Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 1976 / Bibliography: leaves 352-359. / by Jeffrey Prottas. / Ph. D. / Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science

This dissertation addresses a question fundamental to democratic government: Under what conditions are bureaucrats responsive to citizens and elected officials?

This project is a celebration of an office building in Stockholm from the 1960s, by proposing to preserve the existing and make an addition, to enhance what is already there. A premise of the project was to look upon the extension as a parasite. The existing building is a result of a formulated bureaucratic ideal, a piece of text. By using bureaucracy as a theme, the extension is parasitizing on the existing building. The theme has been explored through the use of bureaucratic tools, letters and numbers. Methods of performing bureaucracy, to do paperwork, its automatization and aesthetics, how forms and documents look. What does the contemporary nomadic office worker need? What props and supplies? How to create a bureaucratic atmosphere? How to relate to the history of office planning and keywords such as flexibility and mobility? How to relate to the actual material of the already existing? How to attach one thing to another?

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The standard method for presenting information in the military and political establishments of the US government is through the projection of data in bullet-style and/or graphical formats onto an illuminated screen, using some sort of first analogue, or now, digital media. Since the late 1990s, the most common and expected form of presentation is via the most commonly pre-installed software of presentation genre: Microsoft PowerPoint. This style of presentation has become the norm of communication, and in doing so, has replaced other methods of discursive and presentation. The art of the brief and in particular, the art of the PowerPoint has become a new standard of what was once group communication through oratory. This paper will attempt to show that PowerPoint slide-ware has reduced communication to mere presentation, negatively influencing the decision-making and critical thinking processes of individuals and organizations, particularly within the military and government. This is accomplished through the visual reception of the briefings themselves, where and when the theatrical nature of the presentation takes precedence over the content. And, in fact, this dramatic twist determines which ideas gain acceptance among audiences. This simple style of presentation is becoming indicative of a visual and leadership style of our era. This is the effect of a PowerPoint method of leadership, now de rigueur in the military and demonstrated by the current president and administration. The style of PowerPoint, both at the micro-level in particular presentations, and the macro-level, as demonstrated by people and organizations, ultimately works today as a form of control and discipline. And, in the end, it can become a convenient vehicle for furtherance of a specific ideology and propaganda campaigns. / Master of Arts

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 357-386).

Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach series has been a talking point for many ecocritical papers exploring themes of Anthropocene, uncanny, and hyperobjects. Despite the plethora of themes being investigated concerning climate change in Southern Reach, an important aspect, the climate change bureaucracy of the Southern Reach agency, is glossed over. This agency is responsible for containing Area X as well as understanding it. By primarily looking at Max Weber’s notions of bureaucracy and Jale Tosun’s and Michael Howelett’s discussion on public bureaucracy facing climate change, this thesis explores why the bureaucratic system of the Southern Reach fails to deal with climate change and, more importantly, claims that a rational bureaucratic administrative system is not equipped to deal with environmental changes of Area X because it defies the epistemological capacity of rational bureaucracy.

Devolution of the welfare state brings with it problems of democratic accountability to taxpayers, equality and uniformity in services, and the protection of vulnerable service populations. This research contributes to discussions of devolution and outsourcing by exploring the role of service populations in shaping the relationship between policy formation and implementation and the implications of this relationship for accountability in public policy implementation. A comparative analysis of community based services in aging and behavioral health illuminates the role of political power, professional interests, and organized advocacy in policy formation and implementation. The study pools evidence from legislative histories, newspaper archives, field observations, and surveys to provide a detailed account of the relationship between legislation and implementation. The findings suggest that the political power of service populations affects public policy formation, and written policies structure implementation organizations. Strengths and weaknesses of legislation are transferred to the organizations of implementation as state policies determine the constraints and resources that structure implementation organizations.

This thesis explores the everyday practices, relationships and interactions in a Probation Unit of the Department of Probation and Child Care Services in the Central Province in Sri Lanka. Using multi-sited ethnography and the ethnographer’s own experiences in this sector it examines how frontline workers at the Probation Unit engage and draw upon international and national development discourse, ideas and theories of children and childhood to engage with colleagues and clients. This thesis takes as its analytical starting point that state agencies are sites where global development discourse meets local practices. Simultaneously, they are sites where ideas and practices of nationalism, class, morality and professional identity are produced and reproduced. State sector employment is an important source of social mobility, gaining respectability and constructing a middle class identity. Thus, maintaining the ‘in-between’ position in relation to the upper and lower classes is an especially anxiety-ridden and challenging process for state bureaucrats. This shapes the particular characteristics of their nationalism, morality and professional identity and influences the way in which they translate policies and engage with institutional and bureaucratic procedures. This thesis examines this process in detail and illustrates its translocal nature. More explicitly it looks at the ways in which development discourse and practice is transformed by the forms of sociality that it engenders. The ethnography illustrates that this process allows for development policies and interventions to be co-opted in particular ways that articulate ideas and practices of nationalism, class, morality and professional identity. Through this cooption, the outcomes of development policies and interventions are transformed in unanticipated ways. The broader social and political process that transforms development policies and practices remains only partially visible to development projects and programmes. The complexity and in particular the historicity of social and political contexts remains outside development project logic and timelines. To understand the relationship between policy and practice or to evaluate development outcomes is meaningless if development is conceptualised as something that stands apart from society. What is most useful to understand, and indeed revealing, is how actors make meaning of development policies and programmes as part of everyday practices in historically situated social and political contexts. The thesis concludes that theorising, analysing or even critiquing development’s transformative potential is misleading as it fails to recognise that what is being transformed is development itself.