Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Universiṭat Bar-Ilan, Ramat-Gan, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-290) and index.

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Seyyed Vali Nasr. Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-93). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

The thesis contributes towards a better understanding of political communication in multi-level settings. For the most part scholars of political communication focus their enquiries on the level of the nation-state. Moreover, they often assume that effective political campaigning and media management are predicated on a high level of centralisation. As a result researchers have by and large failed to theoretically and empirically address the implications of multi-level politics on the study of political communication. Constitutional change in the UK presents an ideal opportunity to consider the relationship between the transfer of power from central government to institutions at the sub-state level on the one side and modern political communication processes on the other (Fawcett 2002). The thesis looks at the case of devolution in Scotland to answer three sets of research questions. Firstly, it enquires how legislative devolution has affected the professionalization of political communication in Scotland. In other words, to what degree have political actors north of the border participated in the trend towards greater use of and reliance on professional communicators in public life before and after the creation of the Scottish Parliament? Secondly, it asks what adjustments political parties, central government and the devolved administration have made to their communication strategies in order to deal with the requirements of message control in multi-level settings? How do political actors organise their agenda building efforts across different localities and which coordination problems arise in this context? Thirdly, the thesis asks who sets the news agenda in Scotland, politicians attached to the UK-wide institutions or their counterparts from the devolved sphere of government?

No description available.

From the outset, Northern Ontario has existed as an exploited natural resource region, vulnerable to the vicissitudes of a "boom and bust" verity. This has had profound effects on its ensuing political patterns and political processes. This thesis describes how and why the politics of Northern Ontario are different. This thesis demonstrates that the politics of Northern Ontario, unlike Southern Ontario, are distinguished by disaffection, dependency, domination, pragmatism, and parochialism. This thesis also argues that the North's divergent development and natural resource based economy, as well as pernicious provincial government policies and extensive interventions, provoked the differences apparent in its politics. These differences are evinced in the North's disparate political culture, political priorities, and political structure. Furthermore, this thesis confirms that Northern Ontario politics feature a low level of political efficacy which is primarily the result of its "centre-periphery" connection with Southern Ontario.

This Master’s Thesis compares the dynamics of intergovernmental relations (IGR) in Canada and Australia. In particular, the study explores how two such similar countries have developed such distinct sets of intergovernmental institutions. In Australia, the Commonwealth has increasingly dominated IGR since the 1930s, a process which culminated with the creation of the Council of Australian Government, a “vertical” (Commonwealth-state) institution. In Canada, federal-provincial-territorial relations have been far less institutionalized. Instead, “horizontal” (provincial-territorial) relations have evolved slowly into the Council of the Federation, the most regularized forum for IGR in Canadian history. By examining the historical development of federalism more generally and IGR specifically, this study uncovers a mutually-reinforcing relationship between centralization and the verticality of IGR in Australia, and a corresponding bond between decentralization and horizontality in Canada. Based on original interviews with key intergovernmental officials in each country, the study attributes these relationships to a number of factors, including the presence of multi-nationalism, the strength of intrastate federalism, the nature of judicial interpretation, the structure of fiscal federalism, and the personal style of political figures. The thesis concludes that verticality in Canada and horizontality in Australia are functions of the same factors which made one decentralized and the other centralized, and that institutions of IGR are both cause and effect of the prevailing dynamic in either federation.

This Master’s Thesis compares the dynamics of intergovernmental relations (IGR) in Canada and Australia. In particular, the study explores how two such similar countries have developed such distinct sets of intergovernmental institutions. In Australia, the Commonwealth has increasingly dominated IGR since the 1930s, a process which culminated with the creation of the Council of Australian Government, a “vertical” (Commonwealth-state) institution. In Canada, federal-provincial-territorial relations have been far less institutionalized. Instead, “horizontal” (provincial-territorial) relations have evolved slowly into the Council of the Federation, the most regularized forum for IGR in Canadian history. By examining the historical development of federalism more generally and IGR specifically, this study uncovers a mutually-reinforcing relationship between centralization and the verticality of IGR in Australia, and a corresponding bond between decentralization and horizontality in Canada. Based on original interviews with key intergovernmental officials in each country, the study attributes these relationships to a number of factors, including the presence of multi-nationalism, the strength of intrastate federalism, the nature of judicial interpretation, the structure of fiscal federalism, and the personal style of political figures. The thesis concludes that verticality in Canada and horizontality in Australia are functions of the same factors which made one decentralized and the other centralized, and that institutions of IGR are both cause and effect of the prevailing dynamic in either federation.

This study is a comparative analysis of the survival strategies of two regimes: Jordan's King Hussein and Lebanon's Fu'ad Shihab. It is an exploration of the domestic determinants of foreign policy behaviour, and the relation between foreign policy behaviour and regime consolidation, legitimation, and survival in small, weak state actors located in a permeable regional system. The study advances an hypothesis of four explanatory variables to explain the success and failure of Hussein and Shihab's respective strategies. Husseinism's 'success'--as opposed to Shihabism's 'failure'--may be explained by a successful insulatory regional policy, the historical process of state formation, the availability of economic resources under state control, and the ability of the state to use its coercive resources without hindrance. This enabled the Hashemite regime to restructure state-society relations to consolidate social control, mitigate the effects of trans-national ideologies on the domestic arena, and achieve an acceptable level of national integration among the different segments of the society gaining the state allegiance from a sizeable number, or from strategic sectors, of the population.

This thesis is an investigation of politics in the context of digital technologies. Its central claim is that technologies of what I call the digital ensemble express a politics that is very different from that of other technological ensembles. In order to come to an understanding of politics in the digital, this thesis explores three broader themes by way of discussions of three different technologies or assemblages of the digital. While I do not aim to establish an overarching conclusion as to a politics of the digital, I do identify both elements that are common among the three themes and where they diverge from one another. The first theme concerns the operation of power in the context of the database and examines how subjects are acted upon. I argue that databases represent both an amplification of the disciplinary mode of power and, as a product of that amplification, also express a new mode of power referred to by Deleuze as modulation. It is this concurrent operation of these two modes of power that produces the subject as 'dividual', both object and objectile at the same time, which has a number of consequences in terms of how subjects are controlled and governed. The second theme considers how the subject is constituted as actor and how this relates to the construction of the political in the context of the digital ensemble. This is achieved by way of looking at the concept of the interface. I argue that digital technologies constitute very different practices or forms of doing, both spatially and temporally. Using a broader phenomenological approach, I argue that these technologies constitute very different forms of being than that of the individual that is so central to much of modern political thought and its construction of the political. A key expression of the political in the digital ensemble, I argue, is the interface, enabling the production of a new human-machine assemblage constituting itself as flow/s. The third theme is an exploration of the conceptualisation of political action in the context of digital technologies. Here I make use of the technological assemblage of the network in exploring the actions of fluid beings. I argue that modern political thought has always conceptualised political action as the action of solid entities acting upon and in relation to other solid entities. In the context of digital technologies, however, I argue that such a conceptualisation of action is not very useful; if one conceptualises the actor as fluid, then so must its actions be conceptualised as fluid. It is in such a context that concepts of flow and turbulence gain great importance in coming to terms with politics in the digital. Indeed, to the extent that a digitisation of politics can be discerned, I argue it makes much sense to think of it as a politics of fluidity.