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Mouawad, Jamil. "The negotiated state : state-society relations in Lebanon." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2015. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.694061.
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Edigheji, Oghenemano Emmanuel. "The State, State-Society Relations and Developing Countries’ Economic Performance." Doctoral thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of sociology and political science, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:no:ntnu:diva-1779.
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Developing countries have undergone different development trajectories beginning in the 1970s -- a period that coincided with the current form of globalisation. Most of these countries have experienced low economic growth, poverty, high unemployment, diseases and inequalities. Few others have witnessed an unprecedented high rate of economic growth combined with qualitative improvements in the living standards of their people.
The initial and pervasive discourse about these diverse developmental outcomes was cast in terms of the former set of countries having gotten the “economic fundamentals” wrong while the latter set of countries got the “basic economic fundamentals” right. A key thrust of this conceptual framework was that the market is the most efficient allocator of resources and that integration into the global economy depends on the ability of countries to get the fundamental rights. Once again, there seems to be a resurgence of the Smithian invisible hand, where markets were seen as the best protector of the public good. Within this framework, the state becomes almost irrelevant to the process of national economic reforms and integration into the global economy – indeed unimportant to successful economic transformation and public welfare.
By the 1980s however, a school of revisionist institutionalists had emerged to reassert the centrality of the state to economic transformation. Broadly, this school argued that the ability of countries to take advantage of the opportunities flowing from economic globalisation depends on the state’s capacity. Consequently, a number of state capacity theories were advanced to explain variations in national economic outcomes among developing countries. Despite these various attempts, we lack a comprehensive state-capacity theory. Furthermore, most of these explanations relied on a hodgepodge of case studies, and few were comparative in nature. Although, these sorts of case studies are valuable for their mastery of details, most failed to operationalise how differences in state institutions lead to variations in national economic outcomes. The only existing study that has attempted to develop comparative indicators is limited to “Weberianness”, and by so doing excludes an important aspect of state autonomy. Worse, none of the studies provided measurable indicators for state-society relations as important domestic institutions. The discussion in this study is anchored in measurable indicators of state autonomy and (statesociety) synergy across developing countries. Furthermore, the study focuses on equitable growth rather than a narrower concern with growth that has been the major preoccupation of most studies.
This study develops a number of operational indicators for state institutions and state-society relations for the purposes of comparing developmental outcomes across countries. It develops and compares the institutional characteristics of twelve developing countries. On this basis, two main hypotheses were tested in this study, namely (a) that successful economic performance (that is high economic growth combined with low inequality) is highly associated with autonomous state institutions that are synergistically tied to its socio-economic partners, and (b) that a country’s institutional attributes determine its capacity to effectively engage with the globalisation process.
Through the pursuit and application of comparative indicators, the dissertation concludes that, indeed, countries with highly synergistic autonomous (Auto-Synergy) institutions have achieved egalitarianism and high economic growth. But contrary to a priori expectations, it also concludes that in rare circumstances, such as in countries with rich natural resource endowments and initial income and wealth distributions that altered the ownership pattern and production relations, countries with low or no levels of Auto-Synergy can still achieve equitable growth.
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Morcom, Shaun. "State-Society relations in postwar Russia 1945-1953." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.496710.
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Hannah, Joseph. "Local non-government organizations in Vietnam : development, civil society and state-society relations /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/5670.
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Paker, Hande. "Social aftershocks : rent seeking, state failure, and state-civil society relations in Turkey." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=85026.
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This research emerged from the belief that merely economic explanations of rent seeking were too narrow and an interdisciplinary approach was needed to understand historical structural factors that contribute to particularistic exchanges. Rent-seeking and particularistic ties are almost always explained from a strictly neoclassical perspective which tend to be reductionist approaches that fail to explain why some states will be rent-seeking while others will not. Moreover, other frameworks that analyze state-civil society interaction do so without taking into account particularistic state-civil society interaction. Thus, there is a need to explain such particularistic ties in a comparative institutional framework. My dissertation research was undertaken on two associations in Turkey, namely the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) and AKUT (a search and rescue team), in order to understand the dynamics of the relationship between a particularistic state and civil society associations. The TRC was chosen because it was involved in particularistic exchanges and functioned as an institution of the state, which meant that it partook in the state failure the state in Turkey faced in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in 1999. The Marmara earthquake was devastating not only physically in terms of the damage it caused, but also socially in terms of the extent of the failure of state institutions it exposed and the extent of criticisms it unleashed. The immediate chaos that ensued in the aftermath of the earthquake was marked by the "absence of the state". The failure of the state provoked an unprecedented civil reaction and mobilization. AKUT, the second case of the research, also became the focus of public attention, albeit for completely the opposite reason. It was revered for the successful rescue work it carried out in the earthquake while the TRC was severely criticized for its failure to deliver services.My dissertation research has shown that in cases of state failure, the state can only establish particularistic ties creating a multilevel chain system of particularized exchanges and fails to deliver public goods and services universally. Thus, the state co-opts a civil society organization into this chain system, demonstrated both by the TRC and AKUT. Furthermore, in cases of state failure, a civil society organization that has developed independently of the state becomes over-missionized with filling the gap created by state failure (AKUT), with public expectations and demands from AKUT far exceeding their self-defined goals and capabilities. Thus, ineffectiveness of the state does not translate into well-working civil society organizations. The absence of a capable state affects the nature of civil society organizations adversely. This finding is a direct contribution to the more general debate on the effectiveness of state institutions and the voluntary sector. More importantly, my research effectively shows that much of the dichotomous discussion of the state on the one hand, and civil society on the other, needs to be discarded. Such dichotomous thinking does not capture the complex interactions between the state and civil society organizations, as I have shown in the case of Turkey.
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Bienvenu, Fiacre. "Making African Civil Society Work: Assessing Conditions for Democratic State-Society Relations in Rwanda." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3822.
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This dissertation offers a single case in-depth analysis of factors precluding civil society from democratizing African polities. Synthesizing existing literature on Rwanda, I first undertake an historical search to trace the origins and qualities of civil society in the colonial era. This effort shows, however, that the central authority—commencing before the inception of the Republic in 1962—consistently organized civil society to buttress its activities, not to challenge them. Next, using ethnographic research, I challenge conventional economic and institutional accounts of civil society’s role in democratization. I show that institutional change and the economic clout of organized groups are marginal and transient in effect, and hence possess considerable limitations to democratize state and non-state-groups relations. I argue that the Genocide and its historical materials, social and economic precariousness, and neo-patrimonial power configurations have erected a prevailing political culture that still conditions how Rwanda’s state-society relations are imagined, realized, and challenged. Conversely, just as that political culture has lengthened the reach of the state into society, limiting the potential autonomy of civil society, it has also been the basis for rebuilding the society, restoring the state’s authority, and enacting major state-building oriented reforms. Consequently, for CSOs to induce a liberal democratic order in domestic politics, subsequent activism will require long-term strategic and organic investment of actors into the dispersed, parochial strands of democracy first, not into ongoing confrontational, yet fruitless, political warfare that hinders social capital formation and that civil society is not yet equipped to win.
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Chui, Hiu-kwan Cheryl, and 徐曉君. "Child welfare NGOs in China : implications for state-society relations." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10722/206334.
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The civil society perspective and the corporatist perspective have thus far dominated studies on state-society relations in the Chinese context. While these paradigms are insightful, their unidirectional and rigid natures may no longer adequately describe the complex nature of evolving state-society relations in China. As such, Joel S. Migdal’s State-in-Society framework is adopted as the theoretical premise of this study. Allowing for more fluidity, the State-in-Society theory serves as an alternative approach towards examining interactions between the state and nonprofits and between the state and society. The concept of social control within the framework is examined in further detail. Descriptive multiple case study was used as a method of inquiry, followed by thematic analysis.
Findings generally corroborate with the logic of social control, with compliance, participation and legitimacy being the incremental stages with which both nonprofits and the state seek to attain from each other and from the public. It was found that the state employ strategies including co-optation, procedural validation and hijacking scholarship to gain participation whereas moral reinforcement, rhetoric validation, and image consolidation are used to attain legitimacy. Ironically, nonprofits employ similar strategies in an attempt to change the state’s behaviour. Vilification and shaming are used to gain compliance, while resource appropriation and preemptive engagement are employed to attain participation. Moral reinforcement, image consolidation, individual credibility and persistence were found to be critical factors in bolstering organizational legitimacy. Furthermore, findings generally support the claim that nonprofits operating in rural areas enjoy greater autonomy than those active in urban areas. Even so, state-society relations is highly localized and therefore overgeneralization should be avoided.
In addition to contributing to the discourse on state-society relations, this study seeks to identify the role of nongovernmental organizations in orphan care provision in China. Along with content analysis and field observations, 10 in-depth cases are presented to illustrate existing obstacles pertaining to orphan care provision. Identified barriers are subsequently compartmentalized into five main categories: knowledge level, policy level, cultural level, organizational level, and state-NGO relations.
Given the distinct welfare system extant between rural and urban areas, findings indicate that orphans in rural areas are disproportionately disadvantaged compared to those residing in cities. This may be due to the relatively weak economic and human resources that often characterize rural China. One important observation is the growing tendency for local governments to regard nongovernmental organizations as critical service partners. However, the sustainability of this service model is questionable, especially when the state claims to carry primary responsibility over citizen welfare. The legal ambiguity concerning the registration and governance of nonprofits also jeopardizes future undertakings. Nevertheless, it is strategically and rationally sensible for local governments to ally with nonprofits insofar as there are deficiencies in the former’s capacity to deliver social services for disadvantaged children. This study concludes by discussing policy implications on China’s third sector and social development.published_or_final_version
Social Work and Social Administration
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy
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Paik, Woo Yeal. "Political participation, clientelism, and state-society relations in contemporary China." Diss., Restricted to subscribing institutions, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1925793231&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Amer, Rawya M. Tawfik. "State-society relations and regional role : comparing Egypt and South Africa." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:c00e6d89-06a1-40b5-b760-33965d32bcef.
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The study explains the regional roles of Egypt and South Africa in the last two decades by reference to the state’s relationship with society, a variable that has long been underplayed in international relations and foreign policy literature. It suggests that the different character of this relationship in each country has shaped the opportunities and constraints affecting the foreign policy choices of both the state and societal institutions in the two countries. The study adopts a cross-disciplinary approach using debates on state capacity and its relationship with regime type in comparative politics and political economy to understand and evaluate the two countries' foreign policies in their respective regions. After analysing the impact of state-society relationships on the regional role conceptions of the state and societal actors, the study compares the performance of these actors in two case studies; the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the case of Egypt and the Zimbabwean crisis in the case of South Africa. It concludes that although the role of each state in resolving its respective regional conflict has been less than effective, the post-apartheid democratic dispensation has provided opportunities for South African social forces to play roles that complemented, checked and balanced the role of the state, compared to their Egyptian counterparts. On the other hand, the soft authoritarian Egyptian state used its role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to maintain the international alliances that helped to sustain its domestic control. This constrained the state's foreign policy options. It made marketing peace as 'a strategic choice' and containing resistance movements the priorities of Egypt's intervention in the Palestinian issue. The co-optation of the Egyptian business community and the exclusion of Islamist forces by the state weakened their roles in conflict resolution, depriving the state of tools of effectiveness. In the case of South Africa, racial politics, the ANC's liberation movement psyche, and the domination of the presidency over foreign policy making have hindered the promotion of NEPAD's principles of democracy and respect for human rights in the case of Zimbabwe. However, South African civil society played a crucial role in supporting its Zimbabwean counterpart, holding the South African state accountable to its foreign policy principles and its democratic institutions, and intervening where the state's role was missing or insufficient.
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Mello, Brian Jason. "Evaluating social movement impacts : labor and the politics of state-society relations /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/10711.
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Mura, Marika Noemi. "The discontented farmer : state-society relations and food insecurity in rural Tanzania." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2015. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/80215/.
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In many developing countries, those people who work the land as food producers are also the ones who most suffer from food insecurity. While many studies look at the power dynamics within the food system at the global level and the role played by transnational companies in particular, this investigation starts at the local level to look into the reasons behind the high levels of food insecurity among farmers. Specifically, it analyses how the relationship between the domestic food producers and the state in Tanzania has affected food security in rural areas, in particular in farmers' households. The question it asks is: How has the relationship between the state and farmers shaped food security in rural Tanzania since its independence? A qualitative approach has been employed: farmer interviews were conducted in 8 villages located in two regions of Tanzania - Coast and Kilimanjaro - and supplemented by interviews with state officials and civil society representatives. The villages surveyed in the Coast region suffer from arid conditions and are isolated from the main road that connects Dar es Salaam to Morogoro, while the villages studied in the Kilimanjaro region are on the slopes of the mountains around the town of Usangi, far from the touristic and commercial centres of Moshi and Arusha. Through interviews with farmers in these villages, the qualitative approach of this research offers a contextualised insight into food insecurity, the problems of the agricultural sector and farmers' attitude towards the state and its policies. The interviews with state officials and representatives of civil society were employed to investigate both current agricultural policies and officials’ attitude towards small scale farmers. This thesis makes an empirical contribution to the literature on food security and state-farmer relationships. I argue that the mixture of agricultural policies implemented by the state over the years have done little to improve the livelihoods of small scale farmers that live in isolated rural areas. One of the reasons why this is so is that the policies are not framed around the needs of small scale farmers (despite them being the great majority of the farmers in the country), and hence are not welcomed positively by the communities. The results of this study identify a reciprocal distrust between the state and farmers as one of the main causes of policy failure and unsatisfactory improvements in food security in rural areas. On one side, state officials see small scale farmers as inefficient and wish for the agricultural sector to be driven by medium and large scale farmers. On the other side, most farmers tend to dismiss state officials' advice as inadequate to the reality of farming. In general, farmers see the state as a distant entity, with which they have little contact and which they do not trust. I argue that the controversial relationship between the Tanzanian state and farmers is historically grounded and has a direct link with food insecurity amongst farmers for two main reasons. First, it affects the framing, objectives and implementation of agricultural policies, which thus fail to support small scale farmers. Second, it hinders the ability of farmers to successfully cooperate and/or create a coherent farmers' movement to improve food security and address their challenges at state level. Farmers' discontent is perceived in their alienation to politics, and in their distrust towards a state that has historically not been able to address their challenges nor improve their condition.
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Omari, Namwaka. "Neoliberalism, democracy and transitional states, the changing role of state-society relations." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2001. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/MQ58367.pdf.
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Hsu, J. "State-society relations in China : a case study of migrant civil society organisations in Beijing and Shanghai." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.604688.
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This study examines the relationship between migrant civil society organisations (CSOs) in Beijing and Shanghai and the Chinese state. The research explores how stakeholders interact, and subsequent impact on state-society relations. With the Chinese state gradually withdrawing its support and finances across a number of social sectors, CSOs are appearing to be ever more important in bridging the shortfall. The emergence of migrant CSOs and the general diversification of Chinese society can be understood within China’s economic reforms, leading to unprecedented levels of internal migration. In the case of migrant CSOs, they have surfaced to tackle the diverse challenges migrant workers face, given the failure of central and local states to address their welfare. The state recognises its own shortcomings in the provision of welfare, and has therefore accepted the involvement of CSOs, but with trepidation due to their potential threat to social and political instability. The Beijing and Shanghai case-studies reveal the critical importance of looking at the local level when analysing state-society relationship. Fieldwork consisting of in-depth interviews with migrant CSOs’ project sites, are the foundations for the study. Fieldwork data reveal that the Chinese state is not a single entity, but manifests in various forms of new and old spaces including local and international CSOs, and the government’s mass organisations. Through the study of migrant CSOs, we see state actively co-opting these CSOs to meet its own agenda. However, we also see the CSOs adopting strategies in negotiating with different levels of the state in order to optimise their work.
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Algar-Faria, Gilberto John. "State-society relations and the international-local nexus in post-war Sri Lanka." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2018. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.743046.
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Penderis, Sharon. "State–society relations in the ‘South African developmental state’: integrated development planning and public participation at the local level." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/4548.
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Philosophiae Doctor - PhDIn various formulations, the idea of a developmental state has appeared in official discourse in South Africa since the advent of democratic government in 1994, albeit that its adoption as state policy has been slow, uneven and inconsistent with the original East Asian model. What has been a feature of developmental state thinking in South Africa is the fact that the concept has been so poorly articulated in policy that it has come to mean different things to different state actors and to the public. This has been aggravated by the fact that the idea of a strongly interventionist developmental state has run counter to the idea of a diminished state enunciated in various neo-liberal policies. Moreover, unlike the authoritarian and top-down East Asian model, the government envisages a South African developmental state which is infused with democratic content where citizens assist in the formulation of policy from below. In its emphasis on a bottom-up approach to policy formulation the South African model differs markedly from the conventional idea of a developmental state which is heavily reliant on a strong central bureaucracy to drive economic growth. In the South African model local government has been assigned a pivotal role in addressing persistent economic exclusion and uneven development. A central tenet of this approach is the need for local authorities to institutionalise participatory processes at grassroots level and devise effective structures and processes to facilitate citizen participation in local affairs. In the light of the above, this thesis sets out to examine the manner in which a system of developmental local government is being implemented in the City of Cape Town. Taking as a case study the township of Delft, the study looks at the systems and processes (and particularly the process of integrated development planning) set in place to advance citizen participation. It examines the extent to which the model is perceived to be achieving its goals from the perspective of political office bearers, officials from different spheres of government and residents. The research found that notwithstanding an enabling legislative and policy framework, there is little comprehension of, or interest, in the idea of developmental local government and municipal officials largely pay lip service to participatory processes which are carried out in a top-down fashion and which neither empower local residents nor enhance their welfare. It also concluded that developmental government, in its present form, is contributing little to the establishment of a national developmental state.
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Payes, Shany. "Palestinian NGOs in Israel : civil society and the development of state-minority relations, 1976-1999." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.249868.
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Peláez, Tortosa Antonio J. "State-society relations and grassroots democracy in rural Vietnam : institutional adaptation and limited gramscian hegemony." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2009. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/3778/.
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Toni, Fabiano. "State-society relations on the agricultural frontier the struggle for credit in the Transamazônica region /." [Florida] : State University System of Florida, 1999. http://etd.fcla.edu/etd/uf/1999/amg2051/toni%5Ff.pdf.
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Georgeou, Nichole. "Tense relations the tradition of Hōshi and emergence of Borantia in Japan /." Access electronically, 2006. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20060926.101344/index.html.
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Salloukh, Bassel Fawzi. "Organizing politics in the Arab world : state-society relations and foreign policy choices in Jordan and Syria." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36789.
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Why do some regimes enjoy more autonomy than others when taking foreign policy and alignment choices? How does the organization of state-society relations constrain or enable a regime's freedom to take foreign policy and alignment choices? What explains the overlap between the domestic and external security spheres of some states, but not others? Finally, how do the foreign policy and alignment choices of some regimes have domestic political origins, uses, and implications?This study explores these theoretical questions through a comparative examination of the impact of the organization of state-society relations (the independent variable) on regime autonomy in taking foreign policy and alignment choices (the dependent variable) in King Hussein's Jordan and Hafiz al-Asad's Syria. In contrast to Jordan's overlapping security terrains, and the domestic political origins, uses, and implications of many of the Hashemite regime's foreign policy and alignment choices, in Asad's Syria these choices are responses to shifts in the external geopolitical environment. This study offers an explanation of the discrepancy between the Syrian regime's ability to ignore domestic constraints on foreign policy and alignment choices, due to its preoccupation with external sources of threat, compared to its Jordanian counterpart's inability to do so and, consequently, its preoccupation on many occasions with strictly domestic sources of threat.
This study bridges comparative politics and international relations theorizing, inviting a methodological shift away from the hitherto dominant neorealist tendency in the latter field, which anchors foreign policy and alignment choices in primarily external considerations and objectives. Borrowing from the literature on corporatism, populism, and historical institutionalism, this study also supplies a more rigorous methodology for investigating the relationship between the domestic structures of nondemocratic states and their foreign policy and alignment choices. More than a revision of neorealist theorizing, and in contrast to idiosyncratic, domestic structure, or constructivist approaches to the study of state behavior, this study contends that a contextual and historical analysis of the organization of state-society relations explains why regime autonomy to take foreign policy and alignment choices may be constrained in some states but not in others. Furthermore, and against neorealism's insistence on the external origins of foreign policy and alignment choices, this study also argues that on many occasions these choices have domestic political origins, uses, and implications. The implications of these conclusions on the study of Arab politics, and on the quest for a first-cut theory of state behavior, are also assessed.
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Foran, Tira. "Rivers of contention : Pak Mun Dam, electricity planning, and state-society relations in Thailand, 1932-2004." Connect to full text, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1984.
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PhDThis study investigates how actions – especially narratives and claims – of civil society advocates influenced electricity generation planning and hydropower project implementation, in the context of a democratising authoritarian state. To pursue this research agenda, I use a critical realist philosophy of science to ground a conceptual framework whose fundamental components consist of institutions, interests, and discourses. The research presents three case studies from Thailand, a nation-state with distinct authoritarian legacies, as well as significant economic and political dynamism in the late 20th century. The cases step from macro to micro levels of analysis: (1) Electricity generation planning: an overview and critique of the social construction of peak power demand and supply options in Thailand, 1960s–2004. I focus on the rise of energy conservation advocacy in the early 1990s, and the rise of more confrontational energy activism in the late 1990s; (2) Pak Mun Dam: contention between EGAT, anti-dam villagers, and other state and civil society actors, 1989–2003; (3) Pak Mun Dam: analysis of how knowledge discourses shaped debates over fisheries and local livelihoods in the lower Mun river basin, 1999–2004. I pursue these cases in the larger context of Thai state–society relations, 1932–early 2000s: from the Khana Ratsadorn (People’s Party) and its founders’ increasingly authoritarian struggles to shape the state; through to the rise of civil society in the Indochina-war era; through the emergence of parliamentary politics and NGO evolution in the 1980s and early 1990s; to the Thai Rak Thai “money politics” party that emerged in 1998. Specific research questions focus on patterns and outcomes of state–society interaction, the role of lay and expert knowledge discourses in structuring conflict, and plausible causal connections between outcomes and concepts used in the conceptual framework. The study is based on fieldwork conducted between 2001 and 2005, with 18 months of intensive work concentrated in 2002 and 2004. Recurrent procedures consisted of collecting policy narratives and arguments and re-constructing actors’ interests (including those of leaders in organizations) via participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis. The thesis argues that anti-dam advocates influenced project implementation practices at Pak Mun Dam by forming social change networks, gaining contingent recognition as new political actors. Through innovative and disruptive action, through claims for transparency and justice, through mass performances of worthiness, unity, and commitment, and through the production of local knowledge, they helped set agendas. They triggered elite intervention, as well as reactive counter-mobilization and occasional violence. The escalation of uncertainty from unintended outcomes challenged elites – aided by deliberative exchanges – to reconsider unfavourable decisions, to reconsider their preferences, and to make concessions. At the same time, a number of events made the Assembly of the Poor, the main anti-dam movement organization, vulnerable to destabilizing action at the local and national levels. These include: the formation of competitive organizations in the lower Mun basin; complex and intractable issues (such as multiple rounds of compensation); and inability to take credit for championing the interests of vulnerable small farmers. Destabilizing interactions occurred particularly in the restricted media space of the post-financial and economic crisis years. Populist platforms put forward by Thai Rak Thai and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra pre-empted the AOP’s influence. Sustainable energy advocates influenced practices of power system planning by teaching new techniques of energy conservation, and diffusing new norms. In the recent period, however, as some of them engaged in more contentious interaction, such as intervening in conflicts over new coal and hydroelectric power plants (in southern Thailand and Laos respectively) they disrupted dominant rationalities, and found themselves confronting some of the same core practices of a power-wielding bureaucracy and an authoritarian state, namely rhetorical strategies that police the boundaries of policy-relevant knowledge. The thesis, intended to contribute to social science methodology and theory, concludes with a critical appraisal of the conceptual framework. I suggest new research agendas for analysts interested in mechanisms of civil society advocacy in the context of democratising states.
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Cheung, K. C. C. "Institutions, state-society relations, and the development of the information technology industry : Hong Kong and Singapore." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.597591.
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The institutions on which this project focuses are state institutions, namely, the organisation of power of the state and the governing regime and social institutions, namely the shared social meanings and perceptions. The main research question is how such state-society relations impact on the development trajectory of the IT industry of a place. It introduces a combined use of the historical and sociological institutional approaches to analyse the findings from two empirical case studies, namely, the development of the IT industry of Hong Kong and Singapore. These two city-states are chosen owing to their similarities in cultural and colonial backgrounds and their stark differences in political and social institutions.106 in-depth interviews with IT policy makers, firm owners, practitioners and other important IT players have been conducted in Hong Kong and Singapore in order to gauge the interaction between institutions and actors in the state and society. My case studies illustrate how social and state actors respond to the state and social institutions; and illuminates how such responses can affect their attitudes at work. The findings of these case studies suggest these actors’ attitudes can directly impact on the making of IT policy and influence the development path of the IT industry. This dissertation proposes the following argument. State institutions can directly determine the state autonomy and capacity to reallocate financial and human resources in industrial development and the effectiveness of the IT industrial policy. These state institutions also engender certain kinds of social institutional environments and shape the nature of the state-society relations. Such state-society relations influence actors’ innovative behaviour at work which ultimately conditions the development trajectory of the IT industry of a place.
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Lu, Yiyi. "The functioning and dysfunctioning of NGOs in transitional China : change and continuity in state-society relations." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2005. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1801/.
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Despite the rapid development of NGOs in China in the last two decades and the growing interest in them in both academic and policy circles, research on Chinese NGOs has suffered from a lack of both detailed qualitative data and sophisticated analytical frameworks. The present thesis is an attempt to address both gaps in existing research. It draws on a large amount of information generated by in-depth case studies of NGOs, and it replaces the state-versus-society dichotomous framework that has underpinned most existing studies of Chinese NGOs with a new approach that disaggregates both the "state" and "society" and emphasizes their inter-penetration. The thesis challenges a number of existing analyses of Chinese NGOs. Contrary to common belief that Chinese NGOs lack autonomy from the state, it argues that many of them have in fact enjoyed a remarkable degree of de facto autonomy. Whilst Chinese NGOs are widely perceived as lacking many basic skills that urgently need to be developed by means of organizational capacity building programmes, the thesis suggests that many NGOs already possess sophisticated skills which may be different from those taught by standard NGO training programmes but which are well suited to the specific institutional context of transitional China. The thesis looks at how Chinese NGOs operate in this context and examines the key factors that have limited their usefulness both as service providers and as advocates for vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society. It concludes with some reflections on the evolution of state-society relations in post-reform China as revealed by this study of NGOs. It summarizes change and continuity in state-society relations in the notion of dependent autonomy. This means that social forces have gained substantial autonomy from the state, but they continue to depend on the state for various vital support and resources.
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Kamra, Lipika. "The politics of counterinsurgency and statemaking in modern India." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:90864e1c-250a-4fa6-8749-e9b78c939542.
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This thesis undertakes a study of the modern state in India in the context of counterinsurgency. Through a combination of ethnographic and historical methods, it explores the processes and practices of state formation and legitimacy-building in an erstwhile Maoist guerrilla zone of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. The colonial and postcolonial histories of this forested region, known popularly as the Jungle Mahals, are punctuated by moments of violent conflict and regime-change. These moments of rupture have tended to periodically reorder the relationships between the modern state and its ordinary subjects. Accordingly, the thesis reconstructs a trajectory of state-society relations in the Jungle Mahals from the early colonial era, when East India Company officials created a modern state apparatus to deal with rural rebellions, to the present, when the Indian government has pursued a 'development' agenda to wean ordinary people away from Maoist rebels. I show that periods of insurgency and counterinsurgency ought to be recognised as critical junctures in the history of the modern state in frontier regions such as the Jungle Mahals. The modern state is made and remade in the course of counterinsurgency as both state and rural society are reordered in tandem from above and below. Hence, I make a case for studying the state, understood as both an idea and a set of material practices, from 'within', that is, as emerging through the mediation of actors who represent the state and ordinary villagers in my fieldsites. Furthermore, through an exploration of ordinary villagers' responses to counterinsurgency in the Jungle Mahals, this thesis argues that popular responses to counterinsurgency cannot be explained through the binaries of resistance and complicity. In other words, it is necessary to examine the complex textures of people's lives and subjectivities vis-à-vis the state during and after counterinsurgencies in order to appreciate how statemaking in such circumstances, far from being a top-down imposition on hapless subjects, emerges from below as well.
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Snape, Holly Amelia. "The evolution of a tortuous relationship : the transformation of Chinese state-society relations explored through grassroots NGOS." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.702273.
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This thesis examines the ongoing transformation of China's state-society relationship by exploring the changing roles of, and relationships between, the state and grassroots NGOs. It is based on findings from over a year of empirical research undertaken at grassroots NGOs; thorough readings of core Party and government documents to investigate changes in attitudes from the top; and my subsequent work with many of these social actors over the years after my initial research period, adding a temporal dimension (2011-2015) to the study. Extended periods of participant observation allowed me to examine the finest details of the work of grassroots NGOs and their relationships with local state bodies, enabling me to develop an understanding of 'the quiet approach', which, I argue, is important in shaping the transformation of the state-society relationship. Analysis of past and recent state documents and institutions helped me to frame the behaviour of NGOs within the macro context of the transforming attitude of the state towards social organizing and society governing society. The temporal dimension was crucial in discerning the wave-like fluctuations that I found to characterize the transformation of the state-society relationship. Existing research often adopts either a bottom-up approach, viewing change as being created by social forces, or a top-down approach, viewing state forces as limiting, controlling and manipulating change. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the transformation" of the state-society relationship is a combination of these forces reacting to and engaging with one another: as state attitudes fluctuate, NGOs can respond by tempering their behaviour; by tempering their behaviour and laying low during times of 'down-waves' they incrementally build their own capacity, making themselves increasingly necessary to the state; through acting' quietly' they encourage the state to trust them; and as the state trusts and needs them more, NGOs become more irreversibly integrated into service provision and governance.
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Tursic, Kelly E. "China’s Legal Environment for Domestic NGOs: Standardized Policies for Greater Party-State Control over Civil Society." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1622156270891621.
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Macaulay, Fiona. "Private Conflicts, Public Powers: Domestic Violence in the Courts in Latin America." Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/2936.
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NoDuring the last two decades the judiciary has come to play an increasingly important political role in Latin America. Constitutional courts and supreme courts are more active in counterbalancing executive and legislative power than ever before. At the same time, the lack of effective citizenship rights has prompted ordinary people to press their claims and secure their rights through the courts. This collection of essays analyzes the diverse manifestations of the judicialization of politics in contemporary Latin America, assessing their positive and negative consequences for state-society relations, the rule of law, and democratic governance in the region. With individual chapters exploring Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, it advances a comparative framework for thinking about the nature of the judicialization of politics within contemporary Latin American democracies.
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Gallagher, Stephen J. "State-society relations and the design and implementation of public policy : an application of the state-centered paradigm to a case study of the National Energy Program." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74282.
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The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the relative influence of state and societal actors on public policy and, specifically, to determine the potential for state autonomy in Canada. To advance this project, two 'paradigms' of state-society relations are developed from an analysis of a range of contending theories of state-society relations. These include Eric Nordlinger's state autonomy theory, elitism, pluralism, and Marxism. The paradigms are then applied to a case study of the design and implementation of the petroleum related elements of the National Energy Program. We conclude that the Canadian state can demonstrate a significant degree of autonomy from societal influence using various strategies and resources which are generally unavailable to societal actors. The specific findings of our case study are that in the development and implementation of the NEP the greatest impediments on the federal government's autonomy arose, not from business interests or public pressure, but from the opposition of other state actors and the impact of market forces and international economic conditions.
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Almutairi, Faris Muteb. "RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES TOWARD SOCIAL MODERNIZATION AND THEIR IMPACT ON STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS IN SAUDI ARABIA FROM THE 1920s TO THE 1970s." OpenSIUC, 2019. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dissertations/1718.
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This study examines the religious discourse produced by ulama and preachers toward social modernization in Saudi Arabia and how it has affected the relationship between the state and citizens. The Saudi ulama have historically supported the state’s political legitimacy while simultaneously resisting state modernization projects that would diminish their own authority. The ulama relied on two religious precepts to resist such projects: “loyalty and enmity” and the “propagation of virtue and prevention of vice.” These principles were challenged by the discovery of oil, which led to urbanization, changes in lifestyle, and a desire to adopt modern technology and ideas to be able to interact with the international community. To examine religious discourse regarding modernity and how it influenced state-society relations, this study focuses on three state modernization projects: forging diplomatic relations with non-Muslim countries, reforming public education, and adopting modern mass media. Drawing data from available archival and local sources, this study covers the period from the 1920s to the 1970s.
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Treviño, González Mónica. "Race, hegemony, mobilisation : what roles for the state and for civil society? : the transformation of racial politics in Brazil." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=102219.
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An enduring puzzle of race relations in Brazil is that for most of the 20th century this topic was conspicuously absent from politics, in spite of deep-rooted inequalities between whites and non-whites. The ideology of "racial democracy" effectively depoliticised the issue until the late 1990s, when a wide-ranging programme of affirmative action policies for Afro-Brazilians was implemented.Beginning with the idea that the myth of racial democracy functioned as an ideological hegemony in the Gramscian sense, this dissertation seeks to explain the process through which public policies ceased to reflect this hegemonic ideology, and instead began to represent a counterhegemonic project. Contrary to traditional Gramscian analysis, I argue that a counterhegemonic project can be defended not only by civil society actors, but also by the state, and that the relative strength of counterhegemonic actors is often influenced by transnational factors. Indeed, I argue that when civil society actors lack the necessary strength to reach a leadership position in civil society that can counter the hegemonic order, a counterhegemonic confluence of civil society, state and transnational actors can produce this change.
An analysis of the evolution of racial politics in Brazil since the return of democratic rule in the 1980s demonstrates that such a confluence did indeed take place in Brazil, culminating at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001. A study of the implementation of admissions quotas for Afro-Brazilians in the state universities of Rio de Janeiro serves to confirm the importance of the contribution of the state and transnational actors, as well as to examine the limits of the confluence.
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Owen, Catherine Anne May. "'Obshchestvennyi Kontrol' [public scrutiny] from discourse to action in contemporary Russia : the emergence of authoritarian neoliberal governance." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/15887.
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This thesis explores the emergence and proliferation of public consultative bodies (PCBs) in contemporary Russia. Created by the government and regulated by law, PCBs are formal groups of NGO leaders, academics, journalists, entrepreneurs and public figures selected by the state, that perform advisory, monitory and support functions to government departments and individuals at federal, regional and municipal levels. The concept of obshchestvennyi kontrol’ (public scrutiny) is employed by Kremlin to refer to the dual activities of oversight and assistance, which PCBs are intended to enact. First appearing ten years ago with the foundation of the Federal Public Chamber in 2004, there are now tens of thousands of PCBs in operation across the country. This thesis constitutes the first systematic analysis of PCBs in English. It uses a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach in order to explore the extent to which the portrayal of PCBs in government discourse corresponds to the practices enacted through these institutions in three regional case studies of Moscow, St Petersburg and Samara. It finds that although PCBs are presented by federal and regional leaders as means for citizens merely to assist the authorities in the performance of tasks decided by the state, in practice PCBs can enable citizens modestly to influence policy outcomes and occasionally to shape public agendas. They therefore cannot be dismissed as mere ‘window dressing’ for the authorities. The thesis shows that PCBs were created as part of the market reform of the Soviet-era public sector, in which processes of privatisation, outsourcing and decentralisation reduced the state’s ability to make public policy without input from domestic non-state actors. It argues that the limited participation in governance afforded to citizens through PCBs exemplifies practices of ‘authoritarian neoliberal governance’, a concept that captures the attempts by the state to control policy outcomes produced through new public participatory mechanisms arising from the marketization of state bureaucracy. Although the thesis focuses on the case of Russia, the concept of ‘authoritarian neoliberal governance’ raises the question of the existence of commensurable mechanisms in other non-democratic polities.
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Gharabaghi, Kiaras. "A question of trust?, state-society relations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with a case study of Lithuania, 1991-1997." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0022/NQ49260.pdf.
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Ponomariov, Alexander [Verfasser]. "The Visible Religion : The Russian Orthodox Church and her Relations with State and Society in Post-Soviet Canon Law (1992–2015) / Alexander Ponomariov." Frankfurt a.M. : Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2017. http://d-nb.info/1144802911/34.
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Martins, Ana Adelaide. "Relações estado-sociedade e políticas de saúde: considerações sobre os conceitos de esfera pública, fundo público e padrão de financiamento das instituições de saúde, contexto sócio-histórico de sua emergência e relevância no estudo da reforma sanitária brasileira." Universidade de São Paulo, 1995. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/6/6136/tde-01022018-165536/.
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A presente Tese oferece uma proposta teórico-metodológica para o estudo da Reforma Sanitária Brasileira e seus desdobramentos posteriores, baseada num esquema conceitual de onde derivam três categorias de análise - a de Esfera Pública, a de Fundo Público e a de Padrão de Financiamento Público - referidas aos determinantes sociais, econômicos e políticos que, interativamente, afetam as políticas sociais. Tem origem na constatação de que a VIII Conferência Nacional de Saúde propõe, e a Constituição de 1988 consagra, um conceito eminentemente político de Saúde, pelo qual todas as ações de Saúde são consideradas \"públicas\", por sua relevância social e sua participação no interesse geral, regidas por uma normatividade socialmente definida e sujeitas ao controle social institucionalizado. Desse modo, tornando a Saúde Pública o âmbito interinstitucional, multidisciplinar e popular das discussões e decisões sobre os processos saúde/doença da população - o que significa a definição de um mais amplo espaço para a Saúde Pública no interior da Esfera Pública. A aceitação generalizada das propostas da Reforma Sanitária, no período pré-Constituinte e na Constituinte, liga-se ao contexto da transição para a democracia, quando era reconhecida a falência do Padrão de Financiamento das políticas sociais adotado no regime militar, abrindo-se então espaço para proposições que visavam a um Padrão de Financiamento mais próximo do adotado na social-democracia. Entretanto, o redirecionamento do Fundo Público, pressuposto principal de viabilidade das atividades sociais e, principalmente, das mudanças constitucionais aprovadas, tem encontrado resistências e apresentado recuos, que não apenas recuperam os mecanismos viciados e distorcidos de financiamento, como têm desfigurado o modelo de Sistema único de Saúde proposto na Reforma Sanitária, tornando-o numa espécie de caricatura perversa.The present Thesis offers a theoretical-methodological proposition for the study of the Brazilian Health Care Reform and its later developments. It is based upon a conceptual scheme from which three categories of analyses derive - that of the Public Sphere of Ation, that of Public Fund and that of Public Financing Pattern- referred to the social, economic ando political determinants, which interactively affect the social politics. It comes from the verification that the National Health Conference proposes, and the 1988 Constitution establishes, an eminently political concept of Public Health. By this political concept all health actions are considered \"public\", in way of their social relevance and their participation in the general interest. And so, they must be ruled by a socially defined \"normativeness\", and subject to the institutionalized social control. So turning Public Health into the interinstitucional, multidiscipline and popular ambit of discussions and decisions about health/illness pqpulations processes. And it means the definition of a wider space for Public Health into Public Sphere. The generalized acceptance of the Health Care Reform propositions in the period prior of the Constituent Assembly performance, and in the working period of the Constituent Assembly, is connected to the context of the transition to democracy. In this context the failure of the Public Financing Pattern of social politics adopted in the military regime was recognized. Then a space for propositions that aimed at a Financing Pattern closer to the used in the social-democracy was opening. And so the Public Fund - the main pressuposition of feasibility of the social activities, and especially of the approved constitutional changes, must be directed to the popular interest. However this redirecting of Public Fund has found resistences and presented setbacks, which not only recover the vitiated and distorted financing mechanisms, but have also disfigured the model of the Single Health System proposed in the Health Care Reform, turning it into a kind of perverse caricature.
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Zhu, Jiangang. "Guo yu jia zhi jian Shanghai lin li de shi min tuan ti yu she qu yun dong de min zu zhi = Between the family and the state : an ethnography of the civil associations and community movements in a Shanghai lilong neighborhood /." online access from Digital dissertation consortium, 2002. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?3066642.
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Laitinen, Sara. "Idéburen välfärd: gemensam samverkan eller hegemonisk styrning? : En kvalitativ fallstudie av idéburet offentligt partnerskap." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Malmö högskola, Institutionen för globala politiska studier (GPS), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-42899.
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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between state and civil society. The last decades there has been major changes across state, market and civil society. During these changes, civil society has become an important part of the welfare service. In this study an idea-driven public partnership (IOP) in Malmö is examine. My theoretical starting point is Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, integral state, consent-coercion and Jonathan Davies concept of creeping managerialism. Using interviews and document studies I am able to deepen the understanding of state-civil society relationships. The result of the analysis shows that the case study is an example of when civil society is compliant to the hegemonic order. This can be understood on the basis that civil society is also part of the hegemonic order. The strong actors in civil society, together with the state and capital, are all part of the historical bloc that governs society. Lastly, the study indicates managerialism in the partnership.
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Fu, Diana. "Flexible repression : engineering control and contention in authoritarian China." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:28de652f-66e9-4bd7-9c03-af499249d8cd.
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How do authoritarian stales foster civil society growth while keeping unruly organizations in line? This governance dilemma dogs every state that attempts to modernize by permitting civil society to pluralize while minding its potential to stir up restive social forces. This dissertation's main finding is that the Chinese party state the world's largest and arguably the most resilient authoritarian regime-has engineered a flexible institution of state control in which the "rules of the game" arc created, disseminated, and enforced outside of institutionalized channels. This dissertation demonstrates how the coercive apparatus improvises in an erratic manner, unfettered by accountability mechanisms. The regime does not necessarily pull the levers of hard control mechanisms-the tanks, guns, and tear gas-whenever dissenters cross a line of political acceptability. Instead, in keeping with its decentralized political system and its tradition of experimental policy-making, the Chinese state continually remakes the rules of the game which keeps potential rabble-rousers on their toes. Although the regulatory skeleton of state corporatism remains intact, flexible repression is the informal institution-the set of rules and procedures-that structures state-civil society interactions. Specifically, this institution is made up of three key practices: a) decentralization b) ad-hoc deployment c) mixed control strategies. These three practices manifest in two concrete strategies used to govern aboveground and underground civil society: fragmented coercion and controlled competition. Flexible repression enables the Chinese party-state to exploit the advantages of a flourishing third sector while curtailing its threatening potential. Through participant observation, interviews, and comparative case studies of aboveground and underground independent labor organizations, this dissertation accomplishes three goals. First, it identifies the within-country variation in state control strategies over civil society, which includes the above-ground sector as well as the underground sector of ostensibly banned organizations. Secondly, it traces the patterns of interactions between the state and civil society, generating hypotheses about the mechanisms of change. Finally, it identifies new concepts relevant for studying organized contention in authoritarian regime.. .... Overall, this dissertation contributes to the study of authoritarian state control and civil society contention, with an emphasis on the nexus between the two.
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Delgado, Caroline. "In/security in context : an inquiry into the relational and contextual dimensions of in/security within the Colombian peace process." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2018. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/insecurity-in-context-an-inquiry-into-the-relational-and-contextual-dimensions-of-insecurity-within-the-colombian-peace-process(42a801b1-5035-423f-a782-c63daf89e0d1).html.
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This research is concerned with how in/security is understood and the implications of contested meanings of in/security. The basic premise of this thesis is that in/security in itself has no meaning and thus cannot exist in isolation. Instead, in/security is always defined in relation to something or someone. How we understand in/security derives from the contexts we navigate and the identities we construct. An inquiry into in/security therefore demands incorporating a multiplicity of narratives and discussing these in relation to each other. While scholars have called for a greater emphasis on exploring in/security in marginal sites, I argue that accounts from the margins must not be at the exclusion of other more dominant narratives. Such analysis â placing the elite/margin, included/excluded, powerful/weak â in the same framework in order to produce a relational account of in/security is largely missing. This thesis sets out to provide a rich and detailed understanding of the everyday complexities of in/security. I propose a framework for capturing relational and contextual dimensions of in/security, and the implication of contested meanings of in/security understandings. Through an in-depth case study in the context of the transitions towards a post-conflict period in Colombia, following five decades of armed conflict, I inquired into in/security understandings at the margins in relation to the centre. The margins were represented by conflict-affected communities whereas the centre was represented by the Colombian government and key security sector institutions. The research found several relational dimensions of in/security understandings between the state- and the marginalized community-levels. Moreover, contextual and identity factors had a significant impact on how in/security was spoken about and what was spoken of. Through the framework, it was possible to see in continuum the way deeply ingrained understandings of in/security reproduce violence as the government seeks to transition the country into a post-conflict period following five decades of armed conflict. The research, through a detailed empirical case study, supports the view that in/security is relational and derivative of context and with ties to identity. It contributes to further our understandings of in/security at three distinct levels. At the theoretical level, the research builds upon existing literature in the field of security studies to advance an enhanced understanding of the relational and contextual dimensions of in/security, the contested meanings of in/security and the implications thereof. Methodologically, it proposes an alternative framework to capture the relational dimensions through shifting the problem formulation from a traditional focus on who is to be secured from what threats to how in/security is understood by different people/communities in different contexts. Empirically, it contributes to an off-centred understanding of in/security dynamics in the official transitions into the post-conflict period in Colombia. Through its empirical evidence it has the potential to offer an important contribution to the analysis of post-conflict transitions more generally.
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Scanlon, Teague. "Facilitating Experience through Fabrication and Blue Biophilic Design." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2019. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/214.
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The way humans currently interact with the atmosphere and oceans around us is unsustainable, with pollution entering our waters faster than we are collecting it, and the sea level rising faster than we are building coastal barriers to protect our current infrastructure. This thesis explores the common methodology for communicating climate change and its future effects, and highlights an opportunity for using infrastructure to facilitate interaction with the urban-aquatic interface. By promoting experiential contact with the natural spaces that are most at risk to climate change’s impacts, a sense of stewardship for those spaces will spur behavioral change and activism. On a local level, this thesis explores the history of public access to San Onofre State Beach, and the possibility for the restriction of that access in 2021. Using a 3D topographic and bathymetric model of San Onofre State Beach, I attempt to highlight the beauty of the undeveloped California coastline, and the benefits of keeping this 6.5-mile coastline within the State Parks system.
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Henda, Mongi Stanley. "Arms control and disarmament in Southern Africa: An assessment of civil society and state responses in Mozambique 1995 – 2003." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/4264.
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Thesis (MA (Political Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis aims to ascertain the level of success which civil society and state actors have had in dealing with issues of arms control and disarmament in the SADC region during the post- Cold War era. The main research question shall be divided into two key questions, the first being: How successful have states been in managing arms control and disarmament in the SADC region? The second question being: How successful has civil society been in managing arms control and disarmament in the SADC region? The study is therefore an evaluative study and shall be focused on the case study of Mozambique. Two arms control processes shall be evaluated in this regard. First is the “Transforming weapons into Ploughshares” or TAE project which is a civil society campaign aimed at minimizing the harsh impacts that Small Arms and Light Weapons have on Mozambican society. The demarcated time period for this project shall be 1995-2003. Second is state driven operation between South African and Mozambican police aimed at locating and destroying arms caches responsible for fuelling the illicit trade in light arms between the two countries. This project was known as Operation Rachel and shall be evaluated from the period of 1995-2001. Through evaluating these two projects, the study shall seek to make the point that in terms of arms control in post-conflict developing states, there is a role for both state and civil societies. The role of civil society organizations can be seen as one of identifying security threats, raising public awareness and democratizing security issues such as arms control so that society at large becomes active in negating the problem. The role of the state on the other hand is to live up to its duties as the chief provider of security for the designated population within the state’s territorial boundary. Arms control in Mozambique and in the SADC region in general has been mediocre at best since as shall be demonstrated, states are far too weak to offer any meaningful protection to citizens and secondly civil society organizations which have taken it upon themselves to offer this kind of protection are just not well resourced enough to undertake state responsibilities. Thus the key recommendation of this study is that Southern African states invariably need to build up their capacities. Light weapons have spread uncontrollably throughout the region because weak and fractured states could not contain the problem and continue struggling to manage a multitude of security threats. It is therefore up to civil society organizations to build strong societies which can demand stronger state action.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis se doel is om vas te stel tot watter mate die burgerlike samelewing en Staat akteurs sukses behaal het in terme van wapenbeheer en ontwapening in die Suider-Afrikaanse Ontwikkelings Gemeenskap (SAOG) streek na die koue oorlog. Die hoof navorsings vraag sal in twee kern vrae verdeel word, Die eerste vraag is: Hoeveel sukses het die burgerlike samelewing in die SAOG streek gehad met die bestuur van wapenbeheer en ontwapening? Die tweede vraag is: hoeveel sukses het Staat akteurs in die SAOG streek gehad met die bestuur van wapenbeheer en ontwapening? Hierdie studie is dus ʼn evaluerende studie en sal op Mosambiek fokus as gevalle-studie. Twee wapenbeheer prosesse sal in hierdie tesis evalueer word. Eerste, is die “Transforming Weapons into Ploughshares” of “TAE” projek wat ʼn burgerlike samelewings veldtog is, wat hom ten doel gestel het om die negatiewe impak van ligte-wapens op Mosambiekse samelewing te verminder. Die afgebakende tydperk vir hierdie studie sal 1995-2003 wees. Die tweede proses is die staat-gedrewe operasie tussen die Suid-Afrikaanse en Mosambiekse polisie. Die doel van hierdie projek was om die wapen-opslagplekke wat verantwoordelik is vir die onwettige handel in wapens tussen die twee lande te identifiseer en dienooreenkomstig te verwoes. Hierdie was bekend as “Operation Rachel” en sal tussen 1995-2001 evalueer word. Duur die evaluering van hierdie twee projekte sal die studie probeer om die punt te maak dat daar ʼn rol is vir beide die burgerlike samelewing en die staat in terme van wapenbeheer in post-konflik, ontwikkelende lande. Die rol van burgerlike samelewing organisasies kan beskou word as die identifisering van bedreigings wat veiligheid en sekuriteit kan raak, om bewustheid te kweek en die demokratisering van veiligheid en sekuriteit kwessies soos wapenbeheer. Die rol van die staat is om hulle plig te vervul as die ‘hoof verskaffer’ van sekuriteit vir die bevolking binne die staat se territoriale grense. Wapenbeheer in Mosambiek en in die SAOG streek in die algemeen was totdusver minder suksesvol gewees, aangesien state heeltemal te swak is om enige betekenisvolle beskerming aan hulle burgers te verleen. Tweedens, het burgerlike samelewings organisasies wat die verantwoordelikheid aangeneem het om beskerming te verleen net nie genoeg hulpbronne om die staat se verantwoordelikhede te vervul nie. Dus, is die kern aanbeveling van hierdie tesis dat Suider-Afrikaanse state hulle bekwaamheid en kapasiteit sal moet versterk. Ligte wapens het onbeheersd dwarsdeur die streek versprei omdat swak state nie oor die kapasiteit beskik om veelvuldige veiligheids en sekuriteits-bedreigings te kan hanteer nie. Dit hang dus van burgerlike samelewingsv organisasies af om sterk samelewings te bou wat op hul beurt kan aandring op sterker staatsoptrede om hierdie kwessies meer daadwerklik aan te spreek.
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Xu, Yan. "War Heroes: Constructing the Soldier and the State in Modern China, 1924-1945." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1357130680.
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Durusan, Firat. "Debates On Civil Society: From Centre-periphery To Radical Civil Societarianism." Master's thesis, METU, 2008. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610292/index.pdf.
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The radical democratic conception of civil society strives for theoretically constructing and politically defending civil society as a social sphere autonomous from both the economy and state. As a position taken against Marxist and liberal theories, radical civil societarianism views the cultural and normative structures of modern societies as independent from and prior to systemically conceived economic and political relations. These structures is purported to give way to spontaneous social solidarity characterising civil society. With the mechanisms of domination and exploitation defined outside civil society, this approach ends up with excessive
voluntarism characterising social relations thereof. Similarly, in the Turkish context, the dominant centre-periphery approach is predicated upon the external contradiction between the vertical state-society relations and horizontal relations between social actors. It is argued that the dominance of the former has caused the underdevelopment of civil society which is a particular expression of the latter. In any case, social conflicts are detached from structural political and economic mechanisms and conceived in voluntaristic terms. Consequently, the normative position radical civil societarianism takes vis-à-vis social movements fails to go beyond an imposition of the arbitrary notion of &ldquo
civility&rdquo
through the discourse of self-limitation.
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Kinuhata, Hitomi. "Hugh Borton : his role in American-Japanese relations /." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2004. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0629104-174631/unrestricted/KinuhataH072004f.pdf.
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Thesis (M.A.)--East Tennessee State University, 2004.Title from electronic submission form. ETSU ETD database URN: etd-0629104-174631. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Internet at the UMI web site.
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Suárez, Ruiz Hero Daniel. "Le concept de citoyenneté : une exploration de ses relations avec les catégories de « société civile » et d’« État » dans le contexte espagnol contemporain." Thesis, Paris 10, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013PA100012.
Full textAbstract:
La présente recherche doctorale prétend, depuis la philosophie politique, penser les relations entre les individus et la collectivité, au moyen de l’exploration de trois catégories utilisées en référence aux systèmes démocratiques actuels, à savoir les catégories de « citoyenneté », de « société civile » et d’ « État ». Le sens de la recherche repose sur l’approfondissement, depuis une perspective démocratique, de la valeur épistémologique des trois catégories lors d’une réflexion sur les limites et les possibilités offertes par ces systèmes politiques à l’égard des individus, du point de vue de différents courants théoriques. De même, notre recherche, dans une tentative d’appliquer les résultats nés de l’exploration des concepts, esquisse un portrait de la société espagnole contemporaine, à travers lequel nous avons tenté de montrer ses relations avec le système démocratique, en se fondant sur les liens établis entre les individus et la collectivité sur le territoire espagnol, à partir des trois catégoriesThis PhD investigation pretends to analyse the relations between the individuals and the communities by usage of political philosophy and taking into consideration the examination of three categories:citizenship, civil society and the state. These categories are usedwhen one refers to contemporary democratic systems.The purpose of this thesis is to study in depth the cognitive value of three above mentioned categories from democratic perspective and when thinking of the limits and opportunities that the political systems offer to the individuals in different theoretical trends. At the same time this investigationis trying to apply the results extracted from the examination of the concepts and drawsa picture of the contemporary Spanish society by showing its relations with democratic system. This system is presented from the perspective of the links that are established between the individuals and the community in Spain and looking into the three categories
La presente investigación doctoral pretende, desde la filosofía política, pensar las relaciones entre los individuos y las colectividades, mediante la exploración de tres categorías utilizadas para referirse a los sistemas democráticos del presente, esto es, las categorías de «ciudadanía», «sociedad civil» y «Estado». El sentido de la misma es el de profundizar, desde un punto de vista democrático, en el valor epistemológico de las tres categorías a la hora de pensar los límites y las posibilidades que ofrecen dichos sistemas políticos para con los individuos desde diferentes corrientes teóricas. Al tiempo, nuestra investigación, en un intento por aplicar los resultados extraídos de la exploración de los conceptos, traza un retrato de la sociedad española contemporánea, mediante el que se intentan mostrar sus relaciones con el sistema democrático desde la perspectiva de los vínculos que se establecen entre los sujetos y la colectividad en el país ibérico a partir de las tres categorías
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Pfoser, Alena. "Borderland memories : the remaking of the Russian-Estonian frontier." Thesis, Loughborough University, 2014. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/14541.
Full textAbstract:
The border between Russia and Estonia has undergone significant changes in the past two and a half decades from a border between two Soviet republics to an international border and external EU border. In the public discourse and the scholarly literature, this border has been characterised as a battlefield shaped by divergent geopolitical visions and evaluations of the shared past. While Estonia has sought to distance itself from Russia and condemns the Soviet past as an occupation, Russia derives pride from its historical role in liberating Europe in World War II and continues to hold on to positive memories of the Soviet past and its role in the Baltic states. The thesis looks at how these official narratives have been negotiated locally in the once united border towns of Narva and Ivangorod in the Russian-Estonian borderland. Based on an extended fieldwork stay and the analysis 58 life-story interviews with people living on both sides of the border, it examines how people living in the borderland position themselves in the context of shifting narrative and structural frameworks. How do they re-evaluate the relations to the other side and reconsider their memories of the shared past? In examining these questions, the thesis seeks to make two general contributions to existing literature: it brings together the fields of border studies and memory studies to explore the reconfiguration of both temporal and spatial orderings in the making of a border. Secondly, it outlines a model for studying border change that focuses on the interrelations between the vernacular and the official level. The first part of the thesis looks at the politics of temporal orderings in the borderland and explores how people belonging to different ethnic groups and generations remember the past in the context of changing borders. It shows how people in part reproduce the polarised narratives mobilised at the official level but also how local experiences and generational change lead to a diversification of temporal orderings. The second part of the thesis explores the politics of spatial orderings in post-socialist memories. It looks at how by remembering the past people both reproduce and undermine borders; it demonstrates that it is not simply the memories of a shared past but also new inequalities following the establishment of the border that shape the ways in which people relate to their cross-border neighbours. Overall, the thesis provides a complex and differentiated account of border change in which different temporalities and spatialities at the vernacular and official levels can interact, interrelate and stand in opposition to each other. It shows that although people living in the borderland experience constraints and even powerlessness in the face of changes in the border, they have an active role in negotiating the changes and develop multiple responses to official narratives. It demonstrates how by appropriating official narratives and relating them to their own purposes, people articulate local concerns and make claims for belonging, recognition and state care in the face of the changes.
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Woldetsadik, Lia. "Instituting Collaborative Planning: government systems, trust and collective action in Ethiopia." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2020. https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/305111/3/doc.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
More democratic planning processes are acknowledged to facilitate several positive outcomes including acceptance, support, better solutions and ownership, which are even more critical in developing countries where resource limitation is debilitating. But the paradox lies in needing to institute more democratic planning processes inside less democratic systems. In seeking explanations as to why collaboration in planning is lacking in urban Ethiopia, the research adopts a different analytical perspective that conceptualizes the state not only as a direct participant through its different agencies but also as the main architect of social structure. As the state in less democratic systems is stronger in shaping society, the contextualization of sense-making in the wider environment of the South requires focusing on the influence of government systems to discover associations and patterns that determine the structure of planning processes. Adopting flexible and pragmatic methodological procedures, methods and techniques that balance what is possible with epistemological interest, the research introduces a different lens to planning that links trust, collective action and cooperation with confidence in government by taking into consideration the embeddedness of actors within the framework of existing realities. Through the case of Amdework, the thesis presents implications on planning by the different attributes of the state and state-society relations. It shows how and to what extent partial and undemocratic government systems create power asymmetry, impede the development and the integrity of organized civil society, affect social capital such as trust, cooperative norms and the motivation to participate in collective action. These in turn penetrate planning processes by destroying the basic level of trust, balanced power of participants and democratic culture, and the we-intention for joint action. And through five more cases that focus on conceptions and cooperation at the micro-level (in the autonomous community of Awra Amba, the foreign NGO spearheaded joint action of the BuraNest initiative, and different projects in or related with Addis Ababa), it provides empirical evidence that planning, whether government entities are direct participants or not, also heed to pressures exerted by the overall of intuitional/political environment where the state rules rather than governs.Doctorat en Art de bâtir et urbanisme (Architecture)
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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Watson, Louis E. "The state versus the individual in international theory : a critical review of three realist conceptions of world order: Hedley Bull, The Anarchical society - Terry Nardin, Law, morality and the relations of states - Charles R. Beitz, Political theory and international relations." Thesis, Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/129728.
Full textAbstract:
In the following chapters, I will examine how three
prominent theorists of international relations justify their
conception of world order. Bull, Nardin and Beitz have each
developed state-centric theories of world order which, they claim,
nevertheless protect the common good of individuals within states:
Bull argues the interests of individuals are best served by
maintaining order among states; Nardin claims human rights
considerations are already implicit in customary international
law; and Beitz argues it is possible for the system of states to
accommodate principles of justice. All three texts under
consideration implicitly endorse the realist proposition that
promoting order among states will ultimately serve the interests
of the individuals within them.
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Rojas, Ines Nayhari. "Women and the Democratic State: Agents of Gender Policy Reform in the Context of Regime Transition in Venezuela (1970-2007)." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/political_science_diss/10.
Full textAbstract:
This study examined the process of gender policy reform. It sought to explain how and when gender policy reform has taken place in Venezuela across time. The study entailed observations of gender policy reform during specific periods of Punto Fijo democracy (1958-1998) characterized by democratic consolidation and deconsolidation, and during the transition towards a new type of hybrid democracy, the Chávez era (1999-2007). The policies considered were the ones addressing women’s equality at home and at work, reproductive rights, women’s economic rights, and political participation. The analysis showed that the likelihood of gender policy reform depends on the combination of certain institutional configurations that provide women access to the decision-making process of the state, but most importantly to women’s groups’ capacity to organize a broad coalition of women from civil society and from within the state apparatus behind to push for a reform by using frames based on international agreed norms that legitimized their struggle. In addition, the analysis reveals the negative influence of religious groups with decision-making power on the process of gender policy reform.
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Joseph, Stacey-Leigh. "Consolidating democracy, building civil society : the South African Council of Churches in post-apartheid South Africa and its policy of critical solidarity with the state." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007957.
Full textAbstract:
The South African Council of Churches (SACC) played an extremely crucial role during the struggle against apartheid. The role of the SACC was first and foremost to provide a voice for the voiceless. It managed, among other tasks, to actively fill the void left by movements banned by the illegitimate apartheid government. As a result of its fight against the inequalities that existed in South Africa, its work adopted a political character. In the aftermath of post-apartheid South Africa, the SACC was left with the task of redefining its role within South African society and civil society, specifically. The euphoric sentiment in the mid-1990s was in part reflected in the SACC. However, the conclusion reached by the Council in 1995 was that it would also play a role of 'critical solidarity' which essentially meant that it would not shy away from attacking the government when the need arose. Since 1994, the South African government has implemented a number of policies that do not appear to be in the immediate interest of the majority of South African citizens atld have brought church and state into conflict. This thesis attempts to tackle three issues which are pertinent to the South African situation and which shed light on state-civil society interactions. These issues are HIV I Aids, the question of odious debt and the Zimbabwe crisis. By using both primary and secondary sources, the SACC's responses to government's handling of these matters will be compared with the responses of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference in order to determine their relationships with government. The conclusion of this investigation is that the SACC has in fact managed to maintain a position of critical solidarity. It has been faced with numerous challenges with regard to maintaining the fragile boundary of alliance with government on the one hand, and becoming anti-government on the other. However, by forming alliances with other civil society actors as well as fostering a relationship with government in order to facilitate mediation this dissertation argues that the SACC has become an essential member of South Africa's vibrant civil society.
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Van, Dyke Christopher. "Changing States: Using State-and-Transition Models to Evaluate Channel Evolution Following Dam Removal Along the Clark Fork River, Montana." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/geography_etds/31.
Full textAbstract:
Located just east of Missoula, Montana, Milltown Dam stood from 1908 to 2008 immediately downstream of the Clark Fork River’s confluence with the Blackfoot River. After the discovery of arsenic-contaminated groundwater in the nearby community of Milltown, as well as extensive deposits of contaminated sediment in the dam’s upstream reservoir, in 1981, the area was designated a Superfund site – along with much of the Upper Clark Fork Watershed. This motivated the eventual decision to remove the dam, perform environmental remediation, and reconstruct approximately five kilometers of the Clark Fork River and its floodplain. This study is part conceptual and part empirical. It describes a state-and-transition framework equipped to investigate channel evolution as well as the adjustment trajectories of other socio-biophysical landscapes. This framework is then applied to understand the post-restoration channel evolution of the Clark Fork River’s mainstem, secondary channels, and floodplain. Adopting a state-and-transition framework to conceptualize landscape evolution lets environmental managers more effectively anticipate river response under multiple disturbence scenarios and therefore use more improvisational and adaptive management techniques that do not attempt to guide the landscape toward a single and permanent end state. State-and-transition models can also be used to highlight the spatially explicit patterns of complex biophysical response. The state-and-transition models developed for the Clark Fork River demonstrate the possibility of multiple evolutionary trajectories. Neither the secondary channels nor the main channel have responded in a linear, monotonic fashion, and future responses will be contingent upon hydrogeomorphic and climatic variability and chance disturbances. The biogeomorphic adjustments observed so far suggest divergent evolutionary trajectories and that in some instances the long-term fates of the mainstem, floodplain, and secondary channels are inescapably enmeshed with one another.