This dissertation involves a content analysis of public discussion by government officials involved in the debate over the use of force against Iraq. Elite participants in government made public announcements to justify policy positions to constituents, educate interested participants inside government and external to the process, and persuade fellow decision-makers in government that the decision to use force against Iraq was the correct decision. Government officials public statements regarding the potential use of force against Iraq comprise the policy primeval soup from which the policy of an invasion emerged. This analysis examines how U.S. political elites publicly discussed the use of force against Iraq from when President Bush took office on January 19, 2001 to March 19, 2003, the day the invasion of Iraq began. This research identifies aspects of the debate over which groups of officials most disagreed in the public discourse and how the degree of consensus or divergence changed over time. Results demonstrate that there was little consensus between parties and branches of government in how force was justified against Iraq. As the amount of discussion regarding Iraq increased in late 2002, this degree of consensus decreased. Though Congress authorized President Bush to use force against Iraq in October 2002, Republicans and Democrats in Congress differed significantly in how they discussed the use of force. These differences were smaller than the differences between Congress as a whole and the Executive branch. Nonetheless, the evidence collected here demonstrates that Congress was not acquiescent. While the prevailing interpretation in congressional-executive relations is that Congress passively supports the Executive branch in foreign military endeavors, this research demonstrates that Congress was involved in the debate about Iraq and increased that involvement as the time for the Iraq Resolution vote approached, increasingly growing more hawkish. At the same time, the story of the Iraq war debate was more nuanced than the typical argument would suggest, namely that Congress tends to follow the Executive branchs foreign policy. While the Executive branch exhorted war with Iraq more so than the Legislative branch, there may have been some enablement of this message from congressional Democrats.

Since the late 1980s, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in international development in Japan have become increasingly interested in incorporating advocacy into their operations. Despite the enthusiasm, however, NGO advocacy in Japan has been rather stagnant, not yet experiencing a dramatic boost. Given such situation, this paper analyzes the challenges development NGOs in Japan face in undertaking advocacy work. In doing so, the paper dissects NGO advocacy into aim, approach, and audience. During the 1980s and 1990s, development NGOs in Japan faced an unfavorable legal structure that led these organizations to suffer from chronic financial instability. Forced to emphasize fundraising for service delivery, many of the development NGOs in Japan did not have the capacity to undertake other types of public communication programs, i.e. advocacy. The restricted environment allowed only a limited number of NGOs to engage in advocacy during this period, which were mostly policy recommendation to the Japanese government through lobbying. The unfavorable legal structure began to show dramatic change in the 2000s. The new NPO Law enacted in 1998 and the new tax system for nonprofits instituted in 2001 eased the financial issue of development NGOs, thus allowing them to incorporate more advocacy work. Increased involvement to advocacy led to successful implementation of Hottokenai Sekai no Mazushisa Campaign of 2005, a major turning point of NGO advocacy in Japan. In addition to lobbying the decision-makers, the campaign intentionally attempted to mobilize the general public. This expansion of approach and audience led to a new challenge in NGO advocacy in Japan; the Japanese public with a tendency to regard NGOs as fundraisers for service delivery rather than advocates now stands as the new obstacle. The paper thus finds a shift of NGO advocacy challenge in Japan from 1980s and 1990s to 2000s. In-between these two periods, constraining factor shifted from incapacity for advocacy resulting from unfavorable legal structure to unreceptive audience. The new stage for NGO advocacy in Japan thus calls for careful attention to the qualitative aspect of advocacy work, i.e. messages articulated and delivered to the audience.

Metropolitan and urban issues have been of interest to social scientists, policy analysts, and others for some time. This dissertation explores service provision related to government structure, and measurements of these relationships in metropolitan areas, because public service is a primary function of government. To account for different services in different areas, service expenditure and growth in service expenditure are used as the primary variables. Relationships between growth in expenditures and economic-demographic conditions are examined for county government structure. The research method uses single county metropolitan areas to eliminate complications of large, multiple county metropolitan areas, such as multiple states. The study combines content analysis of government and academic documentation on local governance structure and characteristics with quantitative analysis. There are several study findings regarding growth in service expenditure related to government structure and demographic condition. First, structures of government that facilitate managerial competency tend to have lower cost of service provision. Second, expenditure reduction is related to service scope and the type of government providing the service: 1) use of municipal service delivery for jurisdictional-specific services is associated with lower overall service expenditure for the metropolitan area; while 2) use of county services is associated with lower service expenditure for services which benefit from economies of scale; and 3) utilization of special districts is increasing and apparently benefits the tax stream and development finances. Third, in general metropolitan areas with more population in central cities have lower overall service expenditure growth. This dissertation advances the current discussion for improvement of service provision in the following ways. First, it contributes to an understanding of metropolitan area conditions through public service structure and governmental structure. Second, it contributes to the development of a methodological approach for measurement of metropolitan governance. This is accomplished with the concept of share of service responsibility for each type of local government and managerial competency. Third, it provides a benchmark of the service structure for multiple-county metropolitan areas.

Disasters require quick, decisive action by disaster managers under intense conditions of uncertainty. The response organizations that form to meet the challenge are a collection of actors with a variety of experience, training, priorities and communications abilities, and form a unique, emergent social network. The size, scope and dynamics of the event make it difficult to gather clear, timely, pertinent data, assign and share meaning to inform critical decisions. This study describes the planned, reported, perceived and desired (PRPD) networks in emergency management mass care response operations and the information needs of the disaster manager during the threat and immediate response phases of the disaster to build an effective common operating picture (COP). Utilizing the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and the Emergency Support Function (ESF) organizing concept of the National Response Plan as a framework, the networks of actors and information are identified and compared to actual data and networks that were demonstrated in federal and state disaster response operations through the historic Gulf Coast hurricane season of 2005.

This is a study of Neighborhood Information System (NIS) across the U.S. This dissertation investigates the public-nonprofit partnerships of building NIS and evaluates their effectiveness in being a tool for local governance. I employed an extensive study, including a nationwide survey,and an intensive study, including qualitative case analyses. Neighborhood indicators play a critical role for local governance as they provide necessary information about neighborhoods. Recently, Neighborhood Information Systems (NIS) have been developed in the cities across the U.S. to provide better access to local data and information to community development stakeholders. National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), at the Urban Institute brings many local NIS together, acting as a headquarter unit. Government agencies, non profit organizations, and community organizations engage in decision making process for community development and NISs are designed to help information sharing, and effective and participatory decision makings for community development stakeholders. The use of partnerships has emerged as a dominant strategy to develop an NIS. This research investigated what contributes to a working partnership to develop a successful and effective NIS as an information-sharing network to help local economic development and community revitalization. This study suggests data is more important than other resources such as funding and technology in terms of building an information System for the communities. It also indicates executive level connections with local governments are important as development of an NIS needs a project champion in government for data sharing. The implication for building NISs is that government is an indispensable part of the partnership network, even when the initiation of NIS development comes from the nonprofit sector.

The last decade has witnessed substantial increases in US university study abroad programming. Related, there has been a demonstrable spike in university administrators and faculty members suggesting that their institutions prepare students for global citizenship. Yet few institutions have offered a clear conceptualization of what global citizenship is, how they educate for it, or how they measure their progress in that effort. This dissertation addresses the relative dearth of applicable theoretical constructs by offering one such construct, suggesting the specific educative process by which it may be encouraged, and discussing initial efforts evaluating its success. Its three primary contributions are: (1) a particular articulation of global citizenship that draws on existing theoretical approaches while insisting on integration with or development of strong mechanisms for application, (2) clarification of the educative process by which that articulation and practice of global citizenship may be encouraged, and (3) the development and testing of a quantitative instrument for better understanding and evaluating global citizenship and civic engagement. A pre- and post- survey is employed to develop an index of global civic engagement and awareness measures among students (1) not participating in global service-learning, (2) participating in global service-learning without a deliberate global citizenship education component, and (3) participating in global service-learning with clear attention to the integration of a global citizenship curriculum. The findings, buttressed by analysis of related qualitative data, suggest that integration of a carefully developed and articulated theoretical and practical approach to global citizenship education is essential if universities are to be successful in their efforts to create global citizens. Perhaps less intuitive and more alarming, the findings indicate that exposure to study abroad programming absent deliberate global citizenship education efforts may serve to merely reinforce stereotypes, create situations where severe cultural shock and withdrawal are likely experiences, and otherwise serve to cause young US citizens to shrink from rather than engage with the world. Taken as a whole, the analysis suggests the outcomes of many efforts to globalize campuses and create global citizens are unclear at best and that clearer conceptualizations, educative processes, and evaluation efforts are needed.

Two incidents have forced the United States to take significant steps to prepare for large-scale disasters: the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the devastation that resulted from Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005. Emergency managers respond under the mantra all emergencies are local. While this is a good tag line, it is through the planning and preparation efforts at all levels of government that an emergency response system can work efficiently and effectively. This study focuses on the state level to first, understand how organizations can be designed to contain both structure and flexibility in the emergency management context, and second, identify the role of personal interactions, communication, legal structures and leadership within these types of organizations. California was carefully selected because of its size, national economic importance, and experience with preparing for and responding to multi-jurisdictional incidents.

Public sector corruption plays an important role in a nation's development, and many low income countries (LICs) suffer chronic bureaucratic corruption. While there have been numerous studies addressing both the causes and consequences of corruption, the full range of causes remains unexplored, and consequences are becoming understood in new light with fresh data and expanded linkages. Specifically, the impact of religion and spirituality on public sector corruption had not previously been adequately researched and documented, and tracing the role of corruption on living standards through business starts data provides a novel perspective on this link. This dissertation is a macro-level, global study of public sector corruption, analyzing the impact of religion and spirituality on public sector corruption, and subsequently on living standards. Essentially this is a study of ethics in public service, reviewed through the lens of one ancient concept (religion) and an emerging new construct (spirituality). The primary conclusions and contributions of this dissertation are that: (1) religion has a direct and moderate causal impact on corruption, (2) spirituality has an inverse but weak causal impact on corruption and (3) public sector corruption has an inverse and strong causal impact on business starts, economic growth and living standards. All three of these primary findings have social, political, and economic policy implications.

The international development agencies and the Chinese government have become increasingly more aware of the importance of bottom-up community-driven development. Some scholars argue that the problems for community-driven development in China are mainly because of the lack of favorable policy environment and effective monitoring mechanisms. The research in this dissertation does not intend to deny the importance of those factors. The goal of this work, however, is to offer perspectives that can help organizations at all levels and of different sectors to understand the importance of embracing and integrating the local culture into development policy making and program designing. To achieve effective community-driven development, the policy makers and practitioners should first understand and respect the culture and interests of the beneficiaries. Instead of addressing institutaional and structural development issues as hardware, this research takes a cultural perspective as software to contribute to the existing literature of this field. To achieve effective community-driven development in China, partnership and cooperation between different players is crucial. Culture, both as means and ends of development, is an important factor that bonds them together. Emphasizing the significnace of gender roles and responsibilities, a gendered perspective of community development in China is presented in this research. This research also refers to theories of Complex Adaptive Systems and Self-organization mechanisms, which explain how complex, adaptive macro behavior emerges from simple, local micro decisions and how simple agents collectively solve difficult problems. The roles of community, government, and NGOs [domestic and international] in this development process will be addressed here. During the authors field study in the rural areas of China in the summer of 2007, data was collected through participatory observation, interviews, and focus groups with multiple stakeholders involved in the community-driven development programs in China. This work highlights the opportunities and challenges for effective community-driven development in China. Based upon the analysis, this research also offers policy implications for different stakeholders.

The world entered the nuclear age in 1945 when the United States first acquired nuclear capability. The United States enjoyed a strategic monopoly but only for a couple of years until the Soviet Union tested its nuclear device in 1949. Since then, the United Kingdom, France, and China joined the exclusive nuclear club, and the threat of nuclear weapons has become one of the most daunting challenges of the world. Almost immediately after the United States developed nuclear weapons in the 1940s, it began to explore a way to destroy an incoming nuclear warhead before it reached its target in the United States in order to negate the dangers of nuclear weapons. Smaller scale threats coming from the Third World or rogue states and possibly terrorist organizations are serious factors to be reckoned with, but the nuclear threat from the Soviets was the backbone of US strategic thinking after WWII and until the late 1980s and early 1990s. During the long history of missile defense, the strategic environment experienced fundamental shifts, the most significant being the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the United States has shown rather consistent support for missile defense. Missile defense policy changes were seen but they did not coincide with the rise or fall of the Soviet threat. This is the central research question of this study: how has US missile defense policy been able to survive for decades despite fundamental changes in the security environment? The main interest of this study is the decision making process. Essentially, this study attempts to discover the central force behind US missile defense policy. In this effort, this study proposes three competing perspectives: the security perspective, the bureaucratic politics perspective, and the congressional perspective. Was it the external security factor? Was it the executive branch of the US government? Or was it Congress that brought about the policy decisions? This study argues that new strategic developments play an extremely important role in triggering policy changes, but Congress was instrumental in materializing missile defense policy changes.