Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2004. / Advisor: Kenneth Cruikshank. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 232-250). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed July 31, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-119).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 718-745).

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.

M.Com. (Business Management) / As a result of the cost of new infrastructure and the effect it has on tariff structures in developing areas, the term "cost recovery" tends to have a negative connotation. The fact of the matter is that the capital cost of creating infrastructural services, as well as the cost of operating them, must be recovered. There is no easy way to cut back on existing services and programmes, to charge user fees, or to raise taxes. Yet failure to devise a rational and effective way of investing in public works, as well as appropriate cost recovery mechanisms, will surely prevent any significant improvement in the standard of living, as well as in the local and national economy ...

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.

The move toward establishing regional government in Ontario reflects the recognition by both local and provincial governments of the inadequacies of the present governmental structure to deal with development issues of a regional nature. The requirements of a rapidly urbanizing and growing population are those whose discussion and provision is most efficiently made by a form of government larger than the existing municipality and smaller than the provincial government. The hypothesis states that altering the provincial departmental organization is a necessary prerequisite to successful establishment of the planning function within the regional government. It is based on the argument that with the creation of regional government throughout the province, the existing operational framework of the departmental organization of the provincial government is not sufficiently coordinated to deal with planning issues for regional development. To defend the argument, documentation and analysis is made of the development of both local and provincial government. This gives a back ground upon which to establish how and why there may be problems in coordinating the implementation of planning policy for regional development and to make suggestions of possible changes. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis explores the ways in which a municipal government in Brazil developed itself as a learning system through the support of a capacity-building project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. The project, which began in 1998, focuses on building capacity for adaptive, community based watershed management in the municipality of Santo Andre. It involves a team of Canadian partners led by the University of British Columbia Centre for Human Settlements. Santo Andre is a city of 600,000 people in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area. The focus of the thesis is on Santo Andre's planners' perspectives about the individual learning, and related organizational changes, that were induced by the project. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-one staff holding a variety of planning responsibilities. The findings are that, while not planned for in the design of the project, learning occurred at three levels: learning by the planners as individuals engaging in daily practices, learning through changes in the planners' relationships with one another and with residents of Santo Andre's Watershed Protection Area, and learning through and about the organisational processes of the municipal government itself. It is concluded that international capacity-building projects can contribute to the enhancement of local planning to the extent they are structured to address the potential for learning at all three of these levels. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Local economic development successes and failures at municipal level, and specifically in secondary cities in South Africa, is deeply influenced by the constitutional imperatives for establishing developmental local government. The local planning, economic development and policy frameworks introduced between 1999 and 2006 were largely based on, and moulded according to, the wave of new public management paradigms and public sector reform 'good governance best practises' implemented in South Africa post the 1994 democratic elections. The study makes two claims about municipal designs and practises, one that the governance design for these expressions of developmental local government in South Africa has been driven by solution based and theoretical mechanisms rooted in primarily new public management frameworks and development approaches. The second claim is that this development approach manifested in practise in specific plans and frameworks which municipal governments and entities are required to implement and this implementation is characterised by mimicry and isomorphism through compliance, specifically in intermediate cites The motivation for the study, and the third claim which the study investigates, is that the implementation of these plans in practise is not doing so well in terms of delivering the results as envisaged, and secondary cities and towns are often in economic, social and service delivery crises and exhibit very high levels of spatial exclusion despite the local economic development profiles and governance arrangements in these settings increasingly being a matter of policy discussion and debate. The study then introduces a proposed alternative by focusing on implementation at local level and explores how things might be done differently. It looks at the possible contribution of the current search for more effective public service reform, generally referred to as 'doing development differently' or 'smart(er) development', to this local economic development debate. Through a conceptual analysis and application of the approaches and methodologies introduced by problem driven iterative adaption, the study identifies possible different approaches for local economic development in secondary cities and explains what it looks like. The study concludes that doing local economic differently in intermediate settings in South Africa can provide more realistic expectations for the results of local economic development initiatives through fundamentally rephrasing the problem as one that matters, and make recommendations for approaches through which problem driven iterative adaptation processes and practises can be introduced in the context of the institutional constraints present in these intermediate settings.