. Den andra tillämpade tekniken, “Autonomous Policy Explanation”, ger en generellt prespektiv över robotens beteende genom att mänskliga användare får ställa frågor till roboten. Detta ger även insikt i de beslutsriktlinjer som är inbäddade i robotens policy. Ty syntesen av policybeskrivningarna och frågornas svar är naturligt språk underlättar detta en algoritmdiagnos även för icke-expertanvändare. Resultaten visade att det finns en förbättring av RL-algoritmen som nu väljer mer jämnt fördelade åtgärder. Dessutom produceras en fullständig policy för robotens beslut som för det mesta är anpassad till förväntningarna. Rapporten ger en analys av resultaten av tillämpningen av båda teknikerna, som visade att båda ledde till ökad transparens i robotens beslutsprocess. Förklaringsmetoderna gav inte bara förtroende för robotens val, vilket visade sig vara bland de optimala i de flesta fall, utan gjorde det också möjligt att hitta svagheter i robotens policy, vilket gjorde dem till ett verktyg som är användbart för felsökningsändamål.
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Du, Plessis Sophia W. F. "Institutions and institutional change as explanation for differences in economic development – a study of the first three decades of the postcolonial experience of Zambia and Botswana." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1387.
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Thesis (PhD (Economics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005.Numerous theories have been constructed to provide reasons for economic growth differences between countries. As data became more readily available, cross-country empirical studies identified a set of variables that contributed to economic growth, including variables such as the investment in human and physical capital.
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Cavalcanti, Bianor Scelza. "The "Equalizer" Administration: Managerial Strategies in the Public Sector." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/26644.
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The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the managerial â actionâ of public administrators in the management of their organizations within the brazilian context.
It seeks to understand the relationships between managers and formal management mechanisms by exploring the complementary nature of the effective managerial action in the face of structural deficiencies and flaws, considering the possibility of overcoming the structuralism-subjectivism dichotomy present in the construction of the Theory of Organizations.
Initially, the study provides a review of the literature on organizational design. It highlights the â goodness of fitâ proposition on strategic choice issues concerning the main organizational variables design and organizational goal attainment. It also calls special attention to the emerging interest of designing theorists on interpretivist aproachs to the matter, such that of Karl Weick.
A review of the the administrative reforms in Brazil is made from the perspective of the main stream organizational design conceptual framework. It highlights the complex dynamics of a constant search for differenciation and flexibilization subject to patherns of advances and reversals, due to the centrality, streng and pervasiveness of the bureaucratic model. It is concluded that in no single given moment, a public manager and his team, may count on a formal organizational design wich attends the â congruencyâ criteria, devised by organizational design conceptual frameworks, to explain organizational results in different environmental sets. Although this conclusion may explain failure at the public sector, it can not provide understanding on the many instances of significative success attained by government operations in spite of inadequate formal administrative structures. This point calls for a better understanding from the interpretivist aproach, on how public administrators, strongly associated with good organizational results, engage into transformative action, in order to superate administrative structures flaws and disfuncional cultural patherns of conduct, structurally present and constantly reproduced, in vigorous develloping countries, such as Brazil.
The dissertation transcribes the testimony of four outstanding public administrators, doing a deep incursion in the managerial real world of public administration, as subjectivelly defined by them and transformed by their engagement into action.Through the thematic version of the Oral History methodology, full segments of the complete enterviews are
cathegorized into the thirty two managerial strategies captured wich are presented on a recathegorized manner under eight main strategies: (1) Interchanging Frames of Reference; (2) Exploring the Formal Limits; (3) Playing the Bureaucracy Game; (4) Inducing the Inclusion of Others (5)Promoting Internal Cohesion; (6) Creating Shields against Transgressions; (7) Overcoming Internal Restrictions; (8) Letting the Structures Blossom. Each one of these eight blocks of strategies presented, deserves further reflexive interpretation by the author, on the light of the interpretivist aproach to organizational design.
A final effort is made, now on theory building, for improuving understanding on the matter. In order to find a significant meaning underlining all the strategies extracted from the â practical constiounessâ of the enterviweers as revealed in their report, the author resort to a methafor. This methafor helps to: (1) better describe and understand a not adequately treated phenomenon, namely, good results under inadequate structural social and organizational conditions; (2) reveal the logic and the meaning underlining all the strategies adopted to generate results under these unfaithfull conditions; (3) name, accordingly to the nature of the managerial transformative social action envolved, an open ended class of managerial interventions of a pragmatic sort driven by an ethics of results much common to good managers, that is, the concept of â managerial equalizationâ ; and (4) give back to public administrators, represented by the enterviwees, to be incorporated in their â discursive counciousnessâ , something the most effective and experienced public managers already have as tacit knowledge built in their â practical counsciousnessâ , and so, help the education and development of new talents.Ph. D.
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Goyal, Rishi. "Structural and monetary explanations for Japan's long slump." 2001. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/51955210.html.
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Perez-Escamilla-Costas, Juan Ricardo. "Mexican policies for budgets and interest rates alternative rational explanations /." 1987. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/18078127.html.
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Hopkins, Barry W. "Tests of alternative explanations for the association between the firm's capital structure, investment policy and dividend policy." Master's thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/148052.
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Bruch, Sarah K. "Political learning and policy feedback effects explanations of political and civic participation among the disadvantaged /." 2007. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/163572129.html.
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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2007Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-77).
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Qian, Wei. "Environmental accounting for local government waste management : an assessment of institutional and contingency theory explanations." Phd thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/110003.
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Over the past 10 years, with Australia's urban population ,growth there has been an
increasing pressure on land, resource and waste management throughout the States and
Territories. Local government, one of the public sectors traditionally responsible for
waste services, is being required to take more environmental issues into account in
order to develop a sustainable community. The purpose of this study is to investigate
current practices of environmental accounting for local government waste management
and to explore possible explanations for these environmental accounting practices.
This study applies a mixed method design to achieve the research objectives, starting
with the case studies of 12 local councils in New South Wales (NSW) Australia, and
extending them to a mail survey of all councils in NSW. The case studies allow the
researcher to explore the practices of environmental accounting for waste management
in a real-life context. The case study findings indicate that contingency theory and
institutional theory are most likely to provide insightful explanations for current
environmental accounting practices in local government waste management.
Contingency theory views organisations as technically devised instruments aiming for
effective and efficient control of their work processes. Based on this theory,
environmental uncertainty, environmental strategy and task complexity are proposed as
explanatory variables. Institutional theory views organisations as social actors and the
"carriers" of social structures aiming for legitimacy from a wide range of social
institutions. Based on this theory, regulatory pressures, cognitive pressures, community
expectations, and inter-professional communication, are proposed as explanatory
variables. The mail survey assesses the effectiveness of the two theoretical explanations.
The results reveal that the use of environmental accounting in local government waste
management is generally moderate rather than little or none as previously suggested.
However, the variance in environmental accounting practices in local government waste
management is significant. When the scope of environmental accounting information
becomes broader, from direct to indirect, from internal to external, lower levels of
accounting are found. Among the local councils investigated, accounting for external
environmental costs and impacts in waste management has always drawn the least
attention. The assessment of theoretical explanations reveals that current environmental
accounting practices in local government waste management arc significantly driven by
proactive environmental strategics, complex waste operation tasks, a high level of interprofessional
communication, and uncertain waste management environments. Task
complexity, inter-professional communication, environmental uncertainty, community
expectations and environmental strategy are all significantly associated with the level of
direct waste flow and activity accounting. However, only environmental strategy, task
complexity and inter-professional communication, play a significant role in explaining
the levels of accounting for indirect/hidden and external costs and impacts in waste
management. It appears that community's environmental expectations and uncertain
waste management environments cannot provide a significant incentive for local
government to account for indirect/hidden and external environmental costs and impacts.
Two institutional factors, regulatory pressures and environmental cognitive pressures do
not significantly contribute to any aspect of environmental accounting practices in local
government waste management. When testing the effects of type and size of local
councils, it is found that urban councils have a significantly higher level of direct waste
flow and activity accounting than rural councils, but the differences in the levels of
indirect/hidden and external cost and impact accounting are not statistically significant.
Size of local councils does not explain any aspect of environmental accounting practices
in local government waste management.
The results of this thesis indicate that contingency theory provides better explanations
for environmental accounting practices in local government waste management than
institutional theory. The weaker role of institutional theory explanations implies that the
development and institutionalisation of environmental accounting for local government
waste management may take a longer time than expected. The explanations for current
development of environmental accounting are mainly related to pursuing efficiency and
effectiveness of working processes.
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張簡維典. "The influence of judicial explanation to police policy." Thesis, 2003. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/n4kv2x.
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Khan, Omar Zia. "Policy Explanation and Model Refinement in Decision-Theoretic Planning." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10012/7808.
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Decision-theoretic systems, such as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), are used for sequential decision-making under uncertainty. MDPs provide a generic framework that can be applied in various domains to compute optimal policies. This thesis presents techniques that offer explanations of optimal policies for MDPs and then refine decision theoretic models (Bayesian networks and MDPs) based on feedback from experts.
Explaining policies for sequential decision-making problems is difficult due to the presence of stochastic effects, multiple possibly competing objectives and long-range effects of actions. However, explanations are needed to assist experts in validating that the policy is correct and to help users in developing trust in the choices recommended by the policy. A set of domain-independent templates to justify a policy recommendation is presented along with a process to identify the minimum possible number of templates that need to be populated to completely justify the policy.
The rejection of an explanation by a domain expert indicates a deficiency in the model which led to the generation of the rejected policy. Techniques to refine the model parameters such that the optimal policy calculated using the refined parameters would conform with the expert feedback are presented in this thesis. The expert feedback is translated into constraints on the model parameters that are used during refinement. These constraints are non-convex for both Bayesian networks and MDPs. For Bayesian networks, the refinement approach is based on Gibbs sampling and stochastic hill climbing, and it learns a model that obeys expert constraints. For MDPs, the parameter space is partitioned such that alternating linear optimization can be applied to learn model parameters that lead to a policy in accordance with expert feedback.
In practice, the state space of MDPs can often be very large, which can be an issue for real-world problems. Factored MDPs are often used to deal with this issue. In Factored MDPs, state variables represent the state space and dynamic Bayesian networks model the transition functions. This helps to avoid the exponential growth in the state space associated with large and complex problems. The approaches for explanation and refinement presented in this thesis are also extended for the factored case to demonstrate their use in real-world applications. The domains of course advising to undergraduate students, assisted hand-washing for people with dementia and diagnostics for manufacturing are used to present empirical evaluations.
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Kerr, Pauline. "Labor's security policy, 1983-1996 : towards a liberal-realist explanation?" Phd thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/147889.
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Nadel, Jerome Ian. "An extention of the self-esteem explanation for information search and policy consistency." 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/2097/22702.
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"The Implementation Gap in Responding to Beijing’s Air Pollution: Explanation and Policy Recommendations." Doctoral diss., 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.57243.
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abstract: The lack of in-depth understanding of why policies succeed or fail in implementation puts future policymaking in a situation of having insufficient information to craft effective interventions. Mainstream policy implementation theory is rooted in a democratic institutional setting. Much less empirical research and theory addresses implementation in top-down authoritarian contexts, such as China. This study addresses the research question of how the Chinese governance context affects stakeholder’s behavior in combating air pollution, based on the analysis of implementation of three particular air pollution policies: (i) Natural gas / electricity conversion from coal, for winter heating, (ii) Widespread deployment of New Energy Vehicles, and (iii) The shutting down of cement production in northern China during the winter heating period to avoid overlapping pollution emissions from winter heating.
This study identifies flexibility and accountability as two important characteristics of the Chinese governance context, and traces how they affect stakeholder behavior and coalition formation, which in turn impacts policy implementation performance. The case study methodology triangulates analysis of government policy documents, secondary data, and the results of semi-structured key informant interviews.
Findings include: (i) The Chinese government has a very strong implementation capability to pass directives down and scale up, enabling rapid accomplishment of massive goals. It also has the capability to decide how the market should come into play, and to shape public opinion and ignore opposition; (ii) Interventions from the authoritarian government, given China’s vast economy and market, and the efficient top-down tiered bureaucratic system, risk distorting the market and the real policy goals during the implementation process; (iii) There tends to be an absence of bottom-up participation and feedback mechanisms; (iv) An effective self-correction mechanism, associated with flexibility and adaptability by a myriad of stakeholders often enables effective policy adjustment.
Policy implications include: (i) Policy implementation concerns need to be integrated into policy design; (ii) More thorough discussion of options is required during policy design; (iii) Better communication channels and instruments are needed to provide feedback from the bottom-up; (iv) On complex policy issues such as air pollution, pilot projects should be carried out before massive adoption of a policy.Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Urban Planning 2020
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Yang, Wen-Tzu, and 楊文慈. "Losing Authority：An Explanation of the Predicament of Police in Taiwan, 1980-2014." Thesis, 2015. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/2kg593.
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"Cops, Culture, and Context: The Integration of Structural and Cultural Elements for Explanations of Police Use of Force." Doctoral diss., 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.39457.
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abstract: This dissertation integrates concepts from three bodies of literature: police use of force, neighborhood/ecological influence on police, and police culture. Prior research has generally found that neighborhood context affects police use of force. While scholars have applied social disorganization theory to understand why neighborhood context might influence use of force, much of this theorizing and subsequent empirical research has focused exclusively on structural characteristics of an area, such as economic disadvantage, crime rates, and population demographics. This exclusive focus has occurred despite the fact that culture was once an important component of social disorganization theory in addition to structural factors. Moreover, the majority of the theorizing and subsequent research on police culture has neglected the potential influence that neighborhood context might have on officers’ occupational outlooks. The purpose of this dissertation is to merge the structural and cultural elements of social disorganization theory in order to shed light on the development and maintenance of police officer culture as well as to further specify the relationship between neighborhood context and police use of force. Using data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN), I address three interrelated research questions: 1) does variation of structural characteristics at the patrol beat level, such as concentrated disadvantage, homicide rates, and the percentage of minority citizens, predict how an officer views his/her occupational outlook (i.e., culture)?; 2) do officers who work in the same patrol beats share a similar occupational outlook (i.e., culture) or is there variation?; and 3) does the inclusion of police culture at the officer level moderate the relationship between patrol beat context and police use of force? Findings suggest that a patrol beat’s degree of concentrated disadvantage and homicide rate slightly influence officer culture at the individual level. Results show mixed evidence of a patrol beat culture. There is little support for the idea that characteristics of the patrol beat and individual officer culture interact to influence police use of force. I conclude with a detailed discussion of the methodological, theoretical, and policy implications as well as limitations and directions for future research.Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2016
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Kotzé, Derica Alba. "Die voedselparadoks : 'n ondersoek na vraagstukke rondom voedselsekuriteit in Suid-Afrika." Thesis, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17124.
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Text in AfrikaansSummaries in Afrikaans and English
Miljoene mense ervaar voedselonsekerheid en een uit elke 50 hanger mense is woonagtig in Suid Afrika. Daar is genoeg voedsel op ons planeet om elke mens van 'n voldoende voorraad voedsel te verseker; dit waarborg egter nie voedselsekuriteit aan almal nie. Dit is die voedselparadoks: ondanks globale surplusproduksie van voedsel, ly miljoene mense wereldwyd aan wanvoeding en honger, maar veral in die ontwikkelende lande. Suid-Afrika is geen uitsondering nie en ten spyte van selfvoorsiening in voedsel, balanseer die voedselgelykstelling nie. Daar bestaan 'n ekstreme gaping tussen die produksie en verbruik van voedsel. Gevolglik is die probleem wat nagevors is in hierdie studie die gebrek aan voedselsekuriteit binne 'n wereldkonteks met voedselsurplusse en hoe dit reflekteer in Suid-Afrika. Teen hierdie agtergrond is daar 'n studie gedoen van die oorsake van voedselonsekerheid en die teoriee en verduidelikings van hongersnood. Die fokus van hierdie navorsingstudie is drieledig van aard. Eerstens fokus dit op 'n konseptuele ondersoek na hanger, armoede, voedselsekuriteit en hongersnood in Afrika. Tweedens is ondersoek ingestel na die oorsake vir die gebrek aan voedselsekuriteit in Afrika. Derdens is daar gefokus op Suid-Afrika en is 'n ondersoek gedoen na die voorkoms van hanger, wanvoeding, armoede en die nasionale konteks van voedselsekuriteit met die doel om vraagstukke daaromheen te identifiseer. Daar is bevind dat voedselsekuriteit bepaal word deur die beskikbaarheid van voedsel (aanbod) en die vermoe van mense om dit te bekom (aanvraag). Dit blyk dat die ontwikkelingsproses, regeringsbeleid, ekologiese omgewing en tegnologie, wetenskap en navorsing 'n direkte invloed het op die voedselsekuriteit van mense, en dat Suid-Afrika nie verskil van ander Afrikalande in hierdie verband nie. Hoewel Suid-Afrika voedselselfvoorsiening bereik het, ly miljoene mense honger weens armoede en die gebrek aan aansprake wat bydra tot 'n gebrek aan voedselsekuriteit. Die studie toon dat die Suid-Afrikaanse regering verskeie beleidsmaatreels in plek het ter bevordering van voedselsekuriteit, maar dat dit nie in die praktyk verwesenlik word nie.
Millions of people in the world experience food insecurity and one out ofevery 50 hungry people lives in South Africa. There is enough food on our planet to assure every person of an adequate supply of food; however, this does not guarantee food security for all. This is the food paradox: despite a global surplus production of food, millions of people experience malnutrition and hunger all over the world, but especially in the developing countries. South Africa is no exception and despite self-sufficiency in food, the food equation is not balanced. An extreme gap exists between the production and consumption of food. Consequently, the problem researched in this study is the lack of food security in a world context with surplus food and how this is reflected in South Africa. Against this background a study was undertaken of the causes of food insecurity and the theories and explanations of famine. The focus of this research study is threefold. Firstly it focuses on a conceptual enquiry intohunger, poverty, food security and famine in Africa. Secondly there is an enquiry into the causes of the lack of food security in Africa. Thirdly it focuses on South Africa and an enquiry is done into the incidence of hunger, malnutrition and poverty, and into the national context of food security with the aim of identifying relevant problems in food security. It was found that food security is determined by the availability of food (supply) and the capability of people to obtain it (demand). It appears that the development process, government policy, ecological environment and technology, science and research directly affect the food security of people, and that South Africa does not differ from other African countries in this regard. Although South Africa has achieved food self-sufficiency, millions of people experience hunger because of poverty and the lack of entitlements. The study shows that the South African government has various policy measures for the promotion of food security in place, but that food security does not materialise in practice.
Development Studies
D.Litt. et Phil. (Ontwikkelingsadministrasie)
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Kiratli, Osman Sabri. "Why Sacrifice Sovereignty? A Non-Instrumental Explanation of State Support for Supranational Cooperation in EU Common Foreign and Security Policy." 2012. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3545946.
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This dissertation presents a constructivist approach to explain varying levels of member state support for supranational cooperation in the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy in 2002 through 2004. It examines the possible effects of three independent variables—popular identification with Europe, normative parity between national foreign policy and CFSP institutions, and national threat perceptions, on the level of support for supranational reform of the CFSP during the European Convention and Intergovernmental Conference producing the proposals on CFSP eventually adopted in the Lisbon Treaty of 2007. After an in-depth analysis of four countries, Germany, Netherlands, UK and Greece, this study concludes that in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, the two ideational variables—level of identification with Europe and parity between national and EU foreign policy norms—are positively correlated with the level of support to supranationalism. Only in the case of Greece are threat perceptions the driving reason for Greek levels of support for reforms increasing the supranational character of CFSP. This suggests that ideational factors and threat perceptions offer two different routes to member state support for supranational integration in common foreign and security policies.
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Pickett, Lance. "Robert Goodin’s green theory of value and the politics of fishing and the aquatic environment in New Zealand: an explanation as to how and why fisheries-related policy fails to meet Goodin's public policy and moral criteria for the maintenance of natural resources." 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/742.
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The proposition of this thesis is that, policy and legislation pertaining to natural resources, specifically the fisheries and the aquatic environment of New Zealand, do not meet Robert Goodin’s public policy and moral criteria for successful maintenance of such resources in accordance with his green theory of value. This proposition is derived from an assessment indicating a policy tradition in New Zealand resulting in failure to ensure ecological sustainability in accordance with this country’s international obligations to biodiversity and futurity. This thesis urges change from the prevailing narrowly economistic political agenda to one based upon Robert Goodin’s green theory of value. Such a political agenda would be promoted by a third force over and above the traditional parties of the Left and Right, arguably, The Greens: the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand. The argument for change is based upon an analysis of fisheries related policy and legislation in New Zealand to April 2000. The analysis is organised into successive historical periods, beginning with the arrival of the first Polynesians and ending with the outcome of the 1999 general election. These periods include the development of the common property subsistence fishery of the Maori and its commercial open access Pakeha successors, the institution of an export industry involving in turn delicensing, rationalization, privatization, corporatization, and the process of devolution of fisheries management to industry. It is argued the cumulative outcome is impoverishment of natural resources, the capitalization of Nature and the theft of the “people’s right of fishery”. Goodin’s green theory of value is carefully stated, developed, analyzed, and compared and contrasted with the prevailing economistic argument. The validity and desirability of the green theory of value and the political agenda to which it gives rise is established. This political agenda is found similar to that of green parties. The political and social milieu in which The Greens must presently operate is analysed. Current environmental policy in general, and fisheries related policies in particular are analysed and found incompatible with Goodin’s criteria. The outcome of policies and legislation affecting aquatic ecosystems-maintenance is examined in case studies covering major fisheries and the aquatic environment, and found to be generally disastrous. Alternative policies are proffered, based upon a green political agenda arising from a philosophy similar to that explicated in Goodin’s green theory of value.
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Davidová, Markéta. "(Ne)legální migrace a role účelových sňatků při získání pobytových oprávnění státních příslušníků třetích zemí na území Česka se zaměřením na česko-muslimské sňatky." Master's thesis, 2019. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-404291.
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Migration offers a spectrum of illegal channels through which migrants enter their target countries. Marriages of convenience are one of these ways. Specifically this means marrying a foreigner who has no residence status or has a lower one than their partner they are marrying. Their partner may be the citizen of their target country or also a foreigner, however, having a higher residence status. People entering such marriages misuse the marriage institute in order to obtain a legal residence in the given country. The objective of the diploma thesis is thus illegal migration through marriages between nationals coming from third countries of the Muslim world and people living in the area of the Czech Republic. Subsequently, foreigners obtain the status of a family member, of an EU citizen, and together with that the right of a free residence and movement within the EU. The general aim of the research was to compare two categories of these foreigners who were looking for the entry into the Czech Republic based on a short-term visa. One category consisted of visa applicants who succeeded in their applications, and those whose applications were refused due to a detected circumvention of the immigration law in the form of a marriages of convenience. Both groups were compared based on chosen indicators...
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Allenet-Moulin, Tiffany. "Sécurité et stabilité : quelles sont les conditions qui ont poussé l’Égypte, la Syrie et Israël à entrer en guerre en 1967?" Thèse, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/10245.
Full textAbstract:
Ce mémoire s’intéresse aux conditions qui ont mené à la guerre de six jours de 1967 au Moyen-Orient. Tout particulièrement, mon mémoire investiguera les dynamiques domestiques qui influent sur la prise de décision politique. L’hypothèse principale suppose que le mode de gestion de la société, choisi par le gouvernement au pouvoir, influe et contraint les options de politique étrangère disponibles à celui-ci. . Un régime peut recourir à deux modes de gestion de la société : l’exclusion et l’inclusion, à plusieurs degrés. En fonction du mode de gestion choisi, le gouvernement aura besoin de plus ou moins de ressources pour le mettre en place et pour le préserver. La quantité et la nature des ressources utilisées au niveau domestique contraindront les options de politique étrangère disponibles au régime
Les guerres du Moyen-Orient, et la politique étrangère des pays de la région sont souvent interprétées selon des principes réalistes : la recherche du pouvoir et de sécurité guide la politique étrangère. Ce mémoire cherche à souligner l’importance de dynamiques domestiques sur le processus de prise de décision politique, mais également l’influence qu’a le conflit israélo-arabe sur la structure, le fonctionnement et la société des pays concernés.This thesis looks at the conditions that led to the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War in the Middle East. Specifically, my thesis investigates the domestic dynamics that influence the political decision-making process. The main hypothesis suggests that the type of societal management chosen by the government in power will influence and determine the foreign policy options available. A regime may choose between two types of societal management: exclusion and inclusion, which can be applied to greater or lesser degrees. Depending on the type of societal management chosen, the government will need more or less resources to implement and maintain it. The quantity and nature of resources used domestically will determine the foreign policy options available to the regime. In the Middle East, wars and foreign policy are often interpreted according to realist principles: the quest for power and safety are said to be the main determinants of foreign policy. This thesis seeks to highlight the importance of domestic dynamics in the process of political decision-making, but also the influence of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the structure, development and society in the countries involved.