Transnational networks are growing in prevalence and importance as states, nongovernmental, and intergovernmental organizations seek to meet climate change goals; yet, the organizations in these networks struggle between the global, technical and local, contextual sources of power, authority, and knowledge used to influence decision-making and governance. This dissertation analyzes these contestations in Pacific Islands climate change diplomacy and governance efforts by asking: i) What do power relations look like among the Pacific Islands' networked organizations? ii) To what authority do organizations appeal to access sources of power? iii) What sources of knowledge are produced and reproduced by these organizations? and iv) How do these patterns fit within the broader history of the Pacific Islands and climate change? I draw from interviews, document analysis, event participation, and social network analysis of Pacific Island climate change diplomacy and governance. This examination leads me to propose the concept of "Climate Empire," which can be understood as the network of knowledge and communicative services that imagine, build, and administer the globe through a decentralized and deterritorialized apparatus of rule. In the Pacific Islands, Climate Empire upholds technical bureaucratic and scientific approaches to overcoming climate challenges; however, the global spaces in which these approaches are produced are reconnected with the spaces of local resistance through data collection networks and efforts to relocalize knowledge. Thus, the local/global divisions found in diplomacy and governance in the Pacific Islands collectively produce and reform Climate Empire as organizations interact in the network. Further research is necessary to understand the extensiveness of Climate Empire, as well as to ensure the inclusion and empowerment of Pacific Island voices in climate governance for both justice and efficacy.

Settlement policy in the Third World has been stimulated by the availability of public land. This availability of public land has prompted many Third World countries to adopt policies or schemes called resettlement, transmigration, or land development. These have been presented as potential means for addressing numerous agendas held by Third World countries. Settlement policies have been used to increase agricultural production and make idle land productive. Spatial imbalances of population distribution have been addressed via settlement policies. For national security, settlement policies have been used to exploit frontier lands. Solutions to serious political problems including lack of agricultural self-sufficiency, poverty, landlessness, and unemployment have been sought through settlement policies. Huge amounts of financial resources have been invested in Third World planned settlements, however, their performance has not been very encouraging. If not completely abandoned by settlers, the settlements gave officials, planners, and policy makers cause for serious concern. For the most part, settlements have been costly relative to the number of settlers. In many instances, agricultural productivity was low. I have presented comparative case studies of land settlement policies which examine the factors that accounted for the success or failure of resettlement projects. I examined the resettlement projects from the point of view of the settlers in relation to the objectives of the policy makers. This study reports the findings of case studies concerning Iraq, Somalia, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Israel. A comparative analysis of land settlement policies in Third World nations with varying political, social, and economic conditions is presented. It will be shown that land settlement policies in Third World countries, by and large, failed to reach objectives and are not now viewed as viable options for land development.

Sociopolitical and economic factors shape the lived experience of immigrants and subsequent US-born generations. Often marked by immigrant-related federal and subfederal (i.e., state, county, and city) government policies, but also inclusive of public sentiment toward immigrants, an anti-immigrant climate limits Latino immigrants’ and US-born Latinos’ access to pro-health resources and services, keeps them in a lower socioeconomic position, increases their exposure to interpersonal and structural discrimination, and directly and indirectly exposes them to acute and chronic stressors that can take a toll on their cardiovascular health. The objective of this dissertation is to examine the association between anti-immigrant climate, first defined using policies and then defined using anti-Latino immigrant sentiment, and a panel of traditional and non-traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors among immigrant and US-born Latino adults living in the United States. This dissertation is organized into five sections: 1) an introduction, 2) a systematic review and critical analysis of the literature on US federal and subfederal policies and physical and mental health outcomes among Latino adults, 3) an empirical study of subfederal immigrant-related policies enacted in 2007 and their association with a panel of cardiovascular disease risk factors among Latino adult participants in the National Health Interview Survey, 4) an empirical study of anti-Latino immigrant sentiment during the 2016 Presidential campaign and election and a panel of incident cardiovascular disease risk factors in a cohort of Latino participants of the Hispanic Community Health Survey/Study of Latinos, and 5) a discussion of findings and implications for future research. The systematic review did not identify any studies of immigrant-related policies and traditional cardiovascular disease health condition risk factors of obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, or diabetes. Exclusionary policies were associated with poor mental health and poor self-rated health and no relationship between policies and adverse birth outcomes was observed. In the empirical study of subfederal immigrant-related policies, I did not observe a statistically significant association between exposure to exclusionary policy climates in 2007 and a greater increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease risk factors relative to exposure to neutral/inclusive policy climates. Although no statistically significant difference-in-differences were observed, Latinos living in exclusionary states had a statistically significant increase in the prevalence of high alcohol consumption one year after exposure, while the prevalence remained unchanged among Latinos living in neutral/inclusive states. This increase was reflective of increases among foreign-born Latinos, not US-born Latinos. In the empirical study of anti-Latino immigrant sentiment during the 2016 Presidential campaign and election, findings from models of high depressive symptoms suggested that among Latinos of Mexican and Central American background, the exposed were more likely to have incident high depressive symptoms than the unexposed. Findings also suggested an association between exposure status and incident current alcohol use, particularly among the foreign-born. An inverse association between exposure and risk of hypertension was observed, with further differences by duration of US residence. Patterns for alcohol consumption across both empirical studies suggest that future studies should continue to explore the effect of anti-immigrant climate on acute changes in alcohol consumption among Latinos in the US. Additionally, findings from the systematic review and the second empirical study also support the continued study of the relationship between anti-immigrant climate and mental health outcomes. As the sociopolitical climate of the US becomes increasingly harsh toward Latino immigrants and their families, studies should examine other health outcomes in order to understand which dimensions of health are affected by exposure to an anti-immigrant climate among one of the largest ethnic populations in the US.

Since 2009 the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima has partnered with private corporations to deliver three highway projects worth US$1.5bn. This process follows a state-building strategy developed since the 1990s to allow different levels of government to deliver infrastructure projects with private finance. In Lima, the model has almost exclusively produced highways through a specific scheme that allows firms to submit unsolicited proposals. In this dissertation, I investigate how the availability of private finance transforms the political process and local planning outcomes. I argue that rather than being simply a solution for cash-strapped governments looking to invest in specific pieces of infrastructure, the introduction of private finance shapes what projects get built. Private finance not only transforms the implementation part of a two-step process: it has a deep impact on the planning phase itself by setting constraints on what can be done and to what ends. I call the specific mechanism by which private finance influences planning ‘unplanning.’ Here, the state is not simply retreating to let the private sector determine priorities. In other words, it is not abandoning planning, or simply not planning. Rather, it is being transformed in order to follow a proactive role in attracting investment, and to adapt planning to the needs of private capital. The dissertation goes beyond understandings of infrastructures as neutral conduits and into their techno-political nature in order to reveal how they reflect, reproduce and become both the conduit and the site of political conflicts between private capital, the state, and urban dwellers.

Abstract not available

Also published on CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references.

Bibliography: leaves 303-339.

This research project responds to the observation of radical ecologists and ecopsychologists that our present approaches to environmental change are widely limited to technological, behavioural and cognitive strategies, and lack a deep understanding of the complex psychological and sociocultural interrelationships that underpin human perception and behaviour. To gain a deepened understanding of our ecological crises from depth psychological, holistic, and transpersonal perspectives, a number of counsellors, psychotherapists, naturopaths, and one environmental educator were either interviewed or completed questionnaires that explored the meaning of the terms ‘environment’ and ‘sustainability’. They were also invited to express their views on environmental deterioration and what it means to them to live sustainably. The knowledge obtained from the research participants, an extensive literature review, and my professional experience as a psychotherapist, workshop facilitator and trainer, suggest that the current dominant theories and practices of environmental education, and other change practices, are limited in their effectiveness. The study proceeds with a discussion of key issues related to the ecological approach proposed in this study; and of emergent areas such as environmental education, education for sustainability, deep ecology and ecofeminism. A critique focuses particularly on the common assumption of conventional learning paradigms that deep change can be achieved without addressing emotional resistance to such change. By using the work of the Resilience Alliance, “a multidisciplinary research group that explores the dynamics of complex adaptive as a reference point it is argued that our need to compensate for our fragmented selves leads to significant resistances to changes in consciousness. The study concludes with a summary of the main findings and thoughts on possible sustainable and unsustainable futures. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Australian Police Ministers and Commissioners occupy a pivotal position in the system of law enforcement. Collectively, they are responsible for the general policy, administration and operational direction and control of policing through the Australian States. There has been in the past twenty five years a growing complexity and a variety of problems facing police agencies which are arduous and demanding. Continuing social tension of recent years have given police ministers and commissioners higher public profiles than ever before. The research undertaken in this thesis examines the difficulties experienced between police ministers and commissioners in Queensland and New South Wales from 1970 to 1995. Three models have been developed as a framework to analyse the relationships and how they operate. The three models are called - 'Dependency', 'Independency' and 'Interdependency'. Twenty-one police ministers, commissioners and advisers from Queensland and New South Wales were interviewed during the course of the research. Five separate case studies were developed to analyse and interpret the relationships within the context of the three models. A summary chapter of additional research data provides supporting information which was used to substantiate the case study material. The conclusion argues that relationships operate more effectively when elements of the 'Interdependency' model exist. The need for further debate about the administrative, legal and management elements of the working relationship between a police minister and commissioner is essential to achieve a balance between policy, administration and operational requirements within a modern western democratic policing system.

This is a thesis presented on the position of the distance education student at a distance education university in the present era. Traditionally, the distance education student has been a sort of Cinderella: marginalised, being constructed as some form of lesser version of the on campus one. A largely invisible part of the higher education system in Australia since 1911, the distance education student has really only come to be foregrounded in university education discourses from 1983 onwards. It was not until then that the distance education student emerged from ‘hidden pools’ identified by Karmel (1975), and since then the construction of this student has undergone a number of modifications, mapped in this thesis. At the same time university education itself has undergone a series of modifications, not least of which has been its taking on mercantilist overtones as investments made by students in their own careers and professional development. The modifications, also mapped in this thesis, have progressed to the stage where the construction of the old distance education student is now one of a flexible learner in a mercantilist system of university education. The notion of distance education and the distance education student has undergone significant shifts, redefinitions and constructions, which are tracked in this thesis. My research has focussed on a number of pertinent questions, based on a study of Deakin University and its practice since its establishment. The thesis draws on a number of works which have been informed by those of Foucault, and I have framed my research questions accordingly. I have asked why and how Deakin University came into being as a distance education provider at tertiary level. What were the conditions of its establishment and progression in relation to the political events, economic practices and communication technology in use over time? To consider such questions, I needed to analyse the changes that I had seen occurring in the context of wider restructurings in university education. These had occurred in the context of government forging a closer interconnectedness between education and national economic aims and objectives at the same time as it demanded greater productivity in the face of commercial and industrial sector pushes for applied knowledge. Poststructuralist philosophical developments offer tools to explore not only questions of power, but the practical outcomes of questions of power, and how the complicity of individuals is established. This thesis explores ways in which such considerations helped to shape the changing constructions of the distance education student from a marginalised, disadvantaged and under-represented participant in higher education to a privileged, well catered for and advantaged learner. These same considerations are used to explore ways in which they have helped to shape university distance education courses from a perceived second-rate form of higher education to a prototype that better captures the essential elements of learning for what has been styled in a postmodern world as the Information Age. Overlaid on these considerations is a changing view of the economics of such provision of higher education. It is anticipated that this thesis will contribute to developing new understandings of the construction of subjectivities in relation to the distance education university student specifically, and to the university student generally, in the postmodern world. The implications of this examination are not inconsiderable for students and academics in a self-styled Information Society.