Conditionality has always been a feature of welfare benefit entitlements in the United Kingdom – however, over time, the extent to which conditionality has been exercised in order to change behaviour has drastically increased through the severity of sanctions. Universal Credit, the most recently enacted welfare programme in the UK, has strengthened conditionality even further through even more ambitious expectations, as well as stricter regulations and punishments. The mission of UC is to tackle worklessness, welfare dependency, and poverty by decreasing unemployment and thus, the number of people on benefits. Although UC may have been successful in addressing the first two issues, it is important to recognise that as a welfare policy and a response to poverty, UC is supposed to protect and benefit the wellbeing of people. My findings contradict this idea – UC has failed to address poverty in many ways, by defining poverty through a narrow and solely quantitative lens, by focusing on incentivising employment amongst benefit claimants as a solution to poverty, and by insufficiently accommodating for the needs of marginalised groups. Even so, conditional welfare policies have become the norm, a tool of many Conservative leaders in the United Kingdom. This is where the social policy focus has shifted. My thesis found that while UC and conditional welfare policies may achieve their stated goals of reducing unemployment and the number of benefit claimants, they do not adequately address the issue of poverty, as they ignore structural causes of poverty and disadvantage amongst marginalised communities.

This thesis takes three different perspectives, using theoretical and experimental techniques, on time-inconsistent preferences and how the existence of multiple selves can affect both consumer behaviour and policy design. Across domains such as retirement saving, health, and educational achievement, intertemporal choice presents a challenge for both individuals and policymakers. The first paper, 'Choosing When to Nudge: Designing Behavioural Policy around Decision-Making Costs,' considers how behavioural policy, which has proven increasingly popular with policymakers, affects welfare. I find that for present-biased consumers, behavioural policies help some consumers but can inefficiently discourage others from optimizing. Such policies therefore have an ambiguous effect on welfare, and similar to traditional policies, can impose equity-efficiency tradeoffs. Monopolies may increase welfare given their incentive to simplify consumer decisions instead of exploit switching costs. The second paper, 'Virtue and Vice with Endogenous Preferences,' considers behaviour when preferences are affected by consumer decisions. I introduce agents whose temptation to consume in the present is affected by how much they choose to save for the future. I find that differences between agents can trap them in divergent paths of self-improvement -- saving more, they value the future more, making saving optimal -- or binging -- consuming more makes them indifferent to future costs, making consumption optimal. At the extreme, it is frequently an optimum for a consumer to consume their entire wealth. The final paper, 'Bet You Can't Eat Just One: Consumption Complementarity and 'Self'-Control' considers an intrapersonal game between a moderate cold self and a hot self that wants to indulge. In equilibrium, sophisticated selves best respond to each other's behaviour: the cold self over-abstains and the hot self over-indulges to avoid inducing the other state. I test these ideas in the lab, and find that subjects on a diet who were induced to consume a piece of chocolate before the experiment indulge more in chocolate during the experiment, even when the initial indulgence was imposed by the experimenter. Eating a piece of chocolate, this suggests, can induce a period during which chocolate is more appealing.

Throughout the Cold War antagonisms of the twentieth century, the United States (US) championed greater global economic cooperation and an embrace of free market principles to encourage economic growth. Post World War II, passage of the Bretton Woods Agreement institutionalized this political agenda effectively establishing the rules of global commerce. The result has been increased economic participation and trade liberalization. One of the last remaining vestiges of Cold War hostility and impediments to trade is the US economic embargo of Cuba, in place since 1960. Increasingly seen as a policy failure, the US has taken steps in the past two years to normalize relations with Cuba. At the same time, after extended conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, economic recession, and political polarization over the last fifteen years the US finds itself in a position of ambiguity towards additional foreign commitments. American efforts to open Cuba to two-way commerce serve both national security and economic foreign policy agendas. For Cubans, removal of the embargo represents an opportunity for normal relations with the world’s largest economy and access to capital and markets that come with it. The purpose of this study is to test the theory political economy, which attempts to understand society through the intersection of economic, political, and social functions, using US-Cuba diplomacy as a case study (Yin, 2009). Working within a multiple streams framework, the investigator examined how economic policy is changed under politically ambiguous conditions through a series of 20 semi-structured qualitative interviews and content analysis of secondary data sources (Zahariadis, 2014). Specifically, the study explored the behavior of interested individuals from the US and Cuba, so-called policy entrepreneurs, and their influence on the policymaking process during an open policy window. Research results suggest that policy entrepreneurs operate at the individual, state, and national scales of society using a variety of symbols to create and broaden opportunities for policy change. Across all three levels, US and Cuban policy entrepreneur’s behavior is guided by the search for rationality in ambiguous times, but their agency is bounded by the institutionally determined parameters of what is legally and politically acceptable.

Diet and dietary related health outcomes such as obesity and diabetes are major public health concerns. While personal choice and dietary behaviors are major influences on how an individual eats, the environment influences these choices and behaviors. The nutrition environment is one key influence and its relationship with food choice, behaviors, and socioeconomic influences is complex. Within the structure of the nutrition environment, food access and socioeconomic status compound influencing nutrition behavior and food choice. Food deserts are defined as geographic region of low access to healthy affordable food in low income areas. The USDA developed a system for the analysis of food deserts in the United States. However, the methods the USDA uses do not acknowledge potential geographical barriers present in rural mountainous regions including Appalachia. The purpose of this research is to determine whether the USDA methodology underrepresents food deserts in Appalachia and to develop a modified analysis model for the region. The region was analyzed at the census tract level using methods based on USDA guidelines for low income, rurality, and grocery store identification, then applied in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to roadway data. Network analysis of drive time from grocery stores to 20 minutes away was performed. Low income, rural census tracts with 33% of their area outside of the 20-minute drive time zone were identified as food deserts. Counties containing tracts were then compared to USDA designated counties, using the dependent variables of obesity and diabetes diagnosis rates and controlled for by county level rurality and economic distress. Of the counties designated as rural, 63 contained food deserts by the modified methods and the USDA model identified 20, there was an overlap in identification of 12 counties. There was no significant difference for 2 methods in health outcomes for the counties. In conclusion, the modified methods do identify a larger food desert region. It is crucial to understand the geographic barriers to regions when addressing nutrition environment concerns. The underrepresentation of food desert areas can leave populations and communities underserved and without much needed resources to improve their access to healthy and affordable foods.

Historic preservation has been a successful economic development tool that has led to heritage tourism in some Tennessee towns but not in others. The problem studied was to determine if there was a set of tangible attributes a town must possess to be successful in using historic preservation as an economic development tool. Through an extensive literature review, 59 predictor variables were identified and arranged into 6 research questions looking at the tangible attributes related to town demographics, geography, organizational structure, historic preservation organizations, heritage tourism organizations, and town financial structure. Data were collected from a mailed survey of 32 town managers. The response rate was 68.8% (N = 22). Secondary sources, such as U.S. Census data, were used to collect data when those sources appeared consistent and mandatory. The study used logistic regression analysis to compare successful towns, defined as those towns in the upper third of study towns for tourism expenditures per capita, with less than successful towns. The 32 study towns met the criteria of having a 2003 population of fewer than 10,000 and a nationally-recognized historic district that coincided with the towns' central business districts. The results of the logistic regression analysis on the individual predictor variables indicated that 5 were statistically significant--median age, distance to a major city, restaurant beer sales, Grand Division, and merchants' association. Constraining the final predictive model (Garson, 2006) to no more than 1 variable per 10 cases 3 led to the inclusion of median age and merchants' association as the 2 predictor variables that provided the highest predictive value of correctly classified towns (95.8%). In summary, this study is inconclusive in determining whether historic preservation leads to heritage tourism and can be used as an economic development tool by small Tennessee towns. However, it has been established that 5 attributes or characteristics of small towns does contribute to the probability of success and that median age and the existence of a merchants' association proved to be the best predictive model.

Global climate change is anticipated to raise the overall temperatures and is likely to increase future mortality attributable to heat. Predicting future health consequences of higher temperatures at the regional, national and global level based on historical temperature-mortality relationships can be challenging due in part to the uncertainties in the location-specific temperature-mortality relationship, the heat threshold, and how populations will adapt or acclimatize. This study reviews published estimates of the warm season temperature-mortality relationships around the world and explores the heterogeneity in terms of the magnitude of the relationship and the threshold. We also investigate the potential effects of adaptation and acclimatization on the estimates of excess heat-related deaths based on empirical evidence, and propose a method that can be used in future projections to address the uncertainties. This study contributes to the literature of projecting the future public health burden of heat-related effects, which provides valuable information to climate policy decision making.

As drought becomes more common in California, effective water management has become one of the state’s most critical policy issues. During the drought of 2011-2017 specifically, the state government faced significant legal and political barriers in its attempts to implement sweeping, statewide drought management policy. First, the California water rights system prevents the state from legally curtailing the water diversions of senior water rights holders. Because of this, the State Water Resources Control Board has been engaged in ongoing litigation with senior and junior water rights holders alike over their attempts to curtail water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during the drought. Second, the Board faced local resistance to the 25% conservation order mandated in Executive Order B-29-15 due to concerns over state intervention in local issues and a disregard for the doctrine of first in time, first in right. Finally, the state passed the sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 in order to address California’s overused and under-regulated groundwater supply. While a step in the right direction, the implementation timeline of this policy is not urgent enough to protect aquifers from overdraft and saltwater intrusion. These barriers all made developing and implementing effective drought policy extremely difficult. While Executive Order B-29-15 and the curtailment notices were not meant to be permanent solutions to the drought problem, they now need to be replaced with a comprehensive package of legislation that addresses a myriad of competing interests and environmental realities.

The purpose of “Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez: A Case Study of Social Media as an Agenda Setting Tool in the U.S. House of Representatives” is to explore the impact of a politician’s social media presence on agenda setting in Congress. It was born out of the research question, “how do freshman members of the House of Representatives seek power and influence in their first term?” I answer this using Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a case study, as she is a current freshman legislator with undeniable power and influence. I studied Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tweets from two time periods: the month leading up to her election and her second month in office. I categorized and counted each tweet into 4 categories that yielded quantifiable results. Subsequently, I did a textual analysis of certain tweets from the two periods and explained their relevance to her shift in content and success as a public figure. I found that since being elected, the proportion of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez tweets about National issues increased by four times more than during her primary. Additionally, after being elected, her tweets about her District were proportionally one-fourth of they were during her primary campaign. I interpret this finding as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s efforts to influence the national agenda, a task rarely taken on by a freshman Representative. I also found that she had nearly doubled the proportion of tweets that fall under the Extraneous category, utilizing personal anecdotes, inspirational messages, feminist actions and insights, and calls for progressive leadership that connect with her audience and set her apart from strictly policy-oriented politician Twitter accounts. Altogether, I have analyzed Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter presence and believe it to be a key element of her success in agenda setting as a freshman Congress member.

This thesis explains how national media shape Indian foreign policy toward Pakistan. I use empirical research to explore the contribution of national media to the formulation of policy during the 1999 Kargil War and 2001 Agra Summit between India and Pakistan. I created a database of news articles in the leading national English newspapers—The Times of India and Hindustan Times and then coded and analyzed them. I analyze the media’s role by identifying trends in media strategies such as framing, agenda setting, and manufacturing consent. In addition, I analyze government documents and parliamentary debates to gather information on the policy processes and on government- media relations. I suggest that the media’s role in shaping policy depends on the level of internal dissent, understood as disagreement between the government and the opposition parties. I argue that national dissent allows the media to emerge as an independent actor, influencing the formulation of foreign policy by presenting their own opinions and policy suggestions. This was the case during the Agra Summit. On the other hand, as seen in the case of the Kargil War, during times of national consensus, the media echo the government’s voice and garner public support for the government’s actions. As such, this thesis contributes to existing scholarship and primary fieldwork by providing an original analysis of the intersection of media and foreign policy.

According to the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment created by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there are more than 33,000 gangs in the United States, cited as being responsible for nearly 48% of the violent crime in the country. Using information drawn from gang-related court cases, this study examines the nature of inter- and intra-gang violence occurring between January 1, 2002-December 31, 2011. An innovative application of network analysis will be used to hone in on rivalries, the existence of possible hierarchy, and the relational and structural characteristics of Blood and Crip gangs in Los Angeles County. Results show that the majority of gang-on-gang violence originates and targets individuals in the city of Los Angeles. Furthermore, more than two-thirds of the violence committed at the hands of Blood and Crip gangs is upon individuals that are not affiliated with a gang. Strategies are offered on how to improve the effectiveness of existing community-based policing or hot-spot policing in areas known to have violent gang-related incidents (Los Angeles City). Furthermore, the implementation of programs designed to assist and deter the formation and proliferation of gangs will result in less gang violence and therefore more time to be spent on creating law enforcement strategies aimed at quelling the more troublesome gang rivalries.