As críticas levantadas pela doutrina quanto ao instituto da execução de ofício das contribuições previdenciárias na Justiça do Trabalho culminam, quase sempre, na decretação de sua inconstitucionalidade ou, pelo menos, sustentam a sua incompatibilidade com o processo do trabalho. Os referidos posicionamentos desconsideram a importância do instituto e sua íntima relação com os desígnios da Justiça do Trabalho, em especial enquanto mecanismo de garantia de direitos previdenciários dos trabalhadores segurados. Como consequência dessas críticas, tem-se observado o apequenamento do instituto, pela não aceitação de sua incidência quanto às sentenças declaratórias, conforme entendimento hoje estampado na Súmula 368 do TST e em decisão do Plenário do STF, o que afronta diretamente o texto constitucional, que nenhuma diferença faz entre as espécies de provimentos judiciais. A má compreensão do instituto acarreta ainda a prevalência de interpretações incompatíveis com as normas e os princípios constitucionalmente consagrados, a exemplo da aceitação da sentença trabalhista como título executivo judicial para execução das contribuições previdenciárias, mas, em certas ocasiões, a negativa em acatar os seus termos como prova do preenchimento das condições necessárias à obtenção de prestações previdenciárias pelo trabalhador segurado, especialmente quando a decisão estiver baseada em acordo ou prova exclusivamente testemunhal. O referido entendimento quanto à valoração da sentença trabalhista vai contra a própria estruturação constitucional da filiação previdenciária, que prevê a formação de um vínculo único, do qual decorrem, ao mesmo tempo, a obrigação de contribuir para o sistema e o direito à obtenção de prestações previdenciárias. Assim, além da devida delimitação do sentido e alcance da competência constitucional para a execução de ofício das contribuições previdenciárias na Justiça do Trabalho, o presente estudo pretende apresentar uma crítica ao fato de o instituto ser encarado por parcela da doutrina e dos aplicadores do direito como um mero instrumento de arrecadação ou de facilitação fiscal, ofertando uma interpretação que prestigie a máxima eficácia da norma constitucional, a visão do processo como meio de realização dos direitos, a função social da Justiça do Trabalho, e os direitos fundamentais do trabalhador segurado, de sorte a ressaltar a utilidade e o destaque que o referido instrumento deveria ostentar. / The criticism raised by jurists regarding official enforcement of social security contributions in the Labor Courts almost always ends up resulting in a declaration of its unconstitutionality or, at least, is found to be incompatible with the Labor Process. The aforementioned positions do not consider the importance of the institute and its close relationship to the designs of the Labor Courts, particularly as a mechanism for guaranteeing social security rights to insured workers. As a result of this criticism, the institute has notably grown smaller because of a lack of acceptance of its applicability regarding declaratory judgments, as understood today by Supreme Labor Court (TST) Precedent 368 and an en banc Federal Supreme Court (STF) ruling, in direct contrast to the constitutional text, which does not differentiate between types of judicial decisions. Misunderstanding of the institute furthermore results in a preponderance of interpretations that are incompatible with constitutionally consecrated principles and standards, as seen by the acceptance of the labor ruling as a judicial execution instrument for enforcement of social security contributions; but, on certain occasions, it is negative in accepting its terms as proof of fulfillment of necessary conditions for obtaining social security payments from the insured worker, especially when the decision is based on an agreement or exclusively testimonial proof. This understanding regarding the appreciation of the labor ruling goes against the very constitutional structure of the social security affiliation, which establishes formation of one sole bond, from which the obligation to contribute to the system and the right to obtain social security payments simultaneously arise. Thus, in addition to due limitation of the meaning and scope of constitutional competency to officially enforce social security contributions in the Labor Courts, this study intends to present a critique of the fact that the institute is seen by some jurists and by those applying the law as a mere instrument of collection or fiscal collections, offering an interpretation that strives the utmost for maximum efficacy of the constitutional standard, the vision of the process as an instrument for achieving rights, the social function of the Labor Courts, and the fundamental rights of the insured worker, so as to underscore the importance and the prominence that the aforementioned instrument should display.

M.Litt. et Phil. / The importance of the Trinity cannot be overemphasised in the matter of salvation. We cannot talk about a salvation if we cannot talk about a Trinity. Paul thinks of salvation only in trinitarian categories. For the purpose of this treatise, we call it a Soteriological Trinity. Paul takes the soteriological trinity as a matter of fact because he ascribes deity to both Christ and the Holy Spirit without denying his monotheistic background or beliefs. For Paul, God's dealing with people in the world is to call a people for his own name. These are called the People of God, and is identified with the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Church. The Holy Spirit is instrumental in constituting this People, or Body, or Temple. Because of the death and resurrection of Christ, and the gift of the promised Holy Spirit, this People is defined as an eschatological community, and salvation is an eschatological event. Through these events, the future and the kingdom is present in the here and now ("already"), while there is still a "not yet" aspect to that future. This society, the Church, is therefore a reflection of the Divine Trinity. They reflect God's unity, love, grace, kingdom and more in this world. Because the community of believers is a Spirit-instituted, Spirit-sealed, Spirit-quickened, Spirit-initiated, Spirit-controlled and Spirit-endowed community, they characterise the New Age, which is the age of the New Covenant and the age of the Spirit. That means that our obedience to God is internally motivated rather than by external codes or requirements of law. The Church is, really then, the beneficiaries of God's grace, thus making them a charismatic community. Salvation is by God's grace. Sanctification is by God's grace. Security is ours by God's grace. In fact for Paul, the whole of the Christian life is a matter of God's grace. He calls it "the riches of the glory of God's grace" (Eph. 1:7). Grace is the antithesis of the Law. Paul's own experience of Christ and the Spirit, changed his whole understanding of God, the People of God, and the Law. God was now understood as a trinity; the People of God now consisted of both Jews and Gentiles; and the Law, though holy and good, was weak through the flesh, and unable to bring salvation. In fact, the Law brought death and bondage, rather than life and liberty. The Spirit of life and liberty set us free from the law of sin and death. The Spirit, life and liberty are then gifts of grace. We now have to live as free, not using our freedom as a 'cloak of maliciousness', but to bring honour to God. Freedom was for Paul the mark of sonship, and bondage of slavery. We are sons and not slaves. Through the Spirit we were made sons of God, and are being fashioned after the image of the true Son of God. All of the Spirit's operations in the Church, are to this end. Whether to give us life, or to place us in Christ's Body, or to unite believers to Christ and to each other, or to give gifts for the building up of the saints and for the work of the ministry, or to lead and control us, or to have us bear spiritual fruit, a to reveal to us the mysteries of God, it is so that the Body and the individual believer be conformed to Christ's likeness. All these operations are done in conjunction with the Father and the Son. The Kingdom of God is for Paul the final goal of the relationship between the Spirit, Christ and the People of God. So that God's righteousness and rule be the culmination of it all. The Kingdom of God is nevertheless a present reality, in that righteousness, peace and joy are already the experience of the Church. Yet, the future of the believers' participation in the Kingdom, is guaranteed by their participation with the Holy Spirit in the present. Through this present participation with the Spirit, are we guaranteed of the future bodily resurrection, inheritance and eternal life. Our participation in the "firstfruits" guarantees our participation in the "harvest". When the Holy Spirit is involved in the world, he is involved with the task of the Kingdom; the calling of those who will be the People for God's Name. The Holy Spirit makes the Word understandable and appropriate for salvation through the Gospel. He gives life which opens them up for his work in them to bring about their identification with Christ, the Lord and King. The Holy Spirit is the key to true spirituality and Christ-likeness. The Holy Spirit is the key to the future.

Over the past few decades analyses of causation have proliferated in almost immeasurable abundance, and with two things in common; firstly, they make much of counterfactual dependence, and secondly, none of them successfully handle all the pre-emption cases. In this thesis, I fore-mostly investigate David Lewis’ promising counterfactual analyses of causation (along with many others), and provide an extensive examination of pre-emption cases. I also offer my own counterfactual analysis of causation, which I argue can handle the problematic pre-emption cases, and therein succeed where so many other prominent analyses of causation have failed. I then conclude with some morals for the continuing debate.

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This project investigates why alumni do not become donors to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Interviews with non-donors created the opportunity for an in depth qualitative examination of the motivating process that led these non-donors to abstain from giving. This study used the Van Slyke and Brooks (Van Slyke & Brooks, 2005) model of alumni giving and the Schervish (Schervish, The spiritual horizon of philianthropy: New directors for money and motives, 2000) supply side theory of philanthropy, which has been successfully applied in similar studies (Wastyn, 2008), to provide the conceptual framework. This framework maintains that donors and non-donors differ in that the manner in which they socially construct their university experience in creating their own realities. This constructed reality becomes the filter through which non-donors pass requests for financial support (whether direct or indirect) from the institution. The study revealed that at NMMU factors including generic donor behaviour among alumni, the status of current non-donors as being mostly past donors to their respective constituent institution, attitudes toward the institutional reputation (or aspects thereof) of the NMMU, identified obstacles to engagement, pervasive negative attitudes to institutional giving and alumni support for commercialised but not tiered giving activities, can play a major role in restructuring the manner in which non-donor alumni should be approached. The study demonstrates the need to include non-donors in research that explores alumni giving to the university. It confirms the distinct impact of the abnormally distributed demographic characteristics of this university and confirms that examining the impact of these characteristics and experiences cannot be effectively done by simply relying on one or two simple variables. Being a management project, 13 (thirteen) distinct categories of management recommendations are made, ranging from strategy development, through accounting and budgeting practice, to proposing specific revenue generating initiatives. The study concludes with the view that Alumni can and should be able to make a notable contribution to the revenue of the university and in so doing, contribute to the sustainability of the pro-social transformation process of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

The first chapter explores the extent to which campaign contributions to politicians in the financial sector can influence the economic performance of the banks. In this paper, I study the relationship between campaign contribution, probability of failure and portfolio investment. I find that there is a significant effect of campaign contributions on the probability of failure and riskier investment portfolio using U.S. state banks. This effect is more pronounced for smaller and less geographically diversified banks. The results are robust for the overall risk taking measure ($Z-score$ and volatility of the return). The result is also robust using the magnitude of contributions. Using bivariate model and Blundell-Bond estimate to control for endogeneity of campaign contributions, I find that the results are robust. Using US legislative data on congressmen from congress.gov, the second chapter (co-authored with Aggey Semenov) investigates the effect of U.S. Congress legislators' non roll--call activity in bill sponsorship and co--sponsorship on campaign contributions from the financial industry. We found that bill sponsorship has positive and significant effect on campaign contributions in both Chambers. Co--sponsorship has positive and significant effect on contributions in the House but not in the Senate. We link this observation to a longer term of senators compare to congressmen; senators have more time to engage in more profitable sponsorship than congressmen. Legislators' efficiency in promoting bills to laws is rewarded by the financial industry. We also conduct robustness checks. Motivated by a large literature on the determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the third chapter (co-authored with Roland Pongou) is assigned to understand whether a leader's longevity in office promotes FDI inflows? We answer this question with a novel dataset on the personal characteristics of African leaders covering the period from 1960 to 2011. We find that political longevity increases FDI inflows. The effect is robust to controlling for leader heterogeneity using leader fixed effects. The results remain unchanged when using plausible instrumental variables for political longevity to address possible endogeneity issues, and when estimating a dynamic model. Importantly, the effect of longevity on FDI inflows is only positive for more democratic regimes. Exploring the mechanism, we find that longevity of leaders improves the rule of laws, bureaucracy, property rights, and infrastructure, and reduces corruption. We also find that unobserved characteristics of leaders such as his ability play a role in its longevity and the improvement of institutions.

S.J. Willis was British Columbia’s longest-serving Deputy Minister. Between 1919 and 1945 he influenced directly the policies and procedures of the province’s educational enterprise. Willis assumed a primary role in policy-making. It was to Willis that the Ministers, school inspectors, teachers and members of the public made known their suggestions and complaints. Although he continued to manage the Department with a high degree of central authority, he was more inclusive of teachers and trustees in policy-making than were his predecessors. His ingenuity in this respect is one of the central themes of this thesis. Willis set the tone for dealings with the Department. Public perceptions of the Department, and those of teachers in the field, were determined largely by their dealings with the Deputy. He managed day-to-day operations while Ministers tended political relationships and participated in government. As Deputy Minister, Willis provided political advice to his ministers, thus taking responsibility for controversial issues as an ordinary duty. All the while, Willis showed he understood the scope and limitations of his powers. He was careful to support the politicians and governments he served without assuming the mantle of elected representatives. The record of his career exemplifies that of the traditional civil servant. This study concludes that Willis’ bureaucratic legacy can be instructive to contemporary government officials and suggests that the Deputy performs an important function in providing continuity between changing governments and Ministers. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

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Afrikaans text / Die uitverkiesingsleer is vanaf die vroeë Kerkgeskiedenis aan stryd gekenmerk, wat sedertdien geakkumuleer het. Die vername vrug hiervan is twee teenpole, naamlik Calvinisme teenoor Arminianisme. Hierdie entiteite blyk onversoenbaar te wees en impliseer twee groot vrae wat `n derde vraag (of moontlikheid) antisipeer, naamlik dat daar oor beide gevra moet word: Kies God só? `n Verdere vraag onstaan, naamlik of die Christelike gemeenskap met hierdie toestand tevrede kan wees, veral terwyl blyk dat hierdie stryd intensiveer. In hierdie dogmaties-historiese ondersoek blyk dit dat die antwoord op hierdie vraag negatief is: God kies nie só nie. Die bedoeling is nie om met harde beslistheid `n oordeel te fel nie, maar is dit deel van die soeke na `n beter begrip van hierdie leerstuk wat soveel energie in beslag geneem het en tot verdeeldheid binne die Christendom gelei het. Derhalwe word voorgestel dat daar in hierdie doolhoof `n moontlike middeweg tussen die twee ongenaakbare sienings, óf `n alternatief, weg van die tradisionele is. Die doel hiervan is egter nie om die tradisionele uitverkiesingsleer met `n absolute alternatief te vervang nie, maar eerder bydraend in die soeke na `n oplossing te wees. Derhalwe is die bedoeling hiervan nie om enige tradisionele siening op `n destruktiewe manier te kritiseer, of deur `n eulogie te kanoniseer as eksklusief-waaragtig nie. In hierdie literêre ondersoek word die ganse uitverkiesingsleer nie hanteer nie. Daar word as verteenwoordigende model veral op die probleem binne Protestantse kringe gekonsentreer – spesifiek op die probleem onder fundamentele evangelies-gesindes. Die klem of fokus word vernou om langs die tradisionele hoofmomente van Augustinus/Pelagius en Calvinisme/Arminianisme by die sogenaamde „Evangelicals‟ uit te kom. Hierdie stuk bepaal sigself dus by die evangeliese stroom binne die Protestantisme. Behalwe vir `n historiese oorsig, word kritiek op die tradisionele uitverkiesingsleer gelewer. Daar word ook op die Vyf Punte van Calvinisme gefokus, aangesien dit redelik verteenwoordigend van dié leer is. Besondere probleme, wat steeds heersend is, word uitgewys, waarna alternatiewe in die soeke na `n oplossing hanteer word. Uiteindelik word `n voortgesette, volgehoue en gemeenskaplike soeke na `n antwoord op die vraag: “Hoe kies God?”, voorgestel. / The doctrine of predestination is since the early beginnings of Church History featured by strife which is currently accumulating. A prominent result hereof is the entity of Calvinism, with its antipole, Arminianism. These entities seem to be irreconcilable and imply two major questions with the anticipation of a third, namely that it should be asked of both: Does God choose in this manner? A further question arises, namely if the Christian community is satisfied with this condition, especially when it seems that this strife is intensifying. In this dogmatic-historical enquiry it seems that the answer is negative: God does not choose in this manner. The intention is not to pass decisive judgement, but rather to obtain a better understanding of this doctrine which led to division and discord within Christianity. Consequently a possible middle course is proposed between these two entities, or an alternative, away from the traditional tendentiousness. The purpose hereof is not to replace the traditional doctrine of predestination with an absolute alternative, but rather contributing in search for a solution. Therefore the intention is not to criticize any traditional view in a destructive manner nor, on the other hand, canonize it as exclusively veracious. This literary study will not cover all aspects of the doctrine of predestination. The problem with this doctrine under fundamental, evangelicals will be taken as a model and the focus of this study. The focus will be further narrowed to the traditional momentums of Augustine/Pelagius and Calvinism/Arminianism which culminates in the evangelical movement. This study confines itself basically to Protestantism. Except for the historical review, criticism will be provided on the traditional doctrine of predestination. This will also focus on the Five Points of Calvinism, seeing that it is representative of this doctrine. Particular prevailing problems will be pointed out where after proposals for a solution will be suggested. Finally a continued, sustained and common search for an answer to the question: “In which manner does God choose?”, will be proposed. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Sistematiese Teologie)

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