This dissertation identifies and explains the factors contributing to the presence and severity of U.S. foreign-policy blunders, or gross errors in strategic judgment resulting in significant harm to the national interest, since the Second World War. It hypothesizes that the grand strategy of preponderance and the overestimation of military power to transform the politics of other states have precipitated U.S. foreign-policy blunders since 1945. Examining the Vietnam War and Iraq War as case studies, it focuses on underlying conditions in the American national identity and the problematic foreign policy decision-making (FPDM) that corresponds to this bifurcated hypothesis, termed the overestimation/preponderance theoretical model (OPM). Four indicators operationalize the OPM: (1) how U.S. foreign policymakers estimated the capacity of military power to transform the political dynamics of the target state through intervention; (2) and (3) how U.S. actors and institutions affected the capacity of the partner state and hostile state and nonstate actors; and (4) how the foreign policy was justified and rationalized within the leadership of government and to the general public as it encountered disconfirming information. In each case, the grand strategy of preponderance instituted a bounded rationality of mission in the FPDM stage and the operationalization stage that precluded the inclusion of an unfavorable outcome. In each case, U.S. foreign policymakers greatly overestimated the capacity of the partner state to establish security and legitimacy and underestimated the capacity of hostile actors to mobilize and threaten the partner state. However, these preference-confirmation biases diametrically contradicted the assessment that victory would be easy to achieve; U.S. foreign policymakers promulgated this corresponding overestimation/underestimation even while inflating the threat far beyond what the actual threat to the national-security element of the national interest represented. The subsequent implementing of this inverted calculation created a national-security national interest where none was extant, then significantly harmed that new interest via intervention. This tactical application of the grand strategy of preponderance facilitated the strategic-tactical gap in U.S. foreign policy by creating monsters in order to have monsters to slay, consistent with the ideological tradition of the imperative of crusade in the modern history of American foreign relations.

Natural disasters are uniquely transformative events. They can drastically transform physical terrain and the lives of those unfortunate enough to be caught in their wrath. However, natural disasters also provide an opportunity to reflect on past failures and, at times, a clean slate to correct those shortcomings. This project takes a political economic approach and recognizes natural disasters as occasions for agenda-setting on behalf of transnational commercial enterprises and market-oriented policy elites. These reformers often use the post-disaster policy space to articulate long-term development strategies based on market fundamentalism, and, more importantly, advance a set of policies consistent with their particular interests. This dissertation delves into that process and identifies the actors, their preferences and the policy outcomes. Using the business conflict model alongside changing transnational processes, this project identifies and traces post-disaster policy making in the Caribbean Basin. It also explores and provides a more nuanced explanation of its effect upon and within certain socioeconomic groups. What becomes apparent is that natural disasters are opportunities to first fracture national economies and then integrate them into transnational processes of capital accumulation. Given that economic viability is increasingly determined by assimilation into the global production processes, reformers in both developed and developing countries use disasters as occasions for re-orienting national economies towards this end. It is within this distorted integrative process that disaster capitalism is located.

Since 1979, Saudi-Iranian relations have been tense due to their position as superior powers in the Middle East. Both countries have different values and perspectives in regards to diplomatic relations with the West. As a consequence of the new developments in Iran's foreign policy and the newfound openness to the West adopted by President Rouhani, the topic has proven to be of research interest. The primary concern of this research was to explore the effect of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East, and whether or not there is a possibility to overcome this conflict using the new political developments. For this purpose, a content analysis methodology was employed. Through an analysis of data presented in the literature review, which consisted of scholarly articles, policy briefs, and books, this dissertation examines the complex political relations through which the pattern of the bilateral relations explain the conflicting narratives. This complexity is present in the political actions taken by Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the domestic and foreign policies they are embracing. The findings of this study demonstrate the effect of this conflict in the Middle East. The research also proposes a number of possible recommendations on how to resolve this conflict through political openness and reciprocal agreements that target the citizens of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Identificar los factores que influyen (o afectan) en el proceso de diseño de una política pública permite un análisis más certero de cómo es la política y cuáles serán sus tendencias en las siguientes fases del ciclo de política. Así encontramos que, en el caso peruano, los factores influyen de modo tal que las políticas públicas responden más a la posibilidad de acción de las instituciones del Estado que a la demanda de una acción pública. A través del análisis de la fase de diseño de la Política de Adaptación al Cambio Climático en el Perú podemos reconocer la naturaleza del proceso de toma de decisiones del Ministerio del Ambiente sobre la base de las alternativas propuestas (o impuestas) por actores dentro del sistema político peruano. Estos actores (sociales, institucionales e internacionales) configuran un espacio donde las prio- ridades (aparentemente estables) del ministerio se van restableciendo para hacerse viables a las demandas recibidas por el sistema a costa de la calidad de la propia política pública.

I examine whether Uber and Lyft are currently complements or substitutes of public transit, and how partnerships between cities and ride sharing companies can increase their complementary relationship and solve parking and mobility issues. The results suggest that transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft do not have a statistically significant effect on public transit ridership overall, but are complements of public transit for certain populations. Policies that give discounts for TNC rides taken to and from transit stops help solve the first mile / last mile problem, which consequently help increase transit ridership.

In recent years, industrial preservation policies, which aim to preserve urban industrial activity and industrial employment often through the preservation of industrial land, have emerged as a flashpoint in cities across the country that have implemented these policies. While critics contend that industrial preservation policies amount to smokestack chasing in “post-industrial” cities like New York City, industrial preservationists argue that such policies help to preserve well-paying, middle-class jobs and thus represent a tool to mitigate rising income inequalities in cities. Despite considerable attention to these policies, minimal research has evaluated the effectiveness of industrial preservation policies as land use and economic development planning tools. This paper inserts itself into the debate surrounding the utility of industrial preservation policies by evaluating the effectiveness of New York City’s 2006 Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) program. Specifically, this paper uses propensity scoring to evaluate various measures of urban industrial activity in designated IBZs compared to a control group of similar areas. This paper finds that IBZs outperformed the control group in terms of better stemming industrial employment losses and industrial land decline. The control group, however, provided a more favorable climate to industrial business starts and performed about the same as IBZs in encouraging capital investments in industrial infrastructure. These findings suggest that the IBZ program yielded mixed results in its efforts to both attract and retain urban industry.

Many developing countries depend on the World Bank for development assistance, which the Bank often provides with policy reform conditions. Resistance to World Bank’s conditionality caused the Bank to posit “ownership” as a country’s real assent to its development policies. The combination of ownership and conditionality invalidates the neocolonial, false-paradigm and dualism theses in explaining the international dependence development model. This study explains this model by investigating how the relationship between conditionality and ownership in the context of this model impacts forest management in Cameroon. Integrating theoretical and methodological insights mainly from political science, economics, geosciences, and sociology, the study finds that in this model, conditionality and ownership have a hybrid relationship that fosters and hinders effective forest management in Cameroon. This finding positions policy hybridity within this model. It proposes a nouvelle way to understand international development policies’ interactions, and the effects of the interactions on natural resource management.

Entrepreneurship education and training ensures economic development by enabling the creation of thriving new businesses and jobs by entrepreneurs. The Business Management Training Programme is tasked with training young entrepreneurs in South Africa. However, the youth unemployment rate has been exceedingly high in recent years. This study seeks to explore the implementation challenges being experienced by the Business Management Training Programme at the National Youth Development Agency. Using a qualitative approach, this study made use of semi-structured interviews with a carefully selected sample of those involved in the management and implementation of the Business Management Training Programme. A thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews indicated that the challenges experienced in the implementation of the programme did not stem solely from operational issues within the National Youth Development Agency, but from the conceptualisation and design of the Business Management Training Programme. On this basis, it is recommended that the National Youth Development Agency use the Design and Architecture Framework for Entrepreneurship Education and Training to conceptualise and design their own Business Management Training Programme. The study concluded that by conceptualising and designing its own programme, the National Youth Development Agency will be able to address the unique entrepreneurial education and training challenges being experienced in South Africa. / Public Administration and Management / M. (Public Administration)

The submitted text examines the relation between work-family balance policies and social construction of mothers with children under four years of age. The first part of the thesis outlines the context of work family balance. The research is positioned in the perspective of the theory of social construction of target population by Ingram and Schneider. The following chapter is devoted to the research methodology used throughout the analytical part of the thesis. The analytical part presents answers to questions regarding policy design, framing of the work family balance, stereotypes and social construction of mothers with children under the age of four.

This paper analyses social constructions of people with disabilities in Czech employment policy with a help of Anne Schneider's and Helen Ingram's theoretical framework: Social constructions of target populations. Methodologically this paper is a case study, the analysis is based on a secondary analysis of statistical data and a study of public policy documents, primarily analysis of legislation development and relevant strategic documents. The paper is attempting to define general construction of people with disabilities by public reprepresentative surveys. Power of the group is defined by characteristics resulting from the theoretical framework. The key part of the paper examines, what policies assume about participation of people with disabilities on the labour market. At the end the paper describes employment rates of this group. In conclusion the paper describes how hidden asumptions in design of policy probably hinders participation of people with disabilities on the labour market.