Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Robert L. Hampel, School of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1998. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 13, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth T. Lugg (chair), Robert Arnold, John R. McCarthy, Rodney P. Riegle. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Georgia Southern University, 2006. / "A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education" ETD. Includes bibliographical references (p. 148-154) and appendices.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Deron Boyles, committee chair; Philo Henderson, Douglas Davis, Timothy Renick, committee members. Electronic text (191 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 6, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-191).

In the past few decades, accountability has become a key concept to assess the role and place of a wide range of trasnational institutions. Such trend can be partially explained by the widespread sense of unaccountability that permeates the legal realm beyond the state. The aim of this thesis is to investigate three particular institutional actors of the Climate Change Regime: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol (CCKP), and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This investigation is carried out through the descriptive and critical lenses of accountability. It resorts to the Global Administrative Law (GAL) project in order to pursue that task. Along the way, the thesis asks four interrelated research questions. The first is conceptual: what is accountability? The second is an abstract normative question: what is regarded as a desirable accountability relationship at the national and the global level? The third is purely descriptive: how accountable are the three institutions? The fourth, finally, is a contextualised normative question: how appropriate are their three accountability arrangements? The two former questions are instrumental and ancillary to the two latter. That is to say, they respectively provide the analytical and evaluative frameworks on the basis of which a concrete description and a concrete normative assessment will be done.

abstract: Proponents of current educational reform initiatives emphasize strict accountability, the standardization of curriculum and pedagogy and the use of standardized tests to measure student learning and indicate teacher, administrator and school performance. As a result, professional learning communities have emerged as a platform for teachers to collaborate with one another in order to improve their teaching practices, increase student achievement and promote continuous school improvement. The primary purpose of this inquiry was to investigate how teachers respond to working in professional learning communities in which the discourses privilege the practice of regularly comparing evidence of students' learning and results. A second purpose was to raise questions about how the current focus on standardization, assessment and accountability impacts teachers, their interactions and relationships with one another, their teaching practices, and school culture. Participants in this qualitative, ethnographic inquiry included fifteen teachers working within Green School District (a pseudonym). Initial interviews were conducted with all teachers, and responses were categorized in a typology borrowed from Barone (2008). Data analysis involved attending to the behaviors and experiences of these teachers, and the meanings these teachers associated with those behaviors and events. Teachers of GSD responded differently to the various layers of expectations and pressures inherent in the policies and practices in education today. The experiences of the teachers from GSD confirm the body of research that illuminates the challenges and complexity of working in collaborative forms of professional development, situated within the present era of accountability. Looking through lenses privileged by critical theorists, this study examined important intended and unintended consequences inherent in the educational practices of standardization and accountability. The inquiry revealed that a focus on certain "results" and the demand to achieve short terms gains may impede the creation of successful, collaborative, professional learning communities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

This dissertation examines how voters react towards candidates with records of misuse of public funds in the context of sub-national elections in Brazil. Its contribution to the extant literature on corruption and electoral accountability is twofold. First, it is the first study to inquire whether voters punish candidates with malfeasance records running for both executive and legislative office in the same electoral context and whether a number of contextual factors affect electoral accountability in these offices. Second, it presents and tests new hypotheses on the type of motivation that ground voters' rejection towards corrupt candidates. In chapter 2, I examine whether voters punish candidates for mayor and city councilman with accounts rejected by the Brazilian Audit Courts and whether additional contextual factors affect electoral accountability. In particular, I study whether electoral accountability decreases as candidates (for mayor) have better records of social provision; whether local media promotes electoral accountability; and whether candidates with negative antecedents receive fewer campaign donations and are less likely to re-run. I combine large-N observational analysis, using an original dataset with candidates' accounts rejection records, with interviews with Brazilian Audit Court members and local politicians. In chapter 3 I use three online survey experiments with a convenience sample of Brazilian voters to examine whether likelihood to support a corrupt incumbent is affected by the details that subjects learn about the corruption incident. I use these additional details to inquire whether subjects are sensitive to information emphasizing the public costs of corruption, the candidate's moral misbehavior, or his illicit enrichment. Results presented in chapter 2 suggest that prior records of misuse of public funds have electoral consequences both for candidates for mayor and for city councilman. In addition, they suggest that the existence of local media does not increase electoral punishment; that public spending does not reduce electoral punishment; and that candidates with accounts rejected often receive fewer funds and are less likely to re-run. Results presented in chapter 3 suggest that voters' rejection towards corrupt candidates is stronger when they learn additional details on the candidate's ilegal enrichment.

El ombudsman o Defensoría del Pueblo constituye una institución que se ha venido adoptando en muchos países de la región, a partir de las experiencias de varios países europeos. Tiene por mandato principal la protección de los derechos fundamentales de las personas frente a las entidades estatales, función a través de acciones de persuasión. Se trata, por lo tanto, de una entidad que desempeña funciones de accountability horizontal que resultan fundamentales para la calidad del desempeño de un régimen democrático, en particular en un contexto de debilidad de las instituciones de control y de desconfianza en el aparato público. El caso de la Defensoría del Pueblo del Perú es particularmente revelador de las posibilidades y límites que enfrenta esta opción institucional para las democracias en América Latina.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (Public Administration) / The pursuit of bureaucratic accountability and regulatory controls through political-administrative reforms have become problematic in contemporary public management. Public sector corruption, in particular, is identified as one of key endemic problems associated with the administrative structures, norms and processes in many states across the world. This is despite implementation of otherwise apposite accountability or regulatory reforms in public administration. More especially, in emerging economies in the global South. Using an analytical framework derived from organization theory and neo-institutionalism, this thesis examines the implementation of anti-corruption strategies as key composite of accountability reforms in public administration in Kenya. The broad objective of the study was to assess the impact of administrative culture in the implementation of anti-corruption strategies in governmental institutions, with a particular focus on how political-administrative designs, environments and culture influence compliance systems, the reporting of organizational wrongdoing, and the normalization of corruption in both the public sector and outside it. It also sought to establish the extent to which the administrative culture in public administration can influence the work of accountability institutions and the way in which they implement of anti-corruption strategies. The investigation also looked at the effect of devolution reforms on accountability systems at the level of local government and the complexities in inter-governmental coordination and control to which this has given rise.