Thesis (MA(MW)--University of Pretoria, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

As the third sphere of government, and the one 'closest to the people', local government has been given a mandate of promoting and ensuring community participation in its municipal governance. Both the Municipal Structures Act of 1998 and the Municipal Systems Act of 2000 establish broad principles as well as responsibilities that local government has in promoting a system of participatory governance. The National Youth Policy of 2000 recommended municipalities to establish mechanisms and structures for youth participation in its decision making process. A proposed local youth machinery that municipalities may implement consists of Youth Units/desks, Councillors for the youth, Youth Councils and a support system to ensure effective functioning of the above structures. Other opportunities for youth participation in local government include the IDP and Budget processes and ward committees. Using uMsunduzi Municipality as my case study, the study looked at the extent to which youth structures realised young people's participation in local government and the difference this makes to its decision making processes. A significant finding of the study was that Youth Units are best positioned to facilitate meaningful youth participation and remain the only youth structure with a potential of bringing greater youth involvement in the IDP/Budget process and ward committees. However, for Youth Units to be effective, functional and be able to play their leadership role they need both financial and human resources from the municipality. Without this kind of support they remain irrelevant and useless to the youth in ward committees who continue to remain marginalised. An understaffed Youth Unit without enough money and resources will always struggle to move youth participation from tokenism to meaningful participation in government participatory structures and processes. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

Thesis--Brandeis. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis examines how informal mediation is practiced in Brazil’s urban periphery communities, which are often associated with high levels of violence and insecurity. Based on ethnographic data from low-income neighborhoods in Florianópolis, my analysis of local people’s interventions offers insight into the way that non-state, unarmed actors exercise mediative agency in the midst of everyday violence and insecurity. While a growing body of research shows that state and non-state actors are guided by diverse conceptions, intentions and approaches when they attempt to mediate public and private conflict amongst residents, less attention has been paid to the symbiotic relationship between, or the social impact of, conflict intervention and the reproduction of violence. This thesis argues that interveners use their interactions with antagonists in a particular territory in order to cultivate nondominant power, which serves to obstruct and interrupt the way that violence reproduces and transmits into residents’ lives. As such, it suggests that mediators can enable social change because they have a very particular relationship with the different and interdependent types of violence present in the periphery. Interveners develop and deploy a repertoire of social mediative tactics in order to contend with the complexity of local tensions and the erosion of democratic citizenship that these tensions produce. Defining mediative practices as a source of power invites discussion into community mediation’s strategic potential in the project of urban peacebuilding and violence reduction, positing new directions for applied practices in Brazil and beyond.

Feminist researchers have noted the invisibility of women in power structure studies to date and have suggested that it is the methods of main-stream social science research that systematically obscure women's political activities. The primary objective of this study is to identify and describe the women who participate in the public decision-making process at the community level, as a test of the suggestion that there is a bias in the methods, and as a way of beginning to correct the present lack of knowledge about women's contributions to community politics. There is, however, no accepted theory of community power, and the organization and distribution of power in a Canadian suburban community, a previously unstudied setting, could not be taken for granted. Therefore, the research has been designed to determine both the structure of power in the community and the location of women in that structure. Variations on standard research methods are used to identify men and women active in community politics, and interviews with elected and other community leaders provide data about the leaders, their memberships in key organizations, and their political activities and strategies. Fictitious names are given to the community, some of the local organizations, and the community leaders in order to protect the anonymity of the informants. The distribution of power in the community is found to conform to the elite power structure model. An organized opposition somewhat limits the power of the dominant clique, but this does not constitute evidence of the mutual control that some researchers state is the case in pluralistic societies. A comparison of the data in this and other studies indicates that individuals active in sectors such as business, government and the independent professions, are predominant in all the communities in the comparative survey, no matter what type of community or what methods are used to identify the community leaders. It is suggested that this finding lends weight to the stratification theorists' assessment of the distribution of power in the community. It is concluded that the methods of power structure research are designed to focus on the most powerful members of the community, and active women will be under-reported because, although they are similar to influential men in personal characteristics, women are not often elected to positions of power, they are less likely than men to be members of the associations and institutions through which political power is organized, and they are less often active in the issues that are important to the dominant men. However, main-stream social science research has been designed by men to focus mainly on men's experiences. Women have been classified only in terms of the men in their lives, their political behaviour has been defined in different ways than men's, and researchers and informants alike have not thought of women as influential in public decision-making. By using methods which draw attention to the women who are active in community politics, it is shown that women participate in many ways to shape public policy, from activities that are designed to influence economic issues and land use decisions, to those which influence the type of educational and welfare programs available to the community. Women bring many personal resources to the decision-making process, but lack the organizational resource bases that men use to exert influence and gain political power. Women, like less powerful men in the community, exercise influence in different ways than the men in the dominant clique. It is recommended that the study of women's political experiences be used as a starting point in studying the organization, exercise and distribution of power at the community level from the perspective of relatively powerless individuals and groups. It is hoped that apart from offering women a way to validate their political experiences and to understand the nature of the limitations on their power, such studies will provide the impetus to renew efforts in developing a comprehensive theory of community power. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines how informal mediation is practiced in Brazil’s urban periphery communities, which are often associated with high levels of violence and insecurity. Based on ethnographic data from low-income neighborhoods in Florianópolis, my analysis of local people’s interventions offers insight into the way that non-state, unarmed actors exercise mediative agency in the midst of everyday violence and insecurity. While a growing body of research shows that state and non-state actors are guided by diverse conceptions, intentions and approaches when they attempt to mediate public and private conflict amongst residents, less attention has been paid to the symbiotic relationship between, or the social impact of, conflict intervention and the reproduction of violence. This thesis argues that interveners use their interactions with antagonists in a particular territory in order to cultivate nondominant power, which serves to obstruct and interrupt the way that violence reproduces and transmits into residents’ lives. As such, it suggests that mediators can enable social change because they have a very particular relationship with the different and interdependent types of violence present in the periphery. Interveners develop and deploy a repertoire of social mediative tactics in order to contend with the complexity of local tensions and the erosion of democratic citizenship that these tensions produce. Defining mediative practices as a source of power invites discussion into community mediation’s strategic potential in the project of urban peacebuilding and violence reduction, positing new directions for applied practices in Brazil and beyond. / Marie Curie Sustainable Peacebuilding Fellowship

This is an exploratory study that applies the dominant theories of the community power structure literature to the trend of regional cluster-based economic development policy in order to develop a conceptual framework of the political/institutional context of this "new" approach. In order to develop a framework that can be utilized by practitioners, field studies were conducted in Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina; Lynchburg, Virginia; and Roanoke, Virginia. The findings are that the major community power structure theories (i.e., market model, economic forces, civic culture, regime theory, the growth machine, and civic entrepreneurs) all provide important insights for the adoption of cluster-based policies. Other important factors that need to be considered are the importance of public administrators, performance metrics, state context, institutional arrangements, elected officials, tax structure, and historical path dependency. The implication for public administration is that the role of public administrators is contingent on the nature of the network governance structure. / Ph. D.

Kwok Ngai Kuen. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [153-157]) / Chapter Chapter I: --- INTRODUCTION / Chapter 1. --- Study of Community Power Structure --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- Network Analysis --- p.3 / Chapter 3. --- Objective of this Study --- p.6 / Chapter 4. --- Methodology --- p.8 / Chapter 5. --- Structure of the Thesis --- p.15 / Chapter Chapter II: --- AN UNEXPLORED POLITICAL MARKET / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.18 / Chapter 2. --- Brief History of the Community --- p.18 / Chapter 3. --- Demographic Characteristics --- p.20 / Chapter 4. --- Political Development of the Community --- p.23 / Chapter 5. --- Evolution of Political Market --- p.24 / Chapter 6. --- Political Network Before1985 --- p.28 / Chapter 7. --- Conclusion --- p.43 / Chapter Chapter III: --- MARKET TEST OF THE LIBERALS / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.45 / Chapter 2. --- Changes in Political Scenario After the 1985 Election --- p.46 / Chapter 3. --- Emerge of the New Generation --- p.49 / Chapter 4. --- Structure of the Political Network --- p.55 / Chapter (a) --- Structural Characteristics of the Total Network --- p.58 / Chapter (b) --- Supportive Network of the District Board --- p.64 / Chapter (c) --- Partial Network of the Liberals --- p.71 / Chapter (d) --- Partial Network of the Conservatives --- p.78 / Chapter 5. --- Conclusion --- p.82 / Chapter Chapter IV: --- EMANCIPATION BY THE LIBERALS / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.84 / Chapter 2. --- Market Penetration by the Liberals --- p.84 / Chapter 3. --- Domination over the District Board by the Liberals --- p.90 / Chapter 4. --- Structure of the Political Network of the Conservatives --- p.99 / Chapter 5. --- Political Network of the Liberals --- p.103 / Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.114 / Chapter Chapter V: --- GREAT DIVIDE OF THE LIBERALS / Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.117 / Chapter 2. --- Continual Domination by the Liberals --- p.117 / Chapter 3. --- Political Structure of the District Board --- p.119 / Chapter 4. --- Supportive Network of the District Board --- p.125 / Chapter 5. --- Split of the Liberal Camp --- p.127 / Chapter 6. --- Aftermath of the Conflict --- p.131 / Chapter Chapter VI: --- CONCLUSION / Chapter 1. --- Impact of Exchange Relations to Structure of Political Network --- p.145 / Chapter 2. --- Impact of the Context: Application of Political Market Concept --- p.147 / Chapter 3. --- Methodological Implications --- p.149 / Chapter 4. --- Further Applications of Exchange --- p.150 / Network Approach / BIBLIOGRAPHY

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work