Education policy and funding is, and has historically been, the purview of the individual states. Each state developed its own education system and did so within the specific historical contexts unique to that state. Although federal involvement in education policy has grown drastically since the enactment of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002, education policies and practices are still largely controlled by the individual states. In addition, for most states the single largest expenditure of state and local government resources is education. This dissertation addresses the question of whether differences in educational practices and policy outcomes are attributed to state political culture. A path analysis model was used to analyze causal relationships between state education policy outcomes and political culture, as well as other variables identified by the literature as strongly tied to student achievement or state policy outcomes such as: societal factors, economic factors, political factors, and education practices. A major goal of this research was to identify factors that may be influencing the success of national education policies, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1964 (ESEA) and its subsequent reauthorizations such as the NCLB Act of 2002. These policies address long-standing education policy issues—such as the achievement gap between minority and impoverished students and their statistically higher achieving peers. The results indicate that political culture does influence differences in policy outcomes, although indirectly through other variables such as societal and economic factors. Very often factors such as societal and economic factors are treated only as causes or predictors of student achievement and other policy outcomes. This analysis shows these causes to themselves be functions of political culture, providing additional insight into factors influencing state policy outcomes in order to aid public administrators in the development and implementation of more successful policies.

Le risk management d’entreprise (ERM) est un ensemble de politiques, de structures et de pratiques infuses d’idéaux sociaux de bonne gouvernance et de contrôlabilité. Nous nous demandons ici dans quelles mesures le travail des acteurs permet l’adoption durable de l’ERM dans l’organisation. Dans le cas du Groupe La Poste, l’appropriation des pressions externes par les auditeurs internes a été cruciale. Une fois introduit dans l’organisation postale, l’ERM a d’abord été confronté à l’indifférence du management. Les contenus réglementaires et normatifs ont été adoptés sans être mis en œuvre. Des structures partielles d’ERM ont été peuplées de risk managers détenant les compétences nécessaires pour répondre aux attentes externes. Ces risk managers ont ensuite travaillé à légitimer et structurer le dispositif conformément aux « meilleures pratiques » en réalisant un travail de recouplage – action intentionnelle des individus visant à aligner le risk management organisationnel avec les traits externes et abstraits de l’ERM. L’étude du cas La Poste suggère ainsi une explication organisationnelle au fait que l’ERM ne puisse être révoqué une fois en place. / Enterprise-wide risk management (ERM) is a set of policies, structures and practices infused with social ideals of good governance and controllability. In this research, we seek to know how actors’ work allows ERM lasting adoption in the organization. In La Poste, the enactment of external pressures by internal auditors turned out to be critical. When introduced in the postal organization, ERM first encountered management disregard. As a consequence, ERM regulatory and normative meanings and categories were adopted but not implemented in the business. Partial ERM structures were created and inhabited by risk managers who hold necessary skills to help organizational compliance with external expectations. Newly appointed risk managers worked internally to legitimize and structure the device consistently with external “best practices” performing what we named recoupling work - the purposive action of individuals and organizations aimed at aligning organizational risk management with external ERM abstract features. Thus, our case suggests an organizational explanation to the fact that risk management could not be rescinded after its initial settlement.