The international development agencies and the Chinese government have become increasingly more aware of the importance of bottom-up community-driven development. Some scholars argue that the problems for community-driven development in China are mainly because of the lack of favorable policy environment and effective monitoring mechanisms. The research in this dissertation does not intend to deny the importance of those factors. The goal of this work, however, is to offer perspectives that can help organizations at all levels and of different sectors to understand the importance of embracing and integrating the local culture into development policy making and program designing. To achieve effective community-driven development, the policy makers and practitioners should first understand and respect the culture and interests of the beneficiaries. Instead of addressing institutaional and structural development issues as hardware, this research takes a cultural perspective as software to contribute to the existing literature of this field. To achieve effective community-driven development in China, partnership and cooperation between different players is crucial. Culture, both as means and ends of development, is an important factor that bonds them together. Emphasizing the significnace of gender roles and responsibilities, a gendered perspective of community development in China is presented in this research. This research also refers to theories of Complex Adaptive Systems and Self-organization mechanisms, which explain how complex, adaptive macro behavior emerges from simple, local micro decisions and how simple agents collectively solve difficult problems. The roles of community, government, and NGOs [domestic and international] in this development process will be addressed here. During the authors field study in the rural areas of China in the summer of 2007, data was collected through participatory observation, interviews, and focus groups with multiple stakeholders involved in the community-driven development programs in China. This work highlights the opportunities and challenges for effective community-driven development in China. Based upon the analysis, this research also offers policy implications for different stakeholders.

The world entered the nuclear age in 1945 when the United States first acquired nuclear capability. The United States enjoyed a strategic monopoly but only for a couple of years until the Soviet Union tested its nuclear device in 1949. Since then, the United Kingdom, France, and China joined the exclusive nuclear club, and the threat of nuclear weapons has become one of the most daunting challenges of the world. Almost immediately after the United States developed nuclear weapons in the 1940s, it began to explore a way to destroy an incoming nuclear warhead before it reached its target in the United States in order to negate the dangers of nuclear weapons. Smaller scale threats coming from the Third World or rogue states and possibly terrorist organizations are serious factors to be reckoned with, but the nuclear threat from the Soviets was the backbone of US strategic thinking after WWII and until the late 1980s and early 1990s. During the long history of missile defense, the strategic environment experienced fundamental shifts, the most significant being the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the United States has shown rather consistent support for missile defense. Missile defense policy changes were seen but they did not coincide with the rise or fall of the Soviet threat. This is the central research question of this study: how has US missile defense policy been able to survive for decades despite fundamental changes in the security environment? The main interest of this study is the decision making process. Essentially, this study attempts to discover the central force behind US missile defense policy. In this effort, this study proposes three competing perspectives: the security perspective, the bureaucratic politics perspective, and the congressional perspective. Was it the external security factor? Was it the executive branch of the US government? Or was it Congress that brought about the policy decisions? This study argues that new strategic developments play an extremely important role in triggering policy changes, but Congress was instrumental in materializing missile defense policy changes.

In 1995, Washington State passed the Becca Bill, reversing existing law in Washington State and putting the state in conflict with United States law and the United Nations Childrens Rights Convention. These laws and convention prioritized voluntary services for runaways and other so-called status offendersjuveniles committing offenses that would not be considered crimes for adults. But despite the fact that both sides argued in support of protecting the safety and best interests of children, the debate leading to the Becca Bill was highly conflictual. This research argues that models for serving runaway, homeless, and at-risk youth contain an implicit prioritization of two conflicting valuessafety and choice, and that respondent attitudes towards the different models are related to the respondents own values hierarchies. Comparing the values and attitudes of staff working in youth services in Washington state with those in two adjacent states/provinces with a different configuration of laws related to youth permits examination not only of the relationship between values and attitudes, but also between values and the normative-legal environment. Finally, a comparison of the values and attitudes of staff according to the types of program in which they work offers data regarding the relationship between values and epistemic communities. Despite the efforts of social scientist researchers over the past 50-100 years, debates continue about the exact meaning of institution and values, the origins of institutions and values, the parameters around them, and what causes them to change. The challenge is not simply academic, for the very concepts of institutions and values imply entities that have great influence in the daily life of individuals. This research thus provides insight both in the area of policy and that of theory regarding values and institutions. The results of the research show that staff values are related to a combination of personal experience, the technical considerations of the work, and the epistemic communities within which they operate. No correlation of values and attitudes is found with the normative legal environment. Significant differences are found, however, according to the type of agency in which staff work.

This dissertation seeks to explain variation in democratic governance in the Russian regions, in particular, in the Northwestern and the Southern regions, which are included in the regional dimensions of the European Union Neighborhood Policy: the Northern Dimension and the Black Sea Synergy, respectively. Emphasizing a dynamic relationship between regional governance patterns in the EU-Russia regional cooperation and energy regional domains, regional ethno-cultural, historical, geopolitical, and economic contexts, and regional decision-making processes, it develops a model of sub-national democratic development and sub-national regionalism that links regional sustainable development and democratic governance to the multi-dimensionality of the external and internal pressures that shape and influence the behavior and the strategic actions of the regional actors, and predetermine the configuration of relationships among them. The propositions of the model are tested empirically using both quantitative (econometric analysis of longitudinal data and longitudinal network analysis) and qualitative (interview data) methods. The findings of the analyses have implications for our understanding of sub-national regionalism in the Wider Europe and for the study of democratization and regional development more generally.

Inquiring into the fiscal constitution and the regional economic geography of Colombia, this dissertation carries out an exploration of the linkages running from the fundamental fiscal rules of the countrys multilevel system of government to the disparities in economic development among its regions, or, more precisely, among the jurisdictions of the intermediate level of government. With a comparative focus and with an eye to identifying factors that accentuate or moderate regional economic disparities in Colombia, it also offers an analysis of selected aspects of the fiscal constitutions of Canada and Spain, where, akin to the Colombian case, a less uneven regional economic development is a constitutionally declared governmental goal. Three dimensions of regional economic development are considered, namely, education, health, and income. Similarities and differences in the assignment of functions of government and the design of taxes, intergovernmental transfers and the rules of public indebtedness between cases belonging to the same legal tradition (Colombia and Spain for the civil law tradition) and to different legal traditions (e.g., Colombia visàvis Canada, where the latter to a good extent fits in the common law tradition) are singled out and illustrated, and so are relevant quantitative patterns of the multilevel government finances and the outcomes in the three dimensions of development under study, using longitudinal and cross-section data for within and between country analysis. A sample of policy makers affiliated with the Colombian national and subnational levels of government, interviewed for the study, provide insights into the workings of intergovernmental relations, especially regarding the pros and cons of political and fiscal decentralization, as designed and implemented in Colombia, for regional and local development. The dissertation discusses and exemplifies some ways of assessing the adaptability and robustness of the Colombian fiscal constitution and of harnessing the fiscal state, through the legal system, to deal with regional economic disparities, drawing from the international comparative exercise and from a variety of theoretical approaches, including the economic analysis of law and the theories of public finance and public policy design.

For the most part, Federal Communication Commission policy has gone unnoticed by the American public for most of its seventy-five year history. That all changed in the spring of 2003. In the fall of 2001, the FCC launched its Third Biennial Review of media ownership rules. By the spring of 2003, the FCC was inundated with electronically filed comments, most of which expressed displeasure at the proposed rule which relaxed ownership rules for both television and radio. The resulting vote of 3-2 in favor of the rule change outraged many Americans. This research is a case study focused on determining the role that information played in decision making among the policy elites of the FCC. Given the limitations of a positivist approach to policy study, this study employs the methodology of Network Text Analysis (NTA) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) to discover knowledge maps. This discovery is intended to reveal what criteria guided the decisions that emerge in the written policy, the five commissioner comments, the Third District Court opinion, the 12 FCC commissioned studies, and the public record. This analysis, which uses SNA, reveals consistent concepts or knowledge maps; primarily reasoned analysis, competition, legal, and broadcast media. Additionally, this research shows that the policy itself was most responsive to ecomments filed by corporations and interest groups not individual citizens. The research shows that the media had little influence in this policy primarily because they reported on the policy during the week that the policy was released.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11th the United States invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban in a quick and decisive war, effectively destroying the terrorist safe haven in the country. However, eight years later the U.S. and members of the international community remain there trying to keep terrorists and extremists from reestablishing their base in Afghanistan. To date we have only reached a fragile stalemate between the insurgency, composed of the Taliban and supported by al Qaeda, and the ISAF and U.S. forces within the country. Many argue we should give up in Afghanistan, believing our problems can be attributed to a poor strategy, a lack of resources, a lack of focus, or simply an unwinnable war. However, we now have a new President, a new commander in Afghanistan, and a new strategy that many have touted as a first step toward victory. This thesis examines the history of the battle for stability in Afghanistan, the history of insurgencies in the country, and other major issues challenging the rebuilding and stability of the failed state. The intent of this thesis is to contribute a further understanding of the conflict and challenges present in Afghanistan and its surrounding region. The effectiveness of the Obama administrations new strategy and direction in Afghanistan is also examined. While the new strategy is a step forward in Afghanistan, it is far from a silver bullet. Any victory still requires a true long-term commitment to the fight for stability in Afghanistan, the proper resources for the security of the Afghan people and an effective effort to eliminate the safe haven that now exists in Pakistan. Significant progress is achievable within the region. However, even if the Obama plan works as outlined true stability and success will not occur unless the U.S. and members of the international community avoid past mistakes.

This research examines to what extent and why nonprofit accountability mechanisms are adopted in human service organizations located in southwestern Pennsylvania. Its focus is twofold: 1) to assess the extent to which nonprofit leaders are familiar with and use the nonprofit accountability mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature and through nonprofit sector leadership organizationsto assess nonprofits accountability competency and 2) to explore the motivations or incentives for instituting or resisting the practices. One hundred and fifty-six nonprofit human service executives in southwestern Pennsylvania participated in a mailed survey, and 20 of those respondents agreed to a follow-up personal interview. Results indicate that local nonprofits are more likely to adopt legal and financial accountability mechanisms, such as filing the IRS Form 990 and having a board approved operating budget, and less likely to adopt normative best practices, such as program evaluation, ethics codes and executive compensation policies. Further, study results examined through a dual lens of institutional and resource dependence theories, support the hypotheses that organizations are more motivated to adopt accountability mechanisms with greater degrees of organizational interconnectedness, external dependence on pressuring constituents, social legitimacy achieved, economic gain and legal coercion.

An administrative systems capacity to take effective action can be undermined by the uncertain and rapidly changing conditions that are often generated by disruptive events. Resilience has been identified as the most practical approach to overcoming this administrative problem. Resilience has multiple definitions, one of which is [t]he capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt, by resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure. This is determined by the degree to which the social system is capable of organizing itself to increase this capacity for learning from past disasters for better future protection and to improve risk reduction measures (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction 2005, p. 4). This study argues that, in contrast to conventional administrative systems, resilient administrative systems have the capacity to successfully respond to disruptive events because they possess the organizational stability to maintain the effectiveness of the community in which it operates and the organizational flexibility needed to adapt to uncertain and rapidly changing conditions. This study advances a framework for administrative resilience, which can be used to evaluate the resilience of administrative systems. Through the use of a nested case study that employed a mixed-methods design, the framework was used to investigate the administrative response system that operated in Indonesia after the Great Sumatran Earthquake and Tsunami of 26 December 2004. The study generated a number of findings. First, the system was a system of sub-systems, and the organizations that operated in the domestic sub-system possessed extremely low levels of resilience. The consequence was that the domestic sub-system could not formulate an effective response to the constraints present in the post-tsunami environment. Second, it was the inclusion of the organizations in the international sub-system, which brought with them high levels of resources, technology and experience, as well as the interactions exchanged between international and domestic organizations, which improved the resilience of the overall administrative system. These findings indicate that policy makers can promote the development of administrative resilience through the development and implementation of sociotechnical infrastructures that facilitate administrative action.

By all observable accounts, desertification is exacting a toll on the rural populations of Morocco, potentially leading to social and economic instability. With almost all of Morocco and the majority of the African continent characterized by high vulnerability, it is incumbent upon policy makers and program developers to understand the full parameters of the threat to humanity security. Through process tracing, this paper examines the issue of desertification as a function of the macro-level policies that have been implemented, environmental indicators, and the knowledge, behavior and beliefs of rural villagers in one particular targeted location. Without generalizing to the larger population, findings identify the lack of empowerment as a key factor inhibiting progress in the fight against desertification. This includes the failure to include women in promoting lifestyle changes and the lack of community and social tools necessary to trigger mobilization amongst individual villagers. Government expenditures are not likely to be able address these issues through macro-level policies due to the localized nature of the problem. As such, developing a system that effectively transfers knowledge and resources from external entities (government and NGOs) to local actors that can facilitate local empowerment is essential in bringing about the needed action to fight desertification.