Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Political change under Trudeau'

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the effects of large agricultural investments on food systems change around Nanyuki, Kenya and in the Nacala corridor, Mozambique. Specifically, the effects of these investments on land, the food supply chains, food environments, and food consumption were studied. In Africa, food systems already change against a backdrop of global food system pressures, such as the inroads of supermarkets, and local drivers, such as demographic and economic changes. The large agricultural investments likely intersect with these changes, but if the investments amplify them, and to what degree, is less known. Methodologically, a postpositivist mixed-methods approach was used for an instrumental case study design with study areas in Kenya and Mozambique. Multiple data collection techniques were used, including (un)structured interviews and a household survey, and data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis and between-groups analysis. The results show myriad effects of the investments to food systems, including to land, self-production, agricultural engagement, food distribution and food environments. Overall, the investments linked with more modern food systems that were characterised by lower self-production and higher diet diversity. This change occurred through ‘hybrid modernity’ rather than linear modernity as certain traditional dynamics strengthen alongside modernisation processes. In the end, more inclusive food governance arrangements, such as food sovereignty, can counteract some of the adverse effects of large agricultural investments.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019.
Political Sciences
PhD
Unrestricted

Drylands cover about 40% of the earth’s land surface and provide the basis for the livelihoods of 38% of the global human population. Worldwide, these ecosystems are prone to heavy degradation. Increasing levels of dryland degradation result a strong decline of ecosystem services. In addition, in highly variable semi-arid environments changing future environmental conditions will potentially have severe consequences for productivity and ecosystem dynamics. Hence, global efforts have to be made to understand the particular causes and consequences of dryland degradation and to promote sustainable management options for semi-arid and arid ecosystems in a changing world. Here I particularly address the problem of semi-arid savanna degradation, which mostly occurs in form of woody plant encroachment. At this, I aim at finding viable sustainable management strategies and improving the general understanding of semi-arid savanna vegetation dynamics under conditions of extensive livestock production. Moreover, the influence of external forces, i.e. environmental change and land reform, on the use of savanna vegetation and on the ecosystem response to this land use is assessed. Based on this I identify conditions and strategies that facilitate a sustainable use of semi-arid savanna rangelands in a changing world. I extended an eco-hydrological model to simulate rangeland vegetation dynamics for a typical semi-arid savanna in eastern Namibia. In particular, I identified the response of semi-arid savanna vegetation to different land use strategies (including fire management) also with regard to different predicted precipitation, temperature and CO2 regimes. Not only environmental but also economic and political constraints like e.g. land reform programmes are shaping rangeland management strategies. Hence, I aimed at understanding the effects of the ongoing process of land reform in southern Africa on land use and the semi-arid savanna vegetation. Therefore, I developed and implemented an agent-based ecological-economic modelling tool for interactive role plays with land users. This tool was applied in an interdisciplinary empirical study to identify general patterns of management decisions and the between-farm cooperation of land reform beneficiaries in eastern Namibia. The eco-hydrological simulations revealed that the future dynamics of semi-arid savanna vegetation strongly depend on the respective climate change scenario. In particular, I found that the capacity of the system to sustain domestic livestock production will strongly depend on changes in the amount and temporal distribution of precipitation. In addition, my simulations revealed that shrub encroachment will become less likely under future climatic conditions although positive effects of CO2 on woody plant growth and transpiration have been considered. While earlier studies predicted a further increase in shrub encroachment due to increased levels of atmospheric CO2, my contrary finding is based on the negative impacts of temperature increase on the drought sensitive seedling germination and establishment of woody plant species. Further simulation experiments revealed that prescribed fires are an efficient tool for semi-arid rangeland management, since they suppress woody plant seedling establishment. The strategies tested have increased the long term productivity of the savanna in terms of livestock production and decreased the risk for shrub encroachment (i.e. savanna degradation). This finding refutes the views promoted by existing studies, which state that fires are of minor importance for the vegetation dynamics of semi-arid and arid savannas. Again, the difference in predictions is related to the bottleneck at the seedling establishment stage of woody plants, which has not been sufficiently considered in earlier studies. The ecological-economic role plays with Namibian land reform beneficiaries showed that the farmers made their decisions with regard to herd size adjustments according to economic but not according to environmental variables. Hence, they do not manage opportunistically by tracking grass biomass availability but rather apply conservative management strategies with low stocking rates. This implies that under the given circumstances the management of these farmers will not per se cause (or further worsen) the problem of savanna degradation and shrub encroachment due to overgrazing. However, as my results indicate that this management strategy is rather based on high financial pressure, it is not an indicator for successful rangeland management. Rather, farmers struggle hard to make any positive revenue from their farming business and the success of the Namibian land reform is currently disputable. The role-plays also revealed that cooperation between farmers is difficult even though obligatory due to the often small farm sizes. I thus propose that cooperation needs to be facilitated to improve the success of land reform beneficiaries.
Semiaride (halbtrockene) Savannen bedecken große Teile der Erdoberfläche und sichern die Lebensgrundlage von vielen Millionen Menschen. Die häufigste Form der Landnutzung in diesen Trockengebieten ist die Produktion von Vieh in extensiver Weidelandbewirtschaftung. In Folge klimatischer Veränderungen und als Konsequenz aus der teils intensiven Beweidung dieser Trockengebiete kommt es häufig zur Degradierung derselben in Form einer Zunahme von ‚unerwünschter‘ holziger Vegetation auf Kosten von futterverwertbaren Gräsern. Dieser als Verbuschung bezeichnete Prozess hat schwere negative Auswirkungen auf die betroffenen Ökosysteme und ist die Ursache für einen zunehmenden Rückgang der ökonomischen Leistungsfähigkeit der betroffenen Betriebe. In meiner Dissertation befasse ich mich mit den Auswirkungen von Klimawandel und politischen Veränderungen auf die Savannenvegetation im südlichen Afrika und auf die Möglichkeiten für die Nutzung dieser Ökosysteme in Form von Viehwirtschaft. Hierbei möchte ich sowohl das allgemeine Verständnis der ökologischen Zusammenhänge verbessern, als auch Strategien für die nachhaltige Nutzung der Savannen identifizieren und bewerten. Da nicht nur ökologische, sondern auch ökonomische und politische Einflussfaktoren, wie zum Beispiel die umfangreichen Landumverteilungen im Rahmen der Bodenreform im südlichen Afrika auf die tatsächliche Landnutzung wirken, habe ich im Rahmen der Dissertation zudem untersucht, nach welchen Umwelt und Kapitalvariablen sich die Farmer, welche Ihr Land im Rahmen der Bodenreform zugeteilt bekommen haben, bei Ihren Entscheidungen richten. Methodisch verwende ich verschiedene Simulationsmodelle, welche zur Untersuchung der langfristigen Veränderungen von verschiedensten Szenarien (Klimawandel, Landnutzung) geeignet sind. Hierbei habe ich teilweise bestehende Modelle angepasst, aber auch ein neues Modell, welches zur Befragung von Farmern in Namibia verwendet wurde, entwickelt. Meine Dissertation führt im Wesentlichen zu vier Erkenntnissen: Erstens, zeigen meine Ergebnisse, welche große Bedeutung die spezifischen ökologischen Eigenschaften der Bäume und Sträucher in semiariden Savannen für die Vorhersage der Entwicklung dieser Systeme unter Klimawandel hat. Hierbei zeigte sich, dass insbesondere die Sensitivität der Keimlinge gegenüber Trockenheit und Feuer eine entscheidende Rolle spielt. Daraus folgt die zweite wesentliche Erkenntnis: Feuer eignet sich in herausragender Weise, um halbtrockene Savannen vor der Verbuschung zu bewahren. Drittens haben die Rollenspiele mit Farmern in Namibia gezeigt, dass deren Entscheidungen im Wesentlichen von finanziellen Schwierigkeiten und nicht von Umwelteinflüssen getrieben werden. Dennoch zeigten meine Ergebnisse, dass diese Farmer mit Ihrem derzeitigen Verhalten wahrscheinlich nicht zur weiteren Degradierung der Savannenvegetation beitragen. Die vierte, und mit am bedeutendste Erkenntnis aus meiner Arbeit ist, dass konservative Beweidungsstrategien mit geringen und konstanten Viehdichten notwendig sind um semiaride Savannen dauerhaft in ökologisch und ökonomisch nachhaltiger Weise zu Nutzen.

This research explores the link between New Right ideology and the making of public policy. Taking the Thatcher and Mulroney Governments as examples of the New Right in government this research considers the areas of policy convergence and divergence between them using health as a case study. This study concludes that these 1990s variants of Conservativism differed both in terms of their rhetoric and their ability to chart new public policies. This study finds that the Thatcher Government was a more effective agent of change than the Mulroney Government with institutional differences as the main explanatory variable. Other research themes raised in this research include: The applicability of the incremental policy making model to the study of Canadian and British health policies; the role of interest groups in the development of health policies; and the thesis of the irreversibility of the welfare state. It was found that the incremental model could not account for the rapid and large changes in British health policy but could serve as a theoretical framework to explain health policy developments in Canada. Interest groups for their part were found to have reacted in differing ways to the challenges posed to them by New Right government, seeking to form advocacy coalitions in Canada while remaining resolutely independent in Britain. Finally, this research concludes that the irreversibility of the welfare state thesis as presented by Therborn and Roebroek remains valid. that is that the political popUlarity of national health insurance continue to isolate this sector of social policy from dramatic rollback.

The following study is a qualitative text analysis and an idea- and ideologyanalysis with the aim of examining the Sweden Democrats view on women over time and if the party’s organizational and ideological development is reflected in the party’s ideas regarding women’s role in society. The material of research consists of the Sweden Democrats party programs which has been analysed through conservatism and populism, which is the theoretical framework of this study. The results of the analysis have been divided into three different time periods and the first period between 1989-1999 indicated a strong connection between the Sweden Democrats view on women and a conservative view on women. During the second and third time period, between the years 1999-2018, the operational indicators for a conservative view on women could not be discovered, however several operational indicators which indicated a populistic view on women could be established. Previous academic research has categorized the Sweden Democrats view on women as conservative, but the results of this study´s analysis argues that the party´s view on women rather should be described as populism.

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.

The drivers of CO2 emissions are a widely studied subject of great importance to both individual countries and the global community. However, the inclusion of a quantitative measure of political uncertainty, national and global, has until now been largely overlooked. We investigate how geopolitical uncertainty (GPU) and income interact with CO2 emissions using a panel quantile regression approach for a set of 63 nations over the period 1985-2014. Our key findings are; (i) a consistent negative (positive) relation between global (local) uncertainty and the different CO2 emission distribution levels, (ii) the relation between uncertainty and emissions is heterogeneous across different income groups, (iii) clear and consistent evidence for the Environmental Kuztnet Curve hypothesis with respect to uncertainty, (iiii) when deciding on environmental policy, it is of great importance to consider political uncertainty and whether to use a local or global measure.

Policing in Europe has become more complex, due to the nature of organised crime being more and more trans-national and a growing Europeanization in policing as a result of the creation of European agencies like Europol and Eurojust taking over activities which before the Lisbon Treaty remained within the sole responsibility of single Member State. Informal law enforcement cooperation between Member States is being transferred into formalised cooperation by European agencies with a specific mandate and specific powers. This development also requires a mechanism to streamline national and European law enforcement priorities. In 2005 the United Kingdom proposed the European Criminal Intelligence Model (ECIM) as the tool to achieve this task. In general terms the ECIM is based on the principles stemming from the concept of intelligence-led-policing as proposed by Ratcliffe (2005). However, until today the implementation of the ECIM is not finalised. This dissertation will address the conditions for such a model to be successful, especially with regard to the operationalisation of strategic findings at EU level within a national or trans-national setting. In this regard, the question of the meaning of ‘intelligence’ for the ECIM is examined, especially taking into account that the concept of ‘intelligence’ in law enforcement still is a rather new discipline. In addition, this thesis will discuss the societal framework in which the ECIM is to be deployed with a focus on the respective consequences if our society has changed from modern to a postmodern society. In relation to the ECIM a reflection on this aspect is of crucial importance as a shift in the societal paradigm would also question the value of a ‘grand narrative’ like the ECIM, a single, monolithic tool that would be able to address the problems in tackling trans-national organised crime as if made from one piece in a European context which is defined by diversity.

Mass demographic changes in the ethnic and racial composition of the United States since the 1960s are commonly considered a force driving major transformations in contemporary American politics. In political science, there are longstanding research traditions that examine the political implications of demographic change: how demographic change leads to growing intergroup political contestation over political power and public policies; how demographic changes lead to shifts in the group bases of partisan support; how demographic changes are associated with changes in the demographic composition of politicians and elected officials; and how the changing face of America affects the political responsiveness of elected officials to historically underrepresented but increasingly prominent segments of the population. Despite the proliferation of empirical studies on these topics, numerous causal claims central to broader arguments about the political implications of demographic change deserve greater theoretical and empirical scrutiny. In this dissertation, I make use of novel datasets and methods for descriptive and causal inference to contribute more credible evidence that test these claims and develop new avenues of research.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
政治學研究所
99
Factional politics is one of the features in Taiwan local politics. The exchange of particular interest under clientelism constitutes the political linkage between politician-politician and politician-voter in the factional politics. However, political linkage based on the exchange of particular interest has negative effects on democratic accountability. Voters may be more interested in the particular interest offered by the politician rather than the contents of his platform. Since 2005, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has enlarged its electoral base in Yunlin County, while factions within the Kuomintang (KMT) fought against each other and dissolved. Does this represent a changing political linkage in Yunlin County? Will clientelism be replaced by party image and label managed by political parties on national scale? What are the linkages between voters and politicians in Yunlin County, and how could we explain the emergence and operation of such linkages? Previous researches have mostly dealt with the phenomen of clientelism during an authoritarian period, and understood it as the mobilization and control by the authoritarian regime or as the product of social context in local society. But these researches have not illustrated the change after democratization. The modernization and institutional change can not explain the interview data that I collected in Yunlin County. The data shows that although KMT politicians was affected by the party, new electoral institution, and social change, they still attempted to construct factional organization, broker network, and gain votes by offering particular interests. DPP politicians, mainly adopted their party label to gain voter support. At the same time, they also distributed particular interests to their supporters, and even tried to gain the support of non-partisan voters through the distribution of particular interests. The similar feature between these two parties is that they both lack an alternative model for resource distribution, which can replace the distribution of particular interests. Therefore, both parties continue to offer particular interests and maintain a certain degree of clientelistic linkage strategy. In this research, I propose that such phenomenon of political linkages is caused by the special political cleavage in Taiwan. Since the political cleavage in Taiwan is constituted with nationalism and ethnicism, which lack the connotation of resources distribution, and also impede other social cleavage to become the stake of political struggle. Politicians of both parties in Yunlin do not have strategies that can replace the distribution of particular interests, thus they can only continue to rely on clientelistic linkage.

碩士
國立中正大學
戰略暨國際事務研究所
102
Chinese Indonesians in Indonesia long faced political status inequality, which is as a role of second-class citizens in Indonesia. Since the May 1998 riots, the phenomena of unequal political status and its relating interests of Chinese Indonesians gradually improved and was taken seriously by the mainstream of Indonesia’s society. This study first reviews the historical situation of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia; then with the help of (3 +1) i decision model, which is including ideas, interests’ analysis, institutional changes and information mechanism in four aspects, explores reasons for the change of political status of Chinese Indonesians. This study argues that the most important reason for the change of political status of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia is the integration of interests. Due to Indonesian government’s political concern for citizens choosing the way of democratization and election, economic concern for Chinese Indonesians’ capital and considerations of international relations, political status of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia was changed. Media also plays an important role, especially to convey concerns of the international community on this issue.

This doctoral dissertation presents evidence based research into climate change policy. The research technique of political economy is used to investigate policy development. A major change in the Anglo-American growth paradigm from unconstrained to constrained growth is identified. The implications of this change for climate change policy are identified. The political economy of climate change policies is expressed in a new Spatial Climate Economic Policy Tool for Regional Equilibria (Sceptre). This is an innovative bechmarking approach to computable general equilibrium (CGE) that provides a spatial analysis of geopolitical blocs and industry groupings within these blocs. It includes international markets for carbon commodities and geophysical climate effects. It is shown that climate constrained growth raises local policy issues in managing technology diffusion and dysfunctional resource expansive specialisations exacerbated by the creation of global carbon markets.

This dissertation examines the American project in Iraq between 1991 and 2006. It studies the project's conceptual arc, shifting ontology, discourses, institutions, practices, and technologies in their interrelatedness to constitute a new Iraq. It is an ethnography of a thixotropic regime of law and order in translation; a circuit through various landscapes and temporalities to narrate the 1991 war, the institutionalization of sanctions and inspection regimes, material transformations within the American military, the 2003 war and finally the nation-building processes as a continuous and unitary project. The dissertation makes three central arguments: First, the 2003 war on Iraq was imagined through intricate and fluid spaces and temporalities. Transforming Iraq into a democratic regime has served as a catalyst for transforming the American military organization and the international legal system. Second, this project has reordered the spatialized time of Iraq by the imposition of models in translation, reconfigured and reimagined through a realm of violence. These models have created in Iraq a regime of differential mobility, which was enabled through an ensemble of experts, new institutions and calculative technologies. Third, this ensemble took Iraq as its object of knowledge and change rendering Iraq and Iraqis into a set of abstractions within the three spaces under examination: the space of American military institutions; the space of international legality within the United Nations; and, lastly, the material space of Baghdad. Part one examines the pre-invasion political, military, and legal practices that enabled the 2003 invasion and the so-called nation-building projects that ensued. In the American military space, the dissertation focuses on the 1991 and the 2003 military campaigns and operations and traces both campaigns in Iraq in terms of discourses of spatialization and temporalization to historicize the emergences of the so-called `revolution in military affairs' and its progression to a full-fledged theory of cyber-war renowned as network-centric warfare (NCW). In the UN space, this dissertation studies the forms of sovereignty that emerged through the political, legal, and military processes of the 1990s and early 2000s. The 1991 military campaign; post-1991 deployment of the United Nations' authority in order to establish, as an institution, the sanctions and inspection regimes; the 2003 invasion itself; and, finally, the re-siting of the Iraqi Archive: These events are the work of various technologies of violence and control which led to extensive asymmetrical movements of people and things in and about Iraq resituating the sovereignty of the state not within the territorial borders of Iraq but at the level of the globe. Part two studies the post-invasion regime of law and order imposed by the American occupation, its role in reconfiguring the architectural and social space of Baghdad, the identity of the city's population, and the persistent crisis in which the city was subsumed. The Iraqi legal system was flattened and remade with speed and intensity as a prerequisite for a new democratic Iraq creating a new set of laws to be administered by reorganized government institutions, and a new lexicon of political categories that has divided the city's population and mapped them onto the divided city-scape. In Bagdad's urban space, architectural barriers, empowered by new technologies of surveillance, targeting and identifications, have become a permanent element of the post-invasion system as spatial signifiers of law and order.

碩士
國防大學管理學院
財務管理學系
98
Chinese rising is causing concern around the world, especially economic reform and society opening up brought economic growth rapidly in the late 20th century. The financial crisis had significantly negative impact on the economy growth in the world, but showed positive economic growth in China in 2008. The double-digit defense expenditure increase in recent years has arisen concern of its Asian neighborhood and the other developed and developing countries. The economic growth is gradually declining while economic development is relatively matured and infrastructure construction is steadily completed in Taiwan. The economic growth rate has already become a -1.87% in 2009. The paper employs Barro’s endogenous growth model to construct a vector autoregression model and examine the relationship among defense expenditure, economic growth, and defense expenditure as a percentage of central government expenditure in Taiwan and China over the period 1952-2008. Considering the distinction difference of political change by both sides, the study further divides two sub-period, 1952-1976 years (the period of Kai-shek Chiang) and 1977-2008 years (the period of Ching-kuo Chiang, Teng-hui Lee and Shui-bian Chen) in Taiwan and 1952-1977 years (the period of Zedong Mao) and 1978-2008 years (the period of Xiaoping Deng, Zemin Jiang and Jintao Hu) in China to examine the above mentioned relationship and hope to gain better insight and understand. The results indicate that Taiwan exists positive casual relationship between defense expenditure as a percentage of central government expenditure and economic growth in the long-run. China's economic growth has positive casual relationship with defense expenditure and defense expenditure as a percentage of central government expenditure in the long-run. While China shows negatively effect between defense expenditure as a percentage of central government expenditure and defense expenditure.

碩士
國防大學政治作戰學院
政治研究所
105
Since the beginning of the modernization of national defense by the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party has actively adjusted its military strategic thinking, military system, organization and accelerated the replacement of its weapons. The war in Kosovo in 1999, the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the US-Iraq war in 2003 have had a great impact on the change of the Chinese army. In the words of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party gradually transformed its semi-mechanized and mechanized traditional army into a modernized military system and an information force that could be modeled in contemporary warfare. This study views the Chinese Communist Party as a complete structure of multiple organizations or systems, and its military political work organization is regarded as the subordinate organization or system of its army. By "system theory" and "structural function approach this paper takes 1991, 1996, 2004 as the watershed for China’s new military reform, and we view the new military changes as the influencing factors, to explore the military political work organization and system change. In addition, the 1995, 2003 and 2010 Political Work Regulations are used to test the analysis of how Chinese Communist Party used strategies to adapt to the external changes and ensure the continuity of the organization and the system and reflect its value and function. This paper has the following findings. First, in the new military change environment, by virtue of the military ideological and political education and the implementation of the work of the military party organization, China tries to achieve the party's absolute leadership of the military's core objectives, its organization,and the principle of change. Second, through continuous correction, change and new ways of working, the work mode towards the information change, China vigorously promotes the new type of wartime political work so that its party organization and system can have proper functions and values in the changing military environment.

博士
東海大學
政治學系
106
The policy of BRT(Bus Rapid Transit)express bus system for Taichung City is the most important transportation construction program in recent years, but it is ended in the shortest time due to the political party's rotation. The end of this policy is a case worthy of further discussion. This study will use the Advocacy Coalition Framework(ACF) theory proposed by scholar Sabatier and Jenkings-Smith to analyze the ideals of advocators of policy, discuss the policy planning process, review the initial performance of policy implementation, and clarify the reform plan of anti-advocators of policy. The program analyzes government reforms as an influential case, compares the performance of new measures with the program proposed by anti-advocators of policy, and examines whether the public has any response to the termination of the policy. Based on these, we will examine the process of policy formation, implementation, initial performance, alternative solutions, and termination. This study is summarized as the following five points: First, the BRT policy forms a pattern that is consistent with a rational and progressive policy. Second, the initial implementation of the BRT policy, in spite of some unsatisfactory features, has been presented in the initial period. Third, the BRT policy has been implemented for less than a year; that is, it was abolished due to the establishment of the new government, and it was somewhat rash and irrational. Fourth, the new government has not been sufficiently thoughtful in terms of traffic reform measures, and political decisions trumped all other factors. Fifth, comparing the implementation of the BRT policies of the two parties has shown that the steady policies of the previous government are being replaced by the radical new government, which does not meet the expectations of most people and does not conform to the principle of most policies. The research suggesitons provided in this study are as follows: First, local governments should adopt a gradual and rational decision-making model for major policies such as BRT. Secondly, given the fact that the political party’s rotation takes place over elections, the policy had better be stable and continuous to be in line with the sustainable development of the local government in the 21st century. Third, in the developing metropolitan area political parties dramatic changes in major transport policies had better be avoided in order to save public funds.