Millions of children travel to and from school each day as part of their daily routine. A large percentage of children make this journey by car, and the numbers are steadily rising and this is leading to many environmental and health implications for children. The current economic climate has persuaded the British Government to look again at policies relating to all school travel funding to highlight areas where savings and cuts can be made. This is interesting because the home-to-school transport provision policy has been in place since the Education Act 1944 and this policy costs local authorities in England over £1 billion a year. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is threefold. Firstly, it seeks to determine the main issues within school travel and reports on the views of current professionals in the school travel industry. Structured in-depth interviews were carried out with 16 UK and US school travel experts. The questions focused on the current stakeholders of school travel, issues regarding school travel, bus use in school travel, and the challenges faced by transport planners to ensure school pupils have a safe and pleasant journey to school. Secondly this thesis quantifies the traffic and environmental impacts of the school choice policy in England. It achieves this by analysing School Census data from 2009 from the Department for Education. Multinomial logit modelling and mixed multinomial logit modelling are used to illustrate the current travel behaviour of English children in their journey to school and examine how there can be a significant reduction in vehicle miles travelled, CO2 emissions and fuel consumption if the school choice policy is removed. The results suggest that if all children attended their nearest school, this would result in reductions in their personal mobility, vehicle miles travelled and CO2 emissions. Finally, this thesis examines the policies relating to the funding criteria of home-to-school public school transport provision. Specifically, the paper employs a multilevel modelling technique to develop a series of relationships between bus usage by school and the level of spending by local education authorities on home-to-school bus travel provision while controlling for other factors such as school quality, land-use patterns and various proxies for household incomes. The results suggest that there is a significant effect of funding on the total school-level bus passenger mileage for primary (aged less than 11), secondary (aged 11 to 16) and Post 16 schools.

This thesis explores the degree of independent action possible by national governments in deciding their education policies – in other words, what may be termed their sphere of authority (SoA) – in the context of globalisation; whereby Pakistan, perhaps more than many nation states, is subject to a variety of geopolitical and economic pressures. This issue is explored through a study of the recent education policy review process in Pakistan that resulted in a White Paper: ‘Education in Pakistan’ in 2007. In exploring the SoA of the government of Pakistan in deciding its education policy priorities, key areas of enquiry include the tensions between national and global interests and their attempted discursive management by the government of Pakistan. The research uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as its main methodological resource and looks at two kinds of textual data: interviews with key policy actors and selected policy texts. The methodology of CDA draws attention to the fact that texts are embedded within linguistic, discursive and structural contexts, and that these contexts provide resources that are mobilized by different actors. The textual data resources were analysed to see how language shapes the construction of the White Paper; what discourses are being drawn upon and contested in the articulation of the White Paper and thus what broad power structures shape the White Paper and illustrate the SoA of the government of Pakistan. The findings suggest that the policy review process as illustrated by the White Paper reveals various tensions caused by differences between global and national education policy interests. These tensions are visible in the style and genre of policy; the pursuit of global policy prescriptions; trends to privatization of provision; and disputes over the issue of language and about the ideological principles that should inform educational provision. The research suggests that inclusive and ‘soft’ governance discourse along with a process of consultation were used by the government in an attempt to manage these tensions. The expertise with which the government designed the consultation process and deployed discursive resources sought to establish and maintain its SoA.

The Swedish village by-laws are a collection of rules for coexistence in a village which evolved during the 18th and 19th centuries. The dissertation takes its starting point in an edition of Byordningar från Mälarlänen (Village By-Laws in the Lake Mälar districts) containing about 400 by-laws from the central part of Sweden, and is a limited review of that edition at the same time as it gives a systematic survey of certain aspects specified in the by-laws. These aspects were added as the result of an official proposal in 1742 containing a model on how a by-law should be constructed. The question is asked whether the directives of the Government were formulated when they reached the local level, or whether they were redesigned and adapted to suit the local situation. The village by-laws in the Mälar counties differ in form and in content depending upon the official proposal on by-laws from 1742. The village by-laws were originally discussed in connection with the changes in agriculture, and thus concerned such sectors as farming methods, fencing, grazing, the right to certain proportions of the village's resources. The local conditions in the village are reflected in, for example, the rules on the length of the grass for grazing. There were different kinds of such by-laws, e.g., by-laws for individual villages and by-laws for parishes (approved at a parish meeting). The initiative of the Government in requiring village by-laws gave different results in different counties. Large parts of Uppsala county are without forest land. The fences and the system of enclosing fields are therefore of particular interest in a discussion on the village by-laws. I have demonstrated that their origin and acceptance in Swedish villages and parishes can be placed in political, chronological, social and functional contexts. / <p>Diss. Uppsala : Univ.</p>

This essay studies the European Union and the European asylum system from Max Webers authority theory. The EU considers to be an area of freedom and human rights, but recent events have shown inadequacies in the asylum system that was established by the Dublin Regulation 2003. The Hungarian government is one of the member countries of the EU that has refused and declined their obligations towards the EU. The aim of this study is to see why the EU have failed in implementing a functioning asylum policy and how the lack of authority have resulted in an insufficient asylum system for an international organization. The conclusion in this essay is that the Union is allowing member countries to not be cooperating with the European laws and the absence of authority and efficiency has led to some of the member countries to take advantage of it.

La Thaïlande est un pays sous régime de monarchie constitutionnelle mais il subit souvent les interventions militaires. Malgré l’installation de la démocratie en 1932 et le développement des textes juridiques, la liberté d’expression et le droit de la communication sont limités. Le marché audiovisuel est préoccupé par les opérateurs ayant obtenu les contrats de concession de l’État pour une durée excessive. La solution proposée par la Constitution de 1997 est de créer une autorité de régulation indépendante de communication audiovisuelle pour, d’une part, renforcer l’exercice de la liberté d’expression et le droit de la communication ainsi que la mise en place des principes fondamentaux de la communication audiovisuelle, et, d’autre part, attribuer à nouveaux les fréquences pour l’ouverture totale du marché audiovisuel afin d’offrir une variété de choix aux téléspectateurs ou aux auditeurs. La création de l’autorité de régulation de communication audiovisuelle a été interrompue plusieurs fois par les décisions du Tribunal administratif, du fait de conflit d’intérêts, et a finalement été annulée par le coup d’État en 2006, abrogeant la Constitution de 1997. La Constitution actuelle de 2007 impose de créer une seule autorité de régulation chargée de l’audiovisuel et des télécommunications pour faire face au développement des technologies qui convergent. Aujourd’hui, cette autorité n’est pas encore mise en place. La lacune dans la régulation des deux domaines de communication s’agrandit. Depuis la suppression du monopole étatique de l’audiovisuel, la France a connu trois autorités de régulation. L’exercice des droits et libertés de la communication se développe progressivement. L’étude sur la comparaison avec le système français pourrait orienter la Thaïlande vers le chemin de la démocratie et du développement. / Although Thailand is a constitutional monarchy country with the establishment of democracy and the development of legal texts, it is often subject to military intervention which creates the limitation of freedom of expression and the rights to communicate. The audiovisual market is dominated by the operators who obtain the concession contracts of the State for too long. The solution of the mentioned problem is proposed by the 1997 Constitution, which is to create an independent regulatory authority for audiovisual communication to improve the exercise of freedom of expression on communication law and to implement the basic principles of audiovisual communication. Moreover an allotment of new frequencies is also important for the full opening of the audiovisual market in order to vary the choices for viewers and listeners. The creation of the regulatory authority of audiovisual communication has been interrupted several times by the committee’s conflict of interest. In 2006, it was unfortunately withdrawn by the coup by repealing the 1997 Constitution. After that in The 2007 Constitution, it is required the establishment of a single regulatory authority for broadcasting and telecommunications to meet the development of converging technologies however the authority has not been implemented yet. So the gaps in regulation between two areas of communications are growing.In France, there are three of regulatory authorities of audiovisual communication which have been formed after the abolition of state monopoly of broadcasting. The study of French’s basic principles of audiovisual communication could guide Thailand in several ways since the rights and the freedoms of communication in Thailand have been democratically developing gradually

The purpose of the study is to examine how pedagogues practice their authority over children in conflict situations at preschools. How are children treated based solely on them being children? And how do preschool teachers validate children’s experiences of conflicts? To get answers I proceeded by using a qualitative data collection method and a hermeneutical analysis. I collected the material for the study by observing and interviewing pedagogues to both get an idea of ​​how they act in practice and how they reason about conflict situations in the preschool. The essay is based on a childhood sociological theoretical perspective that recognizes the importance of social and cultural context. The study’s results show that pedagogues practice their authority over children in conflict situations, but that it is done in different ways. How they practice authority, treat and validate children’s experiences depend on the pedagogues’ child perspective. Even though all the pedagogues in the study want what’s best for the children, the various conflict situations have completely different outcomes, since the pedagogues interpret children and their actions in very different ways, resulting in different responses and attitudes towards the children. The consequences of these different ways to respond need to be questioned and reflected upon. It’s time that the way pedagogues practice their authority and the way they see children is brought up for discussions within the world of preschool education.

Sociala medier skapar stora förändringar runt både människor och organisationer. Det betyder att organisationer behöver anpassa sin kommunikation för att nå ut till sin målgrupp. Myndigheter har idag en uppgift i vårt demokratiska samhälle att informera och upplysa samhället och det är även centralt för myndigheter att börja använda sig av sociala medier för att nå sin målgrupp. Syftet med undersökningen är att kartlägga hur en polismyndighet kommunicerar via sociala medier till sin målgrupp. Vi har valt att göra en fallstudie på en specifik polisgrupp - ungdomspolisen och hur de kommunicerar till sin målgrupp. Undersökningen ämnar besvara följande frågeställningar: Hur kommunicerar polisen på sociala medier? Hur kommunicerar ungdomspolisen på Åland genom sin Facebooksida? Och i vilket syfte använder ungdomspolisen sig av Facebook? För att besvara dessa frågor har två metoder använts - netnografisk observation och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Genom en observation av Facebooksidan besvaras frågan hur de kommunicerar på Facebook och genom intervjuer framkommer svaret på i vilket syfte de använder sig av Facebooksidan. Det insamlade materialet analyseras sedan i ljuset av uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk där public relations, Schneiders kommunikationsmodell och strategier för myndigheter på sociala medier presenteras. De övergripande resultat som framkommit genom denna studie är att ungdomspolisen inte har någon specifik strategi för hur de kommunicerar. Poliserna har dock olika sätt att skriva, vilket på så sätt leder till vad man skulle kunna kalla egna individuella strategier för användandet. Deras huvudsyfte med Facebooksidan är att göra polismyndigheten mer öppen och transparent, vilket de gör genom inlägg där de vill informera, visa arbetet som polis, uppmana och föra en dialog med målgruppen. Polisen hade från början ungdomar som målgrupp, men med tidens gång har målgruppen förändrats till föräldrar och egentligen hela allmänheten. Slutsatsen utifrån analysen är att myndigheter som använder sig av sociala medier måste använda rätt plattform för att nå sin målgrupp, men även att sociala medier är ett utmärkt verktyg för att upprätthålla relationer och skapa förståelse för polisyrket vilket i sin tur kan leda till förbättrade relationer mellan polisen och målgruppen. / Social media creates new conditions around both individuals and organizations. This means that organizations need to adjust their communication efforts to reach their target group. Therefore, it is central to the authorities to start using social media to reach their target group when the usage of social media increases. The purpose of this study is to identify how a specified police group communicate through social media to their stakeholders. We have chosen to do a case study on a specific group of police – The Youth Police and study how they communicate through social media to their stakeholders. The study aims to answer the following questions: How does the police communicate on social media? How does the Youth Police communicate through their Facebook page? And for what purposes are the Youth Police using the Facebook page? To answer these questions, we have used two methods - observation and interviews. The collected material is then analysed in the light of the theoretical framework, where we describe public relations, Schneider's communication models and different strategies for authorities on social media. The overall results obtained by this study is that the Youth Police do not have a specific strategy for how they communicate, but the police have their own ways of writing and thus form an unspoken individual strategy. Their purpose with this Facebook page is to make the police more transparent, which they do through Facebook posts where they inform, show their work and have a dialogue with their target group. The Youth Police had initially adolescents as a target group, but along with the passage of time, their target group has changed into the parents of the adolescents and the public instead. The conclusion from the analysis is that the authorities, who use social media, have to choose the right platform to reach their target group.  Social media is also a great tool for maintaining relationships and creating an understanding of the police work, which in turn can lead to improved relations between the police and their target group.

Two central issues in literature discussing legal authority seems to the the questions of what the law has when it has authority and under what conditions the law can be said to have authority. This thesis analyses an answer to these two questions as it has been developed by legal philosopher Joseph Raz. The analysis is conducted through scrutinizing the relation within and between three central concepts in Raz´s theory on legal authority; authority as normative power, the service conception and the obligation to obey. As for the concept of normative power, Raz seems to alternate between defining normative power as the ability to change protected reasons for action and as being a protected reason for action. The question the thesis aims to answer is whether normative power is best understood as the ability to change protected reasons for action or as being a protected reason for action? Raz does not seem to make a distinction between the two and thus, he regards both definitions as plausible. However, the analysis suggests that while it might be plausible to use both definitions as a definition of normative power, they are not interchangeable, but rather seems to represent two different levels of normative power. The analysis of the second concept, the service conception, examines Raz´s statement that justified exclusionary reasons entail a moral obligation to obey the law. Here the thesis asks if a moral obligation to obey is a plausible consequence of justified exclusionary reasons, given Raz´s own definition of obedience. The analysis suggests that a moral obligation to obey is not a plausible consequence of exclusionary reasons being justified and thus, that there seems to be incoherence between the two. Lastly, the thesis asks about the coherence between Raz´s two statements A. that justified exclusionary reasons entail a moral obligation to obey and B. that there is no moral obligation to obey the law. This last question had to be somewhat revised as the first statement (A) had already been suggested to be incoherent by the previous analysis. As such, this last question was revised into asking how the law can have legitimate authority when its legitimacy is tied to a moral obligation to obey, which is denied by Raz? The analysis suggests that these two statements are incoherent and that, as such, it is implausible that the law has the possibility to have legitimate authority at the same time as there exists no moral obligation to obey, as the former is dependent on the latter. The thesis ends in a number of concluding reflections.

Många människor delar uppfattningen om att mellanchefsrollen kan vara problematisk då den är positionerad i organisationens mitt, klämd mellan ledningen och medarbetarna. Att ansvar och befogenheter bör befinna sig i jämvikt och inkluderas i chefsroller är även något som de flesta håller med om, men som vår studie förtydligar så är det dessvärre inte alltid fallet i verkligheten. Studien har även visat att det finns en stark koppling mellan synen på vår omvärld och dess karakteristiska drag, organisationsstrukturer och former, mellanchefsrollen och befogenheter för beslutsfattande. / Many people share the opinion that the role of middle management can be problematic due to that it is positioned in the middle of organizations, squeezed between the top management and the operative core. An equilibrium between responsibility and authority and that it should both be included in a management position is also something that most people find as logical, but our study clarifies that it is not always the case in reality. Our study has also shown that there is a strong connection between the perception of our environment and its characteristics, organizational structures and shapes, the middle management and decision-making authority.

This dissertation project provides a methodological contribution to the field of critical rhetoric by positioning narrative theory as a powerful yet underutilized tool for examining the power dynamic between producer and consumer in a participatory media context. Drawing on theories of author and audience from rhetorical narratology, this study shows how producers of media texts provide rhetorical cues to audiences that allow them to reassert their power in the form of creative authority vis-à-vis consumers. The genre of professional wrestling serves as an ideal text for examining such power dynamics, as WWE has adapted to changing fan participatory behaviors throughout its sixty-year history. Focusing on pivotal moments in which WWE altered its narrative address to its audience in order to reassert its control over the production process, this study demonstrates the utility of narrative theory for understanding how creative authority shows power at work in media texts. Further, this study situates rhetorical narratology in conversation with theories of rhetorical persona, scholarship on subcultures, and the discursive construction of the “people.” In so doing, I show how a nuanced understanding of author and audience augments critical rhetorical scholarship’s focus on power. Finally, by applying narrative theory as a method for both close textual analysis of single texts as well as a tool for piecing together a critical text from narrative fragments, I also address questions of the role of the text in rhetorical criticism and the role of authorship in an era when audiences exert influence on media texts as they are produced.