The creation of eleven directly elected mayors in England between 2002 and 2005, as part of the Labour Government's wider local government reform, altered local governance in those localities. The 1998 White Paper Modern Local Government identified three key weaknesses in the previous local government system: a lack of leadership, legitimacy and accountability. The main question the thesis sought to answer was: what was the political difference made by the introduction of executive mayors in England.? The key issue in this study was to assess if executive mayors have improved the efficiency, the transparency or the accountability of local government. The investigation of the executive mayoral option employed an analytical framework to measure change on three dimensions of efficiency, transparency and accountability. To aid the investigation seven hypotheses were constructed from the government’s White Papers to explore various aspects of executive mayors and assist in providing generalisable conclusions about the introduction of directly elected mayors. Leadership and representation theories were used to operationalise the concepts of leadership, legitimacy and accountability. Models were developed which mapped the locus of power in the council's political space. Given the population of executive mayors was eleven local authorities for the period of the field research, a qualitative approach was adopted relying primarily on interviews augmented with documentary sources and observations. Election results were also analysed using conventional quantitative methods. With regard to elections, the study demonstrates that voters differentiate the office of executive mayor from other political posts. Other findings in this study indicate that one of the main political differences made by the introduction of executive mayors is the creation of a new balance between politicians and officials with the former being more dominant when determining policy matters while the senior officials taking the lead in administration and management. In addition, executive mayors have developed a better capability to challenge professional officers. The strength of executive mayors as leaders within their local authorities over the policy making process demonstrates a change from the operation of the previous system in England. The key person driving policy is now is the directly, clearly identifiable and more accountable executive mayor. This research has shown that directly elected mayors have made positive political differences which can be measured against the core goals of effective, transparent and accountable local government. Executive mayors demonstrate a continuity of governance in local government and have made a difference in the way local councils are run.

This PhD research focuses on rural governance in the context of Mainland China. It focuses on three aspects of the changing rural governance: 1) internalization of the state-sponsored reforms for rural democratization, 2) external intervention and mediation of the human agents for policy implementation, and 3) dispute settlement. Drawing upon the three above-mentioned aspects, this study aims to dissect the interactive processes of China’s rural governance over the ongoing urbanisation of small-to-medium-sized cities. The fieldwork utilizes iterative-inductive ethnography as the research methodology. It additionally adopts the theoretical framework of social constructionism and actor-oriented perspectives to interpret the changing rural governance and employs interface analysis to examine the ethnographic data. It finds that the outcome of rural governance in the selected villages is greatly influenced by the interaction of the human agents’ capabilities and the (emerging) structural forces. In particular, various actors not only construct the emerging power structure but make use of their own knowledge, power relations, discursive practices, and innovate strategies to accommodate, negotiate and compromise with the external forces to solve problems emerging out of rural governance. Simultaneously, structural factors limit the scope of the actors’ choices, and the opportunities for strategies concerning rural governance. In terms of the representativeness of the selected samples, it firstly could reflect on the possible trajectories of rural governance over the next decade for the urbanisation of small-to-medium-sized cities, which is promoted by both the central and local governments. Secondly, the selected samples represent the changing rural governance in villages that feature Hakka culture and history. Further research should be taken on villages consisting of different cultural contexts and political-economic conditions in order to expand on this research as the representativeness of the samples is limited to the specific contexts under study.

The use of the internet and related information and communication technologies (ICT) in public administration (known as 'e-government') has gained notable space within the processes of public sector reform. Arguably, ICT provide an attractive strategy to reorganize internal government tasks, routines and processes and to make them more efficient, responsive as well as accountable to citizens. Yet, the linkages between public values and e-government programmes remain understudies or taken for granted. My research focuses on this particular aspect of public sector reforms and organising. It engages with the debates towards modernisation of central government services while contributing to discussion of the relation between technologically induced programmes and public values over time. Using critical discourse analysis, I trace the discourses on public values and technology within a longitudinal case of a technology-enabled platform to facilitate foreign trade regulations in Mexico - the Mexican Single Window for Foreign Trade. In my empirical analysis, I examine a combination of key government texts and extensive data from fieldwork to address two related questions: what public values are presented, enacted or marginalised during the trajectory of the case, and how these values are enacted and operationalised into technology over time. The analysis reveals four distinctive discourses on public values and technology: 'technical efficiency', 'legality and honesty', 'robustness' and '(forced) cooperation'. The analysis shows that while the technical efficiency cluster - commonly associated to the new public management ethos - is dominating, it cohabits with and is reinforced by other values more broadly related to traditional public administration and the bureaucratic ethos - that is, legality and honesty. In addition, the analysis shows that these four distinctive discourses have been materialised in technology in different degrees, giving rise to tensions and contestation over time. In light of the findings, I draw implications for theorizing public values and technology innovation within public sector reforms in a given context.

Between 1990 and 2010 sub-Saharan Africa experienced some of the highest levels of deforestation anywhere in the world. The problem has been particularly acute in what are known as the miombo woodlands of southern Africa. These occupy a unique ecological niche and are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of people in the region, yet are disappearing rapidly. The aim of this thesis is to identify the structural causes of this phenomenon in two of the miombo countries, Zambia and Mozambique. Standard ‘resource based’ explanations for deforestation in both countries tend to focus primarily on demographic and economic factors, emphasising the impact of economic reforms, population growth, rural migration, poverty, minimal access to electricty and a lack of institutional resources. However I argue that these explanations do not account for Mozambique’s relatively better record on deforestation during the period in question, and that a more convincing account is offered by a ‘governance based’ explanation, which emphasises different forms of forest governance and institutional arrangements affecting the forest sector in each country. Specifically, Mozambique has fared better than Zambia thanks to its more secure system of traditional land tenure, the implementation of more progressive legislation and a sustained commitment to community based natural resource management. The implication is that future initiatives to curb deforestation in these countries should concentrate on addressing institutional and policy based shortcomings before implementing market based mechanisms designed to encourage conservation.

The thesis is concerned with the evaluation of factors in Local Authority housing maintenance requirements in the City of Manchester. Since 1982, expenditure in housing maintenance and repair works has consistently accounted for more than 50% of total expenditure on maintenance and repair work. In turn, maintenance and repair work accounts for almost 50% of total construction output in the UK. Given this level of sectorial contribution, it is apt to understand the factors which affect defects in dwelling buildings and hence maintenance requirements. This thesis reviews the catalogue of building defect causative factors leading to the conclusion that social and tenants' characteristics are equally important. The study is based, chiefly, on a postal questionnaire survey of building surveyors involved in day-to-day identification of defects as well as tenants of the sampled dwellings; and computer cost records of maintenance on dwellings within the sample. A total of 45 completed questionnaires from building surveyors, and 252 Council tenants with corresponding computer cost records formed the data base for the analyses conducted. The building surveyors' questionnaire assisted in the identification of defect-cause criteria which relate to the internal attribute of the dwelling building. The consistency of the resulting data was confirmed by the use of Kendall Coefficient of Concordance. An analysis is described of the manipulated data set using regression analysis. The analysis found that Changing standard contributes (38%) of (building structure related factors') impact on maintenance requirement variance, construction factors (23%), design factors (22%), vandalism (12%) and age factors (6%). The intercorrelations among these five defect-cause criteria within the building object necessitated further analysis using the principal component analysis. This resulted in the extraction of nine significant factors showing how the initial five factors combine to exert their influence on the building. In all, this family of building structure related factors contribute 32% of the variation in maintenance requirements. Combining the data from the tenants' questionnaire, computer cost information and dwelling survey, regression model testing was employed to identify the significant factors. This was facilitated with the use of three indices of housing maintenance requirements as the dependent variables, namely; reactive maintenance cost, property condition and satisfaction among tenants. Nine factors (six of which relate to tenant's characteristics) pertaining to tenant, environmental and housing management were significantly influential.

This thesis examines the way in which decisions about the treatment and disposal of solid waste are analysed in the English counties. The emphasis is on decisions with strategic dimensions rather than on tactical issues relating to plant operations. On the basis of an examination of legislation, government advice to local authorities, and literature from both the political and management sciences, alternative hypothesis sets about the analytical process which might be expected to exist are developed. These hypotheses are then tested, using evidence, drawn from surveys, interviews and field studies. A justification for the use of multiple hypotheses and multiple data sources which centres around the trade off between the precision of a result and its importance is offered in the thesis. The evidence supports the conclusion that the analysis process in existence can best be viewed as an attempt at rational comprehensive planning but one which is severely constrained in various ways. It is argued that the process is a barrier to both effective and efficient operations. The final chapters of the thesis adopt a more reformist approach. It is argued that collection and disposal systems should be recombined and that co-operation between county authorities should be encouraged. An appropriate analytical process is also defined.

Uganda has been considered one of Africa's few "success stories" over the past decade, an example of how a country can be transformed through a committed state bureaucracy. The thesis questions this view by looking at the experiences of development and change in a subparish in eastern Uganda. From this more local-level perspective, the thesis discusses the weakness of the state in the countryside, and incorporates the importance of religious and customary institutions. In place of a narrow view of politics, focused on reforms and policies coming from above, which rarely reach rural areas in a consistent or predictable way, the thesis describes political developments within a rural community. The thesis rests on two premises. First, that the state in rural Uganda has been too weak to support an effective bureaucratic presence in the countryside. Second, that politics at the local-level is an "open-ended" business, better understood through investigating a range of institutional spaces and activities, rather than a particular set of actions, or a single bureaucracy. Oledai sub-parish, which provides the empirical material for the thesis, was far removed from the idea of state-sponsored success described in the literature. Villagers had to contend with a history of violence, with recent impoverishment, and with the reality that the rural economy was unimportant in maintaining the structures of the government system. The thesis shows that the marginalisation of the countryside came at a time when central and local government structures had become increasingly reliant on funding from abroad. Aside from the analysing the weakness of the state bureaucracy, the thesis goes on to discuss broader changes in the life of the sub-parish, including the impact of a violent insurgency in the late 1980s. The thesis also looks at the role of churches and burial societies, institutions which have been largely ignored by the literature on political developments in Uganda. Religious and customary institutions, as well as the village court, provided spaces where political goals, such as settling disputes, building a career, or acquiring wealth, could be pursued.

This thesis examines how institutional frameworks impact on political repre-sentation. It looks at the links and relationships that exist between political institutions and political representation, and explores how institutions shape the role and behaviour of elected representatives. Institutional frameworks are comprised of institutions which include a great variety of rules. Some rules were intentionally designed and formally described in laws and policies. Others developed informally over time as practices and conventions. The thesis argues that formal and informal rules, individually and in combination, impact on political action. Political representation is about action. It is about how elected representatives act for the represented, and about whether the ‘acting’ is in the interest of the represented. The thesis argues that formal and informal rules influence the actions of representatives and thereby shape political representation. This thesis is a qualitative case study of sub-local government in the city of Munich in Bavaria, Germany. It builds upon ‘new institutionalism’ and inves-tigates what the institutions of sub-local government in Munich are, and what their role is with respect to the actions of elected representatives. The thesis looks at both how institutions shape the actions of representatives and at how representatives create and shape these institutions. Based on its empirical findings, the thesis generates theories and hypotheses as to how political institutions and political behaviour influence each other. The thesis reflects on the significance of the findings for representative government in Munich and, more broadly, for democratic outcomes at the local and sub-local level.

This thesis uses economics-style incentivised laboratory experiments to study the effects of the political transformation in Arab Spring Countries (frequent recalling of governments, political and social polarisation, and campaign dynamics of founding elections) on economic outcomes; such as tax compliance, support for painful economic reforms, corruption, and interpersonal trust. The main focus of this thesis is on Egypt, being the largest Arab country in terms of population, historically the most influential in the region, and with a dominant cultural influence felt all over the Arab world. I find the following experimental evidence: (i) Giving citizens the right to recall government officials decreases the level of corruption in government through the increased accountability it imposes on elected politicians. Specifically, corruption is reduced by 14% in the presence of this right (p=0.04). (ii) Empowering citizens with the right to recall government officials was also found to decrease tax compliance by 20% due to the high frequency of divisive elections associated with this newly acquired right in a newly democratised country and the creation of losers who become unsatisfied with the outcome of the election process and thus the psychological costs associated with their incompliance are minimized. (iii) Ideological polarisation in elections can impede economic reform. And that (iv) negative campaigning in elections can impact negatively on the level of interpersonal trust in the society.

This thesis explores how English councils and their public service partners responded to the UK Coalition government’s ‘austerity’-related spending cuts between 2010 and 2015. The research is distinctive in moving beyond a focus on the impacts of cuts to individual services, instead considering responses to austerity ‘in the round’, using a governance perspective. The methodology was innovative, using principles of ‘action research’ and ‘appreciative inquiry’ to design the research collaboratively with Nottingham City Council. Fieldwork was undertaken between 2012 and 2014, including a document review, 34 interviews and two workshops with frontline staff, as well as informal participant observation. The approach aimed to deliver academic rigour, as well as useful findings for practitioners addressing challenges in the field. Taking the locality of Nottingham as an exploratory and revelatory embedded single case study, the analysis combines insights from new institutionalist and interpretive theory. It demonstrates that although the council showed institutional resilience, and was able to maintain a wide range of services, spending cuts were creating pressure to change both the ‘practices’ and ‘narratives’ underpinning service delivery. Tensions in some service delivery partnerships suggested shifts in local ‘traditions’ of governance, viewed by some actors as symptomatic of a wider change in the values underpinning governance institutions. Meanwhile the council was increasingly focussed on strategic forms of community leadership, whilst links with local communities were diminishing. Working with partners, the council had (at least temporarily) mitigated a dramatic reduction in income. Yet although change in service delivery was incremental, the potential for transformation in local governance was clear. These findings are shown to have consistencies with wider comparative studies. Policy implications are discussed for the 2015 Conservative government, as it implements a further round of austerity-related cuts.