In order to address the disconnection between the governing and the governed in our democracies and bureaucracies, many practitioners and academics are looking at models such as participatory governance to increase empowerment and foster better decision- making. Although this model has some encouraging possibilities, there are challenges to implementing an empowering and participatory process. To better understand these issues, this research focused on tenant representatives’ understanding and experience of their role in a recently implemented participatory process in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Representatives reported taking on extensive responsibilities to improve their communities and interviews with tenants suggested empowerment and citizenship were often products of tenant participation. The research also found limitations on empowerment and the extent to which tenants saw themselves as agents and decision-makers in the Tenant Participation System. The paper connects how structure and education impacts the possibilities for agency and empowerment of participants.

In order to address the disconnection between the governing and the governed in our democracies and bureaucracies, many practitioners and academics are looking at models such as participatory governance to increase empowerment and foster better decision- making. Although this model has some encouraging possibilities, there are challenges to implementing an empowering and participatory process. To better understand these issues, this research focused on tenant representatives’ understanding and experience of their role in a recently implemented participatory process in the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Representatives reported taking on extensive responsibilities to improve their communities and interviews with tenants suggested empowerment and citizenship were often products of tenant participation. The research also found limitations on empowerment and the extent to which tenants saw themselves as agents and decision-makers in the Tenant Participation System. The paper connects how structure and education impacts the possibilities for agency and empowerment of participants.

Concerned with the question of why governments display varying degrees of success in implementing social reforms, (judged by their ability to arrive at coherent policy outcomes), my dissertation aims to identify the most important factors responsible for the stagnation of social benefits reform in Russia, as opposed to its successful implementation in Kazakhstan. Given their comparable Soviet political and economic characteristics in the immediate aftermath of Communism’s disintegration, why did the implementation of social benefits reform succeed in Kazakhstan, but largely fail in Russia? I argue that although several political and institutional factors did, to a certain degree, influence the course of social benefits reform in these two countries, their success or failure was ultimately determined by the capacity of key state actors to frame the problem and form an effective policy coalition that could further the reform agenda despite various political and institutional obstacles and socioeconomic challenges. In the case of Kazakhstan, the successful implementation of the social benefits reform was a result of a bold and skilful endeavour by Kazakhstani authorities, who used the existing conditions to justify the reform initiative and achieve the reform’s original objectives. By contrast, in Russia, the failure to effectively restructure the old Soviet social benefits system was rooted largely in the political instability of the Yeltsin era, and a lack of commitment to the reforms on the part of key political actors. And when the reform was finally launched, its ill-considered policies and the government’s failure to form the broad coalition and effectively frame the problem led to public protests and subsequent reform stagnation. Based on in-depth fieldwork conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006 and 2008, my study enriches the literature on the transformation of post-communist welfare regimes, and contributes important insights to the central question in the literature on public policy, that is, when, why and how policies change. It also enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and competitive authoritarian contexts.

The importance of housing has been discussed in several disciplines as a basic need, a fundamental human right, and a source of economic and social security; but the social housing system in Ontario has been downloaded from higher levels of government to municipalities with little to no increase in funding or program governance. In this thesis, I argue that the policies and programs that govern the social housing system in Ontario focus on a service provision perspective that maintains the status quo, particularly the stigma attached to social housing projects and homeless people. Using interviews with activists and a review of the literature, I suggest that activists have a role in changing the way this service-oriented perspective works by bringing forward the realities of homelessness in the public realm to alter social thought, agendas, and actions.

The importance of housing has been discussed in several disciplines as a basic need, a fundamental human right, and a source of economic and social security; but the social housing system in Ontario has been downloaded from higher levels of government to municipalities with little to no increase in funding or program governance. In this thesis, I argue that the policies and programs that govern the social housing system in Ontario focus on a service provision perspective that maintains the status quo, particularly the stigma attached to social housing projects and homeless people. Using interviews with activists and a review of the literature, I suggest that activists have a role in changing the way this service-oriented perspective works by bringing forward the realities of homelessness in the public realm to alter social thought, agendas, and actions.

Situated in the postcolonial modernizing discourse of development, many empowerment narratives tend to pre-identify, pre-construct and categorize community development workers/ mobilizers as empowered bodies, catalysts, and change agents. These bodies are expected to and are assumed will facilitate a transformation in oppressed peoples’ self image and belief’s about their rights and capabilities. Although feminist academics/activists have been critical of imperialist, neo-liberal and politico-religious co-optations of understandings of empowerment, limited attention seems to have been paid to the material effects of empowerment narratives on the lives of these community development workers. Nor does there appear to be sufficient analysis into how local community development workers/mobilizers who find themselves in precarious positions of employment, engage with these narratives. Provided with guidelines based on project objectives and lists of targets, many development workers/mobilizers in Pakistan tend to live with expectations of how best to ‘translate/transform’ empowerment from the abstract into the concrete while restricted in their space to critically reflect on theoretical notions that drive their practice. This thesis provides insight into the economy of empowerment narratives and the potential they have to mediate ‘encounters’ shaping ‘subject’ and ‘other’ by critically exploring how bodies of community development workers are put to work and are made to work. Drawing on feminists poststructuralist and postcolonial theory my work explores how these community workers/mobilizers located in the urban metropolis of Karachi, embedded in a web of multiple intersecting structures of oppression and power relations ‘encounter’, theorize, strategize and act upon understanding of empowerment and community development through an arts informed cooperative inquiry. Through the use of prose, creative writing, short stories, photo narratives, artwork and interactive discussions my participants and I begin to complicate these narratives. As a result empowerment narratives begin to appear as colliding discourses, multi-layered complex constructs, which may form unpredictable, messy and contradictory assemblages; as opposed to linear, universal, inevitable and easily understood outcomes and processes. I conclude that the insistence to complicate and situate such messy understandings in specific contexts is important for women’s movements if empowerment is to retain its strategic meaning and value in feminist theorizing.

This paper documents the activities of the leadership team of Central United Methodist Church (CUMC) in its outreach mission to University Homes. University Homes is a public-owned housing project located in the heart of the Atlanta University Center community. The primary methodology was the corporate use of an intercessory prayer book, Forty Days for Five People by G. Ross Freeman. The thesis is that spirituality consisting of contemplation and prayer with a foundation of Christian Education are significant tools of empowerment---especially for persons with no previous history of mission outreach---which allow Christians to become committed and involved in order to undertake a coordinated effort of missions to poor and underprivileged persons living in public housing. Also, church leaders and other laity in an affluent middle class church with no previous history of mission involvement with public housing can be equipped spiritually through the vehicle of prayer to undertake a vital mission project. Therefore, the church will begin impacting its community by adhering to its mission statement to impact the community by inviting children, youth and adults to Christ. The leaders were challenged to spend time reflecting and praying for designated people of the community. After this phase, these persons voluntarily visited those for whom they had been interceding in order to openly communicate what the Spirit of Cod had revealed to the leadership, and to lay a foundation in order to build meaningful relationships. This project will focus on the dynamics and praxis of the local church's attempt to participate in vital missions in a public housing project, and the role of the associate pastor as mediator/facilitator between the public housing community and the church. The purpose of this study is to examine the reasons inner-city churches have problems engaging in missions to local public housing residents. This project will also present a model with specific alternatives for inner-city churches to become better neighbors in missions to their local communities. Chapter I outlines the overall purpose for the study, presenting the ministry setting and the associate pastor's role in developing strategies for missions praxis. Chapter II focuses on the project in action and the phases of this outreach ministry. Chapter III recounts the history of missions, highlights the relationship of the black church to its community, and reviews the literature on urban mission models for inner-city churches. Chapter IV provides insight into the implications of this project through discussions of spirituality and Christian Education. Chapter V concludes with evaluations, project summary, and reflections.

Increasing attention has been paid to decentralized health care systems in order to evaluate health outcomes. In Brazil, state-run pharmaceutical assistance falls within the scope of a decentralized health care system, also known as SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System). The research intends to shed light on pharmaceutical policy implementation in Brazil through SUS, and argues that it can be used as a guide for institutional reform. This will be accomplished by reviewing the weaknesses and strengths of the SUS decentralized structure as revealed in the pharmaceutical policy responses to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Under the assumption of pharmaceutical assistance improvement conditioned to re-centralization of some functions; it can be argued that a balanced approach to decentralization is more desirable to the pharmaceutical sector than the existing decentralized system. The aim of this study is to highlight the advantages of establishing a hybrid system for pharmaceutical assistance.

Increasing attention has been paid to decentralized health care systems in order to evaluate health outcomes. In Brazil, state-run pharmaceutical assistance falls within the scope of a decentralized health care system, also known as SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System). The research intends to shed light on pharmaceutical policy implementation in Brazil through SUS, and argues that it can be used as a guide for institutional reform. This will be accomplished by reviewing the weaknesses and strengths of the SUS decentralized structure as revealed in the pharmaceutical policy responses to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Under the assumption of pharmaceutical assistance improvement conditioned to re-centralization of some functions; it can be argued that a balanced approach to decentralization is more desirable to the pharmaceutical sector than the existing decentralized system. The aim of this study is to highlight the advantages of establishing a hybrid system for pharmaceutical assistance.

Situated in the postcolonial modernizing discourse of development, many empowerment narratives tend to pre-identify, pre-construct and categorize community development workers/ mobilizers as empowered bodies, catalysts, and change agents. These bodies are expected to and are assumed will facilitate a transformation in oppressed peoples’ self image and belief’s about their rights and capabilities. Although feminist academics/activists have been critical of imperialist, neo-liberal and politico-religious co-optations of understandings of empowerment, limited attention seems to have been paid to the material effects of empowerment narratives on the lives of these community development workers. Nor does there appear to be sufficient analysis into how local community development workers/mobilizers who find themselves in precarious positions of employment, engage with these narratives. Provided with guidelines based on project objectives and lists of targets, many development workers/mobilizers in Pakistan tend to live with expectations of how best to ‘translate/transform’ empowerment from the abstract into the concrete while restricted in their space to critically reflect on theoretical notions that drive their practice. This thesis provides insight into the economy of empowerment narratives and the potential they have to mediate ‘encounters’ shaping ‘subject’ and ‘other’ by critically exploring how bodies of community development workers are put to work and are made to work. Drawing on feminists poststructuralist and postcolonial theory my work explores how these community workers/mobilizers located in the urban metropolis of Karachi, embedded in a web of multiple intersecting structures of oppression and power relations ‘encounter’, theorize, strategize and act upon understanding of empowerment and community development through an arts informed cooperative inquiry. Through the use of prose, creative writing, short stories, photo narratives, artwork and interactive discussions my participants and I begin to complicate these narratives. As a result empowerment narratives begin to appear as colliding discourses, multi-layered complex constructs, which may form unpredictable, messy and contradictory assemblages; as opposed to linear, universal, inevitable and easily understood outcomes and processes. I conclude that the insistence to complicate and situate such messy understandings in specific contexts is important for women’s movements if empowerment is to retain its strategic meaning and value in feminist theorizing.