The purpose of this study was to understand how social workers experienced working with Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in relation to the goal set by the National Board of Health and Welfare. The method is spread nationwide and therefore it is of great importance to examine how the social workers themselves experience the demands and the resources surrounding ASI. We choose to do a qualitative study interviewing eight social workers at six different occasions. The result was analyzed using Max Weber’s ideal type bureaucracy and Michael Lipsky’s thesis on street-level bureaucrats. We found that the social workers consider the method useful when used from without their own purposes. The standards set by the National Board of Health and Welfare was considered hard to achieve because of the complexity of the method. Among other things the valuation done by both social worker and client was regarded as tough and therefore the results of the interview are at risk of not becoming reliable. We found that the outcome of the interview depends on the performer.

This dissertation is an exploratory research that analyzes the representation of the state and its relationship with society in the meaning worlds of the Turkish bureaucrats. Accordingly, the research question of this dissertation has to do with political representation in the mindsets of bureaucratic actors. Regarding this question, we focused on the theory of representative bureaucracy and addressed its inadequacies in analyzing the issue of bureaucratic representation. In our view, representation is a phenomenon related to a particular mode of understanding that creates commonsense. It involves the contextual varieties of taken for granted knowledge that constitutes the basis of one&rsquo / s social world, which the theory of representative bureaucracy fails to question. In this respect, our research intended to discover how do bureaucrats order and arrange the meaning of state-society relationship in their minds. We conducted our research in the Capital Markets Board of Turkey, the Ministry of Finance, and the Turkish Military Academy. We used the methods of multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to reveal the latent meaning patterns in the meaning worlds of the bureaucrats. The results of our analysis pointed out two major findings. Our first finding indicated the reductionism of the theory of representative bureaucracy in understanding and interpreting the meaning worlds of the Turkish bureaucrats. Our second finding involved the significant similarities as well as the differences in the meaning worlds of the bureaucratic organizations. These variations demonstrated how the organizations of the same state might differ due to distinct organizational ideologies.

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As the situation of politics and economy becomes more and more unstable in Taiwan, people have higher criticism and expectation to government efficiency. However, both of Taipei Household Registration Office and Department of Health Kaohsiung City Government have successfully implemented many innovations in organization and started the initial change in less than 3 years. Thus, this research tries to analyze why and how innovations could be diffused efficiently in these two government organizations and started the change. This research collects abundant data and information through studying documents and many deep interviews at first. Then, these data or information are made a static analysis by Everett M. Rogers¡¦ theory of Diffusion of Innovations and Innovation Process in Organizations, and a dynamic analysis by Casual Loop Diagrams of Systmes Thinking. All analyses include the comparison of these two cases. There are 15 findings as followed: 1. Creating can bring better performance than problem-solving. 2. Characteristics of innovations and inertia of organization will affect the speed of innovations diffusion and the acceptability of innovations. 3. Both of innovations and organization will be modified to fit each other. 4. The leader is the most influent point for diffusion of innovations in bureaucracy. 5. The leader sets an example with his/her own conduct and starts change from small things can be helpful to diffusion of innovations. 6. The leader persistence of innovations is helpful to diffusion of innovations. 7. How the leader diffuses innovations is a process of dynamic coordination. 8. The leader is a designer of loops. 9. Different cases have similar key successful loops and key successful factors because they have the same structure of bureaucracy. 10. Structure can help and block leaders to diffuse and implement innovations in bureaucracy. 11. The innovation process in organization should be observed in a larger structure or system. 12. Reports of Media can motivate employees effectively and facilitate the phenomenon of ¡§lock-in¡¨. 13. Examination and evolution have much efficiency in changing employees¡¦ behaviors in bureaucracy. However, what can change employees¡¦ attitude often are others¡¦ appreciation, work results or leader¡¦s moral integrity. 14. Reports of Media, education training and visits can break the closed system of bureaucracy. This is helpful for diffusion of innovations in organization. 15. No matter the focal point of innovations is on easy and small things whose results are obvious, or on fundamental, long-term and more difficult things such as system and value change, ¡Ketc, all can result in profound changes in organizations. Moreover, this research also finds whether ¡§democratization¡¨, ¡§media¡¨, and ¡§bureaucracy¡¨ will bring good or bad contribution, these three things aren¡¦t the point and the most important thing is how we use them. We should take the responsibility by ourselves.

The research presented here has three major purposes. The first is to explain how political institutions and policy outputs can change in the presence of a growing minority population when the preferences of these minorities differ from those of the majority. I show how representation in all three branches of government can lead to these changes, specifically in the local legislature and local bureaucracy. Secondly, I demonstrate the relationship between local legislative representation of Latino minority populations to substantive policy outcomes that favor this minority group, and explain how variable electoral institutions influence this relationship. The third general purpose of this research is to make the argument that the study of minority politics need not take place within a theoretical vacuum. That is, I use theories of minority group behavior (as opposed to Latino group behavior), and relevant empirical tests, to inform mainstream democratic theory. What democratic theory is missing, I argue, is the ability to fully explain and predict changes in institutions, policy, and policy outputs in a dynamic preference environment. Examining minority politics over time helps fill this void.

<p>Croatia became an independent country 1991 and has since then strived to reach a democracy level, which can lead to membership of the European Union. The purpose of this essay is on the basis of consolidate democratic perspective to illustrate Croatia’s democratic development.</p><p>In order to fulfil the aim, I have applied a qualitative text analysis technique. Through analysis of books and documents, data was collected to accommodate a valid result. I have used consolidated democracy, with its five areas (political, civil, economic, legal and bureaucratic), as my theoretical framework to the data, to provide answers and develop an analysis.</p><p>The conclusions show that the consolidate democracy in Croatia has developed a lot since the independence, and Croatia is on its good way to turn into a democratic state like other West-European countries. Croatia has developed and is still developing their political, civil, economic, legal and bureaucratic areas. A good sign of their democratic development is that Croatia received status as a candidate country in June 2005 for European Union, which shows that Croatia is on the way to complete its transition to consolidated democracy.</p>

<p>Title:Comparison of databases – Is the law an obstacle?</p><p>Authors:Alexander Ankarberg, Applied Information Science.</p><p>Tutors:Lars- Eric Ljung</p><p>Problem: Cross running databases is getting more and more significant during the development of the information flow. There are huge benefits if we start to use the technique that already exists. The law is today an obstacle, so what would happen if the law wasn’t so stern. My question is:” why don’t we cross run databases more efficient between parts of institutions”</p><p>Aim:The purpose of this essay is to evaluate why institutions does not cross run databases and start a discussion. There are possibilities that we today does not use. One aim is also to find solutions so that we can start to use the techniques. The essay will explain the fundamentals and discuss both the advantages and the disadvantages in depth.</p><p>Method:The author has approached the problem from two ways. From induction and deduction which combined is abduction. The author hopes that this results in as many points of angles as possible. And the answers will be as complete as possible. The essay also includes an inquiry which is based on interview with ordinary people.</p><p>Conclusions:The law is not up to date nor made for today’s technique. It is in some ways an obstacle for a more efficient system and it could save enormous amounts of money for both the government and common man. There is hope though, and small revolutions happen every day. There is also ways to go around the law and make things possible and make the system more efficient. That is with agreement from the person that the information is about. There is also one possibility with safety classes, to put a number on information.</p>

<p>The purpose of this study was to <em>understand</em> how social workers experienced working with Addiction Severity Index (ASI) in relation to the goal set by the National Board of Health and Welfare. The method is spread nationwide and therefore it is of great importance to examine how the social workers themselves experience the demands and the resources surrounding ASI. We choose to do a qualitative study interviewing eight social workers at six different occasions. The result was analyzed using Max Weber’s ideal type bureaucracy and Michael Lipsky’s thesis on street-level bureaucrats. We found that the social workers consider the method useful when used from without their own purposes. The standards set by the National Board of Health and Welfare was considered hard to achieve because of the complexity of the method. Among other things the valuation done by both social worker and client was regarded as tough and therefore the results of the interview are at risk of not becoming reliable. We found that the outcome of the interview depends on the performer.</p>

This dissertation analyzes the effects of Latino immigration on the representation of Latinos and African-Americans on local school boards and attempts to explain under what conditions Latino immigrants provoke opposition among whites. I consider two measures of representation based on representative bureaucracy—the membership of Latinos and African-Americans on school boards and bias in the responsiveness of white school board members toward these two groups. Whites as the major racial group in the U.S. have been the subject of much intergroup relations research focusing on competition for scarce resources, perceived threat and group biases (e.g., Evans and Giles, 1986; Giles and Evans, 1985, 1986; Esses, Jackson and Armstrong, 1998), and I also focus on their racial behaviors as voters in school board elections and as school board members. I consider Latino immigration in this research because emerging evidence suggests that Latino immigration poses a growing threat to whites, leading them to shift their support from Latinos to a countervailing group, such as African-Americans (e.g., Meier and Stewart, 1991; Rocha, 2007). First, I examine whether Latino immigration into a community affects the support of white citizens for Latino or African-American membership on school boards. Second, I examine whether white school board members also are influenced by Latino immigration in their responsiveness to Latino and African-American parents. It is likely that the reactions of whites to Latino immigration are conditioned by their preexisting racial attitudes, so this dissertation also tests competing theories of community racial climate—group threat and group contact. I expect that racial tensions within a community should moderate the influence of Latino immigration on these two forms of Latino and African-American representation. Overall, this dissertation expands the study of representative bureaucracy by combining past research on community racial climates with conditions influencing minority representation. In addition to examining the determinants of passive representation, this dissertation links expectations of the racial behavior of white citizens with the behavior of white school board members by considering the possibility that school board members express “discriminatory intent” (Mendez and Grose, 2014) on non-policy related matters. A better understanding of the determinants of public officials’ personal biases should help to explain the targeting of substantive policy benefits to minorities, which is the focus of much other representative bureaucracy research. While I base my analysis of school board membership on inferences of white voter behavior from aggregate election results, I directly measure white school board member responsiveness using data gathered from a novel randomized field experiment and e-mail audit design. Representative bureaucracy researchers have called for more of this type of individual-level data to help explain minority advocacy (Bradbury and Kellough, 2011).

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration