Thesis advisor: R. Shep Melnick / The United States now has an extensive, publicly controlled, and bureaucratic system of election regulation. Until roughly a century ago, however, elections were viewed as private party contests subject to minimal state regulation. We examine how this changed, considering in particular the role played by the courts, given that for much of the nineteenth century they viewed the parties as private, constitutionally protected associations. We consider how and why the libertarian argument concerning free speech came to prominence in the campaign debate, and find that at first neither the reformers nor the courts at any level viewed this as a fundamental obstacle to--or even an issue to be considered in--the regulation of money in politics. This shift from a private to a public electoral system had a significant impact on American democracy that has not often been examined. To understand these changes, we examine the arguments put forth by advocates of cam-paign finance reform from the nineteenth to the latter part of the twentieth centuries. We focus on how the proponents justified these laws and how state and federal courts responded to these arguments, paying particular attention to court rulings on the constitutionality of these unprecedented statutes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to the evolution of their jurisprudence in this regard during the twentieth century. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

This bachelor thesis is a study and an evaluation of the planning and implementation of the targeted marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern" at a public library. The analysis is based on the following questions:  What goals does the library have with the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern"?  How has the library chosen to plan and implement the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern" and what role have the users had in this process?  What is the internal result of the library’s marketing campaign – how did the staff experience the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern"?  What is the external result – how did the target group, the parents of young children, experience the marketing campaign "Småbarnsföräldern"? The method is based on a case study of a single library with a series of interviews and document analysis. The study reveals that it´s difficult to plan a marketing campaign against a target group. The target group, the parents of young children, didn’t observe the marketing campaign, two informants had noticed the poster but didn’t pay much attention to it. No informant indicated that the campaign had prompted them to change their way of using the library. Lack of time is one reason.

Adopting ¡§Radical Actions¡¨ is the impression which Greenpeace gives to the outside world, and they are skilled at that way. When facing difference of culture, history, political, economic and society, what actions would this organization comes from west society take? China and Indonesia are the 1st the 3rd Greenhouse gases country, so this article puts them together to understand how Greenpeace faces different external environment and how it engages the environment campaign. This article figures that Greenpeace will hire local environmentalists; in China, Greenpeace is submissive to the authority, and it not only helps China become a renewable energy power, but push environmental laws and citizen environmental education. In Indonesia, Greenpeace respects local traditional culture, customs and provides the way to solve problems. It also contains its radical image to get the media attention, encouraging citizen to learn Greenpeace¡¦s actions. Because of different society situation, Greenpeace uses different methods between China and Indonesia, we can realize that not only radical actions Greenpeace takes, but adjusting their solution according to different surroundings.

In May 1968, a racially, geographically, and politically diverse coalition of poor people joined forces to make themselves visible to the nation and protest the unseen poverty they suffered from on a daily basis. Under the leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) between 3,000 and 5,000 African American, Mexican American, American Indian, Puerto Rican, and white Appalachian poor people caravanned to Washington, D.C., and built a temporary city--Resurrection City--on the symbolic space of the National Mall, where they remained for over six weeks as part of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign. The caravans and temporary shantytown brought poverty into the national spotlight, exposing the bleak conditions impoverished people experienced on a daily basis. In Resurrection City volunteers provided participants with social services and basic necessities they lacked at home, while participants conducted daily protests at nearby government agencies, demanding assistance for the basic need of housing, food, and jobs. The ultimate goal of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign was to produce a radical redistribution of wealth in the U.S., but most involved in the movement hoped, if nothing more, to expose the pervasiveness of poverty and persuade Congress to fund new programs and improve the administration and benefits of existing ones. This radical social experiment was the first national, multiracial anti-poverty movement of the era, yet it has received scant scholarly attention. "Civil Rights' 'Unfinished Business'" provides a comprehensive narrative of this significant yet neglected movement that reveals the complexity of national, grassroots, multiracial, class-based activism that challenged the nation to face the problem of poverty during the most tumultuous years of the era. Civil rights scholars tend to dismissively characterize the Poor People's Campaign (PPC) as the last gasp of the civil rights movement--a failed campaign with no substantial lasting consequences. However, this dissertation argues that rather than simply being Martin Luther King Jr.'s "last crusade," the PPC represents civil rights' "unfinished business." The problems this campaign tried to address--hunger, joblessness, homelessness, inadequate health care, a failed welfare system--still persist, and people of color, particularly women and children, continue to experience poverty and its effects disproportionately. / text

This thesis is concerned with British policy in relation to General Edmund Allenby's command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (E.E.F.) from June 1917 to November 1919. This thesis divides into two parts: until October 1918 the Palestine campaign of the E.E.F. is evaluated in terms of its position within wider British war strategy, and in particular it is shown how the campaign did very little to help Britain's efforts to defeat the Central powers during the First World War; with the armistice in October 1918 the focus is on the politfcal and imperial aspects of the battlefield victories by Allenby which resulted in the occupation by the E.E.F. of Palestine and Syria. These non-military concerns come to the fore in the post-war peace settlements, and it is shown how the usefulness of the Palestine campaign extended beyond the war's end to November 1919 when the E.E.F. withdrew from Syria. This thesis reveals that the Palestine campaign needs to be analysed not just for its contribution to the defeat of the Central powers, but that it had a non-military dimension which centred round the need to provide Britain with negotiating strength at the Paris Peace Conference so as to provide for long-term British imperial security. Allenby's operations to October 1918 are, therefore, examined for more than just their military significance, and in this work a complete analysis of the Palestine campaign is undertaken. This thesis shows how too often the existing literature on the Palestine campaign concentrates either on the purely military aspect, or focuses on the formation of the modern Middle East. What is typically left out is the connection between the two. It is shown that the Palestine campaign was Clausewitzian in that operations were used as a means to further political ends, and that these political concerns influenced the conduct of the campaign. Allenby's central role in these matters means that this thesis comments on his role and position, not just as a militaiy commander, but also in relation to the political and imperial aspects outlined above.

This dissertation focuses on designing new structural election models and applying modern estimation techniques to quantify policy reform questions. All three chapters use models that are based on individual decision-making and estimate the parameters using a novel data set of U.S. House of Representative elections. These models provide new opportunities to analyze and quantify election policy reforms. The first chapter utilizes a unique compilation of primary election expenditures to see if general election voters value the primary nomination signal. While producing new results on the relationships between primary elections and general elections and between candidate characteristics and vote shares, this model allows me to show that campaign finance reform can have an unintended consequence. A limit on expenditures would have little effect on the competitiveness of elections and substantially decrease voter turnout in the U.S. House elections. In contrast, it is shown that a mandatory public funding policy is predicted to increase competitiveness and increase voter turnout. The second chapter examines why unopposed candidates spend massive amounts on their campaign. The postulated answer is that U.S. House of Representative candidates are creating a barrier to entry to discourage candidates from opposing them in the next election. This barrier reduces competition in the election and limits the voters’ choices. An unbalanced panel of congressional districts is used to quantify how an incumbent’s expenditure in previous elections impacts the probability of running unopposed in a later election. The third chapter estimates the value of a congressional seat based on the observed campaign expenditures. Campaign expenditures are modeled as bids in an asymmetric all-pay auction. The model produces predictions on how much a candidate should spend based on the partisanship leaning of each district. The predictions and observed expenditures are then used to estimate the value of a congressional seat. Along with analyzing how expenditures would change with new campaign finance reforms, this model has the capability of quantifying the effect of redistricting. After 2010 Census results become available, the majority of states will redraw their congressional districts changing the distribution of partisan votes. This model can be used to quantify the effect that the change in voter distribution has on campaign expenditures. / text

This study investigated the challenges faced by implementers of VCT campaigns for higher education distance learning students. Qualitative and explorative approaches, using a case study, were employed as the research methodology. It has been concluded that the administrative planning procedures of VCT campaigns were not properly followed, which resulted in the following difficulties: defining the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, using limited resources, and the inability to reach all the students, in order to get them to actively participate in the campaigns. Lack of coordination of HIV and AIDS activities and the absence of monitoring and evaluation also impacted negatively on the success of VCT campaigns. This study recommends that VCT campaigns have a proper task team constituting of experts in VCT campaign operations, in order to strategically plan and coordinate all the campaigns' activities. The implementers should also monitor and evaluate these activities on a regular basis.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Maxwell E. McCombs. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A. in Hist.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1995. / Includes vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-110). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-141).