Bibliography: leaves 192-207 / 207 leaves : / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (M. D.)--University of Adelaide, 1984

This thesis examined the role of supranational organisations (SOs) in the governance of tourism in a North-South context. Focusing on the issue area of development cooperation, this thesis investigated the question of how and why SOs got involved in tourism in developing countries, and more specifically, in small island developing states. Such involvement may occur either directly through aid funded projects or indirectly through international trade regimes that impact on tourism in the aid recipient countries. The thesis adopted a case study approach focussing on the European Union�s (EU�s) involvement in the governance of tourism in South Pacific island states. Grounded in a history of colonialism, the EU has been involved in the �development� of the South Pacific for more than three decades, which allowed to track changes in development philosophy over time. Focusing on the concept of power, the case was assessed in a multi-scalar manner, analysing the EU�s involvement from the global down to the local level. Never before has an entire multilevel polity been assessed in one coherent case study, incorporating actors situated at all levels and ranging from supranational organisations to national governments, businesses, communities, and individuals. The methods employed in this thesis included interviews, participant observation, document analysis (policy documents and newspapers), and subsequently critical discourse analysis. The latter served to highlight the so-called �third face of power� (Lukes 1974), which is closely related to the concept of ideological hegemony. Interviews were conducted in Fiji and Samoa with officials of the South Pacific Delegations of the EU, officials of tourism authorities, NGOs, tourism operators and community members. Elite interviews in Brussels were conducted with officials of the European Commission and the European Parliament. Under all scales and �faces� of power the EU was found to be the dominant actor, while the issue of self-interest appeared to play a key role. At a macro-level, the EU clearly dominated in most overt decision-making situations during negotiations on aid and trade agreements. As concerned the inclusion of tourism in the agreements, the relative importance of the sector was clearly dependent on the European Commission�s prevailing attitude on �tourism and development� at any point in time. At a meso- and micro-level, the EU�s influence was less obvious yet nonetheless existent, for example through funding rules and the use of European consultants. Indirect influence also occurred at the national level. In particular the substitution of a preferential trade regime with a free trade agreement (the Economic Partnership Agreements), which is currently being negotiated between the EU and the Pacific Islands, is likely to have a significant impact on the economic importance of tourism, as well as public policy in the South Pacific. In a mini case study of Samoa, it was found that the resulting changes in tourism policy would have a significant impact �on the ground�, in particular with regard to rates of local ownership and control. Overall, power relations were found to be highly unequal and self-determination and empowerment have largely not been achieved. However, more research is needed to examine the ability to generalise the findings to other geographic regions or other types of SOs. The key contribution of this thesis in the theoretical realm constitutes its bridging of agency and structure within multi-level governance, which may be conceived as a �third way� to either dependency theory-influenced studies (global/structure) or community approaches (local/agency).

Research in the multi-disciplinary domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Development indicates there is potential for ICT to contribute to a nation's socio-economic, socio-technical and socio-cultural development. Because of this, developing countries have been rushing to implement ambitious ICT for Development (ICT4D) projects, in rural areas, through the direct/indirect supervision of institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations (UN) and other local and international donor agencies. These interventions aim to provide positive developmental impacts on people's lives at an individual, group or community level. However, debate is continuing regarding how and to what extent the ICT4D projects further the achievement of development.

Thesis (M. S.)--Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Kim Cobb; Committee Member: Annalisa Bracco; Committee Member: Ellery Ingall; Committee Member: Jean Lynch-Stieglitz; Committee Member: Yuhang Wang.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Purdue University, 1994. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-302).

Thesis (LL. M.)--McGill University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-136).

This thesis examines the challenges that the Federal and Amhara National Regional State (ANRS)1 Courts of Ethiopia face in the realisation of legal and social justice. The Ethiopia Constitution (1995) under Article 43 declares that Ethiopian people have the right to improved living standards and sustainable development where the basic aim of development activity is to enhance, through their full participation, citizens’ capacity for development and the meeting of their basic needs. The Constitution underlined this as the ‘North Star’ of social justice which would be meaningless unless dispute resolution mechanisms empower litigants and the people in gaining social justice and thus the attainment of the Constitutional objective. The attainment of the social justice is however problematic as the legal justice the formal court is administering does not meet the people’s Constitutional expectations. The mismatch between legal and social justice, coupled with the legal history and the prevalence of justice pluralism, tends to force the People of Ethiopia to use non-formal systems of dispute resolution. Thus, there is a need to refine the formal and non-formal systems and to align them with the Constitutional imperative of social justice. Judicial reform is being implemented, with the help of international institutions like the World Bank, but the underlining concern is whether the World Bank proposals on judicial and legal reform will meet these needs or whether they are too located in Western values, the suggestion being that they may suffer from the same problems as other modernisation projects. There also lies a tension between the Constitutional expectation, the conceptualisation of justice by professionals and clients, and the overall purpose of securing justice and preventing injustice. Litigants’ preference for justice is itself in conflict with other litigants and the diverse institutional understanding of justice that made the attainment of social justice a difficult exercise. The area is found to be so problematic that there is a need to re-connect the practical conceptualisation of justice with the Constitutional conceptualisation of social justice which the Federal and ANRS courts require the redoing of justice so that the conceptualisation of justice would not cause irreversible damage to people’s societal, economic, and ecological demands and to the sustainability of justice and development.

This thesis provides a critical account of state transformation on one of the last ‘frontiers’ of mineral exploration and extraction. Mongolia’s struggle to consolidate its extractive development strategy lies in a fundamental tension between the nature of global capital investment and the responsiveness of national democratic institutions to their political electorate. In this sense, Mongolia is part of a broader pattern of state formation in a global era. This pattern has been recognised in established Western democracies, but, as this thesis argues, vulnerable states in the periphery of the global economy are also being affected with potentially more immediate and alarming consequences. In the context of a transition to a development strategy reliant on the extraction and export of raw minerals (primary commodities) since 1997, the Mongolian state has entered the world of competitive international finance (as opposed to development loans) and investment, in which courting and preserving the interest and ‘confidence’ of the investor is paramount for the government. In the early years of the millennium (2003-2012), Mongolian citizens became increasingly engaged in democratic political processes and particularly vocal regarding the lack of perceived public benefit from mining investment and the damaging socio-environmental consequences of extraction in rural areas. Thus, I argue that a constitutional struggle played itself out between the contradictory impulses of the state towards investors and citizens as evidenced in the see-saw cycles of legal and policy reform between 1997 and 2013. Consequently, by the end of 2013, the general downturn in global commodity prices and the particular “vote of no confidence” in Mongolia’s investment environment from the majority of investors led to the consolidation of a cross-party ‘stability consensus’ within the state. The process of ‘stabilising’ the investment environment has occurred at the expense of the democratic constitution of the state, demonstrated in the curtailment of Parliamentary powers over policy-making processes, the limitation of self-government for sub-national administrations and the restriction of civil society organisations’ participation in political processes. As a post-socialist state adjusting to the constraints of the global economy and the cycles of commodity markets, Mongolia provides concrete evidence of the antagonistic relationship between national democracy and global economic integration, and the reality of the latter’s constitutional impacts.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Urban Design / Master / Master of Urban Design