Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'State governments'

This dissertation provides an analysis and evaluation of factors influencing states to enact inpatient health care transparency laws between 1971 and 2006 inclusive, using event history analysis. The primary research question investigates "What factors influence a state legislature to enact a health care transparency law?" To narrow the scope of study, I focus on factors influencing states to enact health care transparency laws to collect and publicly report inpatient data.

The Unified Model of State Policy Innovation, developed by F.S. Berry and W.D. Berry (1990, 1999), provides the framework for the study hypotheses and the analysis of inpatient health care transparency law enactments by states. The Unified Model of State Policy Innovation posits a unified explanation for state policy adoptions. The model unifies the internal determinants and regional diffusion approaches of analysis for state policy adoption.

This study tests eight hypotheses using event history analysis (EHA). EHA is an analytical technique that allows for the testing of a state government innovation theory that incorporates internal determinants and regional influences on state policy adoption. Although there are numerous methods to conduct event history analysis, this study uses the Cox proportional hazards model (also known as Cox regression). Cox regression is a popular method for studying time-to-event data for policy adoption and diffusion studies. This study's quantitative analysis provides support for legislative ideology and unified party control of state government acting as factors influencing inpatient health care transparency law enactments by states. Additionally, the health care crisis and neighbors variables were statistically significant, but in an opposite direction than predicted.

The findings of this research suggest that state adopters of an inpatient health care transparency law are more likely to enact an inpatient health care transparency law when the state government is increasing in liberalism and when unified political party control of the governor and the governorship of both houses of the state legislature is increasing.

To generate new insights into the enactment of inpatient health care transparency laws, I conduct a case study of a national health care data professional association using several techniques, including telephone interviews. The qualitative analysis provides support for professional associations and policy champions as diffusion agents for inpatient health care transparency law enactments by states.

This dissertation supports variables traditionally used in policy adoption research including legislative ideology and unified political party control in state government. However, it will be interesting to see whether internal determinants such as professional associations gain traction over the traditional regional diffusion influences such as states sharing borders as factors influencing state policy adoption. Meanwhile, as evidenced in this study, there continues to be support for a model incorporating both internal and regional influences to explain policy adoption by states. The theory of policy innovation and diffusion to predict the factors influencing the spread of policies and the use of Berry & Berry's (1990, 1999) Unified Model of State Policy Innovation prosper as their applicability to numerous public policy areas, including health care, are continually demonstrated. Similarly, event history analysis and specifically the Cox regression method continue to gain support as their value as analytical methods and appropriateness for use in public policy studies is repeatedly demonstrated.

The outlook for the future of the health care transparency movement looks promising. The health care transparency movement promotes improved access to information, patient empowerment, improved patient safety and quality of care, improved provider accountability, and lower health care costs. This movement is not a fad, but rather a permanent change being implemented in all health care settings across the United States. Improved health through reliable, accessible data and data-supported decisions is increasingly becoming the norm and less an idealistic scenario to be realized in the distant future.

Research has shown that the United States governments have spent a considerable amount of human and financial resources on transformational leadership initiatives, aimed at improving outcomes within the federal, state and local governments. Transformational leadership holds the answers to those seeking to develop and foster effective leadership traits that are common and valued in public sector organizations. Research has also shown that the concepts of transformational leadership are among the most popular and current approaches to understand effective leadership in organizations. This quantitative study is an attempt to compare the perception of transformational leadership traits from middle-level managers and supervisors across the three levels of government in the United States. The study used Avolio & Bass Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire Form 5X (MLQ) to assess the perceived transformational leadership traits demonstrated by leaders within the federal, state and local government. Transformational leadership comprises five dimensions, which are idealized influence attributes, idealized influence behavior, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. A total of 725 employees from federal, state and local government participated in the study. The hypotheses for the study were tested using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The study concluded that while there was no significant difference in the perceived transformational traits among the three levels of government in the United States, the results also indicated that there is need for a higher level of transformational leadership practices across the three levels of government in the United States.

This dissertation seeks to explain and understand why and how sub-State governments conduct their international relations with external actors, and how federal authorities and local governments coordinate or not in the definition and implementation of the national foreign policy.

It conducts a comprehensive and comparative study of the international relations of sub-State governments (IRSSG) in ten federal systems which are representative of all the regions of the world, stages of economic development and degree of consolidation of their democratic institutions (South Africa (Africa), India and Russia (Asia), Belgium and Germany (Europe), Canada, Mexico, and the United States (North America), Brazil and Argentina (South America), and Australia (Oceania)). It constructs a typology to measure and explain the IRSSG based on the domestic political institutions, especially the constitutional provisions relating foreign affairs and the intergovernmental mechanisms for foreign policy decision making and implementation. Based on the comparative analysis of the ten federations, an in-depth analysis of the Mexican case is done, explaining the variation in the IRSSG of its 32 federal units using economic, political and geographic variables to understand the amount and type of international activities and cooperation mechanisms. This analysis is complemented with the study of the 668 inter-institutional agreements signed by Mexican SSG, a survey applied to the public officials responsible of IRSSG in Mexico, and a case study of Mexico City’s international activities, in order to better understand the preferences, perceptions, capacities, and motivations of Mexican SSG in their internationalization.

There are ten main findings. First, there is a very important variation in the IRSSG and central-local coordination in foreign affairs worldwide. Second, there has been change in the types of central-local coordination during the last decades. Third, the most important causes to conduct IRSSG are globalization, regionalization, and decentralization. Fourth, the democratization variable is a relevant cause for increasing IRSSG in all countries with democracies in process of consolidation; however, it is not as important in the cases of consolidated democracies. Fifth, the predominant motive to conduct IRSSG is to promote local economic development; another important reason is the management border issues; cultural motivation is only relevant in cases where there is cultural variation between SSG. Sixth, institutional creation and building is the norm between SSG to coordinate their international relations; SSG have created ministries or agencies to conduct their international affairs, however, the size, resources, activities and level of consolidation varies considerably between cases. Seventh, there is considerable variation in the international activities conducted by SSG. Eighth, a rationalization of national foreign policy is observed, as the federal government allows SSG to conduct international affairs in those areas where they have powers. Ninth, all countries make a difference between foreign policy (considered an exclusive power and responsibility of the federal government, which includes high politics issues), and international relations or affairs (which include those areas in which SSG have powers, mostly low politics issues). Tenth, all inclusive cases are developed and consolidated parliamentary democracies; all the complementary cases are presidential systems with developing democracies in consolidation (with the exception of the United States); and, the exclusive types have federal systems constitutionally; however, in reality, they function in a very centralized way, practically nullifying federal institutions.

The objective of this paper is to explain differences in the economic performance of selected advanced capitalist countries between 1960 and 1980, such as rates of unemployment, level of inflation rates and economic growth rates, with the presence or absence of corporatist arrangements between major interest groups and the State, and with the strength of leftist parties in these nations.

In reviewing the literature, I have found basically two approaches to corporatism: ( 1) a 'structural' approach, which emphasizes sociological characteristics of the actors, especially labor unions; and (2) a 'functional' approach, which stresses elements of policy formation and implementation. Using factor analysis, I will create a corporatism score for each country.

According to Olson's 'Logic of Collective Action', nations with corporatist arrangements (large and centrally organized interest groups) should do better economically (in terms of growth rates) than nations without these arrangements. However, this application has been criticized, since economic growth would be a relatively automatic function of size and degree of organization of interest groups in a given nation, and would not leave any room for strategic considerations, which can be influenced by political parties.

Therefore, I will perform a LISREL analysis for two competing models: (1) an 'additive' model, where I compare the independent effects of corporatist arrangements and leftist parties on strike activity, unemployment rates, inflation rates, and GDP growth rates; and (2) a 'multiplicative' or conditional model, where the effects of corporatism on economic performance depend on the strength of left parties, and vice versa.

My findings do not strongly support the 'additive' model, whose policy implications for countries that wish to be more successful economically in terms of growth of GDP would be to pursue more corporatist strategies. With the notable exception of economic growth rates, on which the combined effects of corporatism and left parties have a strong, negative effect, the 'multiplicative' model is far more successful in explaining differences in economic performance among nations: I have found strong negative. indirect effects of this combined index on unemployment and inflation rates. An implication is that those countries with strong left parties and already existing corporatist arrangements could pursue strategies to extend corporatist arrangements with the hope of gain, while countries without strong left parties and corporatist arrangements might abstain from a policy of becoming more corporatist, since absence of strong labor-based parties might impede rather than promote economic growth. They might even try to reduce their extent of corporatism.