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Gendered poverty among the elderly is a statistical fact. Previous studies have identified inequitable treatment of women and insufficient income for unattached elderly women among the most serious shortcomings of the retirement income system. Despite pension reform over the past decade, the gender gap has widened for elderly Canadians whose incomes fall below the poverty line. This thesis seeks to understand the relationship between the laws that govern Canada's retirement income system and the over-representation of elderly women among Canada's poor, and to explore why the retirement income system continues to deliver benefits in a manner that, though expressed in gender neutral language, is systemically unfair to women. The benefits of Canada's retirement income system may be accessed through workforce participation and, in a more limited way, through a spousal relationship. Familial ideology is used as the theoretical framework to examine the role of the laws that govern access to benefits in reinforcing and perpetuating assumptions about women that undermine their economic autonomy. This examination reveals that gendered economic inequality is embedded within Canada's retirement income system because it accepts the social and economic construction implicit in familial ideology of women as economically subordinate to, and dependent upon, men. The relationship between gender inequality and the two modes of delivery of retirement income benefits, during retirement as pension benefits and prior to retirement as tax subsidies that enhance taxpayers' opportunities to accumulate retirement savings, is also explored. A tax expenditure analysis exposes the bias against the economically disadvantaged (mostly women) inherent in delivering benefits as tax subsidies. Additionally, familial, public/private and restructuring ideologies are used as methodological tools to interrogate the reform process which, although ignoring gender issues, paradoxically deepened and compounded the systemic inequalities for women that existed prior to reform. The thesis concludes by offering suggestions for developing a progressive agenda for advancing gender equality within the retirement income system. The limitations of legal action as a strategy for implementing this type of agenda are discussed, and political action is designated as the most promising strategy for achieving progressive reform.

As a developing country South Africa is faced with mammoth tasks of both creating employment/jobs that require less skill to be able to absorb millions of job-seekers who are less skilled, as well as putting its economy in proper footing, through investment in continuous labor skills and technological upgrading, so as to compete in the global market characterized by trade liberalization. Unfortunately the 20th century trade liberalization drive caught domestic industry off-guard. Domestic industry was found wanting and job losses tide was triggered. The labor-intensive clothing and textile industry was severely affected. The most vulnerable sections of the society (unskilled/semi-skilled and women laborers) were dealt a terrible blow. The government developed an industrial policy that contained sector-specific intervention measures to rescue the sector. Initially, the clothing and textile sector benefited from export promotion drive expedited through General Export Incentive Scheme and Duty Credit Certificate Scheme. Later on, the government introduced the Clothing and Textile Competitiveness Improvement Program which intended to build domestic production capacity of the sector and make the sector globally competitive. This research intended to conduct a critical analysis of the South African government industrial policy and its impact on the domestic clothing and textile sector from the period 1993 to 2010. On the one hand evidence on the ground indicates that General Export Incentive Scheme and Duty Credit Certificate Scheme failed to salvage the sector through building its competitiveness and strengthen its employment creation potential. On the other hand, while the Clothing and Textile Competitiveness Improvement Program’s positive contribution towards addressing crucial challenges facing the clothing and textile sector is acknowledged, the evidence on the ground also demonstrated that some crucial pitfalls need to be addressed to enable the sector to become globally competitive and to realize its employment potential. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

This is a study of public participation which is located within context of the current policy processes that are occurring across South Africa whereby local municipalities are re-naming streets and buildings to more broadly reflect the heritage of South Africa and its people. The process has suffered drawbacks across the country and commentators point to poor public participation, consultation and public engagement. The process of name-changing proves a need to pose some critical questions about the nature of policy implementation in a democratic South Africa. I look at this through the theoretical framework of public policy implementation. In this study I examine the process of public participation in the changing of the name St. Lucia Wetland Park to Isimangaliso Wetland Park. I adopt a qualitative research approach comprising of semi-structured interviews and surveys. I explore four key questions. First, what was the public policy decision-making process that was followed in the renaming of St. Lucia Wetland Park as Isimangaliso Wetland Park? Second, did the re-naming of St. Lucia Wetland Park as Isimangaliso Wetland Park include participation and consultation in the decision-making processes by the public who reside and work in the area? If so, what type of consultation did this include and what was the extent of the participation? Third, to what extent is this new name accepted or rejected by the public who live and work in the area? Is the acceptance or rejection of the name dependent upon levels of consultation, dependent upon the historical significance of the new name, or on something else altogether? Fourth, what implications does the acceptance or rejection of the new name have for processes of public participation in public policy decision-making in the future and for theories of implementation? I find that, despite no proper process of consultation, the community who live and work in the area accept the new name of the park. They do so for three reasons. First, the community do not treat the park as theirs. Second, they have never been participants in previous decision-making processes. Third, the new name represents a history and heritage that they claim as their own. These findings indicate that theories of public policy implementation should be revised. / Thesis (M.A.)-Univerisity of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This dissertation seeks to delineate some of the fault lines of the disparate worldviews and assumptions that have polarized our national discourse, as well as the imbalances of power they support or disrupt. Building on previous case studies of ideologically oppositional political blogs, the dissertation examines thirty-nine key documents from the website torturingdemocracy.org, primarily legal memos written by Bush Administration lawyers (the “Torture Memos”), to analyze a rhetoric of torture that, as a subset of the war on terror, serves as a “ground zero” of political values and motivations. Further, it seeks to combine mixed methods of analysis from various disciplines to help reveal the underlying beliefs and values that inform current national discourse. The cross-disciplinary methods combine rhetorical, linguistic, and critical discourse analyses to examine and interrogate the language that created metaphorical and actual spaces in which torture was legalized, employed, and legitimated. Applying a grounded theory approach to Huckin’s four levels of linguisticgranularity--context, text, phrase, and word (including the use of concordancing software)--the research reveals the logical fallacies, faulty argumentation, slippery word usage, linguistic and rhetorical manipulations, and finally, authoritarian underpinnings that characterize the memos. The research further uncovers multiple strategies used to create the Other, such as Lazar and Lazar’s four micro-strategies of “outcasting” (criminalization, (e)vilification, orientalization, and enemy construction), and strategies of minimizing or maximizing the positive and negative traits of in-versus out-groups in van Dijk’s “ideological square.” The research shows how, in the language of the war on terror, words take on different, even opposite, meanings from previous significations, shifting the national debate about the legitimacy of torture as a hypothetical means of protection. Further, close examination reveals a different intent behind the memos than the purported defense of the country used repeatedly to justify torture. Findings illuminate the memos as the products of authoritarian followers who enabled what Altemeyer calls “double highs”—ideological social dominants with an authoritarian worldview--in a wide-reaching and largely successful bid for power. Lastly, the dissertation points to the need to further investigate and articulate an anti-authoritarian, social egalitarian worldview as a challenge to power structures that, enshrined in language, may constitute a serious threat to democracy. / The great divide -- Review of the literature -- Methods and methodology -- The scene, the agents, their agency and their purpose : conceptions of power and the torture debate -- Torture and the law -- Thirty-nine documents -- The "semantic tap-dance" : discursive, rhetorical and lexico-grammatical strategies in the torture memos -- Constructions of identity -- Constructing torture -- Analysis and conclusions. / Department of English

Graduation date: 1989

Typescript. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-229) / Microfiche. / ix, 229 leaves, bound 29 cm

Government is constantly attempting to balance the competing interests within society, and is itself active in a variety of different roles. The conflict between these roles becomes particularly clear when an attempt is made to implement a "regulatory market" - that is a market that exists only because of government action- such as an electricity or environmental market - to implement some policy objective, since it is the nature of markets to candidly reveal weaknesses that in a non-market management framework may have remained hidden for some time. This thesis examines the difficulty that government has in setting market rules that implement an efficient market design for such markets. After examining the history and development of the Australian Electricity Industry market reform process, we examine more closely some of the electricity related environmental markets developed specifically to drive a policy outcome in Australia -- in particular the Australian Mandatory Renewable Energy Target Market (MRET) and the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme. By comparing these environmental markets with established financial markets, and using the techniques of experimental economics, we show that these environmental markets have significant inefficiencies in their design. We argue that these come about because lessons from the financial markets have not be learned by those implementing environmental markets, that stakeholders are lobbying for market design characteristics that are not in fact in their own best interests, and that governments struggle to manage the divergent pressure upon them. For example, in MRET we show experimentally that one of the market design characteristics most fought for by generators (the ability to create renewable energy certificates from qualifying energy without declaring the certificates to the market until a later time of the creator's choosing) in fact leads to market volatility, and ultimately inefficiently low prices. We also examine the impact on the overall MRET market of simple rule changes upon market performance. Key conclusions of this thesis are that it is more difficult than has been appreciated to successfully use a market to implement public policy and that important lessons have not yet been learned from the existing financial markets.

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Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Public Management in the Faculty of Business at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / This research study sought to find out about the efficacy of the Child Support Grant Policy [CSGP] to the intended beneficiaries – namely, children at the Gugulethu Office in the Provincial Government of the Western Cape (PGWC). An attempt was made to establish whether there is any correlation between the administration of the CSG and poverty alleviation, which the latter seeks to address to a certain extent. The study was therefore undertaken to understand the perceptions of beneficiaries of the CSG, community members and officials at Gugulethu Department of Social Development offices. Furthermore, the study examined the major challenges that serve as obstacles to individuals who try to access the CSG, and sought to offer recommendations as to how these challenges may be surmounted and resolved by the Department of Social Development, which oversees the implementation of the CSG. The study was both interpretive (qualitative) and positivistic (quantitative) in nature, Data was collected through the use of in-depth interviews and structured questionnaires. The findings of the study reveal that the Programme meets intended beneficiaries that is the poor children, though it does not all the children receive the grant. The results of the study have also indicated that the CSG is consistent with the South African government‟s core objectives of creating a better life for all. It was therefore established in the study that the CSG is managing to create better livelihoods for the children and their maternal families as the grant is seen as a source of livelihood. However, it was also revealed in the study that the provisioning of grant has also led to increased teenage pregnancies though there is no clear association between the two. Furthermore, the findings have indicated that there is need to perform capacity building with the Gugulethu Department of Social Development employees as it has been highlighted that most of them are not competent to administer the grant. In addition, it has be found out that there is need to ensure that the grant application forms are written in a language that the applicants can comprehend.