In this study, I undertake a discourse analysis of struggles over representation as they were manifested in the Charlottetown referendum campaign. I utilize transcripts taken during the campaign derived from the CBC news programs The National, The Journal, and Sunday Report as well as from The CTV News. The issue of (im-)partiality provides the analytical focus for this study. Who can legitimately speak on behalf of whom, or, to what extent do individuals have a particular voice which places limitations on whom they can represent? On the one hand, underlying what I call the ‘universalistic’ discourse is the premise that human beings can act in an impartial manner so that all individuals have the capacity to speak or act in the interests of all other individuals regardless of the group(s) to which they belong. On the other hand, a competing discourse based on group-difference’ maintains that all representatives express partial voices depending on their group-based characteristics. I argue that the universalistic discourse was hegemonic in the transcripts but, at the same time, the group-difference discourse was successful at articulating powerful counter-hegemonic resistance. Ironically, the universalistic discourse was hegemonic despite widespread assumptions of partiality on the basis of province, region, language, and Aboriginality. This was possible because the universalistic discourse subsumed territorial notions of partiality within itself. In contrast, I argue that assumptions of Aboriginal partiality will likely diffuse themselves to other categories, beginning with gender, in the future. I also describe the strategies used by the competing discourses to undermine one another. The universalistic discourse successfully portrayed the group-difference discourse as an inversion to a dangerous apartheid-style society where individuals were forced to exist within group-based categories. The group-difference discourse used the strategy of anomaly to demonstrate that individuals were inevitably categorized in the universalistic discourse; impartiality was a facade for a highly-partial ruling class. In examining these strategies, I demonstrate that the group-difference discourse justified its own position by making assumptions about the operation of power and dominance in society. Thus, impartiality was impossible not for the post-modern reason that inherent differences make representation highly problematic, but because power relations hinder the ability of representatives to act in a truly impartial manner. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the politics of separatism in multinational federations. Switzerland, Canada, and India are investigated in detail. Switzerland is a multinational federation that has not experienced a separatist movement for more than one hundred and fifty years. In Canada, there is a significant separatist movement in the province of Quebec. India has experienced a number of violent secessionist crises in a number of states over the past two decades. The cases thus exhibit a range in the dependent variable (presence or absence of secessionist movements). This study adopts a legal-institutional approach to the problem of secession in multinational federations. This approach marries the classical understanding of federalism as a system of government with divided sovereignty to the more recent state-society and new institutional approaches in political science. Federalism is operationalized around three core institutions: constitutions, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and party systems. These three institutions are situated as the independent variables in the study. The dissertation argues that the institutional structure of federalism is a critical determinant of stability or instability (the presence or absence of secessionism) in multinational federations. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Although the literature indicates that knowledge sharing (KS) research is prevalent in the private sector, there is scant empirical research data about KS in the public sector. Moreover, organizations lack an understanding of employee KS behavior. This study investigated two research questions: First, how does the perceived importance of five determinants of KS behavior (organizational culture, workplace trust, incentives, management support, and technology) vary based upon the variables of job function, gender, and work category? Second, what is the relative importance of the five determinants of KS behavior to U.S. federal government employees? This descriptive study employed a Web-based survey methodology and interviews to collect data. The survey was administered to 121 employees in a single U.S. government organization, with a response rate of 69%. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for data analysis, and the multivariate analysis of variance and analysis of variance statistical techniques were used to compare variables. The study findings indicated no statistical differences in perceptions of the five facets investigated relative to the variables of work category, gender, and job function, and no statistical differences in the importance among the five determinates investigated. As a result, the null hypotheses were not rejected. Additional findings were that respondents perceived the five facets investigated to be positive KS determinants and that they agreed or strongly agreed that each facet was important to the success of KS initiatives. Although the results indicated no statistically significant difference between the five facets investigated, the results support literature findings that the five facets are important to the KS process. The investigation also advances the current state of KS implementation in the public sector by providing empirical data on a subject that is rarely investigated in the U.S. federal government. Future studies in similar and larger organizations are recommended. The investigation is a positive step toward improving the understanding of the determinants that affect employee KS behavior and provides a tool for KS planners to use to ascertain the state of KS in their organizations.

Missing from extant conflict literature is an examination of both symmetric and asymmetric conflict ties. To address this void, network analysis was utilized to examine the responses (both symmetric and asymmetric conflict ties) of 140 employees and managers in four divisions of a large agency of the Federal Government. The study was limited to conflict over scarce resources. Conflict management methods were examined as well as the perceptions of how respondents both cope with and feel about conflict. The results indicate that when two people in a conflict setting are structurally equivalent they both report actions and feelings that are opposite from those of- the other person. This finding, an inverse contagion effect, has been termed diffusion resistance.

"Sudan has been selected for purposes of this study because of its recent stride towards securing peace through a comprehensive political reorganisation, which for the most part employs the notion of federalism. Indicentally, the Interim National Constitution of Sudan, adopted on 9 July 2005 (Interim Constitution), provides for a decentralised system of governance. The Interim Constitution grants Southern Sudan autonomy to extend over a six-year period, which will culminate in a referendum in the South on whether it should remain part of Sudan or secede to form another state. ... This study will consist of five chapters. Chapter one will principally set out the content and objective of the study. Chapter two will be the theoretical framework comprising an analysis of the concept of federalism from which the notion of autonomy is derived. The significance of the federal principle in meeting the challenges of multiculturalism will also form part of the discussion. Chapter three will outline the history of federalism in Sudan and attempts at its use as a tool for political integration. This chapter will comprise an analysis of the content of autonomy under the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. Chapter four will consist of an analysis of the federal principle as embodied in the Interim National Constitution of Sudan. In so doing, it is expected that its potential perils and possibilities of success will be brought to the fore. Chapter five will comprise conclusions drawn here from." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2005. / Prepared under the supervision of Professor Nico Steytler at the Faculty of Law, Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

The Civil War and Reconstruction remade the United States. The defeat of the Confederacy, end of slavery, and postwar amendments to the Constitution inaugurated a new stage in national life. The most commanding histories of the period have presented the regional and national contests over the legacies of the war. Yet, the forces shaping the nation’s transformation and the effects this process unleashed were not confined within American borders. Drawing on British, American, and Irish archives, this dissertation reveals international influences and consequences at the core of the nineteenth-century reconstitution of the United States. The legal transformation of the United States after the Civil War required the assertion of American federal sovereignty in the international sphere. Fulfillment of key aspects of Reconstruction depended upon recognition by other nations and empires. Certain subjects, such as the terms of United States citizenship, were by definition international matters and necessitated coordination with the laws and policies of foreign powers. Other fundamental issues of Reconstruction, though not intrinsically international, also compelled attention to precedents, developments, and potential ramifications abroad. Agents of the United States government could not resolve the central issues of Reconstruction unilaterally. Their debates and decisions had consequences abroad, particularly in the British Empire, during a critical period of state-building worldwide. Each chapter of this dissertation examines international dimensions of a key question of governance and canonical subject of Civil War and Reconstruction scholarship – emancipation, land reform, democracy, citizenship, treason, and federalism – to gauge the far-reaching factors that shaped American policymaking and its results. The analysis demonstrates the multiple layers of the questions the war unearthed. It also establishes that changes in constitutional and other domestic law were inextricable from the nation’s relations with foreign powers, particularly Britain. This approach captures Reconstruction as the internationally disruptive event that it was and allows for a more complete accounting of what the Civil War and Reconstruction did and did not accomplish. Developments during these years destabilized the nation’s position and commitments in the international realm but did not provide a clear path forward. The transformation of the United States’ role and power in the international realm proved more gradual and restrained than many Americans and Britons anticipated. Divisions over the Constitution as well as challenges emanating from abroad impeded the assertion of federal power both within and beyond the nation’s borders.

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