This dissertation is a descriptive study of a policy network designed for U.S. government and global cooperation to promote Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). It is aimed at exploring the historical and structural features of the ITS policy network, and evaluating its roles in the policy process. Until now, the network literature has barely examined the full arrays of networks, catching just part of their full pictures. First, this study draws attention to transnational networks and their organic or systematic relationships with lower levels of networks. Second, it examines the individual properties and synergy of three core elements of the ITS policy network: public-private partnerships, professional networks, and intergovernmental networks. Third, it takes a close look at the pattern of stability change and power relations of the policy network from within the net. Finally, this study discusses what difference networks make, compared to hierarchies and markets. This dissertation employed multiple sources of evidence: unstandardized elite interviews, government documents, and archival records. Through a networking strategy to find the best experts, face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail interviews were conducted with twenty-two public officials and ITS professionals. It was found that the U.S. ITS policy network was a well-designed strategic governance structure at the planning level, but an experimental learning-focused one at the implementation level. It was initially designed by a new, timely, cross-sectional coalition, which brought together field leaders from both the public and the private sectors under the slogan of global competitiveness. Yet, day-to-day managers within the net often experience much more complex power relationships and internal dynamics as well as legal obstacles; also, they confront external uncertainty in political support and market. For better results, policy networks should be designed in flexible ways that will handle their disadvantages such as ambiguous roles, exclusiveness, and increased staff time. In this respect, it is inevitable for the networks to include some components of a wide range of conventional structures, ranging from highly bureaucratic to highly entrepreneurial, on the one hand, and ranging between issue networks (grounded in American pluralism) and policy communities (based on European corporatism), on the other hand. / Ph. D.

Currently, rhetoric is considered a negative term. This dissertation uses rhetoric as a normative term serving simultaneously as both the central story line and storyteller. Rhetoric is both the object of study and the lens through which to study. A field study was conducted with the Roanoke County administration. The rhetorical patterns of administrative leaders were observed and documented in their day-to-day activities. Rhetoric is the conceptual glue both highlighting and pulling together different layers of understanding. At the level of theory development and application, this includes building conceptual linkages between leading and organizing. In practice, public administrators know that leading and organizing occur as an integrated whole. Methodologically, a new technique to study the rhetoric of leading and organizing is introduced within the Roanoke County field study. At a normative level, the linkages discovered in the rhetorical discourse of leading and organizing reveal a greater understanding of democratic governance. The field study provides insights into leading and organizing that are also constitutive of a normative position regarding democratic governance. / Ph. D.

In this dissertation, I study the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve System. Administrative legitimacy, I argue, is an evaluative (or subjective) concept consisting of two beliefs: first, administrative institutions have a right to govern; second, they are an appropriate way to handle public tasks. After discussing scholarship on legitimacy, I examine the Federal Reserve System, asking two questions about it. First, how have its officials attempted to legitimate both their institution and their actions over time? Second, how have elected officials, scholars, and political activists attempted to (de)legitimate the Fed and its officials' actions? While answering my research questions, I tell a story about which strategies the institution's supporters have used to legitimate the Fed and which strategies the institution's opponents have used to delegitimate it. To do so, I examine two things: the public argument about the Fed's administrative legitimacy from 1970 to 1995; the Fed's interactions with its environment, those with direct implications for its legitimacy, during this time. / Ph. D.

Yes / Water governance is a widely-used but ill-defined term. Our objective throughout this seminar series has been to analyse what it does mean and to question the consensus that seems to attach to it. In this paper for the final seminar I discuss what governance is not, I suggest what it is and I consider some propositions and issues that seem to have emerged from our meetings. In doing this, I appreciate that governance can mean different things to different people, but I suggest that, used in a specific way, it is a concept with particular value and significance for water development. / ESRC

Yes / The concept of water governance is a firmly established part of the consensus on international water development, and has become a constant theme in the policy processes we are discussing in this seminar. Originating in its present format at about the time of the second World Water Forum in 2002, it was specifically restated at the International Conference on Freshwater in Bonn, 2001 (¿the essential key is stronger, better performing governance arrangements¿), and it featured prominently in the outputs from the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, 2003. In the Alternative Water Forum, held here in Bradford just after the Kyoto event, we encouraged participants to analyse and critically debate the underlying ideas, In this paper I want to encourage this continuing analysis and debate. Like many of the issues we shall be discussing over the next couple of days, I believe it repays closer consideration, and that it encompasses a set of important ideas which must not be lost in constant re-iteration of a general theme. / ESRC

This study examines the effect of independent board members on a bank's performance. Roughly 100 banks in the SIC codes of 6020, 6022, 6035, 6036 were used, with data from the year 2003. Several governance variables were also included in this study; they are CEO/Chair duality, management ownership, insider tenure and total assets. P-B, ROA, ROE and ROI measured financial performance. The effect of outside directors was insignificant. However, the results indicated that bank size positively affects how well outsiders on the board monitor the company. Also, this study suggests that management's ownership of the company increases short term performance, while insider tenure decreases it.

No

The study critically examines developing and sustaining effective governance of universities in Uganda and the extent to which effective governance has contributed to university management. The specific objectives of the study were to; identify obstacles met in implementing measures of effective governance, identify and describe the steps taken in developing and sustaining effective governance in Ugandan universities, and to develop a governance model suitable for Ugandan universities. A mixed research methodology utilising both quantitative and qualitative research paradigms was employed to gather data for this study. The study covered five purposely selected universities in Uganda. Survey questionnaires were administered to vice-chancellors, board members, registrar, deans, heads of department, academic staff and students. Semi-structured interviews also were conducted. The quantitative data was analysed using SPSS while qualitative data was organised into different categories. The following salient findings emerged from the study; the findings presuppose that the universities are governed by boards that are competent and the governance environment was conducive. The governance structures indicate good university governance and the response showed that there were good structures of management in university governance Other findings indicated that Ugandan universities are faced with many obstacles which are limiting the effective governance. It was also indicated that the quality of risk management and internal controls in universities were high. The conclusion indicated that universities were continuously given more pressure by the government, public employers, politicians, and interested organisations. As a benchmark, university performance was seen as an important factor to justify the relevant functions performed by both public and private universities. It was recommended that Ugandan higher education needs improvement in the governance of universities to reduce the challenges faced. This could be initiated not through incremental change but more importantly through the governance renaissance where by the universities can be provided with a greater leeway in their functions to sustain effective governance. / Educational Leadership and Management / D. Ed. (Educational Management)

Following the controversial Federal election in Ethiopia in 2005, in which the ruling party regained power amidst allegations of state-sanctioned violence, the World Bank, along with other bilateral donors, stopped providing Direct Budget Support. In 2006, the Bank formed an agreement with the Ethiopian Government for an International Development Association (IDA) grant for the Protection of Basic Services. The project design for the grant was one of the most complex in the Bank's operations worldwide and featured a component for the implementation of social accountability, financed by a Multi-donor Trust Fund. This thesis critically examines the evolution within the Bank of this policy of 'social accountability' in relation to aid. Situated within the literature on the re-politicisation of aid, it questions the plausibility of implementing such a policy in Ethiopia where the dominant party was seeking ways to extend its power over society. Fieldwork for this thesis was conducted at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and in Ethiopia: in Addis Ababa, and in the region of Tigray. The evidence assembled in this thesis is drawn from 135 semi-structured interviews and a range of primary source documents. Using an historical method, this thesis argues that the primary purpose of social accountability was rhetorical and the deployment of this language by actors was cynical. Not only did donors have a limited purchase on a complex social reality in Ethiopia, but they also tolerated the misuse of social accountability by the dominant party to extend the power of the state. What was produced in Ethiopia was radically outside of what donors imagined, although they were remarkably relaxed about this fact. This thesis challenges the conventional assumptions that actors in aid negotiations are rational and that aid programs involve the imposition of rationalising high-modernist schemes.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze local Corporate Social Responsibility and how this relates to local political priorities in Denver, Colorado to provide insights both in the US context but also in the midst of the Swedish debate regarding the role of private provision of welfare. The research questions are threefold: 1. Are private engagements addressing welfare issues as identified by the public sector?, 2. What is the interaction between public and private sector in social engagements in Denver? and 3. What expressions of a governance network prevails in the cross-sector interactions in social provisions in this case study? The empirical material used in this case study consist of data collected by conducting semi-structured interviews from Denver-based corporations and individuals working for the City and County of Denver. Theories of governance; network governance and interactive governance have been applied in structuring and in the analysis of the empirical data. The results indicate that due to the internal incapacity as a result of the fiscal- and spending restrictions of the public sector in the provision of social services, the public sector lacks the capacity in providing social services for the constituents. This has opened up for a need of nontraditional governance solutions which includes a dependence of private-sector provision of welfare. Furthermore, there are expressions which indicate that CSR does play a role in the local provision of social services by filling the gap of provision which is left as a result of the institutional incapacity of the public sector. However, there are indicators of large variations in the connectedness of the linkages within the network, varying from close connections and comanagement between CSR and public initiatives to activities expressed as the self-governance of corporations in the provision of social services, making top-down goal sharing such as incentives crucial for the public sector to get corporations to address local priorities. Keywords: governance, interactive governance, network governance, welfare provision, cross-sector, CSR