Research suggests that stakeholder investment is maximized when partnerships understand the assumptions held by partners of the benefits to be derived and contributions to be made to the partnership. In 2011, representatives from seven rural county high schools and five university departments participated in a planning workshop designed to identify elements of an effective community-academic partnership to address adolescent obesity disparity in Southern Appalachia. The purpose of this investigation was to examine key elements of partnership building by way of the Give-Get Grid partnership tool. Content analysis was conducted to identify emerging themes. University representatives consistently identified more proposed program contributions as well as benefits than their high school partners. University personnel responses generally pertained to their level of participation and investment in the partnership, whereas high school personnel tended to identify contributions fundamental to both partnership and program success. Additionally, content analysis uncovered programmatic facilitators and potential barriers that can be instrumental in program planning and forming program messages. Findings suggest that although partners often share common goals, perceptions of the value of investment and benefits may vary. The Give-Get Grid can be used during the program-planning phase to help identify these differences. Implications for practice are discussed.

Despite the growing emphasis on collaboration in public health, there remains a dearth of literature providing tools for the evaluation of coalitions and councils. This study employed social network gap analysis as an evaluation tool. Survey data collected from the Southeastern Health Equity Council members were used to assess connections among members as a whole, by committee, by state, and by health specialty area. Analysis of how well Southeastern Health Equity Council met the representation outlined in its strategic plan was also conducted. Recommendations for improving the network and opportunities to effectively recruit and advance the work of Southeastern Health Equity Council are discussed.

How do individual qualities of interest groups and group interactions influence public policy through the courts? This research is grounded in two primary assumptions: 1) neither are all amicus briefs (formal tool to lobby the court) equal, nor do amicus-filing organizations have the same attributes, and 2) the behavior of Supreme Court justices is shaped by the qualities of actors external to the court. Through advanced statistical techniques, and the tools of network analysis, I build on previous scholarship to provide a large-scale study of how the qualities of amicus brief cosigners, and their interaction within their advocacy network over time, bear on judicial politics. Making use of the total population of amicus-filling organizations to U.S. Supreme Court cases between 1945 and 2012, chapter 1 uses a dynamic network analysis to investigate the evolution of organizational identity and coalition behavior of interest groups based on the issue area they advocate for. Chapter 2 investigates the impact of the ideological composition of interest groups supporting the litigants on the justices’ vote. Chapter 3 analyzes how decision at the agenda-setting stage interacts with outside lobbying to influence the opinion-writing process on merit. The results provide a more comprehensive picture a more comprehensive picture of judicial lobbying; a crucial piece in the operation of the American democracy.

In 2007 South Carolina funded 15 regional coordinators to work with local law enforcement agencies and alcohol and drug commissions to create 16 community alcohol enforcement teams to improve enforcement of underage drinking laws. Previous researchers have suggested that collaborative leadership is needed for effective teams, yet little is known about the factors that serve as barriers to and facilitators of, collaborative leadership in alcohol enforcement teams. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of coordinators involved in leading the alcohol enforcement teams in South Carolina. The theoretical framework used was Cameron, Quinn, DeGraff, and Thankor's conceptualization of the competing values framework. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 12 alcohol team coordinators. These data were inductively coded and then subjected to a modified Van Manen and Vagle analysis. Key findings indicate strong support for the idea that existence of positive community relationships and supportive champions from community partners were crucial to building and maintaining successful teams. These findings were consistent with the theoretical framework. Recommendations include implementing leadership and collaboration training for the coordinators and team members. These findings have implications for positive social change by increasing awareness among policy makers about collaborative leadership factors, which in turn could lead to policies that generate more effectual teams, improve enforcement of underage drinking laws, and consequently, result in safer communities.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Department of Defense (DoD) has been challenged to formulate and make strategic decisions, especially in areas related to the Department's "business operations." Strategic decisions are those that focus on setting long-term organizational direction. This has proven difficult because a rather simplistic (and somewhat comforting) DoD organizational orientation toward an "either/or" or "us versus them" decision-making mindset that was once ubiquitous and appropriate, given the nature of political and military threats, has been hard to shake. This study reviews a particular manifestation of this dilemma: the decision-making arrangements associated with the provision of military depot maintenance services. An historical review of this topic shows a mixture of problems, progress, and promise. A strategic decision-making approach that draws upon Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith's Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is proposed to improve the situation. It addresses key problems identified in the analysis and rests upon an approach to strategic decision making that is politically rational in nature. This approach, called a Strategic Improvement Agenda, is offered as a potential foil to the "us versus them" orientation. / Ph. D.

This study of the adoption and diffusion of paid sick leave laws in New Jersey has been designed to examine the spread of the policy between local governments and then the subsequent adoption of the policy by the state. In New Jersey, PSL was first adopted by Jersey City in 2013. Following that adoption, 12 other New Jersey municipalities adopted PSL. In 2018, a law was passed by the state that then voided all the municipal laws and replaced them with a statewide policy. Through a mixed methods research design, this study seeks to better understand the circumstances surrounding PSL. First, a logistic regression model was used to determine the characteristics that are associated with PSL adoption on the local level. Second, case studies were conducted for three adopting cities, Jersey City, Newark, and Morristown to better understand the political forces that facilitated the adoption and diffusion of PSL. Lastly, this study examined the adoption of PSL on the state level to better understand how the actions of governments on the local level affected the actions of the state government. The logistic regression found that large cities, cities with a higher percentage of minorities, cities with a mayor-council form of government, and cities with a higher Gini coefficient were more likely to adopt PSL. In contrast to the findings of the logistic regression, the case studies revealed that the cities that adopted PSL were heavily Democratic and elected officials identified progressiveness as a motivator for adopting this policy. This research used qualitative methods to evaluate how policy diffusion occurred and who facilitated this process. Through interviews, this research revealed the influence of policy advocates in helping to spread PSL to many New Jersey municipalities. An advocacy coalition named New Jersey Time to Care pursued what they termed the municipal approach. The political dynamics in the New Jersey state government prevented a statewide law from being adopted. Given this fact, the coalition pursued multiple municipal laws in order to help New Jerseyans receive paid sick leave benefits and to help build momentum for a statewide law when a change in political dynamics would allow for it. / Doctor of Philosophy / In recent years, many state and local governments have adopted paid sick leave laws. These laws require private businesses to allow their employees to earn and utilize paid sick days. This dissertation examines the jurisdictions in New Jersey that have adopted paid sick leave. It finds that large cities with a high percentage of minorities, a high level of income inequality, and a mayor-council form of government are more likely to adopt paid sick leave laws. This research also examines how advocacy groups influence elected officials in the policymaking process. Policy advocates built public support for the law and engaged in lobbying activities with elected officials. As they lobbied for the law, they presented city councils pre-drafted legislation that was then adopted by the city councils.

We consider the applicability of the Revelation Principle under the possibility of collusive behavior among players in some Bayesian framework. In doing this, since the coalition formation itself suffers information asymmetry problems, we assume that the coalition is formed if the colluding parties can successfully find some coalitional mechanism whose outcome is a set of messages in the original mechanism. Recently Cremer [1986] proposes a coalitional mechanism in the framework of the well known Vickrey-Clark-Groves mechanism. We assume that the agents successfully collude if they can find coalitional a mechanism such that (i) coalitional mechanism is incentive-compatible and (ii) the payoff of this mechanism is strictly Pareto-improving in terms of the agent’s expected utility. Our analysis is undertaken in a one principal/two agent framework. We first ünd that the Revelation Principle is still applicable in the pure adverse selection model. We then extend this result to a model with both adverse selection and moral hazard aspects. Finally, we consider a three-tier principal/supervisor/agent hierarchical organization, as in Tirole (1986). We explicitly present the coalitional mechanism as a side-contract between the supervisor and the agent. We apply the previous result of applicability of the Revelation Principle and characterize the coalition-proof mechanism. We find that the principal can design an optimal collusion free contract with some additional cost by specifying proper individual and coalitional incentive-compatibility conditions and individual rationality conditions. Moreover, we find that the results of Tirole (1986)’s paper hinge on the fact that he considers only “hard,” verifiable, information. / Ph. D.

No / The article shows that community initiatives take different forms and are the outcome of a broader interplay of factors between workers’ interests, representation, and the strategies of unions and broader coalitions that are mobilized in specific communities. Drawing from three case studies on black and minority ethnic (BME) workers and trade unions in the UK the article looks at how the rhetoric of community unionism has been adopted in an uneven manner by trade unions: the article suggests that: (a) community initiatives are variable, (b) they lack a structure and clear vision, (c) the question of BME engagement is rarely central in many projects, and (d) the ambivalent role of the state is a significant factor in many of these initiatives. This state role is downplayed in much of the literature, thus raising dilemmas in terms of community initiatives.

La thèse porte sur les raisons qui incitent les organisations à joindre des coalitions d'influence. Partant de la perspective de la survie organisationnelle, nous avançons que des organisations défendant des intérêts similaires acceptent parfois de joindre une coalition - malgré les coûts engendrés - afin de sécuriser certains capitaux considérés comme essentiels à leur survie. Plus spécifiquement, nous posons comme hypothèses qu'une organisation dont les capitaux politiques ou logistiques sont menacés sera plus encline à joindre une coalition qu'une organisation qui ne fait pas face à une telle menace. Nous vérifions nos hypothèses à l'aide de données recueillies par l'entremise d'un questionnaire et d'un entretien administrés aux responsables de 34 organisations d'influence évoluant au Québec dans trois domaines d'intervention politique, certaines d'entre elles faisant et d'autres ne faisant pas partie de la coalition active dans leur domaine respectif. L'étude de ces données primaires est complétée par l'analyse de sources documentaires relatives à chacune des organisations étudiées (publications, sites internet et revue de presse). Si nos résultats ne nous permettent pas de confirmer nos hypothèses, il ressort qu'en fait, la propension d'une organisation donnée à agir sur la base de considérations stratégiques, son ouverture à la collaboration, de même que l'importance, à ses yeux, de l'enjeu auquel s'intéresse la coalition sont des prédicteurs fiables de la place occupée par celle-ci au sein d'une coalition ou dans son environnement immédiat. À partir de ce constat, nous proposons une typologie des organisations qui permet de distinguer les organisations de type « puritain », « entrepreneur politique », « commentateur distant », « bagarreur de rue », de même que les « organisations hors réseau », les « non-qualifiées » et les acteurs « faiblement organisés ». Le modèle proposé permet de raffiner la perspective de Hula (1999), tout en identifiant des pistes fécondes quant aux liens entre la composition d'une coalition et son succès potentiel.

Notre travail se penche sur le financement de la formation professionnelle continue tel qu'il a été négocié par les partenaires sociaux dans les pays européens post-fordistes. A travers une approche des associations patronales centrée sur la distribution inégale des ressources entre grandes firmes et PME, nous montrons que l'émergence d'une gestion corporatiste (les fonds de mutualisation) peut s'interpréter comme le résultat d'alliances inter-classes entre les syndicats, les associations patronales et les PME, contre les grandes entreprises. Bien que nous mobilisions un corpus centré sur les employeurs à l’image de ce que fait l'approche en termes de Variétés du Capitalisme (VoC – Hall et Soskice, 2001), la thèse soutenue est plus proche de l’institutionnalisme historique de l'Ecole française de la Régulation. En effet, l'attention accordée à l'hétérogénéité des firmes et au rôle du politique est difficilement compatible avec l’institutionnalisme rationnel de la VoC et sa conception des associations patronales comme simples outils de coordination des firmes / Our work tackles the issue of the financing of the continuous vocational training as it has been negotiated by social partners in the post-fordist European countries. The reflection is centered on the unequal distribution of resources among the large and small firms affiliated to employer associations. It is shown that the emergence of a corporatist governance (the training funds) can be interpreted as the result of cross-class coalitions between trade unions, employer association and SMEs, against big companies. Although we mobilize a theoretical corpus centered on employers as the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ approach does (VoC – Hall and Soskice, 2001), our dissertation is closer to the historical institutionalism of the French Régulation School. Indeed, the attention granted to the firms’ heterogeneity and to the role of politics is hardly compatible with the VoC rational institutionalism and its conception of employer organizations as mere employer coordination instruments.