M.A. (Political Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Integrating into a political democratic regime has not been a simple task for post-communisitc states such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. The signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995 marked the end of the catastrophic war that took place in the region, and was the start for the democratic developments that would now fully integrate Bosnia and Herzegovina into a consolidated democratic regime. However, the history after the signing of the agreement has not been as idealistic. Corruption, ethnic limitations and restrictions, disagreement between the various governmental bodies, and the lack of accountability between the political authorities are just some of the factors which have hindered Bosnia and Herzegovina from reaching any major democratic progress for the past years. This essay will examine if Bosnia and Herzegovina can be regarded as a political democratic regime in accordance to Robert Dahl’s eight institutional guarantees. It will also investigate the democratic development that has taken place before and after the elections in 2014.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Sociology)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / The debate on decentralisation has intensified on various global platforms wherein both developed and developing countries demonstrate interest in the subject. It is acknowledged by scholars and practitioners in the fields of social sciences and management sciences that decentralisation increases power and authority in sub-national governments. In the South African context, the Constitution of the Republic South Africa (RSA) (Section 156(4)) provides that functions such as the housing function must be assigned to local government. The Municipal Accreditation Programme as implemented by the Department of Human Settlements (DHS) is a classic case of decentralising (delegating and devolving) the housing function from one sphere of government to another in South Africa (DHS, 2012). Regardless of the constitutional provision for decentralisation, the challenge encountered is that the provincial sphere of government is unwilling to delegate and devolve the housing function to local government. As such, a scientific investigation was more than likely to unearth some of the reasons for the unwillingness and challenges affecting the Accreditation Programme in order to provide possible solutions and policy recommendations regarding the problem identified. The purpose of the study was to explore the challenges and perceptions on decentralising the housing function to the local government in South Africa using the case of the Accreditation Programme. The study was anchored by the Weberian Theory of Bureaucracy and Rationalisation. Also, Peter Evans’s embedded thesis was utilised as ancillary to Weberian theory. A qualitative research study was conducted wherein an exploratory case study design was adopted. Purposive sampling was utilised to single out relevant participants for the research problem identified. Interviews were conducted to gather data and thematic data analysis was utilised to analyse data. Besides the solutions provided which are more on the applied dimension for the empirical contribution of the study, this study also provides a theoretical contribution by suggesting some fundamental basis of a Weberian developmental state theory in the South African context. The empirical and theoretical contribution that this study provides address the researcher’s quest to contribute in generating knowledge on the subject of decentralisation. / Department of Human Settlements (DHS)

Military historians have been debating the U.S. Army's World War II replacement system for decades, but no one has completed a detailed study of the War Department's policies and practice. Authors have focused primarily on how combat units overcame the system's limitations, but they have not conducted an in-depth examination of its creation, structure, and function. Nor did they question why infantry divisions had to devise their own replacement policies in the first place. The extant literature is too celebratory of the army and utilizes ultimate victory as a measure of efficiency and effectiveness. Such a myopic view has prevented these earlier studies from evaluating how the replacement system affected the overall course of the European war. This dissertation breaks new ground by presenting a comprehensive overview of the replacement system--from the War Department down to the squad, and from the last days of World War I through the post-World War II years. It will elucidate a process of failed administration and implementation at the highest levels of the War Department and army, but it will also relate a "grassroots" story of success at the divisional level and below. The War Department's managerial approach to the utilization of military manpower was both inefficient and wasteful. The army largely overlooked the impact of individuality, morale, psyche, experience, and training on a soldier's performance. Its insistence on rushing men to the line once combat operations began meant that it often neglected to train, orient, and equip replacements in a manner conducive to their favorable and effective integration into combat units. The GIs at the front, both veterans and replacements alike, suffered for this oversight. / History

La ville de Québec offre une mosaïque d’espaces de vie qui correspondent à autant de sous-marchés résidentiels. Quatre cent ans d’histoire ont produit une agglomération diversifiée, depuis la fondation en 1608. Toutefois, on peut remettre en question la pertinence des découpages administratifs pour réaliser des études urbaines. S’il n’y a pas de découpage spatial idéal, des approches permettent néanmoins de délimiter des ensembles géographiques relativement homogènes, eu égard à une problématique donnée. Cet article présente une segmentation spatiale du territoire, basée sur des critères historiques, sociologiques et morphologiques, comme alternative aux partitions administratives pour réaliser des études du marché résidentiel. Des analyses discriminantes ont permis de comparer la performance de trois découpages: celui proposé - l'historico-morphologique (HM) et deux administratifs, celui avant et celui après les fusions municipales. L’étude porte sur le marché unifamilial de Québec et utilise des données multidimensionnelles. Enfin, les trois découpages sont intégrés dans des modèles de prix hédoniques afin de tester leur pertinence pour mesurer les variations des prix implicites. Les résultats suggèrent que la partition HM est plus efficace que les découpages administratifs, tout en étant perfectible. / Quebec City offers a lot of different residential environments, leading to several housing sub-markets since its foundation, in 1608. Administrative delimitations have become questionable for urban studies. There is no such thing as a perfect spatial segmentation. Nevertheless, some methods exist to delineate homogeneous spaces, regarding to a given type of problem. This paper presents an historical-morphological (HM) spatial segmentation approach for generating residential sub-markets using historical, social and morphological criteria as an alternative to the usual administrative segmentations used in real estate studies. For this study, we compare HM segmentation with two sets of administrative limits, before and after amalgamation. Overall performances of the tree segmentation for the Quebec single-family housing market are compared using multivariate discriminant analysis. Then, three hedonic pricing models are used to estimate the extent to which segmentation affects the sale price, and to test their relevance for assessing local variations of implicit prices. Findings suggest that HM segmentation is more efficient than administrative boundaries, but still perfectible.

Une forte hétérogénéité caractérise les niveaux et les fluctuations du taux de chômage dans les régions du Québec. Par exemple, entre mars 1997 et décembre 2018, le taux de chômage moyen s'est respectivement établi à 6,3% et à 10,0% dans les régions de la Capitale-Nationale et du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean ; un écart non négligeable de près de quatre points de pourcentage. Dans la mesure où ces inégalités sont inefficaces (Taylor, 1996) et qu'elles exacerbent les écarts de revenus (Macphail, 2000), il est primordial de déterminer les facteurs qui les sous-tendent. En ce sens, des travaux antérieurs ont permis de conclure à l'influence de la fiscalité et des institutions du marché du travail comme facteurs explicatifs des disparités du taux de chômage à travers les États. Ces éléments sont toutefois homogènes sur l'ensemble du territoire de la province du Québec et ne peuvent donc pas expliquer les différences du taux de chômage à travers les régions administratives québécoises. À partir de la définition de Friedman (1968), nous développons un modèle structurel du taux de chômage qui divise ce dernier en une portion structurelle et en une portion cyclique permettant, par le fait même, de mettre à l'épreuve de nouveaux facteurs explicatifs tels que la productivité régionale et la composition industrielle. En nous appuyant sur un panel de données sur les régions administratives du Québec, qui s'étend de mars 1997 à décembre 2018, nous procédons à cette décomposition à l'aide d'une estimation des moindres carrés ordinaire (MCO) à effets fixes robuste à l'autocorrélation et à l'intercorrélation ainsi qu'à une seconde évaluation des moindres carrés généralisés(MCG) à effets fixes qui considère la structure autorégressive du terme d'erreur. Nos résultats démontrent que la productivité et la composition industrielle régionale ont toutes les deux un effet significatif sur le taux de chômage régional. Finalement, nous utilisons les résultats pour mesurer le taux de chômage naturel de chaque région et discutons brièvement de son évaluation. / Regional unemployment in the province of Quebec is characterized by a significant heterogeneity both in the levels across the regions and how they evolve. Between March 1997 and December 2018, for example, the mean unemployment rate was about 6.3% in Capitale-Nationale and of 10.0% in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean; an important gap of almost four percentage points. Because those disparities are inefficient (Taylor, 1996) and because they exacerbate income inequalities (Macphail, 2000), understanding their determinants is essential. Previous works on the determinants of unemployment point to the influence of fiscal legislation and labour market institutions to explain unemployment rates disparities amongst the countries. Therefore, those factors being homogeneous for regions in the same province, they cannot explain this diversity between Quebec's administrative regions. Based on Friedman's (1968) definition of structural unemployment, we develop a model that divides the observed regional unemployment rates in a natural (or structural) and a cyclical component which allows for the integration of new determinants like regional productivity and industrial composition. Using panel data on Quebec's administrative regions from March 1997 to December 2018, we run a fixed effects ordinary least square (OLS) estimation with an SCC error term robust to correlation and cross-correlation plus a fixed effects general least square (GLS) estimation integrating an AR(1) correlated error term. Results show that regions' productivity and industrial composition both have a significant effect on regional unemployment. Finally, we use our results to calculate the natural unemployment rate and its evolution for each region and briefly discuss its evaluation.

Le présent mémoire décrit le rôle et l’application de la méthode platonicienne des divisions telle que décrite dans le Sophiste, le Politique, le Phèdre et le Philèbe. Il met en relief les différences et les similitudes du rôle et de l’application de la méthode dans ces quatre dialogues, afin d’analyser la possibilité ou bien de postuler l’unité de la doctrine platonicienne, ou bien de retracer les lieux de son évolution. Certains auteurs du siècle dernier affirment qu’il n’est pas possible de retracer quelque évolution que ce soit dans la doctrine, et estiment même que la méthode des divisions est utilisée bien au-delà de ces quatre dialogues, et que son absence des dialogues de jeunesse ne doit en aucun cas être prise pour une absence de la doctrine de l’époque. D’autres sont au contraire convaincus que la méthode des divisions est propre à un stade de la pensée de Platon qui ne peut être que postérieur à l’introduction de la théorie des Formes intelligibles, et que cette méthode incarne même, à toutes fins pratiques, la dialectique platonicienne des dialogues tardifs. / This thesis aims to describe the role and application of Plato's method of divisions as it is seen and described mainly in Sophist, Statesman, Phaedrus, and Philebus. Through analysis of similarities and differences of the method in the different dialogues I intend to describe the possibilities of claiming the unity of Plato's doctrine, or to see in which regards it has evolved. In the last century some authors were convinced that no such evolution could clearly be seen in Plato's thought, and that the method of divisions was to be found in a lot of passages both before and after the four dialogues mentioned above, whereas others argue that the method of divisions is to be seen as specific t the later dialogues, because it cannot possibly be used before the introduction of the theory of the Forms, and further, that it is to be identified with Plato's later method of dialectic.

Along with the right-left economical dimension of positioning of political parties and voters, there is also dimension of division along cultural and value items which is described as authoritarianism - libertarianism axis or sometimes conservatism - liberalism. In new democracies the division along clear support for liberal democracy on the one hand and support or toleration of non liberal use of power on the other hand is often very important. We distinguish between authoritarianism as orientation with tendency towards support for restrictive and hierarchical politics, which in some cases lead to non liberal variant of formally democratic order, and cultural conservatism, which has its roots mainly in higher level of religiosity. Authoritarian and conservative tendencies are to certain level associated with each other, nevertheless they do not create an integral complex. There is evidence of a group with authoritarian value orientation and culturally liberal position at the same time; in Slovak conditions it is the case of the electorate of left wing party Smer (Direction). Examining the opinion cleavage among Slovak public along cultural and value questions, we identify the biggest conflict potential of the authoritarian items as the mode of political rule and nationalism. Next significant...

This quantitative study investigated a range of leadership behaviors by teachers (teacher characteristics) and students (student characteristics) inside their higher education classrooms and various aspects of those environments (classroom characteristics). The behaviors and environmental aspects examined are those determined by research findings to foster and enhance participant growth and development. Cluster sampling was used for this study of 25 classes representing 5 divisions of the curriculum at 3 institutions. The instruments were administered to 277 students and 25 teachers during the spring of 1999. The null hypotheses for main effects of teacher, student, and classroom characteristics were tested on the two instruments' items at the .05 level of significance using a Univariate ANOVA. According to student responses, overall, a main effect of teacher gender was found on teachers' characteristics and approaches to student learning. A main effect of teacher gender was also found on students' characteristics and overall orientations to learning. According to teacher responses, a main effect of teaching style was found for both male students and female students, on teachers' approaches to student learning, and on students' characteristics and overall orientations to learning. A main effect of teacher gender was found for both male students and female students on students' characteristics and overall orientations to learning. A main effect of teacher gender and an interaction of teacher gender and teaching style was found for male students on students' characteristics and overall orientations to learning.

La transmission intergénérationnelle des connaissances au sein de la banque tunisienne au moyen de la formation sur le tas fait traditionnellement partie de la culture de branche inhérente au secteur bancaire. Ce mode de formation archaïque n'a pas disparu, et la banque tunisienne a même intégré de nouveaux modes plus modernes. La comparaison avec la situation des banques allemandes, pionnières dans le domaine de la formation professionnelle et surtout de la formation duale permet d'une part de mettre en relief l'avènement d'une entrouverture au recrutement externe de jeunes diplômés issus de l'université. Mais, également et d'autre part de montrer que l'adoption par les banques tunisiennes de ce mode de formation censé créer davantage de synergies entre les salariés contribue au contraire à dégrader davantage le climat social aussi bien entre qu'avec la hiérarchie. En effet, dans un contexte de renouvellement des générations, couplé avec une ouverture à la concurrence internationale, le management introduit de nouvelles pratiques gestionnaires, et veut modifier rapidement la culture interne tout en gardant cette transmission à des fins de codification