The New Zealand Food Bill is being passed amidst stern criticism of its content and the influence on it by multi-national corporations and the Codex Alimentarius Commission, whose food-safety standards motivated the bill. These concerns illustrate the large democratic and legitimisation deficits in global governance. One response to these criticisms and concerns is global administrative law, which focuses on promoting administrative law tools to enhance accountability. However, an examination of the Food Bill reinforces two main critiques of global administrative law: that it excludes addressing substance of international law and brackets democracy. I argue the limited GAL approach cannot be justified and the significant gaps in its approach require that it engage with democracy. I analyse the possibilities of global administrative law to engage with (to acknowledge and adopt) three theories of global democracy - deliberative, cosmopolitan, and radical pluralism. I argue deliberative democracy offers the most accessible option.

The New Zealand Food Bill is being passed amidst stern criticism of its content and the influence on it by multi-national corporations and the Codex Alimentarius Commission, whose food-safety standards motivated the bill. These concerns illustrate the large democratic and legitimisation deficits in global governance. One response to these criticisms and concerns is global administrative law, which focuses on promoting administrative law tools to enhance accountability. However, an examination of the Food Bill reinforces two main critiques of global administrative law: that it excludes addressing substance of international law and brackets democracy. I argue the limited GAL approach cannot be justified and the significant gaps in its approach require that it engage with democracy. I analyse the possibilities of global administrative law to engage with (to acknowledge and adopt) three theories of global democracy - deliberative, cosmopolitan, and radical pluralism. I argue deliberative democracy offers the most accessible option.

This project examines the foreign policy rhetoric of Bill Clinton in the post-Cold War world. My reading of Clinton’s rhetoric reveals that a change/order binary underwrote his oratory. Clinton defined change as being the underlying guidepost of the post-Cold War international setting. Order was defined through how he could guide, shape, direct, and manage American foreign policy in a sea of change, represented through his use of what I call America’s foreign policy vocabulary. This lexicon is based on three rhetorical components—the definitions of America’s role in the world, identification of the enemies we face, and the grand strategy we use to achieve American interest—have been a resource for presidential foreign policy discourse since America’s founding. Clinton’s use of this vocabulary maintained continuity in its use with his predecessors, but he also modified it in key ways to deal with the changes of the global environment. These modifications positioned Clinton to direct and manage the change to serve American interests which offered a semblance of order for American foreign policy in a sea of international disorder.

In this thesis, an information system is designed and developed for engineer-to-order organizations to improve the traditional Bill-of-Material by handling variants of products and components efficiently. A database is developed to store the related information about inventories and configuration management in an effective way. The improved Bill-of-Material provides a common structure to access stored information for material management purposes. A model, based on network, is presented and included into the system for calculating time required to produce components and to make subassemblies or assemblies with the current inventory levels. The system is applied to T&Uuml / BiTAK-SAGE, which is an engineer-to-order organization carrying out Research and Development projects for Defense Industry.

Marine debris is improperly disposed of solid waste, also called litter, which is deposited in the marine environment (NOAA, 2010). Litter prevention techniques such as fines, cleanups, incentives, and others, can help to decrease litter, and ultimately decrease marine debris. This research analyzed 2000 and 2010 International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) data obtained from The Ocean Conservancy to ascertain whether certain litter prevention techniques did reduce amounts and types of marine debris found in coastal areas. The litter prevention techniques analyzed included state bottle bills, voluntary monofilament fishing line recycling programs, and the Keep America Beautiful (KAB) cigarette butt litter prevention campaign. In addition, coastal population density and coastline length were also studied to uncover any potential impact they may have on marine debris amounts. This study found no significant connection between population density and kilometers of coastline and marine debris amounts. In addition, no statistically significant difference of marine debris amounts was found between states with bottle bills and without bottle bills for 2000 or 2010. Florida has the highest participation in the monofilament line recycling and was analyzed to find any difference between Florida and national averages. No significant difference was found between Florida and the national averages of fishing line debris for the year 2000 or 2010. Finally, there was no significant reduction in cigarette butt litter from 2000 to 2010 (the KAB cigarette butt litter prevention program began in 2002), but there was an increase in cigarette butts per smoker from 2000 to 2010. Other aspects that could impact marine debris amounts are also discussed to help understand the complex causes that lead to marine debris. Despite these results, the study did highlight some interesting trends. OR, LA, AL, MS, and NC had the largest decreases in marine debris per capita from 2000 to 2010, with decreases of 87%, 79%, 65%, 54%, and 52% respectively. RI more than doubled the amount of marine debris per capita, up 52%, from 2000 to 2010, and DE increased per capita debris 91% in the same time period. RI and DE also saw large increases in marine debris per kilometer coastline, along with MD, over the ten year time span. In addition to population, bottle bill data also provided some interesting clues to potential marine debris reduction. There was no statistical difference between bottle bill and non-bottle states, but bottle bill states did have slightly lower amounts of returnable debris both years. Similar results were found for monofilament fishing line debris. There was no statically significant difference between Florida and the national average of fishing line debris, but Florida did have 92% less fishing line debris than the national average in 2010. The cigarette butt marine debris data, analyzed to find the number of butts found per smoker, increased from 2000 to 2010, which is the opposite trend that was expected. This is most likely due to increased awareness of the impacts cigarette butt debris can have on the environment which is discussed.

In this comparative policy development analysis, I utilize path-dependence theory and presidential records to analyze President Lyndon Johnson's success in passing Medicare and Medicaid and President Bill Clinton's failure to pass national health care reform. Findings support four major themes from the Johnson administration: 1) President Johnson had a keen understanding of the importance of language in framing debate; 2) He placed control of the legislative process in the hands of a small, select group of seasoned political operatives and career policymaking professionals; 3) He paid considerable attention to the details of negotiations and the policy consequences; and 4) He had a highly developed sense of the political and legislative processes involved in passing major legislation. The case study of the Clinton administration reveals five major themes: 1) There is a lack of evidence that President Clinton remained actively engaged throughout the policy development and legislative processes, instead choosing to delegate the process to the First Lady; 2) There was a naiveté on the part of the Clintons and many administration staff members with regard to the legal and political ramifications of their decisions; 3) The Clintons tried to make the plan fully their own, sharing little credit for its development with Congress; 4) Their attempts to incorporate existing corporate health care delivery structures with their vision for universal coverage proved unworkable; and 5) The extended time from task force launch to bill delivery gave opponents ample time to marshal their opposition forces. I conclude that in developing health care legislation, Johnson had the advantages of: 1) a small group of key policymakers; 2) multiple, simultaneous legislative initiatives which diffused the attention of a more limited media; and, 3) national crises which promoted an environment conducive to sweeping policy change. I suggest that major, national health care reform will not occur until: 1) an economic or geopolitical crisis sets the stage for change; 2) business interests and progressive interests find common ground; and, 3) Americans achieve a new cultural understanding of universal health care as both economically just and economically necessary. / text

This thesis focuses on the rhetorical formations of identities of people of color through news media coverage. Specifically, I investigate news media coverage of the Arizona immigration legislation, Senate Bill 1070. Major commercial media and Spanish-language media systems associate the immigrant identity to the U.S. Latina/o identity and position U.S. Latina/os as second-class citizens in American society. The language of the legislation, in addition to media coverage of it, works to reinforce race relations and the ideologies of meritocracy and cultural difference in the United States. Chapter one presents up-to-date demographic data, stressing the continuing growth of a diverse American people. Specifically, I use data on the U.S. Latina/o population as a way to establish this reality given that the data are recent. This chapter also presents the argument that current norms and standards in political opinions, such as those considered by policy makers, excludes opinions deriving from people with distinct cultural backgrounds. I present this argument in order to define and exemplify contemporary U.S. culture. The next chapter is a comparative close-textual analysis of news media coverage of Arizona SB 1070. Chapter two also outlines a theoretical framework in order to understand the functions of the media in society in relation to the rhetorical forms of reinforcing dominant ideological values. Chapter three utilizes survey data that speaks to the identity of U.S. Latina/o college students. As part of the questionnaire, I pose questions regarding language preference, generational status, media consumption and political knowledge. The results exemplify the prevailing bicultural component of U.S. Latinas/os and suggest that this ethnic group draws from different and contrasting ideologies. When comparing the identities presented by the media to the results of the questionnaire, discourse analysis suggests the notion that bicultural Americans are not acknowledged fully as citizens. / text

Historically the United States has welcomed immigration from all over the world; from Ellis Island to the Statue of Liberty, whose iconic “Mother of Exiles” is considered a symbol of hope to generations upon generations of immigrants. In the last few years there has been an increase in hostility towards immigration but more precisely towards unauthorized immigration. This has caused several states to enact anti-unauthorized immigration measures. States such as South Carolina, Utah, Alabama, have all followed Arizona, which was the first state to enact such a laws. Unauthorized immigrants typically vacate three labor areas, construction, food service, and agriculture. The following thesis tries to detail House Bill 56, which is Alabama’s anti-unauthorized immigration bill, and its impact on the construction industry in Alabama. House Bill 56 was passed by the Alabama House of Representatives, the following research shows that it has negatively affected the construction industry in Alabama. Alabama has three major indexes that detail the overall “health” of the construction industry. They are employment rates, Construction GDP, and Construction Spending. Since the passage of HB 56, all three construction indexes in Alabama have encountered significant negative changes. A survey of sub-contractors in Alabama shows that there is a negative construction labor pool, with most of sub-contractors blaming the passage of HB 56 as the culprit.

<p>On the assumption that the Bill of Rights in the Malawi Constitution has brought change in the enjoyment of rights by women married under customary family laws, this research study examines its impact on African customary family laws that are discriminatory against women in Malawi. The main focus is on customary family laws governing marriage, divorce, children after divorce, and inheritance in both patrilineal and matrilineal systems of marriages. The extent to which this has been reflected in practice is assessed in the light of women&rsquo / s rights law reforms and courts&rsquo / adjudication of customary family law issues.</p>

The central argument that I advance in this dissertation is that the influence of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in the governance of global health and agricultural development has been derived from their ability to advance knowledge structures crafted to accommodate the preferences of the dominant states operating within the contexts where they have sought to catalyze change. Consequently, this dissertation provides a new way of conceptualizing knowledge power broadly conceived as well as private governance as it relates to the provision of public goods. In the first half of the twentieth-century, RF funds drove scientific research that produced tangible solutions, such as vaccines and high-yielding seed varieties, to longstanding problems undermining the health and wealth of developing countries emerging from the clutches of colonialism. At the country-level, the Foundation provided advanced training to a generation of agricultural scientists and health practitioners, and RF expertise was also pivotal to the creation of specialized International Organizations (IOs) for health (e.g. the League of Nations Health Organization) and agriculture (e.g. the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) as well as many informal international networks of experts working to solve common problems. Finally in the neo-liberal era, RF effectively demonstrated how the public-private partnership paradigm could provide public goods in the face of externally imposed austerity constraining public sector capacity and the failure of the free-market to meet the needs of populations with limited purchasing power. Since its inception, the BMGF has demonstrated a similar commitment to underwriting innovation through science oriented towards reducing global health disparities and increasing agricultural productivity in poor countries, and has greatly expanded the application of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach in both health and agriculture. Unlike its intellectual forebear, BMGF has been far more focused on end-points and silver bullets than investing directly in the training of human resources. Moreover whereas RF has for most of its history decentralized its staff, those of BMGF have been concentrated mainly at its headquarters in Seattle. With no operational programs of its own, BMGF has instead relied heavily on external consultants to inform its programs and remains dependent on intermediary organizations to implement its grants. Despite these and other differences, both RF and BMGF have exhibited a common capacity to catalyse institutional innovation that has benefited historically marginalized populations in the absence of structural changes to the dominant global power structure. A preference for compromise over contestation, coupled with a capacity for enabling innovation in science and governance, has resulted in broad acceptance for RF and BMGF knowledge structures within both state and international policy arenas. This acceptance has translated into both Foundations having direct influence over (i) how major challenges related to disease and agriculture facing the global south are understood (i.e. the determinants and viable solutions); (ii) what types of knowledge matters for solving said problems (i.e. who leads); and (iii) how collective action focused on addressing these problems is structured (i.e. the institutional frameworks).