As a conclusion, the Chinese state's coercive capacity that has been solidified under enforced "decentralization" in the reform era, does not necessarily coincide with state building theories that are based on Western European countries' historical experiences. Western theories regard "modern state building" as a process within which the state gradually centralizes and monopolizes the coercive power "from top to bottom." However, the development pattern of state coercive capacity in China during the reform era suggests a somewhat different path composed of two stages: decentralization from top to bottom and re-centralization from top to bottom. In this sense, the experience of solidifying state coercive capacity in reform China enriches existing state building theories by adding a new angle for understanding state building. / First, decentralization of coercive force characterizes the institutional arrangement that undergirds state coercion in reform China Enforced decentralization reflects historical continuity of institutional design in state coercion; at the same time, "devolution of power" has been the center's strategy to mobilize resources from localities more effectively, while making localities to cope with challenges rising from transitional local society directly. Based on a panel data of provincial level localities in 1988-2004 period, and a field research in three county-level localities of Shandong province, this study finds out that "enforced decentralization" has contributed to the growth of police force. Though, depending on each locality's specific situation, the degree that decentralization has contributed to the reinforcement of local coercive capacity has some variations. Additionally, through a "two-way fixed effect regression model," I examined existing theories that have explained reinforcement of state coercive capacity. It was found out that the key determinants for the growth of state coercive capacity in reform China includes: crime rate, economic development, revenue, and urban-rural division in localities. / In post-Mao era, the police forces were perceived to be CCP's instrument for controlling society rather than the state's apparatus for guaranteeing crime control and law enforcement. The reform, however, changed Chinas social landscape greatly. Along with the transformation in the functions of the state, the functions of the police forces experienced changes as well. Through an empirical study, this research discusses how variations in institutional arrangement put impact on the state's capability of exerting coercion. By unpacking the development of basic power structure in reform China (state coercion and police forces), and by examining the underlying mechanism of such development, this research attempts to explore how the functions of the state as well as the nature of governance in China has been transformed. / Second, along with the development of state coercion mechanism under decentralization, some negative effects of state-enforced decentralization have also started to come out. In order to maintain a sustainable development of state coercive capability, at the latter period of reform, the state started to re-emphasize central monitoring and administrative centralization. While strengthening the center's monitor and control over local police apparatus through reorganization of public security administrative system, the center also attempted to facilitate its penetration into local society. Nevertheless, it has been found out through my fieldwork that the effort of re-centralizing the coercive power is greatly constrained by decentralized institutions that have been established in the earlier stage of the reform era. / The object of this research is police force in reform China: the context and mechanism that enabled transition in state coercive capacity in the reform era. Three things have been aimed in this research: first, to describe how state coercive capacity has been developed in China; second, to analyze how the establishment of relevant institutional mechanism has affected state coercive capacity and how those institutions work; third, to explore how the state has made a functional transition in governing local society which is getting more diversified. / Third, the growth of police force indicates the growth of fundamental governing capacity of the state. It has influenced the pattern and even the nature of governance in China tremendously. The tradition in Chinese administration, "centralized minimalism" at grassroots level, would be revitalized and strengthened throughout the reform. At the same time, with the changes in external conditions that affect governing capacity, state apparatus under the Chinese Communist Party's control is in functional transition: from "controlling a few dangerous classes in society" to "answering to diversified demands on security within society." / 樊鵬. / Adviser: Shaoguang Wang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 2231. / Thesis (doctoral)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 312-322). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / School code: 1307. / Fan Peng.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-305). Argues that despite the liberal use of social control theory in the literature on the social history of venereal diseases, rationale discourses do not necessarily lead to government intervention. Comparative analysis reveals that culturally similar locations can experience similar impulses and constraints to the development of social policy under differing constitutional arrangements.

Bibliography: leaves 156-167. The aim of this thesis is to show how in practice the National Socialists sacrificed ideological considerations to the material advantages that could be gained from the sale of "degenerate art". In practice the term "degenerate" was extended beyond modern art to include French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, specifically because they were highly saleable. This is evinced by the sales of "degenerate art" which were conducted by the Reichministerium für Volksklärung und Propaganda (RMVP). The record of the sales compiled by the propaganda ministry in the summer of 1941, provide conclusive evidence that the Reich government compromised its ideological position for financial gain. The sale of "degenerate art" conducted by order of the Reich at the Galerie Fischer auction in Lucerne in 1939, provides further evidence that the practice of confiscation was economically driven.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-305). / iii, 305 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Argues that despite the liberal use of social control theory in the literature on the social history of venereal diseases, rationale discourses do not necessarily lead to government intervention. Comparative analysis reveals that culturally similar locations can experience similar impulses and constraints to the development of social policy under differing constitutional arrangements. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of History, 2001

Based on archival work in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada and Australia, my dissertation expands the traditional purview of diplomatic history into the international dimensions of the social and cultural realms. My study treats doomed attempts to reconstruct previously-held notions of hierarchy and deference as encapsulated in the Empire Settlement Act (ESA) in the wake of the dramatic changes to the world order resulting from World War I. To counter the emergence of Japan as a world power, under the auspices of the ESA, British Columbia and Western Australia, the two most distant outposts of the “white” British Empire in the Pacific, imported poor Celtic farmers and militiamen from northern Scotland in an attempt to retain their “British” identity, which they felt was threatened by Japan on the one hand, the Japanese in their midst on another, and local “nationalisms” on a third. This dissertation argues that such schemes were undermined by the conflicting priorities of Britain and the Dominions, the tensions between laissez-faire and excessive centralized control, the disconnect between government, capital and labor, the valuations of self-help within highly circumscribed situations, the conflict between the themes of rejuvenation and permanent regression, the fight between an idiosyncratic rural ideal and the reality of the urbanized and industrialized world of the twentieth century, and the inconsistent application of supposedly inviolable Social Darwinist ideals. The birth and death of plans to recruit Hebridean crofters to British Columbia and Western Australia in the 1920s reveals a great deal about the fluidity surrounding concepts of identity and security in a very unstable time. The debates surrounding the status of the Hebridean Scots, especially vis-à-vis their British compatriots and the Japanese, are an extreme window through which the much wider dialogues taking place regarding the status of the British Empire both internally and on the global stage, on the changing role of race as the final determinant of one’s identity and status, and the clashes between the Victorian and the modern ways of defining and conceiving of Empire, can be viewed and debated. / text

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This thesis will examine the political and social significance of the new artistic language that emerged in Poland in the 1980s. The new artistic language pertains to symbols, imagery and themes that originated in the discourse of the opposition and can be defined as the amalgam of the traditional religious vocabulary and time-specific symbols of oppression under Communism. The most prominent in this category are the symbols of the cross, the flowers, the national red and white flag, exclusively contemporary symbols such as the "television-people" as well as an array of traditional religious vocabulary. This unusual relationship between symbolic language of art and the symbols of the Church and the Solidarity accounted for the inherently political nature of dissident art. This thesis will discuss dissident art in context of the contemporary discourses: the discourse of the Communist Party, the Church, John Paul II and Solidarity.

This thesis contends that Christian conversion in the African context has been authentic because of the translatability of the event of Christ. The event of Christ is defined as the incarnation, the suffering and death on the cross and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Through these events God made the calling of all humanity including Africans, for transformation unto salvation. God is perceived as the originator and the initiator of Christian conversion while human beings and their culture are perceived as the recipients and channels of God's mission. The combination of the concepts of preparation evangelical, the translatability of the event of Christ and the theology of the cross are the basis of the theological deliberations of this thesis. The thesis contends further that the proclamation of the gospel hence, Christianisation moved together with the wave of modernization. Due to the continuity of translation, Christianity strengthened its influence and became the Word of God in the Hehe vernacular. In that way Christianity was naturally indigenised and continually contextualised in the Hehe culture and belief thus being deeply entrenched in their daily life and could be rightly described as renewed Hehe (African) Religion. Therefore, the Hehe accepted Christianity because God appeared in the human (Hehe) nature through Jesus Christ and dwelt in the Hehe community and shared everything with them. God through Jesus Christ participated in the daily suffering. He was humiliated and became vulnerable and weak. Through the translation of the Word God was no longer the ineffable beyond. Through the manifestations of the spiritual gifts God remained among the Hehe; instructing, comforting and reminding them of the benevolent love and the call of God for the universal salvation through which the Church builds its response to God's mission. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005

Traditionally, the history of Christianity has been written from a white, missionary perspective and in many ways it has portrayed them as the heroes of Africa. Such information has neglected the hard work of their African counterparts, many of who interpreted and organized evangelistic meetings among the indigenous people. Its history has primarily reflected the opinions and interests of Western missionaries. The white missionaries' information relied almost exclusively on written sources. The missing link: Indigenous agents in the development of the Iringa diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (1899-1999), tries to recover the silenced voices of the Christian people particularly the men and women who played a crucial role in the development of the church in the Iringa diocese. The study has attempted to give an historic account of the recovering of the African perspective and counterbalance a presentation dominated by a missionary perspective and bringing to a fore all the actors by drawing attention to the role and importance of the African agents in the development of the church. In this study, oral history methodology has been used in analyzing and interpreting the history of the Iringa diocese from an African perspective, while at the same time bringing into focus the indigenous actors: teachers, evangelists, women and youth. There would have been a serious gap in Christian knowledge if such information were not available. The study has established that from the inception of the planting of the Lutheran church in the Iringa diocese in 1899 both the missionaries, Tanzanian clergy, and agents worked with determination for the church to take roots. From that time, the church gradually expanded by way of increase in the number of stations and converts. What cannot be ignored is the fact the indigenous agents were instrumental in the planting and consolidation of the gains of the Lutheran church in the Iringa diocese in Tanzania. The determination, with which the "fathers" saw to injecting Christianity in Tanzania, has been continued by the generations after them. From the foregoing, the point that Africans have always heard the gospel principally from other Africans in Africa should not be belabored. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002. / Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.