Poverty and inequality in South Africa are a result of the impact of apartheid policy, which inter alia stripped people of their assets, especially land, distorted economic markets and social institutions through racial discrimination, and resulted in violence and destabilization. This has shaped the nature of poverty in South Africa. In view of the above, the South African government has introduced a programme known as the Comprehensive Rural Development Strategy in order to redress the imbalances of the former apartheid regime. In this strategy it is envisaged that vibrant, equitable and sustainable rural communities and food security for all will be achieved. In this study, I investigated the implementation of rural development programmes in the Mbhashe local municipality of the Eastern Cape Province in order to determine appropriate intervention strategies. This study focused on Ward18 of Mbhashe local municipality on a village known as Nkwalini Bafazi. This is a village that has been earmarked by the government to be a pilot site for the Rural Development Programme. This project is at the initial stage of social facilitation. In other words this research project is designed to investigate the process of Rural Development and how it can be implemented in the Mbhashe Local municipality in order to alleviate poverty and underdevelopment. For the purpose of the study, a mixed research approach was chosen. This means that the study used both the qualitative and quantitative approaches for in-depth understanding and verification. Questionnaires and structured interview questions were used to collect the data. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was also used for the purpose of observing and involving the community in the exercise. Data was collected from residents by conducting surveys, making use of questionnaires. Structured interviews were conducted with government officials (Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform) in order to understand the situation better.

Migrant labourers who cross borders often have to send money back to their various countries of origin. These monetary transfers are known as remittances. To send these funds migrants often opt to rely on informal mechanisms as opposed to the remittance services of formal financial institutions such as banks. Informal remittance mechanisms raise a number of concerns such as those related to consumer protection. In contrast to formal channels informal channels are not based on any legally binding agreements. They are highly based on trust and do not offer any legally binding guarantee that the funds will be delivered or that the remitter will be reimbursed in the event of non-delivery. Aside from consumer protection concerns, informal remittances also raise security related concerns. These channels are not subject to the supervision of any regulatory authority and usually offer a high level of anonymity. They can act as an attractive mechanism for terrorists and criminal organisations to launder and mobilise their illicit funds. Taking into mind the concerns mentioned above, as well as others, it would be preferable for more remittances to be channeled through formal financial mechanisms. In conducting research on remittance transactions financial, as well as other institutions and organisations, have outlined legal and regulatory provisions in sending and recipient countries as being a factor that often hinders migrants from accessing formal financial services. This dissertation examines how the South African legal and regulatory framework affects the formalisation of remittances by migrant labourers, with a focus on the context of low-income migrants. The study identifies the Exchange control, immigration, anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism legislative provisions as being the most significant provisions that affect the formalisation of migrant remittances. So as to make an analysis and gather recommendations were possible, a comparison of the South African legal and regulatory provisions is made to those of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The dissertation comes to the conclusion that South African legal and regulatory provisions hinder the formalisation of migrant remittances to a certain extent. They do so by collectively and individually restricting migrants who do not fulfill legislative requisites from accessing formal remittance channels. It is submitted that such migrants are inclined to rely on informal remittance mechanisms when the need to send money arises. Furthermore, South African law restricts competition within the remittance market by making it difficult for service providers to enter the market. The lack of an adequate competitive level fosters the prevalence of high remittance costs which can pose a significant barrier to low income migrants that wish to channel funds via formal means. Taking into mind the significance of formalising remittances as well as the objectives that the laws that hinder them seek to attain, which are equally significant, it is necessary for the regulatory authorities to investigate ways on how to possibly cater for both. It is submitted that if more remittances were to be channeled through official means the objectives sought to be attained by some of these legislative provisions would be attained more efficiently.

It is widely accepted by governments of many developing countries that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is crucial to the socio-economic development of their nations and have developed various policies in an effort to attract FDI, as a result. FDI is a crucial source of technology, capital and skills for developing countries for economic growth that may ultimately lead to poverty reduction, employment creation and modernisation. However, results from many studies have been inconclusive and have failed to find a direct link between the increase of FDI and the associated socio-economic development of recipient nations. South Africa is no exception to this debate as it seeks to turn its back on decades long apartheid, which has entrenched poverty in the majority of its population and exacerbated social tensions. The main socio-economic challenges that South Africa faces include high unemployment, skills shortages, poverty and high inequality, and the 2008/2009 global financial and economic crisis has exacerbated the crisis. Despite these challenges South Africa‘s macro-economic strategies have had a good reputation since 2000. The monetary policy has turned out to be more transparent and predictable, and a sound fiscal policy has sustained its framework. The study analyses the role that FDI plays in the socio-economic development of South Africa since 1995 by focusing on selected case studies: ABSA Bank, General Motors South Africa (GMSA) and the Mining Sector of South Africa. The research concludes that although ABSA Bank has implemented several corporate social responsibility (CSR), and various employee development programmes, there is hardly any evidence to suggest that Barclays Bank‘s takeover of ABSA Bank has positively impacted on these programmes. General Motors South Africa (GMSA), which came into South Africa many decades ago through a Greenfield Investment, has played a positive role in the economy of the Eastern Cape Province as well as that of South Africa, having created jobs directly and indirectly. The company has also designed and implemented various educational, housing as well as health and awareness programmes for its employees and for the communities. Mining companies that operate in South Africa formed partnerships in the communities in which they operate in an effort to improve the lives of people. While these various projects have been a source of employment, they have had a limited impact on the core causes of social problems surrounding the mines. Many of these root causes relate to core business practices of the mining companies, especially employee recruitment, wages and housing. These root causes where witnessed in the Lonmin tragedy and in other strikes that spread throughout the sector in 2012. The study concludes that although FDI does play a role in the socio-economic development of South Africa, especially Greenfield investment, the same argument could not be made on Mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Finally, the South African government needs to play a proactive role in ensuring that foreign companies that invest in the country need to be well aware of the socio-economic needs of South Africa, and be willing to play a positive role in that regard.

This inquiry explored the everyday struggles of several women who worked as coordinators and instructors in three government-funded job-entry programs for women in the non-profit sector. The programs studied included an entry program for native women, a program which trained immigrant women in bookkeeping skills, and a program which trained women on social assistance to enter the construction trades. The work of the staff in these programs was considered in light of a theoretical framework developed by Nancy Fraser. Fraser has called for a different approach -- a more critical discourse-oriented inquiry -- to the study of social-welfare policies and programs. This approach focuses on the political struggle over the interpretation of needs, particularly women's needs, which she sees as central to social-welfare policy-making. In her study of the American system, she has found that "needs talk" is the medium through which inequalities are symbolically elaborated and challenged. She also has found that needs talk is stratified and differentiated by unequal status, power, and access to resources, and organized along lines of class, gender, race, ethnicity and age. For this study, information was collected through interviews with the staff in the three programs, observations of life skills classes, and examination of program proposals. Government and government-related documents were also examined. The analysis revealed that, in the official policy documents at the national level, women’s needs were interpreted within a dominant policy framework which focused on reducing spending, matching workers to the market and privatizing training programs. Programs for women were developed based upon a "thin” understanding of women's needs -- one which focused on women’s lack of training and job experience and ignored the structural inequalities of the labour market and women’s different racial and class struggles. At the local level, analysis of the interviews, observations and documents indicated that the staff struggled to respond to the trainees' diverse and complex needs which the official policy discourse addressed in only a limited way. In their negotiations with the state, the staff employed a plurality of needs discourses, engaging in a process which both challenged and reproduced the dominant policy orientation toward getting women "jobs, any jobs”. There were moments of resistance by the staff to the dominant policy orientation, most notably in the program for native women. The trainees also challenged the narrow interpretation of women's needs, particularly in the program training women to enter the construction trades. Generally speaking, the analysis indicated that the staff played a crucial role in mediating between women and the state and in producing a kind of discourse which tended to construct the trainees as subjects needing to be "fixed". The analysis also revealed that the relationships between staff, trainees and the state were organized around unequal access to resources based on gender, race and class. In order to transcend the limitations outlined in this study, efforts are required to democratize decision-making, collectively organize the non-profit private sector, challenge privatization and the exploitive practices of the state, and bring alternative approaches which support participatory and dialogical processes of need interpretation. The analysis brings to light the importance of studying the implications of state policies on adult education practice, particularly policies which promote privatization. It also reveals the explanatory power of a feminist theoretical framework which provides a more critical, discourse-oriented approach to examining policy and practice, and the usefulness of this framework for further research and political advocacy. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

This thesis explores the role played by the state at the provincial level in the planning of hydro-electric power development in British Columbia. The electric power industry has been a primary focus for government intervention in the economic affairs of most western industrialized countries. Not only has the structure and scope of the state's regulatory activity in the industry been more extensive than most others, but governments have often gone beyond such regulatory supervision to assume a more direct role in the production of the commodity itself. In British Columbia, however, the direct entrepreneurial role played by successive provincial governments led to major planning failures. Serious social and environmental costs were ignored in development decisions, economically dubious projects were constructed, and the electric power system as a whole was seriously overbuilt. This thesis argues that the problems associated with state-directed hydro-electric power development were institutional rather than technical in nature. Two types of institutional factors are shown to have played a key role. First, the scope of power planning has been limited by the role played by the provincial state in the broader political economy of British Columbia. This role has been basically non-interventionist in nature, with the exceptional interventions in economic affairs being associated with the removal of barriers to the private exploitation of the natural resource base. This broad economic role has conflicted with the state's central position as arbiter among opposing societal interests and has biased subsequent government planning activities toward facilitating the supply of electric power rather than evaluating the demand for it. Second, rigidities within the institutions employed by the state to undertake power planning activities inhibited the adaptation of these activities to a changing economic environment. Organized structures were created to implement particular power policy initiatives, and these organizations developed their own set of interests and priorities. Hence, a bias against the re-evaluation of previous policy and planning approaches was created, even in the face of clear evidence of their failings. In Chapter 2, the conceptual and theoretical groundwork for the study is laid with an examination of four alternative approaches to the economic role of the state in western capitalist societies. The key questions explored are the rationale for state intervention, the choice of policy instruments employed, and the effectiveness of these instruments in undertaking goal oriented planning. In Chapter 3, the stage for the analysis of power policy is set with an overview of the economic context of electric power production in British Columbia. This chapter establishes the staple-based nature of the B.C. economy and analyses the changing role played by electric power in this economy. Chapters 4 through 8 detail the historical evolution of power planning and policy in British Columbia. Chapter 4 documents the predominantly laissez-faire approach to power policy during the pre-World War II period and the gradual emergence of demands for a more active regulatory role by government. Chapter 5 documents both the implementation of electric power regulation during the 1950s and the emerging policy preoccupation with underwriting the development of British Columbia's large-scale hydro resources. The chapter focuses on the links between this overall role, the creation of a dominant Crown corporation in the power industry, the decision to undertake an economically dubious sequence of hydro development, and the lack of attention given to environmental issues. In Chapter 6, the focus is on the use of the Crown hydro corporation as an economic policy instrument during the 1960s. The preoccupation with initiating large-scale hydro developments shifted to a concern with producing power at the lowest possible direct cost to the consumer. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on the shift from power policy to power planning. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, policy making at the provincial level was largely replaced by an institutionalized, formally rational decision making process dominated by technical experts. This shift, by creating a powerful set of established interests within the provincial power utility, gave added momentum to the expansionary power policies of the 1950s and '60s during a period when their underlying justification was being increasingly questioned. Finally, Chapter 8 concludes by examining the re-assertion of regulatory control by the provincial state over the now publicly-owned power industry. The conclusion summarizes and interprets the evidence presented in Chapters 4 through 8 in light of the theoretical concepts introduced in Chapter 2. The central problem of state involvement in the electric power industry is shown to be the representativeness and adaptability of policy and planning institutions. A number of recommendations are made to overcome the deficiencies identified in the study. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis compares policy instruments in the American and Canadian oil sectors from 1973 to 1977, the years immediately following the Arab oil embargo. Public policy has traditionally emphasized objectives over instruments even though instruments are at the heart of the policy making process. This case study helps to address this deficiency in the policy literature. It begins by providing a review of the instrument choice literature. Doern and Phidd's typology, which arranges instruments in terms of degrees of coercion, subsequently forms the basis for Chapter Two. Chapter Two's analysis of American and Canadian oil policy reveals that both countries agreed upon the security of supply objective. Furthermore, both deployed many similar instruments including suasion, direct expenditures, loans and guarantees, taxation, and regulation to reach the objective. However, one very important difference in instrument choice was made. While Canada deployed the most coercive policy instrument (public enterprise), the United States did not. Chapter Three offers three explanations for this specific difference. They are (1) differences in ideology, (2) market factors, and (3) differences in government institutions. The difference in ideology is the most important explanation. American ideology is decidedly more conservative than Canadian ideology. As such, American governments are less inclined to create government corporations, like national oil companies, than are Canadian governments. Furthermore, ideology is invariably reflected in a nation's party system, and neither of America's mainstream parties advocated the creation of an NOC while Canada's government party did. Market factors are also important. Countries with formidable industrial bases, such as the United States, are less likely to create public corporations than are those with weaker industrial bases. In the particular case of oil, Canada's oil industry was predominantly foreign-owned owing to insufficient pools of domestic capital. America's industry was overwhelmingly domestically-owned. Hence whereas Canada's NOC was the only oil company truly loyal to the Canadian people, an American NOC would have had to compete with home-based multinationals making it relatively unattractive to governing elites, and unnecessary to the American public. Finally, the differences between Canadian and American institutions are stark and important. Canada's parliamentary system of government fosters public corporations because corporations are easy to create and offer significant benefits to their political masters who can control them. The Canadian government set out to create an NOC in the mid-1970s and came across no obstacles. On the other hand, America's presidential system discourages public corporations. Not only did American Presidents and Congressmen not desire an NOC, but they were unable to legislate what comprehensive oil policy they did desire. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Ground water is a critical element of the ecosystem in the Great Lakes Basin. It is an integral component of a dynamic hydrological system that is the lifeblood for this region's remarkable natural diversity. It is also an important human resource. Unfortunately, intensive ground water withdrawals are resulting in negative consequences that are often hidden from view but which are causing social conflicts and environmental degradation. This thesis considers the failure of courts and governments to implement laws for allocating ground water rights according to hydrological reality and the collective interests of affected communities. Legal mechanisms are rooted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite rapid growth and the considerable pressure now exerted on ground water resources, courts and governments continue to allow, and even encourage unrestricted ground water withdrawals. The underlying ideology of state institutions within the Basin is contributing to the systematic undervaluation of environmental and long term interests of present and future generations. A reinvigorated concept of sustainability, one that is based on the ideals of deliberative democracy, would better represent these interests in decisions concerning the allocation of ground water. Through the process of ground water allocation planning, decision-making can be guided into a preventative and community-oriented approach that more accurately reflects the long term interests of the Basin. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

This thesis makes the legal argument that certain histories of aboriginal child removals in Canada and Australia, that is, the residential school experience in Canada, and the program of child institutionalization in Australia, meet the definition of 'genocide' in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. My primary focus is on that Convention's requirement that an act be committed with an "intent to destroy a group". My first concern in formulating legal argument around the Convention's intent requirement is to offer a theory of the legal subject implicit in legal liberalism. Legal liberalism privileges the individual, and individual responsibility, in order to underscore its founding premises of freedom and equality. The intentionality of the subject in this framework is a function of the individual, and not the wider cultural and historical conditions in which the subject exists. Using a historical socio-legal approach, I attempt to develop a framework of legal subjectivity and legal intent which reveals rather than suppresses the cultural forces at work in the production of an intent to genocide. Having reacquainted the subject with the universe beyond the individual, I move on with the first limb of my legal argument around intent in the Genocide Convention to address the systemic means through which child removal policy was developed and enforced. In this, I confront two difficulties: firstly, the difficulty of locating in any single person an intent to commit, and hence responsibility for, genocide; and secondly, the corresponding difficulty of finding that a system intended an action in the legal sense. I respond to both of these difficulties by arguing for a notion of legal subjectivity which comprehends organisations, and correspondingly a notion of intent which is responsive (both on an individual and an organisational level) to systematically instituted crimes such as genocide. The second limb of my argument around intent confronts the defence of benevolent intent. In this defence, enforcers of child removals rely on a genuine belief in the benevolence of the 'civilising' project they were engaged in, so that there can be no intent to destroy a group. I reveal the cultural processes at work to produce the profound disjunction between aboriginal and settler subjectivities, especially as those subjectivities crystallize around the removal of aboriginal children. I locate this disjunction in the twin imperatives of colonial culture, those of oppression and legitimation. I argue that colonial culture exacts a justification for oppression, and that aboriginal people have been "othered" (in gendered, raced, and classed terms) to provide it. Intent to destroy a group, then, will be located via an enquiry which confronts the interests of colonial culture and aligns them firstly with the oppression of aboriginal people, and secondly with the discourses which developed to render that oppression in benevolent terms. The interpretation of the Genocide Convention is thus guided by the demands of context: and in context is revealed an intent to genocide by child removal. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate

This study applied Ethnographic Decision Tree Modeling (Gladwin, 1989) to the field of child abuse reporting to investigate the factors that influence decisions to report possible child abuse. Participants were licensed psychologists in the lower mainland of British Columbia. Using ethnographic interviews, participants were asked to discuss a recent case in which they reported possible child abuse and the factors that were influential in their decision making. Based on the data from 34 cases, six factors were identified: (1) Were there any signs of or risk factors for child abuse or neglect? (2) Did the signs or risk factors meet your threshold to report as you understand the law? (3) Was there some other value to report other than a legal one? (4) Were you concerned that reporting would cause harm? (5) Were you able to minimize the harm that would result from reporting? and (6) Did the reasons to report outweigh the reasons to not report? These six factors were presented in a decision tree to illustrate the relationship between factors and decision outcome. This preliminary group model was then tested using the case experiences of a separate yet similar group of registered psychologists in British Columbia. Results found that the preliminary model accurately predicted the reporting outcome of 93% (33 of 36) of the cases in the new sample. Errors in the model were identified, and suggestions were made to improve its predictive ability. The results are evaluated in light of the decision tree produced. Implications for theory building, naturalistic inquiry, clinical practice, policy, and future research are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The theme of my diploma work is the regulations in energy sector. I will try to describe their impacts on the environment. I will deal with the economic effects of the regulations and their utility for the environment. I will use many criteria for the consideration of these regulations. The main solution of my goals should be the application of the regulations in energy sector to aggregates of national economy. In the first part of my diploma work I will try to define the concept of regulation and I will also mention some kinds of regulation, their methods and goals. In the second part, I will focus on regulations in Czech Republic and I will determine their background and institutions which deal with them. Third part of the work will contain the impacts of the regulations on market mechanism. I will focus on specific economic theories which deal with regulations. Fourth part will determine impacts of the regulations on the environment. I will mention some laws and alternatives for environment which are related to these regulations. Final part of my work will deal with individual regulations and their impact on aggregates of national economy.