The European Union (EU) has long strived to act collectively in the face of international challenges such as poverty, hunger and state fragility beyond its borders. While the EU member states and institutions seek coherent responses to these challenges, they also have partly competing agendas. Yet there has been increasing agreement on collective action. To understand this agreement, this thesis asks how policy professionals contribute to the advocacy of policy norms for collective action between the EU institutions and the member states. The research analyses policy processes in EU development cooperation since the early 2000s. In development cooperation the EU's effectiveness has been particularly contested because of the combination of competing ideas about the EU's role and about how to achieve effective and sustainable development. The research finds that, while formal decisions about collective action remain in the hands of member states, transnational networks of policy professionals in the EU institutions, member state bureaucracies and civil society contribute to shaping the terms of debate regarding the EU's role in effective development cooperation. These network interactions, which form around institutional decision-making centres, transcend the organisational boundaries of member state bureaucracies, EU institutions and civil society organisations. These findings fill a gap in our understanding of how EU norms governing collective external action are advocated as existing research has tended to focus on how institutional structure facilitate state coordination. By concentrating on the cases of Germany and the United Kingdom and their engagement with the EU institutions, the research revises existing, dominant views on norm advocacy in EU external action: It links the previously little related concepts of norm advocacy and discursive networks to analyse the agency and scope of policy professionals in the advocacy of EU policy norms; and it provides new empirical insights into the role of these policy professionals for collective action between the EU institutions and the member states in development cooperation.

This study starts out with the hypothesis that the integration process in Europe is connected to cross-border régionalisation, a process which supports the institutionalization of subnational cross-border cooperation - region-building. Cross-border régionalisation is characterized by the decentralisation of vertical links and enhanced opportunities for horizontal links across state borders. In addition, political integration is expected to have some impact on the cross-border institutional forms that emerge at the subnational level. Three different approaches are utilized in order to establish the empirical connection between political integration and region-building. These are: an analysis of the factors which determine the general pattern of cross-border cooperation in Europe, an analysis of the policy network related to the regional and structural policies of the European Union (EU), and case studies of cooperation in the heartland of Europe, the Regio Basiliensis along the external border of the EU, and the EUREGIO along one of the internal borders. Two institutional factors are found to have a significant impact on the number of subnational cross-border cooperations, EU-membership and centrality. Federal constitution was shown not to be significant. It is suggested that the interaction between actors at different politico- administrative levels creates network relations, which typically bring both private and public actors together. More precisely, region-building is described as the outcome of the interaction which takes place between actors. A closer examination of the emerging policy network shows that community initiatives, the Interreg-programme in particular, improve the prospects for multi­level interaction. The EU plays a crucial role in providing the incentives for cooperation by increasing resource dependency and by establishing direct ties between the European Commission and a large number of subnational actors through partnerships. It appears as if the Commission wishes to demonstrate its capacity to deal with problems relevant to individual citizens. By, in part, bypassing central governments, it seems to increase its own importance vis- à-vis member states. The modus vivendi of cross-border region-building and régionalisation is the degree to which institutional actors at different levels share the same objectives. As shown by the case studies, there is a common interest in cross-border cooperation up to the point were public statues are introduced. Interests seem to coincide as long as the structures and contents of cross-border cooperation do not ultimately challenge the authority of state institutions. Therefore, it is not surprising that it seems impossible to give cross-border regions any rights under international law. Functional cooperation, rather than regionalist manifestations of cultural or political unity across borders, constitutes the backbone of region-building. Activities transcending borders are less controversial than those that may contribute to the establishment of new borders. It is concluded that region-building is a process which is embedded in the institutionalization of a multi-level interaction pattern. More favourable multilevel relations have been achieved through the transfer of some authority to the supranational level. This is the main reason why traditional integration theory fails to explain why there is a connection between political integration and cross-border cooperation. / digitalisering@umu

This study is a policy analysis of the merits of policy networks in policy-decision making: A case study of the Premier's Office, KwaZulu-Natal. This study aims to identify some of the merits of policy networks as identified by the literature. It is also aimed to understand what some of challenges are that face policy networks, and also to determine what type of policy networks are within government, more particularly the Premiers Office in KwaZulu-Natal. This study proves that in theory policy networks allow for participation and coordination between different stakeholders across different levels of government. In practice the time available to members to meet is limited. The absence of key members because of multiple meetings simultaneously. This study is divided into four parts in which part one explores literature on policy networks. The second part looks at the policy issue. The third part looks at the findings and the forth part looks at what has been learned from the literature. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, [2004-05].

This research focuses on policy networks as a framework to analyse the implementation of the South African Land Reform (Labour Tenant) Act 3 of 1996 (LTA) and the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (ESTA) more generally. In particular, this research looks at the Association for Rural Advancement’s (AFRA) implementation of the farm dwellers project, specifically, how this organisation has been using the policy networks approach to implement its farm dwellers project. The LTA and the ESTA guide the South African post-apartheid land reform programme. This programme responds to the racially-based system of land access created by colonialism and apartheid. It is against this system of land access that the post-apartheid, democratic government undertook a vast land reform programme, intended to redress the injustices of the past (Drimie 2003:39). The LTA and ESTA are situated within this perspective and their objectives were derived from an understanding that land reform has the potential to make a direct impact on poverty through targeted resource transfers and by addressing the economic and social injustices caused by colonial and apartheid dispossession. However, after sixteen years of democracy and policy implementation of the land reform programme, little progress has been made. This includes an undertaking in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of 1994, which provided a set of guidelines and principles for the evolving land policy, to redistribute, by 2014 (extended from 1999), 30% of the 80% of commercial farmland (mostly white owned) to black South Africans and to make land reform the driving force of rural development (Drimie 2003:39). By March 2009, a total of 5.2% of the targeted 30% of commercial farmland has been transferred through the various land reform programmes (Kleinbooi 2009:1). Concerns have been raised that attribute this seeming failure of the land reform programme to the government’s market approach (Mkhize 2004). This has been sustained by the government’s shift from the RDP to Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR). AFRA, in its funding proposal of 1998-2000, has identified this shift as “disturbing because it implies that government’s economic and political direction is likely to result in reduced resources for rural and agricultural development, a shift which will impact hard on the already tough conditions of poverty that people live in.” From this understanding, this research hopes to establish that the seeming failure of the implementation of the South African land reform can be improved through a more effective utilisation of policy networks. More particularly, this research hopes to establish how AFRA has been using policy networks to implement its Farm Dwellers project from 1994 until today. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

This research focuses on civil society’s efforts to reduce poverty in Lesotho. The primary focus is on the networks that are formed in this process through a case study of World Vision International in Lesotho. According to the Millennium Development Goals Report (2008:9), the majority of Basotho live in increasing poverty, deprived, among others, of incomes that cover basic necessities like food, shelter and clothing. Although Lesotho is a relatively small Southern African country, it is faced with challenges that include chronic poverty (Bello, Letete, Rapapa and Chokobane, 2008:2). Both the State and civil society are concerned with alleviating this problem. In efforts to reduce poverty in Lesotho, a number of programmes and strategies have been applied, including the Millennium Development Goals operational artefact: Poverty Reduction Strategies. According to the MDG Report (2008:2), the prospects of Lesotho achieving the goal of reducing hunger and poverty by half by the year 2015 ranges from unlikely to potential. In the efforts of reducing poverty, both civil society and government ministries network to achieve this goal. In the current study, eleven organisations in a network, including government ministries, are discussed. Of the eleven organisations, seven are civil society organisations, while the remaining four are government ministries. This study is of a qualitative nature. Primary data was used in the form of structured in-depth interviews. Furthermore, a social network analysis was used for data analysis. The findings of this paper showed evidence of the role played by ‘networking’, in other words, although there was insufficient information concerning the ways in which World Vision International networks with other organisations in Lesotho, the findings from the interviews pointed at the importance of partnering and ‘networking’ with other organisations, as well as the role played by shared resources in the poverty reduction process. This research hopes to add to the literature on poverty in Lesotho generally and the importance of networking for poverty alleviation specifically. Furthermore, this study examines the networked involvement of World Vision Lesotho in development initiatives and poverty reduction approaches in Lesotho. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Much has been written in recent years about governance in the areas of political science, public policy, local government, and international relations. However, social scientific usage of the governance concept has been eclectic, diverse and at times contradictory (Jessop, 1998: 29) as well as confusing and sometimes misleading. In addition, despite the burgeoning literature on governance, little research effort has to date been devoted to examining the term in relation to the organisation, administration and management of sports organisations. This thesis is concerned with reviewing the range of applications of the concept, and in particular evaluating the utility of governance in understanding aspects of the management and policy process of sport. For the purpose of this study a case study approached is adopted, focusing on three sports: cricket, association football and swimming, and within these the pattern of interrelationships between the government and related agencies, the media and broadcasters, athlete-representative groups and supporter organisations, as well as focusing on issues relating to gender. The study concludes by arguing that governance broadens our conceptual repertoire, introduces greater sensitivity and subtlety into policy analysis, and highlights problems of coordination both in government and across a range of agencies, organisations and policy actors.

The aim of this study was to establish whether there is a policy community for disability sport in England. Whilst structured competitive disability sport may traditionally have been organised and run by charitable bodies, segregated from mainstream non-disabled sport, contemporary policies stress a need for disability sport to be the responsibility of mainstream organisations. However, there is a dearth of literature that considers how disability sport policy has developed, which agencies have been powerful in the organisational network, and the significance of the values of key actors in the policy process and outcome. This study; a) establishes the key characteristics of disability sport policy in England, and b) establishes the interests, resources, power and relationships between organisations involved in disability sport and determines the ideologies of key actors involved in disability sport policy. Data is generated in three phases using an analysis of policy documents, a survey of 162 sports organisations and 21 interviews with key personnel. In Phase I semi-structured interviews with key personnel combined with documentary analysis were used to establish how disability sport emerged and developed. Informed by the data from Phase 1, in Phase 2a survey of governing bodies of sport and disability sport organisations was conducted to establish which national organisations are involved in the policy network, how disability sport policy is formed, the role organisations play and ideologies of key actors. In Phase 3, informed by the data from Phases I and 2 and using interviews and documentary analysis, two case studies were carried out to examine, 1) the formation and role of the English Federation of Disability Sport, and 2) the mainstreaming of disability sport. The analysis of data is informed by theories of disability, a history of disability policy and sports policy, and three prominent theories of policy analysis: Marsha and Rhodes' policy network model, Sabatier's advocacy coalition framework and Kingdon's policy streams approach. (Continues...).

This study assesses the value of two analytical models explaining particular contemporary political events. This is undertaken through the comparative evaluation of two international models: the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Rhodes’s model of Governance. These approaches are evaluated against an single case study: the censorship of computer network (“online”) content in Australia. Through comparison evaluation, criticism, and reformulation, these approaches are presented as useful tools of policy analysis in Australia. / The first part of the thesis presents the theoretical basis of the research and the methodologies employed to apply them. It begins by examining how the disciplines of political science and public policy have focused on the role of politically-active “interest”, groups in the process of policy development and implementation. This focus has lead to ideas about the role of the state actors in policy making, and attempts to describe and explain the interface between public and private groups in developing and implementing public policies. These, largely British and American, theories have impacted upon Australian researchers who have applied these ideas to local conditions. The majority of this part, however, is spent introducing the two research approaches: Paul Sabatier’s Advocacy Coalitions Framework and Rod Rhodes’s theory of Governance. Stemming from dissatisfaction with research into implementation, Sabatier’s framework attempts to show how competing clusters of groups and individuals compete for policy “wins” in a discrete subsystem by using political strategies to effect favourable decisions and information to change the views of other groups. Governance, on the other hand, attempts to apply Rhodes’s observations to the changing nature of the British state (and by implication other liberal democracies) to show the importance of self-organising networks of organisations who monopolise power and insulate the processes of decision making and implementation from the wider community and state organs. Finally, the methodologies of the thesis are presented, based on the preferred research methods of the two authors. / The second part introduces the case serving as the basis for evaluating the models, namely, censorship of the content of computer networks in Australia between 1987 and 2000. This case arises in the late 1980s with the computerisation of society and technological developments leading to the introduction of, first publicly-accessible computer bulletin boards, and then the technology of the Internet. From a small hobbyists’ concern, the uptake of this technology combined with wider censorship issues leads to the consideration of online content by Australian Governments, seeking a system of regulation to apply to this technology. As the emerging Internet becomes popularised, and in the face of adverse media attention on, especially pornographic, online content, during the mid to late 1990s two Federal governments establish a series of policy processes that eventually lead to the introduction of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999, a policy decision bringing online content into Australia’s intergovernmental censorship system. / The final part analyses the case study using the two theoretical approaches. What this shows is that, from the perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, debate over online content does not form a substantive policy subsystem until 1995, and within this three, relatively stable, competing coalitions emerge, each pressuring for different levels of action and intervention (from no regulation, to a strong regulatory model). While conflict within the subsystem varied, overall the framework’s analysis shows the dominance of a coalition consisting largely of professional and business interests favouring a light, co-regulatory approach to online content. From the perspective of Governance, the issue of online content is subject to a range of intra- and inter-governmental conflict in the period 1995-7, finally settling into a negotiated position where a complex policy community emerges based largely on structurally-determined resource dependencies. What this means is that policy making in the case was not autonomous of state institutions, but highly dependent on institutional power relations. Overall, in comparing the findings it becomes apparent that the approaches lack the capacity to fully explain the role of key sovereigns, defined here as those individuals with legal authority over decision making in the policy process, because of their methodological and normative assumptions about the policy process. By showing these individuals as part of wider networks of power-dependencies, and exploring the complex bundle of real, pseudo, symbolic, and nonsense elements that make up a policy, the role of Ministers as “semi-sovereign sovereigns” can be accommodated in the two approaches.

Esta dissertação se debruça sobre a formulação da agenda, o processo de tramitação, de aprovação, e de constituição de uma rede de apoio ao Marco Civil da Internet (MCI), sob a perspectiva da literatura de políticas públicas e ativismo. O MCI foi proposto em 2009, pelo Executivo, a partir de uma consulta pública realizada via Internet. Em 2013 o projeto foi colocado em regime de votação urgente no Congresso Nacional como resposta política às denúncias de espionagem eletrônica por parte dos EUA, sendo finalmente aprovado no início de 2014. A lei foi considerada pioneira por estabelecer direitos e responsabilidades entre os diversos entes que compõem o ecossistema da rede. Para analisar a formulação da agenda é utilizado o conceito de “janela de oportunidades” de Kingdon (2013), que designa o momento em que há a convergência de fluxos independentes da política pública. Para analisar o ativismo e a mobilização dos atores em torno das políticas de Internet é utilizado o conceito de insurgent experts, proposto por Shaw (2011). Para a realização do trabalho foram entrevistados 37 atores-chave ao longo de 2013 e 2014. A conclusão é que houve a constituição de uma policy community que mobilizou Estado e estabeleceu laços de cooperação entre atores individuais e coletivos em torno de ideais sobre as políticas relacionadas a neutralidade da rede, a defesa da liberdade de expressão e a proteção da privacidade na Internet. / This master’s thesis is focused on the process of agenda-setting and approval of the bill “Marco Civil da Internet” (MCI), drawing from the sociological literature on public policy and civic engagement. The MCI was proposed in 2009 by the executive power through a public consultation online. In 2013, it was fast-tracked by president Dilma Rousseff after classified documents were leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealing the fact that the US intelligence agency had been monitoring the president's communication. The bill was finally approved in early 2014 and pioneered a new framework for a civil Internet with rights and duties. To analyze the process of agenda-setting, I use Kingdon's (2013) concept of "policy window" which addresses the convergence of independent streams of public policy. In order to analyze the civic engagement and the network formation for mobilization in support of the project, I use the concept of "insurgent experts" proposed by Shaw (2011). The corpus of analysis for this research was composed by 37 interviews with key-actors conducted from 2013 to 2014. In conclusion, I demonstrate how the constitution of a policy community around the issue of net neutrality, the defense of freedom of expression and protection of privacy on the Internet, that created the conditions for mobilization of State, creating cooperation ties among activists and policy makers for the defense of policy proposals for the Internet.

Esta dissertação se debruça sobre a formulação da agenda, o processo de tramitação, de aprovação, e de constituição de uma rede de apoio ao Marco Civil da Internet (MCI), sob a perspectiva da literatura de políticas públicas e ativismo. O MCI foi proposto em 2009, pelo Executivo, a partir de uma consulta pública realizada via Internet. Em 2013 o projeto foi colocado em regime de votação urgente no Congresso Nacional como resposta política às denúncias de espionagem eletrônica por parte dos EUA, sendo finalmente aprovado no início de 2014. A lei foi considerada pioneira por estabelecer direitos e responsabilidades entre os diversos entes que compõem o ecossistema da rede. Para analisar a formulação da agenda é utilizado o conceito de “janela de oportunidades” de Kingdon (2013), que designa o momento em que há a convergência de fluxos independentes da política pública. Para analisar o ativismo e a mobilização dos atores em torno das políticas de Internet é utilizado o conceito de insurgent experts, proposto por Shaw (2011). Para a realização do trabalho foram entrevistados 37 atores-chave ao longo de 2013 e 2014. A conclusão é que houve a constituição de uma policy community que mobilizou Estado e estabeleceu laços de cooperação entre atores individuais e coletivos em torno de ideais sobre as políticas relacionadas a neutralidade da rede, a defesa da liberdade de expressão e a proteção da privacidade na Internet. / This master’s thesis is focused on the process of agenda-setting and approval of the bill “Marco Civil da Internet” (MCI), drawing from the sociological literature on public policy and civic engagement. The MCI was proposed in 2009 by the executive power through a public consultation online. In 2013, it was fast-tracked by president Dilma Rousseff after classified documents were leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealing the fact that the US intelligence agency had been monitoring the president's communication. The bill was finally approved in early 2014 and pioneered a new framework for a civil Internet with rights and duties. To analyze the process of agenda-setting, I use Kingdon's (2013) concept of "policy window" which addresses the convergence of independent streams of public policy. In order to analyze the civic engagement and the network formation for mobilization in support of the project, I use the concept of "insurgent experts" proposed by Shaw (2011). The corpus of analysis for this research was composed by 37 interviews with key-actors conducted from 2013 to 2014. In conclusion, I demonstrate how the constitution of a policy community around the issue of net neutrality, the defense of freedom of expression and protection of privacy on the Internet, that created the conditions for mobilization of State, creating cooperation ties among activists and policy makers for the defense of policy proposals for the Internet.