Matthias Zana Naab, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2005 This study examines decentralization and democratic local governance in Ghana by assessing the effectiveness of the performance of District Assemblies (DAs) in order to better understand how DAs plan, implement, and manage development activities in close partnership with communities. It applied the proposition that decentralization and democratic local governance are expected to result in more efficient, effective, sustainable, and equitable outcomes through the hypotheses that decentralization results in more effective local government; more responsive local government; local government that is democratic, more accountable, and more participatory; local people having more positive perceptions of government; and local governments providing high quality services that respond to local demands. Engaging in both exploratory and explanatory research, this study identifies important variables and relationships as well as plausible causal networks that shaped local government and governance in Ghana. Using an inductive and theory-building design, it explains a model of decentralized governance and highlights potential partnership arrangements for the effective engagement of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) in complementing the efforts of local governments. The results of decentralization, interpreted through questionnaires as well as stories and conversations with local people in two Ghanaian District Assemblies, was a combination of success and failure. In the two case study districts, the assemblies have resulted in a slight increase in development projects and services. However, the poor level of local revenue mobilization has limited the ability of the assemblies to finance significant development projects in their districts. Consequently, this has forced the assemblies to depend on the District Assemblies Common Fund as well as on external donor funded projects and programs and on local people in self-help projects. The analysis of revenue and expenditure patterns in the two districts showed that per capita development spending was low, while recurrent expenditure and spending on local government infrastructure was high. District assemblies and CBOs often remain unwilling partners, and both are faced with serious capacity constraints which militate against structuring effective partnerships for service delivery. The successful implementation of decentralization depends on the degree to which national political leaders are committed to decentralization, and the ability and willingness of the national bureaucracy to facilitate and support decentralized development. Therefore, the ongoing process of decentralization in Ghana must be seen in the broader context of a deliberate redirection and change in the internal regulatory framework of the state.

The growing demand for welfare reform represented a devolution of authority from federal administration and enabled state governments to seek ways to improve efficiency and enhance coordination in managing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs. This shift in authority from the federal government to the state and from the state to county administration empowered interagency collaboration and partnership by expanding organizational linkages between state agencies and local governments, nonprofit, and for-profit agencies for the shared goal of welfare reform. Based on a theoretical framework from New Public Management and governance theories, this research is a small-n comparative case study that explores how the shift in authority emerged at state and local administrative levels, and how states have changed TANF implementation structure in two states: New York and Pennsylvania. It also examines whether the evolution in TANF administrative infrastructure changed the decision making capacity of organizations at state and local welfare jurisdictions and contributed to economic self-sufficiency of TANF clients. The practices of Albany County, New York and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania are examined to explore how county government has implemented TANF programs in partnership with other organizations. This research conducts qualitative, quantitative, and network analysis using data from interviews, surveys, and archival records. It finds that state and county governments in New York and Pennsylvania have not substantially reinvented internal structures, but have expanded the collaboration and partnership with state or county sister agencies and nongovernmental organizations for improving efficiency. The experimentation of New York and Pennsylvania reveals that the involvement of other organizations made a substantial contribution to the decision making capacity of the organizations involved in TANF implementation. It did not yet contribute significantly to an increase in family income for TANF clients. The data also show that a larger proportion of TANF clients left welfare not for employment, but for other reasons. States sought to reduce welfare rolls without a thorough assessment of the impact of participation on the real lives of TANF clients and the reasons why clients left the program until the reauthorization in 2002. TANF clients still face difficult circumstances in becoming economically self-sufficient.

ABSTRACT AN EXPLORATION OF COLLABORATION AND ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS IN DENVER COUNTY HUMAN SERVICE NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS Jane F. Hansberry, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2005 This study looked at the role of human service organizations' collaboration against the backdrop of the sometimes conflicting influences of New Public Management, the New Federalism, and PRWORA (welfare reform). The study examined the influence of Denver County human service nonprofit organizations' collaborative activities on the organizations' effectiveness. In order to understand collaboration's relative impact on organizational effectiveness, other organizational effectiveness factors measured in the study included management procedures, board of director performance, and change management. The study used a cross-sectional survey and focus groups to gather data. Using survey data from 143 Denver County human service nonprofit organizations and a series of focus groups comprising nonprofit managers and funders, it was found that human service nonprofit organizations are collaborating more now than five years ago. Respondents reported that mission fulfillment is the primary reason for their collaborations, though funding opportunities are also a factor. Other findings are that change management and collaboration are stronger influences on organizational effectiveness than management procedures and board performance. It was found that smaller organizations are more likely to collaborate and that collaboration is a stronger influence on smaller organizations' effectiveness. Focus group results indicate a perception gap between nonprofit practitioners and funders about the level of collaborative activity within the Denver nonprofit community. Implications are discussed that include the need for dialogue in the nonprofit sector about collaboration, better measurement of collaborative activities, and training for nonprofit organizations in collaboration's principles and smart practices.

ABSTRACT Mainstream development economics has typically concentrated on the contents of public policy, such as GNP per capita and investment rates, to the virtual exclusion of the processes that shape those contents and the people who are affected by public policies. This preoccupation with content has in turn translated into an inordinate focus on hard indicators of development, such as Gross Domestic Product and exchange rates, at the expense of soft indicators like citizens satisfaction with the contents and the process, a satisfaction which ideally should be part of the overall measure of the material and non-material progress of a nation. After more than 50 years of hard-indicator development economics, during which social disaffection with public policy appears to have risen alongside growing and widespread poverty, perhaps it is time to incorporate soft indicators into development discourse and thus offer society a more complete view of its development efforts a view that would not only enrich the policy process but help it to yield outcomes that at the very least reflect the aspirations and satisfactions of the citizenry. This dissertation represents a modest attempt to foster such a complementarity in the development process, using Ghanas Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI) as a case study. Held in Accra in 1997, SAPRI was an effort by civil society organizations to gain a greater role in the policy process, after nearly 20 years of structural adjustment, during which public policy was formulated by a technocratic few and at the end of which social conditions had deteriorated not improved. Advocates of this new participation, or citizen engagement in development at the national rather than local level, argued that a participatory approach to national policy making was the surest way to intercept flawed policies at the national level before they become programs and projects at the local level. The success of such participation, as viewed by the participants, not organizers, was defined in terms of inclusiveness, voice, and impact. Questionnaires were sent to them and the data analyzed with non-parametric statistics. Among other things, participants perceptions of inclusiveness were found to be conditioned significantly by such factors as the sex of respondent, despite efforts by organizers to promote gender balance. Female respondents, for example, were less likely than male respondents to view SAPRI as adequately inclusive of women and especially childrens issues, despite claims of representativeness by organizers. Voice the ability of citizens to make policy demands unhindered was, as anticipated, associated more with the organizational arrangements of the process than any other postulated factors, such as analytical capacity of the participants organizations. Overall, respondents views of the impact of their participation in SAPRI on public policy were surprisingly found to reflect existing hard indicators of development. The view by majority of respondents, for example, that childrens issues received less attention at the forum was borne out by findings in the Ghana Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (2004) that the nutritional status of children under five years deteriorated severely between 1997 and 2003. The findings are situated within the context of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy, the localized version of the IMF-World Bank-inspired Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, which considers widespread civil society participation as one of its strongest features.

This exploratory study examines the use of agent-based modeling for the dynamic assessment of the hazards associated with flooding responses. While flooding is the specific agent used the techniques are applicable to any type of hazard. The equation upon which the model is built considers three components of vulnerability: geophysical, built, social environments and one component of resiliency, public safety response organizations. The three components of vulnerability combine to create an initial vulnerability level. The public safety response capability is subtracted to provide an adjusted vulnerability. The adjusted vulnerability varies as response assets fluctuate between available and assigned. The development of the agent characteristics for both vulnerability and resiliency requires quantification of the interdependencies of the environment as well as the interaction among the response agencies in a complex adaptive system. The result of the study is anticipated to be a realistic method of conducting an assessment of hazards through the use of vulnerability and resiliency models and a computer simulation that allows the user to evaluate potential impacts.

Policy analysis emphasizes analytical methods to get better information. Better information, however, plays a limited role in improving the quality of policy making if it is not appropriately interpreted. Analytical information measures the different aspects of a policy problem using different methods: analyses result in information that is created different forms with varying qualities and relative importance. In order to be more appropriate for policy making, analysts have to integrate and to interpret the information using contextual and expert knowledge. However, few studies have paid attention to analysts judgment behaviors. This study examined the judgment structures of analysts who perform actual investment analysis. I analyzed why politicians and bureaucrats rely on policy analysis, and how a growing demand for policy analysis leads to an increase in analysts being more actively involved in investment decision process. Especially, I note that it is not realistic or desirable to restrict the role of policy analysts as a technical information provider. As analysts are required to consider multi-dimensional aspects of investment problems, they have to do more integrative analysis with high level of judgment to respond to the needs of their clients. Analyses of policy analysts judgments show that policy analysts are not obsessed with economic efficiency when evaluating investment projects. The analysts gave a similar weight to economic efficiency (51%) as they did to policy factors. Also, the large variation of judgments in weighting and scoring that was observed can be explained by several factors: the project fields, analysts role in analysis, and their affiliation. Most importantly, we can find strong evidence that analysts judgments are highly related to their self-interests. I showed that analysts self-interests are more problematic in the judgments than the cost underestimation. With the judgment analyses, I suggest developing management techniques using the statistical distribution, which allows us to infer the possible range of variation of weighting and scoring.

The EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has witnessed important institutional developments since its creation in the 1991 Maastricht Treaty. These developments have led to increased coherence and visibility of the CFSP in certain regions of the world. Contrary to the belief that the CFSP is essentially conducted according to an intergovernmental decision-making process, the thesis shows how the creation of the post of the High Representative has led to a new system of governance in the field, with the Secretariat General of the Council of the EU at its core and the European Commission in a secondary but nevertheless crucial role. This second pillar system of governance is crucial in encouraging member-states to formulate and implement common positions. However, the dissertation also emphasizes the crucial role played by EU member-states in CFSP, as they are still the actors who need to initiate the process of devolution to the High Representative. In addition, the dissertation singles out the crucial role played by the United States in the second pillar, especially important when military issues are part of the process. The empirical analysis shows that when the issue is not of contention for the transatlantic relation, then the EU seems to act in a more unified way. To explain this new system of governance, the thesis uses foreign policy analysis (FPA) as the theoretical framework. It shows how this approach can be adapted from its state-centric focus to the study of the EU, by incorporating elements of the EU institutionalism literature in order to better grasp the specifics of the EU institutions.

Much of the current debates in the social service delivery have focused on the blurring boundaries between three sectors the nonprofit, business and public sector. Surprisingly no empirical research has been given to this phenomenon from macro and comparative perspectives. First contribution of the study to is the conceptual and methodological model to link organization and strategic management theory with network theory. The study calls this new framework as collaboration network. Second, this survey of 33 nonprofit organizations in the Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania uncovers the hidden patterns of collaboration between the sectors including empirical evidence of blurring boundaries. In order to reveal the hidden patterns of collaboration, the study adopts blockmodel from network analysis that is useful to reduce complex networks into concise and easily understandable forms. Major findings uncovered by network analysis are; 1) Network structures are different according to specific types of collaboration relationships. Network structures become less dense as the collaborative relationships intensify. While nonprofits do not have to spend much of their valuable resources such as time and money on maintaining informal or infrequent information sharing or work referral relations, nonprofits should commit themselves to maintaining intensive relations such as formal contract or joint program. In addition, the types of six network structures are different from each other. For example, while formal contract network is shaped as a cohesive subgroup structure, resource sharing network shows a central-periphery system. 2) When three sector organizations are participated in the work referral network, the social service system emerges. Three sectors play a unique role respectively a sender for public agencies, a service provider for businesses. As a major actor in the social service field, nonprofits not only play these two roles, but also play a coordinating or broker role between three sectors. 3) When either of the business or public sector is introduced in the collaboration network, new network structures replace the network structure which is composed exclusively of nonprofits. For example, when the public sector is involved in the formal contract network, the network structure changes from a cohesive subgroup system to a hierarchy system.

The Balkan states have all responded to the EUs conditional offer of membership with domestic institutional and policy changes in line with the EU requirements. Yet, there is a remarkable variation among the countries from the region in terms of their formal sovereignty, both with regard to domestic governance independent of external actors (internal sovereignty) and internationally recognized status (external sovereignty). Does sovereignty affect the conditionality-compliance dynamic? The dissertation offers an explanation of how the statehood of a prospective EU member affects the policy and politics of conditionality at EU level and the politics of compliance at domestic level. It argues that in semi-sovereign countries, the EU conditionality can incur higher compliance costs as it can intervene in the sovereignty of an aspiring candidate suggesting a redefinition of internal and/or external statehood structures. The security nature of such interventions has an effect on the EU foreign policy behavior involving two agents of conditionality - the European Commission and the Council and creating risks for inconsistency in EU policy execution. Domestic politics hold the key to compliance with sovereignty-sensitive conditions as the political space tends to be very fragmented and political opposition to EU conditions may arise. In countries where sovereignty is not contested, the EU conditionality prioritizes democratic and economic reforms, the politics of conditionality hides less dangers for incoherence as the EU is inclined to speak with one voice and the politics of compliance are more consensual rendering the compliance trend more sustainable. The dissertation employs the comparative method of analysis and examines the compliance patterns of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro and Bulgaria as cases representing the full variation along the sovereignty variable. The argument is situated at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. It extends the sovereignty debate in the International Relations (IR) literature to the specificity of the EU relations with the Balkan countries. In so doing it links the IR debate to the Europeanization literature exploring the EUs impact on domestic changes in EU candidate countries. Sovereignty as a variable is neglected in the Europeanization literature and this dissertation is an attempt to address this gap.

This study aims to evaluate whether surprise and intelligence failure leading to mass casualty terrorism are inevitable. It explores the extent to which four factors failures of public policy leadership, analytical challenges, organizational obstacles, and the inherent problems of warning information contribute to intelligence failure. This study applies existing theories of surprise and intelligence failure to case studies of five mass casualty terrorism incidents: World Trade Center 1993; Oklahoma City 1995; Khobar Towers 1996; East African Embassies 1998; and September 11, 2001. A structured, focused comparison of the cases is made using a set of thirteen probing questions based on the factors above. The study concludes that while all four factors were influential, failures of public policy leadership contributed directly to surprise. Psychological bias and poor threat assessments prohibited policy makers from anticipating or preventing attacks. Policy makers mistakenly continued to use a law enforcement approach to handling terrorism, and failed to provide adequate funding, guidance, and oversight of the intelligence community. The study has implications for intelligence reform, information sharing, Congressional oversight, and societys expectations about the degree to which the intelligence community can predict or prevent surprise attacks.