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Over time, the predominant tendency of many governments' agencies has been to evaluate a programme or policy investing large amount of resources in supporting policy evaluation. However, recommendations suggested by policy evaluators are not always taken up. Moreover, there is relatively little evidence of the extent of policy evaluation effectiveness (i.e. the influence of evaluation on the programme evaluated) and the factors which have significant impact on it. This dissertation aims to shed light on this issue by focusing on the Mexican and Chilean experiences of policy evaluation in the health care sector. It provides a detailed analysis of the extent to which evaluations have led to changes in policies and programmes and reveals a rather limited effectiveness of policy evaluation in these countries. I argue that shortcomings in the effectiveness of policy evaluation can be explained by institutional and political factors, primarily the nature of Intra Governmental Relations (IGR), but also the quality of bureaucracy, the level of democracy, the autonomy of policy evaluators, and the type of policy evaluation framework. While all of these factors seem to have some influence, the relationship between the executive and legislature is clearly the key determinant of the take up of recommendations. Thus, the findings of this thesis suggest that strengthening coordination between the different parts of government is needed to enhance the effectiveness of policy evaluation. In addition, the analysis also suggests that policy evaluation is likely to be more effective when it incorporates budgetary incentives.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, March 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Many HIV/AIDS public service announcements (PSAs) focus on aspects of HIV/AIDSprevention efforts, including stigma and discrimination. However, due to an absence ofmedia evaluations that have properly understood the ways in which HIV/AIDS-relatedstigma PSAs are framed and constructed, little is known about the ways in which thesemessages are framed. This study attempts to bridge the gap by analyzing the ways inwhich the Pan American Health 10-year Anthology DVD, frames and constructs theirargument in PSAs targeted at HIV/AIDS-related stigma. In order to answer thequestions, this study connects the theories of stigma, media, and framing, to the theory ofsocial construction. Where stigma is a form of social construction, framing can causesocial construction and media facilitates social construction. Moreover, this study uses aqualitative content analysis, to analyze the198 PSAs in the anthology. The results of thestudy revealed that HIV/AIDS-related stigma PSAs could be categorized into eitherproactive or reactive frames. Within the proactive and reactive frames there are alsoseveral sub-categories, which includes: proactive messages that reduce self-stigma,proactive messages that encourage community support, proactive messages thatencourage institutional support, and proactive messages that focus on antidiscrimination.Within the reactive messages the sub-categories include: reactivemessages and HIV/AIDS corrective information, reactive messages that focus on howHIV/AIDS is and is not transmitted, reactive messages that focus on what stigma is. Theanalysis of this study connected the theoretical reference to the results of the study, bydetermining that the proactive and reactive frames are tools within PSAs, intended tocreate a new reality or new social attitudes about HIV/AIDS-related stigma. Futureimplications for this study could evaluate the effects of the proactive and reactive frames.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 333-343).

Thesis (DPhil(International Politics))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Summary in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis defines and offers explanations for the distribution, range, and behavior of Striated Caracaras, coastal raptors of far southern South America. Like other caracara species, Striated Caracaras are relatively social, nest in dense aggregations where food is abundant, and feed largely by scavenging and opportunism. Unlike other caracaras, however, their distribution and range are severely restricted; they live only on the outermost islands of the Falklands/Malvinas archipelago and the Fuego-Patagonian islands of southernmost Argentina and Chile. Striated Caracaras' morphological differences from their closest relatives in the genus Phalcoboenus (which inhabit alpine habitats in the Andes) suggest a period of isolation from their sister species, resulting in speciation by vicariance. A possible mechanism for this isolation is the Patagonian Ice Sheet, which spread over much of southern South America during glacial epochs. During these periods, the sub-Antarctic Falkland archipelago and islands to the south and east of Tierra del Fuego appear to have remained largely ice-free, and probably acted as glacial refuges for colonial seabirds and pinnipeds, as well as for the ancestors of Striated Caracaras. On these islands, Striated Caracaras developed a dependence on the food resources that seabird and pinniped colonies provide, and a preference for their habitat - seacoasts fringed with the giant grass Paradiochloa flabellata. In these coastal environments, selection probably favored the tools that Striated Caracaras use today to exploit the seabird colonies' resources. These tools include large size (to handle large prey species), strong talons and bills, ease of movement on the ground (both for foraging in seabird colonies and precise mobility in near-constant strong winds), and good night vision (to capture burrowing petrels as they return to colonies at night). The caracaras' curious, opportunistic nature (to which they are ancestrally disposed) would have been preserved and perhaps enhanced, due to the necessity of investigating any potential resource during winter months when seabird colonies are vacant. A philopatric tendency might also have developed, as outside of seabird colonies food is scarce and chances of breeding are slim. Isolation in the islands' relatively simple ecosystems probably had another evolutionary effect, typical among island species - it deprived caracaras of defensive adaptations they might have once possessed, including wariness toward potential predators and nesting in inaccessible locations. The result was "ecological naivete", a phenomenon in which species that evolve in simple ecosystems lose (or simply lack) behavioral and morphological traits necessary for survival in more complex environments. Striated Caracaras demonstrated this naivete in encounters with humans in the 19th and 20th centuries, whom the birds approached without fear and by whom they were heavily persecuted. Even after decades of persecution by farmers in the Falklands, Striated Caracaras "had not learnt that man is dangerous" (J Hamilton 1922). They remain so today. A tourist guidebook refers to the birds as "charmingly tame"; islanders are more likely to call them "cheeky" but are increasingly tolerant of them, as wildlife tourism has become a major source of income. The caracaras' ecological naivete also probably restricts them from the more complex South American mainland, where mammalian predators (including humans) and other caracara species are common and food sources are not as concentrated or dependable as the coastal seabirds and pinnipeds. Thus, Striated Caracaras' preference for a habitat and resource set to which they are well-adapted, combined with the loss of defensive behaviors that might protect them from the hazards of the mainland, may leave them essentially "trapped" within their current range. Present-day threats to Striated Caracaras include habitat destruction due to exotic predators and browsers, threats from fisheries and global climate change to the seabirds and marine ecosystems on which the caracaras depend, and the intrinsic genetic pressures of the caracaras' small population size.

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