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Transport projects are complex; the interface with different policy areas can often lead to significant challenges to ensuring that long-term value outcomes are achieved. This thesis seeks to explore the challenges associated with the effective provision of transport services from a social exclusion perspective. It uncovers a number of key factors that can affect the successful delivery and provision of such schemes by examining the consequence of the decisions and actions taken by service providers and commissioners. Using a case study approach conducted on three local authority projects across the United Kingdom, the study is exploratory in nature through an in-depth qualitative data analysis. In order to address the aim of the thesis, six key objectives are defined: to understand how transport projects may act as a vehicle for delivering policy aimed at addressing social exclusion in the United Kingdom; to understand and investigate the impact of deregulation of the bus industry on the provision of transport services, particularly for the socially excluded; to critically examine the process underpinning decisions that guide the provision of transport schemes to address social exclusion; to examine the propensity for service users to be actively involved in the decision making process; to conduct a case study research in order to explore the challenges to the successful provision and delivery of the transport services to the socially excluded as a consequence of the decisions and actions taken by the service providers in the case study areas; and to characterise the factors that should be considered in the provision and delivery of transport services, particularly for the socially excluded.Semi structured interviews were carried out with the service providers in three locations– West Midlands, Sheffield, and Manchester. These interviews seek to determine the challenges to the effective provision and delivery of transport services as a consequence of the decisions and actions of the service providers. Overall, some challenges that could inhibit the provision and delivery of transport services were identified. These include constraint on the provision and delivery of transport services for the socially excluded due to the Competition Act, lack of accessible information, lack of close working relationship between service providers, lack of trust and mutual respect between service providers, too much focus in reducing the number of benefits claimant, service accessibility – inflexible access criteria, lack of support for bus drivers, lack of cultural diversity in the workforce and marketing of services, resource constraints on scheme performance, tendency on the service providers to focus getting output rather than outcomes, partnership issues - lack of commitment, poor communication, lack of common understanding of social exclusion, tendency on the service providers to focus on economic aspect, and lack of willingness to fully engage with citizens in the delivery and provision of transport services.These challenges identified were then further analysed in order to examine the underlying reasons why those challenges existed. Having identified and examined the challenges that could hinder the provision and delivery of the transport services, particularly for the socially excluded, some recommendations were made based on the identified issues that should be considered in the provision and delivery of transport services, particularly for the socially excluded.The findings that emerged contribute toward the social exclusion and transport provision domain in four areas:• Highlighted and provided an understanding of the difficulties surrounding the role of bus drivers and how it affects transport provision for the socially excluded;• The importance and the need to have the local knowledge in delivering transport service;• Understanding service provider’s attitude towards engaging with the community in the provision of transport services; and, • Inadequate funding and the impacts on transport provision for the socially excluded.

Forskare argumenterar för att det krävs mer deliberativa kvaliteter i dagensdemokratiska Sverige för att vi dels ska kunna kallas oss för en fungerande demokratioch dels för att vi ska ha en chans att kunna nå något vi nästan alla strävar efter idag –hållbar utveckling. En lagstadgad och därmed vanlig metod som används idag för attutreda en planerad verksamhets miljökonsekvenser är att upprätta enmiljökonsekvensbeskrivning (MKB). Samrådsprocessen i MKB:s för projekt är ettmedel att göra processen mer demokratisk. Syftet med denna studie är att utvärderadetta demokratiska medel för att kunna dra slutsatser kring om det fyller sin funktionoch hur det skulle gå att förbättra för att generera fler positiva utfall. Syftet harbesvarats med hjälp av två litteraturstudier, sex djupintervjuer och enenkätundersökning som alla har kopplats till studiens teoretiska utgångspunkter. En delav uppsatsens teori är relevant bakgrund (d.v.s. avsnitt Miljökonsekvensbeskrivningar)medan andra delar är vetenskapliga och har som syfte att jämföras med resultaten (d.v.s.avsnitt Samtalsdemokrati). Det viktigaste resultatet från de två litteraturstudierna var att kapitlet om MKB imiljöbalken inte har genomgått någon större förändring från det att det skapades tillsidag och att det behövs andra metoder (ex. intervjuer och observationer) för att kunnaavgöra om det som kommer fram på samrådet tas hänsyn till i MKB:n. Det mestframträdande resultatet från intervjuer och enkätundersökning var dels att denvanligaste formen på samråd är antingen skriftligt eller ett stormöte och dels attupplägget på stormöten ofta inleds med att verksamhetsutövaren håller en långpresentation och i slutet blir det en kort frågestund. Resultatet visar också att det verkarvara form och upplägg på samrådsprocessen som skapar de största problemen för att videls ska få ut de kvaliteter som konsulter och verksamhetsutövare själva anser ärviktigast, nämligen synpunkter och dels för att kunna säkra att detta verktyg för att ökademokratin, som samråd just är, inte bara gör det i teorin utan också i praktiken. Det ärkring detta som diskussionen till största del har kretsat och det är detta som äruppsatsens viktigaste slutsats. Resultatet visar också att konsulter ochverksamhetsutövare är medvetna om att de vanligaste formerna för samråd inte äroptimala för att leverera de synpunkter de så gärna vill ha, ändå finns en motvilja till attändra och utveckla formen. Ett förslag för vidare utredning är att gå djupare in på vaddetta beror på för att på sikt kanske finna nyckeln till hur man kan ändra på dennamotvilja att utveckla form och upplägg på samrådsförfarandet. / Researchers argue that it takes more deliberative qualities in today's democratic Swedenboth that we should be able to call us for a functioning democracy but also for us tohave a chance to achieve something we almost all endeavors today - sustainabledevelopment. A statutory and thus a common method used today to investigate whatenvironmental impact a planned activity may cause is to establish an EnvironmentalImpact Assessment (EIA). The consultation process in EIA:s for projects is a means tomake the process more democratic. The purpose of this study is to evaluate thisdemocratic means in order to draw conclusions about whether it fulfills its function andwhether it would be possible to improve in order to generate more positive outcomes.The aim has been answered with the help of two literary studies, six in-depth interviewsand a survey which has been linked to the study's theoretical points. Part of the thesis isrelevant background theory (i.e the Environmental Impact Assessments section) whileother parts are scientific and are intended to be compared with the results (i.e thedeliberative democracy section).The most important result from the two literature studies was that the chapter on EIA inthe environmental code has not undergone any major change from the time it wascreated until today and the need for other methods (e.g. interviews and observations) todetermine whether the comments during the consultation will be considered in the EIA. The most striking result from the interviews and survey were that the most commonform of consultation is either writing or a public meeting and partly that the layup atlarge meetings often begin with the operator holding a long presentation and in the endit will be a short question and answer session. The result also shows that it seems to bethe form and structure of the consultation process that creates the biggest problems forus both to get out the qualities that consultants and operators themselves consider mostimportant, namely observations, and partly to ensure that this tool can enhancedemocracy, which consultation is about, not just in theory but also in practice. It is onthis that the discussion mainly revolved around, and it is this that is the essay's mainconclusion. The result also shows that consultants and operators are aware that the mostcommon forms of consultation are not optimal to deliver the comments they want sobadly, yet there is a reluctance to change and develop shape of the consultation process.A proposal for further investigation is to go deeper into what causes this to be able toeventually find the key to how to change this reluctance to develop the form andstructure of the consultation process.

The collaborative management arrangements in place for Nunavut’s National Parks demonstrated a shifting trend in Canadian resource management, where Indigenous people are increasingly involved in the governance of traditional lands. This work considered the arrangement in place for Auyuittuq National Park, Nunavut, by exploring the effect that differential discourse had on policy formation and implementation. To focus the research on a single management issue youth engagement was selected for consideration. Employing a qualitative case study strategy of inquiry, data was collected by conducting 50 interviews and 7 focus groups in the park adjacent community of Pangnirtung. The project findings indicated that the Parks Canada Agency’s discourse maintained a dominant position within the management process, such that many of the youth engagement strategies implemented did not account for Inuit cultural practices. As a consequence of this omission, many of the implemented methods were unintuitive to the community, and in some cases served as a barrier to youth participation. / October 2016

Advances in information and communication technology and the ready availability of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have made it possible for citizens to create information on the internet expressing their personal perceptions in the form of pictures, videos and text narratives associated with geographic locations. The term Volunteered Geographic information (VGI) was coined to describe the processes whereby non-professionals or “citizen scientists” participate directly in spatial data creation, editing and shared use. VGI offers promise as an innovative way for members of the public to participate directly in the use, production and sharing of spatial information that is relevant to issues of personal or community concern and as a means of addressing some of the issues associated with traditional public participation methods. Planners can find meaning in the heterogeneous, time-sensitive, geo-social geographic information created by citizen volunteers in a bottom-up participation process where planners give up some control over what data is collected and from whom. However, uncertainties associated with volunteered geographic information include relevance, credibility, representativeness and quality of the geographic information. This thesis investigates the opportunities and barriers to the use of volunteered geographic information as public participation in planning. A framework and methodology for collaborative quality control of VGI through multi-criteria subjective relevance ratings of the VGI by its producers and users is put forward in this thesis. The relevance rating framework for quality control of VGI is based on the use of relevance in information retrieval in information science to improve the relevance of search engine results. This concept is transferred to the quality control of VGI contributions to determine the best VGI contributions to be used in planning as public participation. A VGI web application prototype, including the subjective relevance rating system, was created and a methodology and demonstration of its use for public participation was presented.

The practice of environmental assessment (EA) in Ontario, Canada and elsewhere has been criticized for resulting in projects that are not necessarily “good” for the environment or society, but simply “less bad.” In Ontario, the ongoing erosion over time of meaningful public involvement in the EA process is seen as a major reason for the degradation of EA practice from something closer to its idealistic purpose of creating “sustainable” development down to its current state, as many have suggested, as an administrative process to ensure legislated minimum requirements (for action or outcome) are met. Nonetheless, the EA process in Ontario continues to offer one of the best legislated processes available for addressing the potential negative impacts associated with public projects in the province. Ontario’s streamlined Class EA process allows for routine, low-impact public projects to proceed without ministerial review so long as certain minimum standards for technical review and public consultation are met. It also includes a mechanism for stakeholders to request ministerial review should a stakeholder believe a substantive or procedural error or oversight has occurred during the study. This mechanism, called a Part II Order request, has been invoked in recent years for multiple reasons in addition to correcting substantive or procedural errors or oversights. This research asks why stakeholders request Part II Orders. Through review and coding of Part II Order request letters from various projects across Ontario, and conducting detailed case studies of projects for which Part II Order requests were made in the Greater Toronto Area, it was determined that the two most commonly-found issues in the Part II Order letters were related to stakeholders feeling distrustful of the proponent or the EA process, and stakeholders feeling as though they were not adequately engaged in public consultation activities for the EA study. The case studies examined these themes in greater detail, and found that these two issues were intertwined with issues of stakeholder power and control. The research findings suggest that EA outcomes can be improved by altering public consultation activities to provide stakeholders with greater control over the decision-making process in a transparent manner so that stakeholders are aware not only of the perspectives of the proponent, but also those of other stakeholders.

Advances in information and communication technology and the ready availability of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have made it possible for citizens to create information on the internet expressing their personal perceptions in the form of pictures, videos and text narratives associated with geographic locations. The term Volunteered Geographic information (VGI) was coined to describe the processes whereby non-professionals or “citizen scientists” participate directly in spatial data creation, editing and shared use. VGI offers promise as an innovative way for members of the public to participate directly in the use, production and sharing of spatial information that is relevant to issues of personal or community concern and as a means of addressing some of the issues associated with traditional public participation methods. Planners can find meaning in the heterogeneous, time-sensitive, geo-social geographic information created by citizen volunteers in a bottom-up participation process where planners give up some control over what data is collected and from whom. However, uncertainties associated with volunteered geographic information include relevance, credibility, representativeness and quality of the geographic information. This thesis investigates the opportunities and barriers to the use of volunteered geographic information as public participation in planning. A framework and methodology for collaborative quality control of VGI through multi-criteria subjective relevance ratings of the VGI by its producers and users is put forward in this thesis. The relevance rating framework for quality control of VGI is based on the use of relevance in information retrieval in information science to improve the relevance of search engine results. This concept is transferred to the quality control of VGI contributions to determine the best VGI contributions to be used in planning as public participation. A VGI web application prototype, including the subjective relevance rating system, was created and a methodology and demonstration of its use for public participation was presented.

From 2008-2012, the Harper government engaged in an effort to reform Canada's copyright legislation. This thesis uses a frame analysis approach to identify two distinct frames advanced by the government during this reform. 2008's Bill C-61 was unsuccessfully framed as a "Made-in-Canada" bill in order to combat opposition claims that American pressure unduly influenced the policy process. Following the failure of this bill, the government embarked on a public consultation on copyright. Although the government did not substantively modify subsequent reform bills, it was able to leverage the consultation process and Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence to lend legitimacy to its new frame of the reform as a "balanced approach", build a coalition of support, and mitigate opposition. The thesis' analysis supports key conclusions of existing framing literature and creates a space for the role of ideas in the study of copyright reform in Canada.

Non-compliance with pieces of legislation may be considered the root cause of qualified, disclaimer and adverse opinions that continue to emerge in South African municipalities. One of those pieces of legislation is the Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003. The study has assessed compliance with the Municipal Finance Management Act at Blouberg Municipality in terms of public consultation and management of the municipal budget. The researcher has used qualitative method in this study. Public consultation plays a significant role in a budgetory process of the Municipality, Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003 requires Municipalities to take public views into consideration when compiling a budget. The objectives of local government are often defeated by maladministration because of non- compliance with legislations such as Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003. This can be supported by audit outcomes (2011-11) from the office of the Auditor General. The report states that during the year 2010-11 forty Municipalities had not been audited because they did not submit annual financial statement on time which is a requirement in terms of the MFMA. The objective of the study is to assess compliance with the Municipal Finance Management in the Blouberg Municipality in terms of Public consultation and the competency of the Municipal officials to implement MFMA. During the study, it was found that Blouberg Municipality has embarked on Municipal Finance Management training in order to capacitate its officials to be able to implement MFMA and little has been done in terms of public consultation as members of the public were not aware of their responsibilities in terms of the Municipal budget. It is recommended that the Municipality should review its communication strategy to ensure maximum participation of the public and to create a conducive environment for public participation. / Public Administration and Management / M. P. A

Este trabalho tem como objeto de pesquisa o processo de consulta pública online para elaboração do Marco Civil da Internet, nova lei que dispõe sobre os direitos dos usuários de Internet no Brasil. Ele busca responder às seguintes perguntas: (i) como foi idealizado processo de consulta pública online do Marco Civil da Internet? (ii) Como a consulta foi gerenciada e executada? (iii) Quais foram os resultados da consulta em termos de soluções jurídicas aos conflitos políticos do setor da Internet? A proposta é realizar uma descrição desta experiência de participação social pela Internet a partir de um mapeamento das contribuições dos cidadãos e instituições, de informações em fontes variadas (imprensa especializada ou não e outros trabalhos acadêmicos) e do confronto deste levantamento com entrevistas dadas pelos gestores do projeto sobre seu planejamento e execução. A pesquisa trabalhou com a hipótese de que a consulta pública online que elaborou o Marco Civil da Internet se colocou como alternativa a um debate instaurado dentro do Congresso Nacional e bloqueado por propostas de lei de enfoque penal. O resultado da pesquisa sugere a confirmação dessa hipótese, bem como a relevância da experiência analisada para o sucesso uma estratégia política de reversão dessa agenda legislativa anterior. / Between 2009 and 2011 the Office of Legislative Affairs of the Ministry of Justice (SAL/MJ), in partnership with the Center for Technology and Society at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV-CTS), organized a virtual platform to collect peoples comments and insights for a new bill that promises to establish a regulatory framework for the Internet: the Marco Civil da Internet. This work aims to describe this experience, addressing the following issues: (i) how the process was created; (ii) how it was managed and operationalized; and (iii) which outputs it produced in terms of legal solutions solving Internet regulation dilemmas. The research tested the hypothesis that the public consultation process revealed a turning point of the Brazilian Internet regulation debate, which was dominated by criminal-related approaches. The study suggests that the hypothesis was correct and that the analyzed experience was relevant in a reexamination of that previous political agenda.