This thesis has explored the process that has transformed Saudi Arabia from a loose tribeal community into a centralized urban society. This process was accomplished under the traditional political leadership if the House of Saud, which imposed a framework for national integration by setting the limits on the boundaries of the nation. Out of conviction and necessity the Sauds decided that the system inherited from the past eras out of date and that a change to modern policies was necessary. Reforms were launched but within the existing framework of political and religious ligitamacy.In addition, the thesis has discussed the impact of petroleum development on all sectors of the Saudi society, as well as a general growth, on the evolution of development planning machinery, or. settlement of nomads, on improvement in the provision of social welfare and education. Despite the huge capital surplus from oil production, the thesis finds major problems which continue to confront the Saudi leadership-- traditional constraints and manpower constraints. The thesis' findings confirm that the social and institutional constraints inherited from the past are far more powerful limitations to modernization and development than has been generally realized.

In a drive to make local government as interesting and popular as generations of Westminster's politicians have believed it ought to be, the reform of local government as become as English an obsession as the weather. Throughout the 20th century a range of subjective criteria have been developed to justify reorganisations of local government, along with increasingly complex models of how subjective measures can be used to justify change. The complex and time-consuming procedures that characterised the 1929 'review' of local government were compounded by a layer of additional complexity in the, eventually abandoned, review of 1945. By then the development of urban spatial planning as a discipline had given policy makers a renewed optimism in their ability to effect scientific change, and the complexity of post war local government reorganisation increased incrementally. The Government in 1992 and again in 2003, avoided the question of identifying what the purpose of local government was, and establishing cross-party consensus on how it might be established. Instead, local administration has become synonymous with local democracy, whilst being referred to under a generic title of 'local government'. Proposals to reform one have created concerns regarding the future of the other. This confusion, along with a general lack of interest by the general public has led to a scenario where government ministers have become defenders of the status quo, or champions of change, but rarely informed arbitors of reform. With the benefit of 170 years of evidence to draw from, objectives that stood little chance of success remain stated outcomes of local government reform. It will be shown that fanciful claims have not been consigned into the dustbin of history, but have incrementally produced heirs.

Existing research on MPs using the Internet (Halstead 2000, Perrone 2002, Ward and Gibson 2003, Jackson 2003, Ward and Lusoli 2005, Ward et al. 2005, Jackson 2005, Auty 2005, Jackson 2006b) has tended to be too reliant on content analysis; restricted to one part of the Internet, and involved limited research on the views of actual users of an MP.s online presence their views of it. This thesis seeks to identify the impact of the Internet on MPs through: their campaigning abilities; the impact on their role as representatives and how MPs communicate. The research triangulates data on the impact of websites, email, e-newsletters and weblogs through content analysis, questionnaires and interviews. The data collated has helped develop a theoretical understanding of how MPs campaign, represent and communicate. First, there is evidence that e-newsletters can be used as effective vote- winners by encouraging constituents to switch votes. This „incumbency effect. (Krasno 1994) suggests that existing research (Curtice and Steed 1997, Butler and Collins 2001) has under-estimated the effect of a personal vote (Cain et al. 1987). Second, websites and e-newsletters are helping MPs develop a new representative role, by providing an „information portal. which encourages local participation. Third, there is evidence that we are on the threshold of a new model of e-representation. MPs. use of e-newsletters appears to be developing a parallel of e-constituency which enhances the relationship geographical constituents have with their MP. At the same time, weblogs are creating a separate e-constituency whose online link to an MP is based on interest not geography. Fourth,a typology has been created for explaining how MPs use the Internet, with four different characteristics:technophobes; bandwagoners; mapie; and pioneers. The Internet is creating a new architecture of representation with both a territorial axis, and an issue axis accessible from the computer keyboard.

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No description available.

The second half of the 18th century saw the formation of the first establishments to provide formal training to officers prior to receiving their first commission. The first school, the Royal Military Academy, was formed in 1741 by the Board of Ordnance to train Artillery and Engineer Officers. It was 1800 before the army formed a similar establishment and the building blocks were in place for the creation of the Scientific Soldier. This thesis will look at the formation of the Royal Military Academy and look at the training that officers received with a focus on those officers destined to serve during the Peninsular War. The complementary roles and training of the Royal Military Artificers and the eventual formation of the School of Military Engineering will be described. A thorough review will then be undertaken of the officers in the Royal Engineers, the numbers, their background, the locations they served in and the tasks they carried out. A new review of the sieges during the war will be completed using unpublished material. The other roles undertaken by the Royal Engineers in the Peninsular War will be fully investigated and described. These roles are more comprehensive than has been commonly understood and will demonstrate the contribution of the educated officer to the war. The thesis will conclude by looking at the impacts of the post-war peace on military education.

Theoretical and ‘real world’ research into democratic engagment concentrates on larger-scale contexts. There is an accompanying tendency to focus on participation, neglecting other aspects of engagement. The thesis rethinks the notion of democratic engagement by dividing it into three analytically distinct, but interwoven, aspects namely communication, participation and representation, and drawing attention to small-scale or micro-level contexts. Understanding the communicative, participative and representative aspects of engagment in micro-level settings favours a case study approach and a research strategy designed to capture the minutiae of experiences of engagement. ‘Mossbank’, a neighbourhood in a small-to-medium sized Scottish town, has been chosen as an appropriate case. Mossbank is undergoing a physical and social regeneration initiative that has created new sites of democratic activity centred on Mossbank-related issues. It is also a setting where democratic engagement is likely to be constrained. A flexible mixed methods approach to data collection has been adopted using questionnaires, interviews, documentary analysis and non-participative observation, enabling the generation of ‘rich’ and ‘thick’ data. A theoretically informed analytical framework is used to explore the different aspects of democratic engagement in Mossbank. Here, Iris Marion Young’s theorising on communication in deliberative settings has been particularly influential. Democratic engagement in Mossbank is dominated and constrained by formal, familiar and broadly conventional institutions, processes and roles ‘imported’ from established larger-scale democratic settings. Less visible, context-specific factors also have an influence. ‘Messy’ practices and asymmetry affect the ‘quality’ of communication. Participation in democratic processes has its own particular constraining characteristics related to individual motivations and abilities to ‘fit in’ and ‘succeed’ within pre-existing processes. Representation in Mossbank is distant and sporadic, culminating in the evolution of an increasingly brokered approach to the relationship, administered by an intermediary. The thesis contributes to ‘empirical’ debates relating to the scope and nature of democratic engagement. This is especially relevant given the continued growth and development of micro-level democratic institutions and processes in developed democracies. The thesis also contributes to debates concerning the nature and extent of the ‘dialogue’ between normative ideals of democracy and engagement, and research into ‘real world’ democratic engagement.

This thesis aims to critically examine the development of Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) in the UK: organisations that lend to businesses unable to access finance from mainstream sources. The overall aim of the research is to capture the development of a proto-type sector into a recognisable and fully-fledged financial sector. The research found there was considerable interest in CDFIs in the late 1990s fuelled by research reports published by the New Economics Foundation. Ideas and influences were being transferred to the UK from North American CDFIs and from micro-finance lenders in the developing world. While a few CDFIs had existed in the UK since the 1970s, from the late 1990s a new generation of organisations were being established to help combat what New Labour had defined as financial exclusion. The thesis identifies this group of CDFIs the ‘British New Wave’, because they were developing their own products and services to meet local needs. After 1997, New Labour ideas about a potential Third Way and Communitarianism were increasingly influential. This thesis argues that the subsequent development of CDFIs can be strongly interpreted as offering a Third Way between the market and the state. Their links with local communities or sectors (such as social enterprise) also enhanced their importance at district, regional and national levels. The research also analyses a number of individual case studies such as the Aston Reinvestment Trust and Street UK, the CDFI sector and government policy to highlight the complexity of the challenges facing CFDIs particularly the range of issues relating to funding. The thesis argues that the government’s initial interest in the sector has waned over time and some of New Labour policies aimed at promoting localism have in practice restricted the growth of CDFIs. At the end of the first decade of the twenty first century, the UK CDFI sector is surviving and offering loans to businesses excluded from finance and offering social and economic benefits that should be recognised and supported through social investment. However, despite the optimistic note in some areas of the thesis, it will be argued many CDFIs remain financially unsustainable precisely because they offer small business loans and work with their borrowers.

This thesis seeks to explore the changes of the Libyan economy, which began in the mid-1980s. The core of this research is to examine the influence of these changes on the course of the state and the implementation of the economic reform programmes. The relevant theoretical literature is based upon the relationship between the international and internal factors leading up the economic reform. The globalisation and state power are reviewed. The theory of rentier state and also the discussion of the most relevant aspects of the privatisation process were considered. The contribution of the thesis is its sustained analysis of the Libyan economic policies and, more importantly, its response to the neglect of the international and domestic influences of the economic reform process particularly in oil states. In addition, the literature on Libya and its structural and economic reform suffers from a lack of theoretically-grounded analysis. The methodology of this study is based upon combination of both interviews and questionnaires seemed the ideal methods in examining the economic reform and the privatisation programmes. The documentary research was also an important element for this study. In order to identify the determinants of the changes of the Libyan economy and the implementation process, it employs a variety of Libyan official documents and economic data. In general the study reveals that the relationship and the interaction between the international and domestic factors is extremely vital to understand the economic reform and privatisation programmes in Libya. Despite the significance of the international arena, its impacts are mitigated through the domestic context. Moreover, the previous state policies, the role of the state institutions and the interaction between the state apparatus and the Libyan society are important in understanding the Libyan economy.

No description available.