La questione portante della mia ricerca è la verifica dell'eventuale appartenenza dei think tank a modelli di Comunità Epistemiche o Advocacy Coalition. La struttura della tesi rispecchia quindi parte del percorso che ho sviluppato, partendo da una analisi della definizione dell'oggetto di ricerca Think Tank, della sua struttura ed azione, con la finalità di influenzare il processo di policy making. La seconda sezione analizza gli approcci metodologici principali all'analisi del processo di formazione delle politiche pubbliche, mentre il terzo capitolo affronta la ricerca sui casi di studio selezionati: l'Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), l'Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale (ISPI) e lo European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). / The fundamental question supporting my research is to verify the membership of the think tank to the Epistemic Communities or Advocacy Coalition model. The structure of the thesis, therefore, reflects the path that I developed, starting from an analysis of the definition of the research think tank, its structure and action, with the objective of influencing the policy making process. The second section discusses the main methodological approaches to the analysis of the formation of public policy, while the third chapter discusses research on selected case studies: the Institute of International Affairs (IAI), the Institute for the Study of International Politics (ISPI) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

For students with physical and health disabilities, the development of self-advocacy skills is critical to their future success. Characteristics that may inhibit the development of self-advocacy skills in this population include reliance on others for assistance across multiple areas requiring physical abilities, deficits in communication skills, and the development of learned helplessness. Instruction in self-advocacy is needed for this population of students in order to maximize future success and decrease learned helplessness (Angell, Stoner, and Fulk, 2010; Macdonald & Block, 2005; Roberts, 2007). For this study, the researcher provided instruction to four elementary age students with physical disabilities who exhibited characteristics of learned helplessness, including ineffective initiation of requests. Students used speech, sign, or gestures as their primary form of communication, and were able to use this form of communication as a reliable means of response during typical classroom activities, including social interactions and when responding to questions. When they needed to initiate a request for required materials during classroom activities, they made no response, ineffectively gestured, or made unrelated comments when prompted to complete an activity. Students who initiated requests ≤ 50% of presented opportunities were eligible to participate in this study. The intervention consisted of combined use of environmental arrangement and the system of least prompts in a multiprobe multiple baseline across participants design. Environmental arrangement strategies included missing materials or materials that were out of reach. The system of least prompts involved the following levels of prompting: (a) independent, (b) verbal – restatement of direction, (c) indirect verbal, and (d) verbal/model. Analysis of the data indicated that three of the four students increased their effective initiation of requests during intervention, and generalized this skill to new materials and novel settings. The fourth student exhibited noncompliant behaviors that interfered with his ability to reach criteria during intervention. These results support the effectiveness of this intervention in decreasing learned helplessness and increasing the self-advocacy skill of initiating requests with students with physical disabilities who have no interfering behaviors.

Program Description As a part of the community education branch of the Feminist Women’s Health Center (FWHC), there is a leadership & advocacy training program for young women called the Young Women’s Leadership Program. This project was developed in 1999 at the FWHC as a way to connect young women from all walks of life to different communities and prepare them for reproductive justice activism, advocacy, and organizational leadership. Through this program, young women will have the opportunity to develop invaluable skills that include: how to advocate for social justice and women’s rights, how to plan events and recruit new activists, and empowerment through volunteering. The Young Women’s Leadership Program has expanded to the Latina community of Atlanta as well as the African American community. Since inception, over 2,200 young women have graduated from the YWLP program (“Young Women’s Leadership Project”, n.d.). The end result of the YWLP is for the participants to take on leadership roles and to participate actively in the community as well as operate as a board member on a committee at the FWHC. Evaluation Questions Three main questions were posed in order to perform an outcome evaluation of the Young Women’s Leadership Program. These questions coincided with the agenda of the Program Coordinator because the current goal is to regain external funding for the program. Proof of the success of the program through the outcome evaluation would be helpful in meeting that goal. Through the activities of the program, did participants feel that their knowledge of reproductive rights and justice was increased? i. Was volunteer orientation valuable in increasing participant’s knowledge of reproductive health, rights, and justice for women? Did the participants find the advocacy activities of the program valuable in increasing their advocacy skills? Did the participants find the leadership activities of the program valuable in developing their leadership skills? i. Did any of the program participant’s progress to Tier III leadership roles within the Feminist Women’s Health Center? If so, in what capacity? Summary of Results To summarize the findings of the evaluation results, a majority of the program participants did have the perception that five of the Young Women’s Leadership Program activities did increase their knowledge of reproductive health, rights, and justice. Specifically, volunteer orientation and FOCUS: Reproductive Justice Advocacy workshop seemed to have the largest response rates and were favorable towards participants agreeing that their knowledge had increased as a result of the activity. Also, a majority of the participants did agree that 5 out of 6 activities were valuable in increasing their advocacy skills as well as their leadership skills. The evaluation question, “Did any of the program participant’s progress to Tier III leadership roles within the Feminist Women’s Health Center?” returned positive results as there were some 7 participants who moved to Tier III leadership out of 24 participants who responded. In summary, the participants of the Young Women’s Leadership Program, did have a positive perception of the program on increasing the leadership and advocacy skills as well as the knowledge of reproductive health, rights, and justice of the participants surveyed.

The growth of the drug war and rates of narco-violence in Mexico has captured the attention of the international community, leading to international debates about the validity and effectiveness of the War on Drugs mantra. Since 2006, the Mexican government has been actively combating the cartels with armed troops, leading to high rates of human rights abuses as well as growing opposition to official prohibition policies. This thesis explores three movements advocating for alternatives to the Mexican drug war that have their foundation in civil society organizations: the movements for human rights protection, for drug policy liberalization and for the protection and restitution of victims of the drug war. These movements are analysed through a theoretical framework drawing on critical political economy theory, civil society and social movement theory, and political opportunity structures. This thesis concludes that, when aligned favourably, the interplay of agency and political opportunities converge to create openings for shifting dominant norms and policies. While hegemonic structures continue to limit agency potential, strong civil society advocacy strategies complemented by strong linkages with transnational civil society networks have the potential to achieve transformative changes in the War on Drugs in Mexico.

For over forty years, archivists and records managers have developed and advocated numerous theories and methodologies for the preservation of authentic and reliable organizational digital records. Many different tools, standards, and guidelines have been created to enhance and safeguard the content and context of digital records across multiple migrations. In addition, several archives have been able to create and sustain full-scale digital preservation programs. However, in spite of these successes, most archives and records management programs are not yet capable of preserving digital records indefinitely. Long-term archival digital preservation advocacy is defined as efforts undertaken by archivists and records managers to convince others, inside and outside their professions, to support the concepts, methodologies, and resources necessary to implement long-term digital preservation. Advocacy as a political- and policy-focused activity to convince a targeted audience to act is distinguished from archival “public programming” that is centered around outreach, publicity, exhibitions, and reference services. Advocacy for long-term digital preservation has not been widely successful, as evidenced by the relative small number of fully supported and fully functional archival digital preservation programs. As a result, the potential for a “dark age” characterized over the long term by a dearth of surviving, readable, and contextualized digital records is very real. This thesis explores why advocacy efforts have created only limited success, as well as what might be done to improve this situation. It rethinks long-term digital preservation as an issue of advocacy and will, as well as one of technology, strategy, or theory. Chapter One opens the thesis with a brief discussion of computers and digital records, placing advocacy efforts within a historical and technological context. Chapter Two presents an intellectual history of long-term digital records preservation advocacy literature and practice, demonstrating how advocacy “messages” have been formulated, disseminated, and “sold.” It also illustrates the multitude of informational resources and technological “solutions” that are now available to assist archivists and records managers in undertaking long-term digital preservation activities. Chapter Three tests the resonance of advocacy efforts through a series of surveys which I conducted with archivists and records managers from a variety of government, corporate, educational, and other institutions, as well as follow-up interviews with Manitoba-based records professionals. Survey questions were developed based on my examination of long-term digital preservation advocacy literature in Chapter Two, while interview questions were based on the responses of survey participants. Chapter Four concludes the thesis with a series of recommendations on improving long-term digital preservation advocacy. It argues for archivists and records managers to increase their personal commitment to long-term digital preservation, which includes having the will to embrace change and get started. Records professionals must also produce more practical internal guidance to assist archivists and records managers in undertaking preservation activities. In addition, the development and delivery of external advocacy “messages” must be improved, so that advocacy arguments better resonate with those responsible for funding organizational records management and archival preservation programs for digital records.

International lawyers are increasingly interested in studying NGOs ("NGOs") and their influence on state behavior, but few have studied the impact that domestic NGOs can have on transforming and generating international norms. This paper explores the links between Latin American NGOs and their aim of changing international norms into more effective instruments against systematic violations of human rights by states. I will aim to articulate the stages of the processes that NGOs go through to change state behavior. / I decided to write about NGOs and changes to human rights norms because I have dedicated most of my life to trying to eliminate human rights violations in Latin America. To the detractors that insist that such attempts are futile, I would respond that every effort one can contribute to the human rights movement is one step towards the goal of transforming beliefs and principles into real changes to state practices.

This dissertation brings together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives born of the fields of disability studies, critical race theory, cultural studies and queer and feminist studies to analyze the social significance and productive effects of cultural representations of autism. Specifically, this work addresses contemporary enactments of autism advocacy as found in the mass media, education literature and policy as well as in fundraising campaigns. In response to a global/izing economy that privileges the fast, efficient exchange of information and knowledge, I attend to how autism appears in the field of autism advocacy as an abbreviation; its multiple meaning distilled down to a series of ‘red flags’ in awareness campaigns, bulleted ‘facts’ in information pamphlets, statistics in policy reports. I analyze the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and trace their continuities so as to make legible an underlying logic: a powerful and ubiquitous logic that casts autism as a pathological threat to normative life, and advocacy as that which must eliminate this threat, thus, limiting the role of the ‘good’ autism advocate to one positioned ‘against’ autism. This dissertation shows how dominant, contemporary discourses of autism advocacy that narrate autism as some ‘thing’ to be ‘fought’, ‘combated’, or ‘warred against’ function to shape ‘life’ as conditional and cast autism as (one of) its condition(s). As autism is discursively and ideologically made separate from the vital category of life itself, and as bodies and minds of living people are relentlessly divided up into vital and non-vital parts, individual and collective life ‘with’ (the condition of) autism becomes life that is conceptualized as ‘almost living’ or ‘mostly dead’. I demonstrate how such an understanding of the conditionality of life is a necessary pre-condition for normative acts of violence – violence enacted in the name of securing the norm and violence that is normalized as necessary.

This dissertation brings together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives born of the fields of disability studies, critical race theory, cultural studies and queer and feminist studies to analyze the social significance and productive effects of cultural representations of autism. Specifically, this work addresses contemporary enactments of autism advocacy as found in the mass media, education literature and policy as well as in fundraising campaigns. In response to a global/izing economy that privileges the fast, efficient exchange of information and knowledge, I attend to how autism appears in the field of autism advocacy as an abbreviation; its multiple meaning distilled down to a series of ‘red flags’ in awareness campaigns, bulleted ‘facts’ in information pamphlets, statistics in policy reports. I analyze the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and trace their continuities so as to make legible an underlying logic: a powerful and ubiquitous logic that casts autism as a pathological threat to normative life, and advocacy as that which must eliminate this threat, thus, limiting the role of the ‘good’ autism advocate to one positioned ‘against’ autism. This dissertation shows how dominant, contemporary discourses of autism advocacy that narrate autism as some ‘thing’ to be ‘fought’, ‘combated’, or ‘warred against’ function to shape ‘life’ as conditional and cast autism as (one of) its condition(s). As autism is discursively and ideologically made separate from the vital category of life itself, and as bodies and minds of living people are relentlessly divided up into vital and non-vital parts, individual and collective life ‘with’ (the condition of) autism becomes life that is conceptualized as ‘almost living’ or ‘mostly dead’. I demonstrate how such an understanding of the conditionality of life is a necessary pre-condition for normative acts of violence – violence enacted in the name of securing the norm and violence that is normalized as necessary.

Titel: Etik, ansvar och legitimitet - En kvalitativ studie om hur PR-konsulter förhåller sig till professionell etik Författare: Elin Helgesson  Kurs, termin och år: MK032G Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap GR (C) C-uppsats, HT13, 2013-2014. Antal ord i uppsatsen: 19 468 ord. Problemformulering och syfte: Debatten om hur PR-branschen finner sin legitimitet är en central fråga som PR-skrået i helhet tampas med. Det sätt som branschen försökt uppnå en yrkeslegitimitet är att påvisa sitt arbete för allmänintresset och sin positiva roll för demokratin. Emellertid ifrågasätts PR-konsulternas förmåga att representera allmänintresset. Detta eftersom PR-konsulterna befinner sig i en balansakt mellan att de dels som en profession bör arbeta för allmänintresset, och dels att de aktivt ska arbeta för att främja olika särintressen för deras olika uppdragsgivare. En balansakt som ifrågasätter etiken i branschen. Detta lyfter frågan om hur PR-konsulter underbygger sitt handlade som etiskt och vad de anser utgör etiskt beteende inom den egna branschen. Utifrån denna bakgrund är syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur PR-konsulter ser på professionell etik ur perspektivet av att företräda olika parters intressen. Metod och material: Samtalsintervjun som metod är vald i studien, och totalt åtta respondenter intervjuades. Samtalsintervjuerna genomfördes på respektive respondents kontor och följde en färdiggjord intervjumanual. Efter intervjuerna genomförts transkriberades samtliga intervjuer för att underlätta en god analys. Huvudresultat: Ur respondenternas svar går det att tolka att deras bild a professionell etik egentligen utgörs av att PR-konsulterna själva ska ha en god personlig etik, som även kan appliceras i arbetet. Ett resonemang som i stor grad är paradoxalt och påvisar hur bilden av yrkesetik skiljer sig åt mellan forskarna och PR-utövarna. PR-konsulterna menar att etiken i den egna branschen är på en god nivå även om de ser en förbättringspotential på vissa punkter. Till skillnad från flertalet forskare utrycker en majoritet av respondenterna att det inte finns något uttalat behov av ett etiskt regelverk eller reglering för PR-utövarna. Detta eftersom PR-konsulerna ger ett intryck av att varje PR-konsult utifrån sitt personliga etiska ställningstagande upprätthåller en grad av professionalism som är nödvändig. PR-konsulterna finner sin legitimitet i att de aktivt utvärderar frågor och klienter ur ett etiskt perspektiv. Detta etiska ställningstagande skapar en form av restriktioner i påverkansarbetet som medför att det utförs på ett etiskt sätt och inte skadar allmänintresset. I relation till Edgetts kriterier för att företräda olika intressen på ett etiskt sätt går det att uttolka att respondenterna värderar kriterierna utvärdering, prioritet, sekretess och känslighet högt. Emellertid kompliceras detta av att strategiska och marknadsmässiga inslag har en inverkan på beslutfattandet. Nyckelord: Etik. PR-konsulter. Advocacy/påverkansarbete. Public Relations (PR). Legitimitet. Professionell etik.

The transition from an industrial to a global knowledge-based economy has put universities in the spotlight of public policies as the new drivers of innovation and sustained economic growth. Consequently, societal expectations towards the academic community have changed and so has, under the influence of neo-liberal ideas, the public governance of higher education. This is particularly true in federalist systems, such as Germany, Australia and the European Union, where the roles of each government level in governing the higher education sector had to be renegotiated and clarified. In Canada, however, despite repeated recommendations by policymakers, scholars and international organisations, the respective responsibilities have not yet been clarified and, to date, there are still no mechanisms to coordinate the post-secondary education policies of the federal and provincial governments. This paper inquires into the reasons for this exception. In the academic literature, this has generally been explained in terms of Canada’s uniqueness with respect to its federalist system and the decentralized higher education sector. We attempt to go beyond this traditional federalism, state-centered approach, which is predominant in the Canadian higher education literature. Instead, based on interviews and official documents and inspired by the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), we shall be looking at the belief systems of the major actors in the policy process and the degree of coordination among them. Our analysis comes to the conclusion that, on the one hand, proponents of a pan-Canadian approach are divided over their fundamental beliefs regarding the compatibility of inclusiveness and excellence. Some argue that the federal government must legislate common standards to ensure equal opportunities for all Canadians. Others propose a New Governance-inspired approach to create a differentiated and competitive university sector that meets the demands of the global knowledge-based economy more efficiently. On the other hand, even though the provinces differ in their beliefs regarding the equal opportunity versus economic efficiency debate, they share the same strong belief with respect to the role of the federal government. According to this view, post-secondary education is exclusively a provincial responsibility and the role of the federal government is solely to help them ‘fix the problems’. Moreover, contrary to the proponents of more intergovernmental collaboration, the provinces have successfully strengthened the coordination among themselves to block further perceived federal intrusions into provincial jurisdiction. We come to the conclusion that the absence of intergovernmental mechanisms to govern post-secondary education is a consequence of the diverging belief systems and the establishment of formal coordination structures among the provinces to block – as they perceive - further federal intrusions. Also, there is less of a sense of urgency to act compared to, say, health care. Finally, remembering the near-separation of Quebec in 1995, there is very little appetite to reopen the constitutional debates. Therefore, based on our analysis, we argue that contrary to suggestions by some higher education scholars, the establishment of intergovernmental coordinating mechanisms appears unlikely in the near future.