This thesis investigates governance in large Scottish charities. In particular, the focus is on internal aspects of governance, predominantly the functioning of the board. The influence of business on charities is also investigated through considering the impact of individuals with business expertise on the boards of charities. Charity governance in the Scottish context has been under-research, this thesis attempts to fill this research gap. A multi-method approach was employed, encompassing both quantitative and qualitative research. The study utilised a survey in the form of a selfcompletion questionnaire, and three case studies to examine governance in Scottish charities. Social construction provides the framework of the analysis. This thesis provides an insight into the functioning of the boards of Scottish charities, in-line with previous research in other countries, governance issues are apparent. However, in relation to the impact of business expertise in charities, there is evidence that business members of charitable boards make contributions to the governance of these organisations, and charities can gain considerable value from having outside specialists on the board.

This research offers the perceptions of independent non-executive directors (INEDs) in Thailand of their roles and the way they cope with constraints such as family-concentrated ownership structures and asymmetric information problems. There has been scant prior research in this area. The researcher applied qualitative research techniques to understand what was in the interviewees’ minds. The semi-structured interview was employed because it allowed some flexibility while also providing some guidelines. The fieldwork data reveals that interviewed INEDs were aware of a board’s control role which, in theory, can be realised by nominating and remunerating top management; however, in practice they had no authority to do so due to the family-concentrated ownership of Thai firms. Ensuring compliance with laws and regulations was the actual controlling activity which they undertook. Another role perceived was a service role concerned with giving advice and counsel to management. Although the interviewees rarely got involved with planning and directing, they contributed their expertise to the board. Their service function also helped them to better fulfil a control role because an INED’s service role builds his credibility in the eyes of management. This allows them to gain access to better information about a company – a critical input of a control role. Therefore, a good relationship between executives and non-executives is an essential factor for INED’s effectiveness. i A proportion of outside directors on the board and a director’s independent background were not considered guarantees of board independence. Only an INED’s independence of mind matters. Such independence can be exercised by resigning in order to send a signal to the market and protect minority shareholders. The competencies and personal characteristics of INEDs and their motivations are other elements contributing to their effectiveness.

Corporate governance refers to a complementary set of legal, economic and social institutions to protect the interests of corporate owners by securing long-term corporate stability. A corporate governance system is comprised of a wide range of practices and institutions, from accounting standards and laws concerning financial disclosure, through executive compensation, to the size and composition of corporate board all envisaging monitoring responsibility on the part of the investors to protect them from expropriation by managers. Managers’ power and prestige in running a large and powerful corporation give them superior access to inside information and thus a privileged position as compared to the numerous and dispersed shareholders. The principal concern of the present work is the UK-model of corporate governance and the role of institutional shareholders in the governance of their investee companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. The proportion of the listed UK equity market owned by major shareholders grew enormously between the early 1960s and 2008. Whereas in the early 1930s, individual investors had 80% of the securities traded on the London Stock Exchange, now the ownership structure of public listed companies has significantly changed so that institutional investors have become the dominant players on the British financial market with 88.7% share-ownership of listed companies. This significant growth of institutional ownership has coincided with the emergence of self-regulatory corporate governance practices. The British model has played a pioneering role for the development of a self-regulatory approach to corporate governance framework from the Code of Best Practices 1992 to the Combined Code 2008 and the UK Corporate Governance Code 2010 and the Stewardship Code 2010. The self-regulatory approach on the basis of the ‘comply or explain’ principle adopted by the British model has now been in operation for the last two decades. The operational flexibility of the ‘comply or explain’ approach not only encourages the companies to adopt the general spirit of the code rather than the letter but also takes into account the monitoring responsibility of the institutional investors. This latter feature of the UK approach is based on the assumption that institutions have an economically-rational self-interest to monitor and actively engage with their investee companies to evaluate the veracity of their disclosure statements and thus to protect their investments.The crucial question asked by this thesis, however, is why institutional investors are not behaving as the model expects them to and thus why they have in fact been acting as ‘absentee owners’. Their perfunctory monitoring behaviour by adopting a ‘box-ticking’ approach on the basis of a ‘comply or perform’ analysis appears to have contributed significantly to the financial crisis. This thesis moves on from this observation, however, in order to consider whether there is anything that can be done to improve the monitoring behaviour of institutional investors. In this regard, it begins by noting that institutional investors are not homogeneous; some are companies while others are trusts; they face different problems of collective action, short-termism, conflicts of interest and managerial manipulation. The thesis accordingly considers whether there are any existing powers and remedies within company law and trust law that could be brought to bear in order to encourage or even enforce improved monitoring by institutional investors within the UK’s corporate governance model, which even in the aftermath of the financial crisis remains steadfastly wedded to self-regulation.

In the recent years, there have been many reports on the prevalence of corruption in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. Corruption impacts negatively on the image of organisations since it erodes public trust and delegitimises such organisations. Therefore, good corporate governance practices should be adopted to prevent corruption. The purpose of this study was to analyse the governance system of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development with the view to identifying shortcomings in the system.

Hydropower is often termed "green energy" and proffered as an alternative to polluting coal-generated electricity for burgeoning cities and energy-insecure rural areas. India is the third largest coal producer in the world; it is projected to be the largest coal consumer by 2050. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, India, over 450 hydroelectric power schemes are proposed or are under development. Hydropower projects ranging from micro hydro (run-of-the-river systems with generating capacity up to 100 kW) to large reservoirs (storage systems up to 2000 MW) such as the Tehri Dam are in various stages of planning, construction or implementation. Run-of-the-river hydropower projects are being developed in Uttarakhand in order to avoid some of the costs to local communities created by large dams. Stakeholders in this rapid hydropower expansion include multiple actors with often diverging sets of interests. The resulting governance challenges are centered on tradeoffs between local electricity and revenue from the sale of hydropower, on the one hand, and the impacts on small-scale irrigation systems, riparian-corridor ecosystem services, and other natural resource-based livelihoods, on the other. We focus on the Bhilangana river basin, where water dependent livelihoods differentiated by gender include farming, fishing, livestock rearing and fodder collection. We examine the contradictions inherent in hydropower governance based on the interests of local residents and other stakeholders including hydropower developers, urban and other regional electricity users, and state-level policymakers. We use a social justice approach applied to hydropower projects to examine some of the negative impacts, especially by location and gender, of these projects on local communities and then identify strategies that can safeguard or enhance livelihoods of women, youth, and men in areas with hydropower projects, while also maintaining critical ecosystem services. By assessing the Bhilangana basin case, we also offer hydropower-livelihoods-irrigation nexus lessons for headwater regions across the Himalayas and globally.

No description available.

The prospects of democracy in Africa is the central concern of this study. The factors that contribute to the existence of undemocratic or autocratic governments in most of Africa therefore becomes our major focus for evaluation. An analysis of the pre-colonial, colonial and neocolonial political history of Africa attributes autocracy in Africa to irreconcilable differences between the African traditional institutions and the imposed colonial political and economic systems. This socio-economic and political disharmony orchestrated by the colonial economics of exploitation, set the tone for neo-colonial African States fraught with economic and political instability. Our research strategy involved a qualitative technique of collecting and analyzing a significant body of data relating to the political history of African states. Through an Afrocentric prism, the flaws of the African political and economic systems are traced to underlying deficiencies in the nature of its states. For a second and perhaps authentic emancipation of Africa therefore, the components of the state structure must be realigned giving priority to the values, customs and traditions of African people. This should form the base for a democratic environment that will usher in effectiveness and legitimacy in governance in those states. A Democratization Front comprising Africans in Africa and in the diaspora is advocated to design and monitor the democratization movement in the continent. The Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) should serve as-the supervisory body to the Democratization Front. The philosophy of the Democratization Front would include a Pan-African mobilization against the forces of political economic and social exploitation of the continent.

Since the ruling pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP hereafter) came to power in 2002, there has been a general transformation in Turkish politics from a secularist orientation toward a mainstream Muslim conservative line. This conservative political transformation manifests itself in the socio-cultural domain in terms of a proliferation of discourses on "family crisis" and the "decline of family values" as well as social programs and projects aimed at "strengthening the Turkish family." While the family crisis discourse situates the family as the source of socio-economic and demographic problems facing the Turkish society, strengthening the family is offered as the primary solution to these problems since the family is conceptualized as the foundation of a firm and stable social order. The Turkish state's intervention into the family sphere has occupied a central place in the governmental and legislative policies of the state since the rise of modern forms of governance in the nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire. What is novel about the configuration of family governance under the AKP government, however, is the extension of family governance beyond the formal institutions of the state to a wide array of actors, institutions, mechanisms, and rationalities and the deployment of religious or religiously-inspired actors, institutions and organizations in the conceptualization, production, and implementation of social programs and projects aimed at "strengthening the Turkish family." Within the past decade, this concern for maintaining family values and fortifying the family institution has been widely circulated among Muslim conservative circles, and the family has constituted the foundation of most social projects designed and implemented by not only formal political institutions such as the Ministry of the Family and Social Policies and AKP-governed municipalities but also various religious or religiously-inspired organizations and institutions such as the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Islamic civil society organizations, and Islamic television channels. This dissertation focuses on the role of these religious or religiously-inspired actors, institutions, and organizations in shaping the politics of the family in contemporary Turkey. It argues that the increasing prominence given to the family by the state and these religiously-inspired institutions and organizations points to emerging forms of governance as well as reconfigurations of religion and secularism in contemporary Turkey. It also demonstrates how the dominant political discourse on declining family values and the social projects that aim at recuperating these values situate the family as an object of governmental intervention as well as a site of discursive proliferation, disciplinary practices, and biopolitical governance.

This thesis examines how the changing governance environments introduced under New Labour compromised or assisted the delivery of the 2004 Community Rail Development Strategy. It considers the origins of Community Rail and the circumstances which led to the adoption of the 2004 Strategy and its content. It explores the wider processes of governance change across multiple scales and the rise of a new neoliberal approach favoured by recent administrations, with particular emphasis of New Labour’s introduction of the Third Way and its creation of the third sector. The primary research aim and four core research objectives are tested within six Community Rail Partnership (CRP) case study areas, through the application of a multi-methodological approach combining desk-based quantitative analysis with qualitative semi-structured interviews of actors engaged in the case study areas and wider policy elites. For each of the case study areas, an empirical overview of the transport planning policies of actor members of the CRPs is undertaken, as well as visual and audio station audits. The research then examines the place of the 2004 Strategy within the wider transport planning policy landscape at all tiers of regional and sub-regional government, concluding a very mixed approach to engagement and support. The resurgent approach to localism and the role of New Labour’s Local Strategic Partnerships are considered in identifying existing levels of CRP engagement and opportunities to create functional spaces of engagement. It identifies a high level of correlation between current CRP activities and alignment with core performance indicators of this new governance framework, manifesting itself in a published national toolkit model. The research then examines the importance of a CRP’s own approach to governance; the role of core individuals; and the importance of actor engagement to support a stable platform for delivering successful Strategy outputs and outcomes. It concludes by recommending national policy options to improve on outcome delivery for individual CRPs and their members.

This D.Phil. thesis is an international comparative study looking at the development and implementation stages of policies tasked to reduce emissions from transport. The substance of policy is all too often the primary focus of research, leaving the settings in which these policies are developed and implemented relatively underexplored. Examining the relationships and interplay that exists between departments responsible for climate change and transport at the sub-national (state) level and those with their local and national counterparts, this research tries to unpick the organisational intricacies that may act as barriers to delivery. State governments have become a promising source of action to reduce emissions from other sectors for which they have legislative responsibility; however, the private road transport sector remains a challenge. This research examines the barriers preventing such progress and whether the lack of collaboration between departments and across levels of government are responsible in part for these challenges. Taking a specific policy intervention designed to reduce transport-related emissions from four case study governments (Bavaria, California, Scotland and South Australia) this research is about organisational structures of government and policy processes. The main hypothesis of the research is that conventional environmental/climate change- and transport-policymaking practices are incompatible – and that this incompatibility is hampered by organisational structures of government. Together these factors render implementation of policies to reduce the climate impact of transport difficult. The hypothesis is guided by four research themes – scale, scope, leadership and process. Each of these themes has a distinct yet important part to play in understanding and comparing the case study contexts, in terms of the cross-departmental and cross-level interactions occurring within each of the sub-national governments. Each of the subject case study governments have been chosen since they are self-determined ‘leaders’ on climate change. This research serves to highlight some of the governance issues that need to be overcome or removed for such positive political intent to be realised. It posits that without successfully linking frameworks and interested stakeholders in the process, tangible emissions reductions will be difficult to achieve. The main objective of the research is to investigate the frameworks, interplay and dynamics at the sub-national level of government across departments and between levels of government. The relationship and collaboration with industry is also examined as a supplementary consideration. The second objective is to look at how and whether climate change policy can be more closely integrated with transport policy and the barriers to this integration. This investigation is underpinned by cross-disciplinary governance theory, as well as notions from socio-political governance and applies the concept of institutional interplay in this context between levels of government. It develops the concept of sub-national governance which argues that relationships between levels are distinct and non-hierarchical in terms of policy development and implementation.