Yes / This paper focuses on the dispute over river Cauvery in Southern India. Among the causes of river water disputes are contested property rights, difficulty in enforcing such rights, conflict of uses and a lack of willingness to compromise. A co-operative outcome in such cases depends on several factors: asymmetry of power in a triadic relationship between a federal government and two riparian states (one upstream and one downstream). Other factors influencing co-operation are the extent to which the claims of river waters can be elevated from those of immediate riparian peoples to those of an entire state; the dominance of a masculine paradigm towards 'taming' river waters using 'hard' investments rather than 'soft' and decentralised alternatives. On the basis of district level data, the importance of river Cauvery to the hydrology, economy and polity of the two contesting states is examined. This analysis helps us to appreciate why the two riparian state governments have limited room to manouvre. Drawing from two brief case studies of Murray Darling Basin and recent litigation in the USA, and other international experiences of river water treaties, the paper identifies various implications for the resolution of Cauvery and other river water disputes.

Northern Iraq's Christians are a second-order minority. That is, they are a minority within a minority. They occupy a tenuous position between the Arab-dominated central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government. All Christians in northern Iraq desire to remain in their historic homelands. Yet efforts to advance a common political goal have been rare. Differences within the Iraqi Christian community center on three interrelated points: 1) the adoption and advancement of the Assyrian ethno-nationalist identity; 2) the struggle for leadership of the community between secular parties and church officials; and 3) the securing of group rights through either Baghdad or Erbil, which is typified by the debate over a province for minorities in the Nineveh Plain. The Islamic State's invasion in June 2014 made this dynamic even more complex. This dissertation explores how a second-order minority mobilized to protect its homelands during state breakdown and state recalibration. It examines how an Iraqi Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), responded to the rise and spread of the Islamic State. More specifically, it analyzes the ADM's creation of a self-defense force, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU), and how the party positioned itself for the post-conflict state. Data generated through ethnographic fieldwork, combined with existing primary and secondary sources, reveals a detailed process whereby security threats shaped mobilization. Notions of historic homelands and distrust of both the central government and KRG were the central factors shaping this outcome. The ADM created the NPU to liberate occupied lands. More importantly, the NPU was created to ensure Christians retained a place in their historic homelands after the Islamic State was evicted. The use of the name "Nineveh Plains Protection Units" held strategic importance. The binding principle of the NPU was an indigenous-based attachment to the Nineveh Plain, including the right to defend it, and Christianity in Iraq. Both elements captured the common threads among all Iraqi Christians and the claim they make on the state. The ADM, therefore, was particularly attuned to Iraq's pre-Islamic ancient Mesopotamian heritage. This ironically echoed earlier efforts by the Ba'ath regime to instill a Mesopotamian identity among citizens by glorifying a common Assyrian and Babylonian heritage all could presumably share. Second-order minority status meant the ADM had to eventually align with either Baghdad or Erbil. The ADM chose Baghdad, effectively balancing against ISIS and the KRG in the Nineveh Plain. Baghdad proved a willing partner for a time. The ADM, however, was left alone to navigate the Nineveh Plain's position in the September 2017 Kurdistan referendum on independence. / PHD / This dissertation examines the Assyrian Democratic Movement’s response to the Islamic State. It analyzes the ADM’s creation of a self-defense force, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units, and how the party positioned itself for the post-conflict state. Data generated through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Iraq combined with existing primary and secondary sources reveals a detailed process whereby security threats shaped mobilization. Homeland claims and distrust of both the central government and KRG were the central factors driving this process. Second-order minority status meant the ADM had no choice but to pick sides between Baghdad and Erbil. The party eventually aligned with Baghdad. However, it was left alone to navigate Nineveh Plain’s position within the Kurdistan independence referendum.

This dissertation aims to examine the relationship between interorganizational collaboration and the implementation of urban greening policy. Specifically, it discusses bonding and bridging relationships that explain a successful interorganizational collaboration, and to what extent these factors explain the perception of success in the implementation of public programs. The effects of risks of collaboration on the implementation of urban greening policy are also studied. To frame the analysis, this dissertation uses Feiock's institutional collective action (ICA) framework, which aims to understand successful interorganizational collaboration and policy implementation across sectors. The collection of data was carried out in Riyadh City in Saudi Arabia, which is located in the center of Saudi Arabia. In this study, the unit of analysis is the networks of relationships among organizations that work with the Royal Commission for Riyadh City (RCRC). The data were obtained from 44 organizations collaborating to implement urban greening projects in Riyadh City and were collected over 17 days from June 15, 2019 to July 2, 2019. The sampling technique used in this study was snowball sampling. The main statistical methods employed for hypothesis examination were social network analysis (SNA) and ordinary least squares (OLS). The key empirical results indicated that there were 12 major organizations most central within the network (i.e., 11 public organizations, and 1 private organization). Also, the findings revealed that among the 12 organizations, the most central organization within the network was the Ministry of Environment, Water, & Agriculture. Further, the empirical findings indicated that bonding relationships among organizations increase the levels of perceived success in the collaboration to implement urban greening projects. The results indicated that network betweenness (bridging) has no statistically significant effect on the perceived success in interorganizational collaboration. The findings revealed that the three categories of collaboration risks, coordination problems, division problems, and defection problems have no statistically significant effects on perceived success in the collaboration to implement urban greening projects. Overall, the hypotheses were partially supported by the results of the analyses. This dissertation builds upon and expands the application of the ICA framework by using it in an international context. It can inform public managers in public organizations in addition to other organizations that work in a variety of areas regarding the implications of collaborative work. The results may encourage organizations to successfully collaborate with other organizations in adopting policies for climate change adaptation such as urban greening to mitigate the effects of future climatic events. Finally, this study indicates its limitations and future research directions.

This research seeks to answer why and which Chinese people go to the street to protest. I argue that different sectors of Chinese society differ from each other regarding their tendencies to participate in protest. In addition to their grievances, the incentives to participate in protest and their capacities to overcome the collective action problem all needed to be taken into account. Using individual level data along with ordinary binary logistic regression and multilevel logistic regression models, I first compare the protest participation of workers and peasants and find that workers are more likely than peasants to participate in protests in the context of contemporary China. I further disaggregate the working class into four subtypes according to the ownership of the enterprises they work for. I find that workers of township and village enterprises are more likely than workers of state-owned enterprises to engage in protest activities, while there is no significant difference between the workers of domestic privately owned enterprises and the workers of foreign-owned enterprises regarding their protest participation. Finally, I find that migrant workers, which refers to peasants who move to urban areas in search of jobs, are less likely than urban registered workers to participate in protests.

Thesis advisor: Julia Chuang / In China’s overheating housing market, citizen grievances over “unfinished housing” (lanweilou) have become widespread. In lanweilou cases, developers presell housing units in high-rise apartments, initiate construction, then abscond without completing construction and renovation of these housing units. This paper documents the rise of a new social media-driven mode of mobilization now popular among homeowners of lanweilou housing. Based on ethnography and interviews with aggrieved homeowners in a southwestern Chinese city, this thesis argues that social media enables homeowners to report their grievances to a wider audience while providing diverse information about their cases for them to refine mobilizational targets. By combining authentic storytelling with self-censorship, homeowners can transform public attention in media channels into state intervention. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

This dissertation argues that the core of building smart cities is through the procurement and implementation of smart city technologies (SCTs) by either individual (i.e., smart city) or collaborative endeavors (i.e., smart governance). Given that urbanization problems (e.g., air pollution) usually spill over city boundaries, building smart cities as silos may not solve these problems. Therefore, utilizing smart governance in SCT procurement and implementation should be a better approach. Considering the potential benefits of smart governance, this dissertation addresses three overarching questions: (1) What is a smart city? (2) What is smart governance? and (3) Why do some cities choose to participate in smart governance while others do not? By developing a typology of smart governance, this dissertation categorizes three levels of smart governance based on cities' participation in cooperative procurement and implementation of SCTs. Data collected from the 2019 Smart Governance Survey confirm that the level of smart governance does vary among Texas cities. Applying transaction costs and institutional collective action (ICA) frameworks, the dissertation finds that public managers' perceptions on transaction costs and joint gains as well as cities' extant ICA mechanisms affect cities' participation in smart governance.

<P align="justify">En Belgique, 85% des chômeurs sont affiliés à une organisation syndicale. Cette situation inhabituelle est principalement due à la fonction d’organisme de paiement des allocations de chômage que remplissent les trois syndicats interprofessionnels. L’objet de la thèse est d’examiner les origines de la relation particulière qui découle de cet état de fait et de questionner ses implications tout à la fois pour les syndicats et pour les chômeurs.</P> <P align="justify">Les développements théoriques se penchent sur le mode de fonctionnement et sur les déterminants de l’action des organisations syndicales, sur les causes du chômage et ses conséquences pour les travailleurs salariés et leurs organisations, ainsi que sur les obstacles et les incitants à l’action collective contestataire des sans-emploi.</P> <P align="justify">Ces outils d’analyse sont ensuite utilisés pour examiner, depuis l’origine des organisations syndicales contemporaines et de l’indemnisation du chômage, au XIXe siècle, jusqu’à la réforme du mode de contrôle des chômeurs en 2004, les fondements et l’évolution de la relation que les syndicats belges entretiennent avec les questions de l’emploi et du chômage d’une part, avec les chômeurs d’autre part.</P> <BR> <P align="justify"><i>In Belgium, 85% of the unemployed are unionised. This peculiar situation is mainly related to the specific position of the trade unions, as the jobless can choose to receive their benefits through the intervention of one of the three national unions. The Ph.D. dissertation aims at examining the origins of that specific relationship and its implications on both the trade unions and the unemployed.</P> <P align="justify">The theoretical part explores the features of union action and functioning, the causes of unemployment and its consequences for the workers and their organisations, as well as the impediments and impetus to the contentious mobilisation of the unemployed.</P> <P align="justify">Based on that theoretical framework, the Ph.D. dissertation then examines the origins and the evolution from the 19th century till 2004 of the union positions on the issues of employment and unemployment on the one hand, and their links with the jobless on the other.</i></P>

The aim of this study is to analyze the conditions for legitimacy of the Wildlife Conservation Committees in two counties in Sweden. This study uses three concepts. Social networks, deliberation and learning as the main focus points to analyze. Olson's theory of organisations collective action with public goods stands as the theoretical perspective. Selective incitements are necessary to get them to promote the public goods. The study examines the legitimacy and functionality of the Wildlife Conservation Committees through interviews and an comparative study with the government bill 2008/09:2010. The results are that the governor with the leadership stands as a very important role to get organisations to make them promote collective action, because co-management thrives from it. The interest of hunters has an advantage when it comes to representation but only when the incentives for collective action are missing. The functionality differs between the committees when it comes to the form of management. Further research could expand the scope of this subject. Both the scale of included committees and with quantitative data research. The leadership role in co-management needs more focus in co-management studies.

Today we are experiencing an urbanization process at a speed never acknowledged before. With mobilityaccounting for a considered share of the environmental impact of these expanding urban ecosystems, the bicycleassumes an increasing fundamental role in the framework of sustainable development. However, despite gainingrecognition as valuable sustainable transportation alternative, it is still marginalized within a current car-centeredsociety. Collective action around cycling has therefore started to mobilize in order to defend cyclists’ interestsand needs. Yet, there is still limited research on its role on affecting urban development, as well as on its impacton the people who engage in such action. This thesis aims to fill this research gap by focusing on how collective action around cycling has shaped city andpersons. First of all, the collective action framework has been delineated by building on different authorscontributions: in this thesis, collective action has then been defined as an action of the collectivity for thecollectivity through the efforts of both single individuals and organized groups. Three sub-questions haveconsequently been investigated: how collective action changed its own practitioners, transforming theircapabilities and self-perceptions; how collective action has been shaped itself by cyclists group identity; and howsuch action has impacted the development of the city of Stockholm, taken as case study. The methods appliedinclude a literature review to provide relevant background, followed by a qualitative research based on semi-structured interviews. The informants involved were selected based on their engagement in the collective actionof the Stockholm scene, taken as case study due to its rather rapid process and quest in becoming a more bikeablecity. By analyzing their experiences and answers, the study results provide a new perspective on the impact ofcollective action, focusing in particular on the way group identification can strengthen and direct this engagementand on how the latter has contributed to a more personal development of its practitioners. The results build up on and also confirm previous findings in relation to dynamics typical of collective action andgroup identity, applying a more case-related perspective. In regard to its practitioners, collective action has beenfound to have an impact by enhancing a feeling of empowerment, freedom and community, affecting also non-practitioners and benefiting the society as a whole. Group identification resulted to play a significant role inshaping the different kinds of engagement, for example by focusing on contrasting the car hegemony within theurban system; however, consistent differences were found between high and low identifiers. For what concernsthe urban development of Stockholm, collective action has been found to have shaped the city in regards toinfrastructure, policies and organization, thanks to a growing network and political engagement of different actorsand organizations. The deriving increased awareness and recognition represent a core starting point for theachievement of future goals.

O artigo desenvolve o conceito de \'Empreendedor Político\' de Russell Hardin (1982), a partir da abordagem da Escolha Racional e da Teoria do Bem Público. Originalmente aplicado à Ciência Política, o objetivo é transformá-lo em um instrumento de análise para a avaliação do desempenho da ação de Estados nas Relações Internacionais. Para isso, o artigo lança mão da taxonomia de Soares de Lima (1990) para designar o comportamento \'empreendedor\' de países emergentes, e assim qualificar o desempenho do Brasil como empreendedor político em dois estudos de caso que serão objeto de consideração no artigo empírico. / The article develops the concept of \'Political Entrepreneur\' of Russell Hardin (1982), from the approach of the Rational Choice and of the Theory of the Public Good. Originally applied to the Political Science, the objective is transforming the concept in an instrument of analysis for the evaluation about the performance of States in the International Relations. For that, the article utilizes of the taxonomy of Soares de Lima (1990) for assessing the behavior of developing countries, and qualifies the performance of Brazil as \'entrepreneur\' in two case studies that will be object of consideration in the coming empirical article.