This study is an investigation of the impact of public policy on competing interests in the case of the South African Taxi Recapitalization Programme. I explore this through a theoretical framework of implementation theory which includes the concept of broader public participation in policy formulation and implementation processes and the significance of a bottom-up approach in decision-making. I employ a qualitative methodology comprising fieldwork interviews, surveys and focus groups. The findings of this study show that for the recapitalisation programme to achieve its objectives of regulating the mini-bus taxi industry, conditions that enable interests to access, bargain and influence decision-making must be redefined. Broader representation has to be encouraged in order for diverse interests to be reflected in policy outcomes and for implementation to be effective. This includes the recognition of other taxi organisations, the integration of the taxi industry into the legal frameworks of the Department of Labour, a structural and functional transformation of the Transportation Board and the application of an innovative violence reduction framework which includes an effective route-regulation and route-based operating-license system. This also requires the introduction of a taxi industry-specific minibus fleet, a comprehensive taxi driver-training programme and, possibly, subsidising the taxi industry. If the TRP does not become the framework through which the taxi industry is comprehensively regulated, violence is curbed and road accidents that include mini-bus taxis are drastically decreased, many more lives will be lost, thus contradicting the principal objective of commuter safety. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

The radical shift in approach to the Air Quality Management (AQM) strategy that has been introduced recently, through the promulgation of the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act (AQA), makes provision for a number of innovative measures in the control of air pollution in South Africa. These include the appointment of Air Quality Officers, the development of Air Quality Management Plans, the designation of priority areas, the provision for stricter enforcement conditions, and the broad implementation of monitoring. A significant change is in the form of delegating the greatest responsibility for implementation of measures to the local government tier, comprised of metropolitan areas, district and local municipalities. Local authorities are recognised as a sphere of government, however, they are impeded, inter alia, by matters of limited financial resources, lack of skills capacity, and the slow transformation of organisational culture and structure (Cloete, 2002). The implementation ofthe AQA by local government is framed by an understanding ofthe responsibilities of local government, as well as the principal components of AQM and their implementation. The selected areas for study are Uthungulu, Uthukela, and Ugu district municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, representing administrative and geographical variation. Existing and potential air quality issues, and their plans to address these issues, were identified and assessed in the municipalities using the Integrated Development Plans. The capacity of municipalities to implement the AQA was assessed using interviews, focusing on the interpretation of the AQA, technical capabilities, and implementation of AQM. Awareness of municipal responsibilities under the AQA was limited, although advances in AQM implementation had been made by municipalities. Responsibilities reflecting technical measures or activities that were currently undertaken by the municipality, such as monitoring and enforcement, were well recognised. However, the related policy and management tools, of Air Quality Officer (AQO) appointment and Air Quality Management Plan (AQMP) development, were less emphasised by municipal respondents. Limited progress in implementation of the AQA was observed, with only AQO appointment and ambient monitoring being significantly applied. The greatest challenge facing municipalities is the securing of financial resources for personnel and equipment. Progress in technical fundamentals is noted, most notably in emission inventories and monitoring capabilities, although communication on air quality issues remains poor, with limited mechanisms in place for inter-governmental or public communication. There is a prevalence of the use of AQMPs as planning tools, as well as general concepts of town planning and zoning. However, in general, planning departments are not involved. A significant proportion of municipalities have a means of assessing progress, whether explicitly or not. A framework for implementing the AQA is produced to guide local government efforts, and provides a summation of the outcomes of the research. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Contaminated sites are a common problem across municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. These problems are complicated and multi-dimensional, and raise fundamental concerns about the risks to human and environmental health. This thesis shows however, that there are no easy answers to how much risk is "acceptable", and no one right way to decide. How the acceptable risk problem is structured is important, because fact and value issues, a source of controversy and dispute, are variously interpreted depending on how the problem is cast. The literature generically categorizes acceptable risk as either a technical, social or decision problem, and each of these have implications for the types of decision-making approaches and solutions that are considered appropriate in resolving acceptable risk. This thesis investigated how acceptable risk in contaminated site problems is handled in British Columbia by reviewing the provincial decision-making framework, and by surveying municipalities in the Greater Vancouver Regional District for their views on contaminated site problems and acceptable risk decision-making. The underlying goal of the thesis is to question the use of the current approach, the Pacific Place site criteria, as a model for acceptable risk decision-making in the province, and to explore the implications for urban communities. The Ministry of Environment is the central authority for contaminated sites in British Columbia and has generally taken a scientific and technical approach to the problem. Although the municipal survey suggests that the Pacific Place site criteria has a broad base of support in the GVRD, the technical emphasis has implications for urban communities. The approach is expert-oriented and largely excludes local and public involvement in the acceptable risk debate. The major concern is that important social value issues have been neglected, relative to the engineering and technical aspects of the problem. The research also finds however, that the majority of individuals in the municipal survey are willing to explore other methods of determining acceptable risk, and support in principle, local government and public involvement in deciding what these methods should be. This thesis suggests that British Columbia can benefit from a more comprehensive view of acceptable risk in contaminated site problems. Resource limitations at the provincial and local level, and the high stakes in contaminated site problems for urban communities point to the growing importance of incorporating a broad range of value issues and understanding the trade-offs in acceptable risk decisions. The Ministry of Environment can improve the current decision-making approach by: incorporating structured value assessments that elicit stakeholder values and address trade-offs; involving a wider range of stakeholders in standard setting and risk assessment, including the forthcoming review of the Pacific Place site criteria; creating forums to explore other decision-making approaches; and by encouraging private sector involvement in risk assessment and risk management. The province can also encourage and support community-based institutional networks, both at the municipal and regional level.

This paper uses the case of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) to examine the dynamics of the public policy cycle in Canada. A process approach is applied to examine the principal stages of the cycle: problem identification, agenda-setting, decision-making, and implementation. In examining these stages, the factors that drive the policy cycle and those that impede its progress are identified. The regulatory history of PCBs is traced to demonstrate some of the complexities of the policy cycle. As one of the better known hazardous wastes in Canada, PCBs have been the catalyst for the introduction of new toxic chemical regulations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Since the late 1970s, regulatory policies have been developed and implemented for PCB use and handling. After major PCB accidents occurred during the second half of the 1980s, regulations were introduced for their transport, storage and disposal. This case study provides seven major conclusions: (1) before the right policy solution is found and implemented, several stages in the cycle may need to be repeated; (2) public perception is a key determinant of the policy problem; (3) focusing events are a critical factor in setting the agenda; (4) decision-making often takes an incremental approach due to incomplete information and divided policy jurisdictions; (5) successful implementation, particularly in divided jurisdictions, requires sympathetic officials who are supportive of the enabling legislation; (6) constituency group support is a necessary condition for policy implementation; and (7) to deal with public concerns which may impede the implementation process, officials need political and managerial skills.

This paper examines British Columbia's residency requirement on social assistance implemented by the NDP government on December 1, 1995. The policy created a three-month waiting period for newcomers to the province before they could apply for social assistance. Because it violated ;the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), the residency requirement put the BC government at risk of losing, through federal penalty, many millions of dollars more than the intended savings. To explain the BC government's decision-making, I use a rational choice nested games approach. I argue that the residency requirement policy produced two sets of interactions in two separate policy arenas. In the principal arena, the British Columbia Social Services Ministry negotiated with the federal Department of Human Resources Development (HRD). The negotiations centred on the possibility of federal concessions in- exchange for BC withdrawing the residency requirement. In the secondary arena, the federal Department of Finance was consulting with its provincial counterparts regarding the' long-term funding formula for the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) set to replace CAP on April 1, 1996. Social Services interacted with the federal Department of Finance to influence the outcome of the funding decision. I propose that the BC government risked minimal resources in the primary arena to gain substantially higher payoffs from the CHST funding formula. The government linked these two arenas through a 'trade-off strategy that allowed them to apply the political pressure and communication generated by the residency requirement and negotiations with HRD to the Finance arena. This enabled them to. increase the possibility of a favourable payoff in that arena. I find that the rational, choice approach produces an explanation that reflected the government's actual decision-making more closely than other theoretical approaches.

The practice of providing urban parks as an integral part of community development no longer creates public debate about the function or legal authority of local governments to make such purchases. However, the debate continues on the ethics of local government's parkland acquisition practices. These practices have the capability and motivation to influence the land value of sites they wish to acquire. Local governments are responsible for determining land use, which in turn affects land value. The limited financial means of local government to acquire parks makes influencing land value one way of stretching the scarce resources of the community. The ethics practiced in the negotiations to acquire urban parkland where the land has development potential are unique because: 1. Parkland is a public good and not a market commodity; 2. The potential for other higher land uses exists; and 3. Local government plays a dual role: one of a regulator and approving authority for determining land use and providing community stewardship, and the other as the corporate cost controlling agency seeking to acquire land. These qualities create the strong possibility for ethical conflict to occur in the negotiating process. Building upon the Interest-Based approach to negotiations, this paper uses a set of Prescriptive, Intuitive and Evaluative (P.I.E.) criteria that define ethical conduct, and the dimensions of Fact, Social Consensus and Experience that defines the dimensions of interests, to develop a General Model for Ethical Negotiations (GMEN). Conceptually, the GMEN model is a three-sided pyramid within a sphere of negotiations. Negotiations that adhere to the principles defining the parameters of the pyramid would be considered ethical. Negotiations outside the pyramid are considered unethical. Six parkland acquisition cases are discussed using the GMEN model. In this study, the parameters establishing the criteria for passing ethical judgment are the functions of the political economy, the policy statements of the local government, and the legislation that delegates power and authority to local government. The study finds that ethical conflict is inherent in parkland negotiations where the land has development potential because of the multiple roles and dual character of local government. This conflict is not necessarily illegal since prescriptive criteria are only one means of judging ethics. Nor is the outcome necessarily negative to the vendor, since the public may end up with a less attractive park agreement. However, the parameters that would require parkland acquisition negotiations to be ethical sometimes conflict with some of the multiple roles held by local government. Several recommendations are made that would help to reduce ethical conflict and the imbalance in parkland negotiations.

This dissertation examines the multifaceted and pervasive impact of globalisation on the Canadian public policy environment through a detailed analysis of the monopoly marketing of prairie wheat. The study argues that forces associated with globalisation, working through regionally differentiated configurations of farmer opinion and interest groups amidst varying partisan settings, are key to understanding the changing nature of policy-making processes, structures, and outcomes in the wheat marketing arena. The forces associated with globalisation include the increased presence of transnational corporations, the expansion of international trade regimes, increased interaction and cooperation between Canadian provincial governments and US state governments, the international harmonisation of regulations, advances in transportation technology, and heightened levels of education, knowledge, and information. In attempting to understand how globalisation influences the wheat policy arena, the examination uses a comparative analysis focusing on Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The inter-governmental harmony that had prevailed since the 1940s on the matter of Canadian Wheat Board's (CWB's) wheat monopoly was replaced by conflict by the 1990s as the forces of globalisation washed across the Canadian prairies. The dissertation shows that where the absence of these forces once reinforced the CWB's wheat monopoly, the presence of these forces now poses a formidable challenge to its continuation. Farmer opinion data indicates that a trend away from monopoly selling toward open marketing is present throughout the prairies. Like the presence of the forces of globalisation, anti-monopoly opinion is particularly strong in Alberta. The dissertation will also show how the conflict over monopoly wheat marketing was projected into the policy arena through differentiated sets of interest group configurations and partisan environments. In doing so, the examination points out that institutions, while often providing resistance to change, can also serve as conduits facilitating change. The analysis shows that the public policy network involved with the marketing of prairie wheat, as well as actors within this network, have become increasingly internationalised. The examination indicates that domestic governmental regulation and control have been severely undermined in the wheat marketing arena as north-south ties increasingly undermine and replace the east-west unity previously forged by the National Policy.

This thesis argues that landscapes are products of language, that the meaning of a landscape depends upon how it is presented and interpreted in the course of human communication. It is also argued that the field of rhetoric—as a body of theory, ideas, and methods for interpreting the persuasive use of language—can assist human geographers in their attempts to interpret landscapes. These positions are put to work in a study of the promotion of tourist landscapes by the British Columbia government. Two time periods are examined: first, presentations of landscape during the 1920s and 1930s, and second the 1970s and 1980s. These periods are similar in that they are periods of transition—periods in which the tourism industry underwent significant change. The first period is associated with the development of mass tourism, and specifically with the emergence of the state as a major player in the tourist industry. The second period concerns the recent development of postmodern (alternative environmental and cultural) tourism. Postmodern tourism is characterized by the rejection of mass tourism and by the quest for real places and experiences. The thesis uses both qualitative and quantitative (computer-assisted content analysis) methods to examine how the state has rhetorically responded to these changes in its presentations of landscape. Changes are found in both periods, but they are gradual and incomplete. It is consequently argued that the state’s character as an author limits its audience and the strategies it may use for presenting tourist landscapes.

The New York State politicians, notably members of Congress such as Irving Ives, Herbert Lehman, Samuel Dickstein, Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, were very involved in the immigration debates for the period from 1945 to 1953. By their interventions, they emerged as fiery supporters of a liberalization of American immigration policy. A willingness to satisfy a multiethnic electorate largely explains their position. But these individuals, mostly defenders of President Truman's foreign policy, also believed in this cold war context that an attenuation of restrictionism in immigration would provide numerous advantages to the nation. If their attitude seems dictated by considerations that were both pragmatic and idealistic, it generated non-negligible results. Thus, the granting of a quota to India in 1946, the act on the war brides in 1945, as well as the legislation affecting the refugees in 1950, were among the measures mainly ascribable to the activities of these politicians.

The objective of this thesis is to determine why Canada, a state that pioneered nuclear technology, and that faced, throughout the Cold War, the Soviet threat to its national security, consistently rejected any opportunity to convert its latent nuclear capability into an indigenous nuclear weapons program. The answer to this research question must address a number of explicit contradictions in Canadian foreign policy. While Canada has, on the one hand, rejected the bomb, it has, on the other hand, pursued defence and industrial policies based upon intimate involvement with nuclear weapons. Moreover, Canada espouses, on the one hand, a clearly realpolitik view of international relations, while, on the other hand, committing to forging for itself a role as an international peace broker. It becomes, therefore, unclear which theory of international relations could adequately explain this dualism in Canadian policy formulation. This thesis argues that power and self-interest are not separable from Canada's decision to reject the bomb, and that by modifying certain precepts of realist theory, we may substantiate the hypotheses that two disincentives to proliferation are at the root of Canada's policies: first, Canada's political and geographical proximity to the United States and thus a credible U.S. nuclear umbrella; and second, prestige, where Canada interpreted both the rejection of its nuclear option and its internationalist policies as a sign of independence vis-a-vis the United States.