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Within the under-populated realm of scholarship on legislative committees, there have been numerous studies which have looked at the ability of legislative committees to achieve policy influence in the wider legislature. However, fewer have examined the ability for non-governmental organizations – particularly those with relative outsider status in the policymaking process – to influence the policy recommendations of committee members. As environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) have often worked through legislative committees to try to influence policy, this dissertation examines how the characteristics of different legislative institutions work to facilitate or limit influence by representatives of ENGOs. This is done by comparing the interactions of ENGOs with legislative committees in Canada, the United States, and Russia – countries which respectively have parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential systems, and hold in common the derivation of a large portion of the country’s GDP from natural resource-based industries. The central research question for this study asks how the institutional organization of legislative committees affects the ability of ENGOs to achieve influence through engaging the committees, and how other factors interact with this to increase or decrease the potential for ENGO influence. A key finding that emerges out of this line of inquiry is that there is evidence that some conditions for influence in committees cannot be seen as extensions of the wider legislature but can rightly be seen as unique to the committees themselves or as manifesting in unique ways within them. / Dissertation / Candidate in Philosophy

What does informal problem solving in neighborhoods -- when people act collectively, but without much formal organizing -- look like? Does or can problem solving at this level contribute to the democratic capabilities of citizens? If so, how, and does public administration, as the part of government most involved in the daily life of citizens, have a role to play in building this informal capacity for self-government? The communitarian agenda in the United States assumes the importance of indigenous action, but on the basis of little evidence. To find out more about the existence and value of this mode of community problem solving, I conducted an ethnographic field study of problem solving in and around mostly black, inner city neighborhoods in Roanoke, Virginia in the mid 1990s. I found that while informal action appeared to have once been the main form taken by problem solving in the African American community, it had fallen on hard times. Three sets of factors seemed most to account for this decline: the aging of the population in these inner city neighborhoods, aided by the influence of both urban renewal and desegregation; the increasing professionalization of community problem solving through formal organizations; and a habitual use of civility in public affairs that reinforced professional dominance and reduced the motivation of inner city residents to act on their interests. I use these findings to set forth a novel conceptualization of both informal and formal community problem solving. This conceptual scheme draws on the psychological theory of self-determination and the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey to show how the informal and formal play different roles in the formation of individual and group identities and how both are needed in human development. I conclude by suggesting that, although the informal domain has atrophied in places like Roanoke, it might have an opportunity to reassert itself if public administration, as the engine of formal problem solving in communities, were to focus more on its own performance. A more effective public sector, achieved by replicating proven programs and practices, would increase the legitimacy of public administrators, making their example influential in inspiring citizens to undertake complementary efforts in their neighborhoods. / Ph. D.

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No / Thirteen chapters examine contemporary political and economic problems in Africa, analyzing causes and suggesting alternatives. Presented by editors from the U. of Central Lancashire (UK), the articles reject much of the self-serving explanations proffered by Western corporate elites and African autocrats for African problems, locating the root causes in lack of democracy at both national and international levels. Specific topics include international donors and civil society in Zimbabwe by Donna Pankhurst, implications for African export policies of misconceptions about the "world market," French foreign policy towards Africa, imperialism and Sub-Saharan Africa, and multinational peacekeeping operations in Africa.

Over the past several decades, the numbers of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that focus on tackling human rights issues have grown rapidly. These organizations operate internationally and work with governments, legislatures, social movement leaders, activists, donors, and individual citizens. As the number of operating INGOs has risen dramatically, researchers have simultaneously begun to investigate the possibility of creating a global civil society that would govern itself in order to maintain peace, create global solidarity and achieve human rights. This research investigates the role of nonprofit organizations in developing a global civil society by evaluating U.S.-based organizations that are tapping into an often-uninvolved subset of society—American donors. / Master of Public and International Affairs

As Hegel uses the term, “civil society” is a form of social life driven by self-interest. Agents in civil society only cooperate voluntarily and for private reasons. Hegel includes it as a necessary part of the social world in which the will is free, or of “ethical life.” But it can be hard to see why he includes it. One reason is that the self-interested behavior of agents in civil society doesn’t seem particularly “ethical.” Another is that, according to Hegel, civil society produces an unfree “rabble,” and more generally a “spectacle” of “ethical corruption.” It can be tempting to conclude that Hegel did not really see civil society as part of ethical life, or just that he should not have. This dissertation is an attempt to resist that temptation: I want to make sense of Hegel’s inclusion of civil society as a part of ethical life, while doing justice to the ethical concerns that tempt us to exclude it. In Chapter One, I explain a unique contribution civil society makes to freedom: participating in it transforms our needs in such a way that satisfying them can be a rational, free activity. In Chapter Two, I explain under what conditions, for Hegel, civil society gives rise to a “rabble,” and why, for Hegel, this would be “ethical corruption.” I then explain how Hegel connects the ethical corruption of civil society to its characteristic self-understanding. In Chapter Three, to make sense of the ethical ambivalence of civil society, I consider Hegel’s striking remark that civil society is “the world of appearance of the ethical.” In civil society, I argue, the individual’s self-interest both manifests the ethical and tends to put itself forward as independent of the ethical. I argue that when we pursue our self-interest in accordance with law and transform our needs in the way described in Chapter One our collective activity constitutes a “world of appearance of the ethical,” and I try to say why it matters, for Hegel, that the ethical “appears.”

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Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis examines how globalization has affected Vietnam's view and treatment of religious institutions. In a larger context, it argues that the conditions of globalization foster increased liberalism and the latent development of civil society. The implications of globalization on religion in Vietnam are explored through a case study of the Catholic Church in Vietnam from 1975 to 2004. The Catholic Church is examined during two different periods: during autarky from 1975 to the Doi Moi reforms in 1986, and during international interdependence from 1987 to 2004. Isolated from international norms and pressures during its period of autarky, Vietnam suppressed, rigidly controlled, and severely restricted the Catholic Church. As Vietnam entered its present period of global integration and interdependency, Vietnam's view and treatment of the Catholic Church improved: suppression lessened, controls eased, and many restrictions lifted. The thesis concludes that in order to foster religious freedom and build civil society, policy makers should implement policies that engage rather than isolate. Engagement policies tend to increase a country's degree of global interdependency and integration with the world economy and community. As the level of interdependency increases, countries tend to become more subject to international norms and standards. / Captain, United States Air Force