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In the Third World, the Oil Crisis has emphasized the vulnerability of certain large oil-importing countries, engaged in an extensive process of industrialization. The author asks whether Brazil's response to this new challenge will emerge from a tradition of direct State involvement in Energy (exemplified by PETROBRAS), or an original strategy based on the private sector. Both the personal commitment of General Geisel to enhance the national bourgeoisie, and the general context of the mid-Seventies, favour the latter. As the locally-owned sugar-producing oligopoly promotes an alcohol program to replace gasoline, the State is seeking a loose formula--an Alliance of the agro-energetic sector with the multinational automobile industry and PETROBRAS. Its success would be based on the performance of each actor. / Given a tradition of susceptibility of the Brazilian State to internal lobbying, and the choice in favour of indirect involvement in the program, it is not surprising that controls remained largely ineffective. Further structural limitations--an archaic agriculture resulting in low productivity of land, a lack of private funding, and technological deficiencies (caused by inadequate R & D activities)--induced the failure of the program in its original conception. However, the national bourgeoisie's fear of foreign control lead the military to veto the possible alternative of further internationalization of the alcohol sector. It remains to be seen, in the light of the weakening position of Brazil in the world economy, if such a stance can be maintained in the long term.

The cooperation of developing countries is commonly assumed to be essential for the establishment of effective regimes to manage global environmental interdependence. Yet their policies and perceptions have been inadequately studied. This thesis seeks to partially fill this gap in the literature with a detailed analysis of Indian policy on global environmental issues. It examines the cases of ozone depletion, climate change, and loss of biodiversity, and discusses developments up to the 1992 Earth Summit. The study addresses four broad questions about Indian policy: the process of policy making; the character of Indian interests and preferences; the nature and evolution of India's bargaining strategy; and the outcome of international negotiations for India. It reveals a complex picture of continuity and change in Indian policy. It demonstrates the enduring importance of traditions and values such as the "poverty is the greatest polluter" orthodoxy and the concepts of sovereignty, equity and Third World solidarity. It also highlights the impact of perceptions of vulnerability in relation to the North. It argues that Indian policy did not reflect purely powermaximising goals; policy makers were sometimes uncertain about where India's interests precisely lay, and felt constrained both by economic weakness and by the recognition of the mutual interest of all states in global environmental protection. This was reflected in the moderation in India's bargaining strategy. The Indian case suggests that developing countries did not regard their cooperation in the resolution of global environmental issues purely as a bargaining chip with which to extract concessions from the North. Still less did they perceive these issues as providing an opportunity to pose a macro-challenge to the North, linking agendas across issue areas. Instead, their goals reflected perceptions of constraints and mutual interests in bargaining with the North. Their bargaining strategy thus tended to be moderate and flexible, unlike the confrontational approach of the 1970s.

The purpose of this study was to examine three state-sponsored health insurance programs targeted at small businesses and identify the political and economic factors that contributed to their success. I evaluated the success of each states program using three criteria: reducing the number of uninsured, program participation, and providing portability. In my analysis, I examined factors which may have played a role in the varying levels of success that were observed. I found that the success of a program depended largely on two factors: economic conditions within the state and the quality of the program. / Department of Political Science

The study found that there is marked poverty in Lekoko village, and that food security is lacking. Purchasing power of household commodities and consumables is observed to be non-existent. Agriculture as a form of food security has eluded many because of drought. All those who practised subsistence fanning are unable to do so. Food security is greatly impaired; the people cannot access sufficient aid and nutritious food. This includes the problem of food production, preservation and storage. The projects and programmes initiated by the Government to alleviate poverty do not reach the people. Substantial changes are needed to expedite the distribution of food Production resources. Formal and informal institutions should be involved in bringing about transformation of the structures, which are currently blocking the socio-economic. Premium access to information and social networks as well as to the State should be improved. The onus rests with extension officers to support the people and bring about generation of livelihoods with institutional reform to reduce vulnerability and risks. / M.A. (Peace Studies and International Relations) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2005

South Africa has the highest Tuberculosis (TB) incidence in the world. In 2006 it was estimated that in South Africa, with only 0.7% of the world population; some 28% of HIV positive adults had TB. To treat one patient with ordinary TB costs the Health Department approximately R310 and a patient with multi-drug TB (MDR-TB) more than R2000. TB has added to the burden of a country which is struggling to cope with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. TB is one of the national health priorities of the Department of Health (DoH). KwaMsane Clinic is located at Mtubatuba, in the UMkhanyakude district. The uMkhanyakude district has the highest prevalence of HIV and the highest number of cases of TB in South Africa. The UMkhanyakude district stretches from the Umfolozi River, which is south of Mtubatuba, to the Mozambique and Swaziland borders. The clinic is a Primary Health Care centre and is open 24 hours a day. UMkhanyakude has a population estimated at 614,046. According to the DoH National Tuberculosis Management Guidelines (2009), the greatest challenge that the TB programme faces are inadequate financial and human resources for TB control, resulting in poor case detection, increasing numbers of multi-drug resistance TB, extensively dry-resistance TB and poor quality data collection and data analysis. The study set out to identify the challenges that KwaMsane clinic faces in terms of TB management. It was found that the problem facing KwaMsane clinic’s effectiveness was largely due to two factors. The first is the delay in patient diagnosis and the second is the negative nurse/patient ratio which affects the workload and compromises levels of service delivery. The population was sufficiently small, but statistically adequate and all 31 employees were surveyed. Of these, 61% or 19 of the employees agreed that there is a delay in patient diagnosis. The recommendations for KwaMsane clinic include more effective recruiting of staff; attracting and retaining qualified and experienced health personnel; equipment and resources need to be more available; and the clinic management should ensure that they have enough personnel to cope with high number of patients More research is needed on issues such as recruiting attracting and retaining qualified and experienced health personnel; provision of skills training for clinic management and other health personnel to improve service delivery; management of information systems at primary health care clinics for record keeping and data analysis; and integrating TB and HIV/AIDS management. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Tourism))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Despite concerted research effort over the last thirty years, social capital remains a variably, and at times, ill-defined concept. A lack of a clear causal theory has made social capital difficult to explore in an empirical setting. In addition, limited understanding of the concept’s operation has restricted its ability to provide valuable insight into policy development. The three papers that compose this thesis examine the concept, measurement, and consequences of social capital. The first provides a theoretical discussion of the conceptual origins of the term, its common criticisms, and suggests an alternative approach to its understanding. The second applies this alternative approach to an empirical model of child enrolment in post-secondary education. Finally, the third critically examines a recent federal policy research initiative related to social capital, identifying key policy development advantages to this thesis’s alternative approach. This thesis argues that antecedents to the modern social capital literature along with more recent criticisms suggest a dual approach to understanding social capital. This dual approach involves two distinct frameworks for understanding the concept – one literal and one figurative. These frameworks guide alternative approaches to empirical social capital work, demonstrated through the analysis of social capital’s impact on child post-secondary enrolment. It further identifies how the two frameworks provide more relevant information on the operation of social capital, facilitating prospective policy development. Overall, the thesis concludes that the literal and figurative approaches represent a more useful way of understanding and applying the social capital concept.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Tourism))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

How can we think of power in the form of a seed? This thesis will trace the discourse of "improvement" from its seventeenth century use by John Locke to justify the appropriation of Aboriginal lands in North America to the inter-locked languages of improvement and development in the twenty-first century in the context of genetically engineered food aid. This paper also explores the nature of sovereignty in a biopolitical age, arguing that the improvement discourse is operationalized on the ground through a diffuse power that trades on claims of improving the bios as whole. The paper concludes with a discussion of the food sovereignty movement as a possible practical and epistemological break for farmers in the Global North and South from the hegemony of this war by other means.