This thesis explores the role of citizen participation in a post-disaster flood hazard mitigation planning program in Peterborough, Ontario. Recognizing that citizen participation is an integral element of hazards mitigation planning, a review of the relevant literature identifies six strategic planning choices that should be considered in the design of a citizen participation program. The study applies this framework to the Flood Reduction Master Plan (FRMP) study and planning process in Peterborough, undertaken following the July 2004 flood event, to analyze citizen participation in hazard mitigation planning practice. Existing documentation, including the FRMP, and fifteen key informant interviews provided the main sources of research data. Data were analyzed in terms of the framework and other hazards mitigation theory found in the literature to produce the findings of the study. There existed many strengths and several weaknesses of the citizen participation aspect of the planning program. Many of the decisions made regarding citizen participation in the FRMP process can be considered successful by the standards set in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to examine how EU-migrants visiting the social project Crossroads experience their life situation in the Swedish society. Two questions were formulated: (1) How do the respondents describe their situation when it comes to work, housing and social network? (2) How do the interviewees describe and experience the social project Crossroads? The method used was qualitative interviews conducted with five EU-migrants who visited Crossroads. The theoretical framework is the concept of integration and Bauböcks (1996) theoretical model of the ideal society. The results show that none of the interviewees had their own accommodation. Most of theme were living under stress because of their job seeking situation. The results also show that the interviewees’ social networks consisted of small groups of individuals who speak the same language.  According to the interviewees. The results show that Crossroads provides a welcome but acute help to relive problems with everyday life. The interviewees perceived their situation as complex and frustrating, and it appeared as if their situation as regards work, accommodation, and social contacts was interrelated.  It is concluded that EU-migrants would benefit from structural changes that made it easier for theme to improve their life situation more lastingly.

In this thesis we have looked at the citizen communication of a former Soviet society. Moldova gained independence in 1991, and established their first democratic election the same year. However, the democratic progress of the nation has been slow and the society is still split between those who believe in the future, and those who experience nostalgia for the past. Our thesis concerns the capital of Moldova, Chisinau, and its City Hall (CCH), which has an expressed wish to communicate more democratically with their citizens. In order to gain ideas about how to communicate more democratically, we have turned to theories of marketing and communication. By comparing CCH’s citizen communication to western criteria of democratic citizen communication, we find that CCH has quite a long way to go before they can refer to their communication as democratic. However, we believe that these theories, developed in a western society, do not pay enough respect to the cultural and historical context.  They rest on assumptions about what democracy is, and how to reach it. In order to find the reason to why CCH’s citizen communication does not measure up to the western ideal, we have looked deeper into the history and culture of the Chisinau society. By interviewing Chisinau citizens and politicians we have discovered that they posses a Communicative Heritage. This heritage is highly influenced by the nation’s experiences of Soviet. Citizens and politicians understanding of both each other, and communication itself constitute this heritage. What we suggest is that this Communicative Heritage also poses as a barrier for achieving democratic citizen communication.

This thesis explores the role of citizen participation in a post-disaster flood hazard mitigation planning program in Peterborough, Ontario. Recognizing that citizen participation is an integral element of hazards mitigation planning, a review of the relevant literature identifies six strategic planning choices that should be considered in the design of a citizen participation program. The study applies this framework to the Flood Reduction Master Plan (FRMP) study and planning process in Peterborough, undertaken following the July 2004 flood event, to analyze citizen participation in hazard mitigation planning practice. Existing documentation, including the FRMP, and fifteen key informant interviews provided the main sources of research data. Data were analyzed in terms of the framework and other hazards mitigation theory found in the literature to produce the findings of the study. There existed many strengths and several weaknesses of the citizen participation aspect of the planning program. Many of the decisions made regarding citizen participation in the FRMP process can be considered successful by the standards set in the literature.

This study develops an interdisciplinary exploratory approach for understanding concepts and tools for local participation that leads towards sustainability. The research goals include : identifying effective public participation criteria and sustainability criteria, identifying lessons that might be learned from Canadian communities that have used, and applied, public participation and sustainability initiatives, exploring how might these lessons be applied to a mid-sized community such as the City of Waterloo, and exploring how might citizen advisory committees be more effectively engaged to foster sustainability. The ultimate objective is to identify effective participation processes in order to foster sustainability using both secondary literature and a case study methodology. Findings were assessed in the analysis of lessons learned of communities located across Canada to be later refined and tested using the case study of the City of Waterloo, Ontario. The thesis contains an analysis of the conceptual literature and case study research to ascertain the factors that determine effective public participation processes towards sustainability and recommendations for citizen advisory groups that can be used by various local governance stakeholders in a Canadian context.

The move toward primary health care renewal in Canada and in industrialized nations around the world is resulting in a fundamental change in the way health care is delivered. Citizen participation is one of the five pillars of primary health care-not just participation in decisions related to an individuals health care treatment, but also from the larger perspective of decision-making that affects policy and structure within an organization. Health care organizations want to be responsive to the needs of their communities, and consumer-savvy citizens increasingly expect to play a part in the decision-making process of organizations. <p>The relationship between health care administrators, providers and citizens is sculpted by fundamental philosophies, values and processes. These include organizational culture, change process, social capital, citizen role definition and shared power or citizen empowerment. This research seeks to link the concepts and create an understanding of the dynamic and complex relationships which result in effective or ineffective citizen participation in decision-making within organizations. A theoretical framework was used which addresses these fundamental philosophies.<p> The object of this research is to explore the processes and structures of organizations that facilitate or hinder meaningful citizen participation. Community health centres (CHCs) have long been recognized in Canada and around the world as leaders in the facilitation of citizen participation, and this research reviews pertinent documents from fourteen CHCs across Canada. Some of the data collected from a national research project on community health centres is used. Through secondary analysis, the original results of the document audit are compared to the original results of a quantitative survey administered to volunteers, clients, health care professionals and board members at each site that collected information about community capacity, organizational capacity and outcomes. <p> Results of this thesis research are presented in a framework of community and organizational characteristics influencing the degree of public participation supported in the literature. The research presented in this thesis shows some relationship between supportive factors identified in the organizations documents and the degree of participation and satisfaction identified in the quantitative survey results. Possible reasons for this relationship are explored and recommendations are made based on a hierarchical model of participation, with greater citizen participation as the goal.

Based on the theory of Spiral of Silence from Noelle-Neumann, the main purpose of this research is to figure out internet users how to express their opinion after evaluating opinion climate and whether the characters of the Internet make their opinion- expression arbitrarily. Moreover, this research focuses on Chinese ¡¥face¡¦ culture to examine the cultural context how to influence opinion- expression of internet users. This research chooses ¡¥PeoPo¡¦ citizen journalism platform as research field, and adopts in-depth interview to analyze the opinion- expression of 9 PeoPo citizen reporters. As for the research topic, it¡¦s concerned with the issue of village migration of Taiwanese aborigine after the disaster caused by Typhoon Morakot in 2009. Therefore, this research attempts to figure out the PeoPo citizen reporters¡¦ inner process of opinion- expression and the influence of Chinese face culture. This research finds that the opinion-evaluation of internet users mainly rely on the Internet, and the fear of isolation that the spiral of silence theory emphasizes don¡¦t predict their willingness to speak up alone, but Chinese face culture does. Furthermore, the characters of the Internet don¡¦t prevent the spiral of silence effect. Although PeoPo not only accepts diverse viewpoints widely, but also inspires more citizens to voice local issues, the results show that actually PeoPo citizen reporters express their opinion with great pressure mostly lowering their willingness to speak up such as the foundation idea of PeoPo, reference group, threat of opposition, objective principle of journalism, and Chinese face culture. In sum, getting one¡¦s own way is discouraged on PeoPo; in other words, the characters of the Internet still unable to relieve PeoPo citizen reporters of speaking up.

With the rise of Internet, ¡§Electronic Mailbox¡¨ becomes the most immediate communication channel between government and citizens beyond limit of time and distance. Apparently, Electronic Mailbox appears as one of the two-way interactive e-government services; moreover, it is commonly available on all country government web sites and offers two-way communication service channel. Citizens are able to express their opinions, doubts, and complaints regarding policies, laws, and regulations via such electronic approach, and can look forward to receiving prompt responses or results. On the other hand, through civic participation, government enables to gather public opinions and then, to transform them into knowledge resources to policy and strategy decision-making. Therefore, the service quality of Electronic Mailbox not only becomes the manifest index of e-government service, but also influences citizen¡¦s satisfaction with government services. According to what Zeithaml et al. (2002) proposed as ¡§e-SQ model,¡¨ we set up the "e-SQ model¡¨ of Kaohsiung City Mayer¡¦s Electronic Mailbox, and bring up six dimensions as ¡§efficiency,¡¨ ¡§reliability,¡¨ ¡§fulfillment,¡¨ ¡§privacy,¡¨ ¡§responsiveness,¡¨ and ¡§empathy¡¨ to prove the proposition that ¡§Information Gap,¡¨ ¡§Design Gap¡¨ and ¡§Fulfillment Gap¡¨ do exist during the process of e-service quality delivery, especially among the manager, designer and the citizen. Through the method of interview and e-questionnaire, we confirm these propositions. The result shows that among these expectations of services, citizens would like to emphasize on ¡§operation instructions¡¨ most, subsequently ¡§ease of use,¡¨ and then ¡§politeness of responsiveness and offering interactive service.¡¨ After experiencing the services of Electronic Mailbox, citizens satisfy with ¡§operation instructions and submitting on line¡¨ the most, but almost displease with ¡§the accuracy of commitment¡¨ and ¡§degree of solving the problem,¡¨ which means the government has to understand the needs and troubles of the citizens, and then figure out some practical way to solve their problems. At last, according to these factors, this thesis proposes certain suggestions from the viewpoints of ¡§system,¡¨ ¡§the government staff,¡¨ and ¡§the needs of citizens¡¨ in order to bridge the gap between the manager, designer, and citizen. Moreover, this thesis hopes to benefit the exercise and service quality of Electronic Mailbox and citizen¡¦s satisfaction.

The Improvement Strategy of Kaohsiung Mayor¡¦s Mailbox via Internal Customer Orientation Abstract Under the circumstances of increasing citizen demands and active participation in civil affairs, to improve citizen satisfaction and service quality is the most important things for the government. Actually, whatever the convenient public services or policy vision, these policies products will have great effects on the real life of the public through government employees¡¦ services. In the process of policy output, government employees¡¦ attitude toward the policy will affect the policy performace, and then, leads to citizen satisfation and loyalty. To let the external customer feel satisfied must gratify the internal customer¡¦s desire first. That is to say, to offer good internal service quality to government employees will generate high loyalty to organization, and naturally, the internal customer will give the excellent service quality to external customer. Mayor¡¦s electronic mailbox is the visualization of ¡§the Electronic Government¡¨ or ¡§the Virtual Government¡¨. In addition to providing policy information, governmental service on line, and enhancing citizen participation in public affairs by network technology, it became the vital policy instrument to implement government commitments, and supplied the grievance solving, information sharing, and policy problems construction. This research will discuss the function of customer orientation and it¡¦s effectiveness to inside customer. It began with the present utilization of Mayor¡¦s mailbox, literature review, in-depth interview, questionnaire, and confirm the positive linkage among internal customer orientation, system management mechanism, e-service quality, and internal customer satisfaction. Data were analysed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model to test variables and constructs. Finally, this research will put forward a series of proposals, including a short, middle, and long-term improvement strategy for the reference of Kaohsiung city government.

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to research the management and development of the Community University in South Taiwan. Firstly, according to the motive and reason of the study, we can analyze the content of literature to set our study framework. Besides, it is the comparative research analysis foundation to understand the management conditions and questions in the Community University by a participating observation and depth interviews. Because the development and planning of the school involve the forecast of the society changing trend¡Bexpect of the different interest groups¡Blearning persons¡¦ background and need evaluations¡Bknowledge structure¡Beducation objects, we collect so multiple data that to know the different roles¡¦ perception for the management and development. The study is to research from the ideal¡Bposition¡Bsetting ¡Borganization structure¡Bplanning and practicing of courses¡Bperforming condition of resources and public relationship sides. The results of this research are as follow¡G 1¡B Ideal and position sides¡GThese education ideals of three Community Universities in South Taiwan include the education revolution and society movement but the different roles¡¦ perceptions for ideals affect the range between the ideal and management conditions now. 2¡B Setting side¡GThese three Community Universities in South Taiwan came from the society groups and had different relationships with the public department. Besides, the public department had impact on the development and democracy in three Community Universities in South Taiwan. 3¡B Organization structure side¡GThese organization structure of Community University are different in participating and division of labor because of the education ideal and real situations . 4¡B Planning and practicing of courses side¡GThere are different course planning modes in three schools but the main design is the education course. They have the same crisis that special and academic courses are reducing; however, it is just a start for combining with the communities. 5¡B Performing condition of resources side¡GThere are some problems on the Community University human resources. For example, lecturers¡¦ joining conditions are not good and administers¡¦ loading are so high that we should add social worker resources. However, these financial resources are great impacts on teaching. 6¡B Public relationship side¡GThe public relationship of Community University affects these resources share-using¡Bjoint activities and results of marketing strategies. According to these results in the research, we have some suggestions to the public department¡Bthe manager of school and the following research as reference opinions for the development of the Community University in the future.