The influence of transnational actors (TNAs) on the policy process in most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries is widely acknowledged. Yet, studies examining this phenomenon focus mainly on the imposition of policy conditionality and under explore other mechanisms such as ideational processes, which mediate the relationship between national and transnational actors. Focusing on two poverty alleviation policies implemented in Ghana – Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), and Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) –, this study draws on the Transnational Policy Process (TPP) Framework to explore the ideational mechanisms that were instrumental in the development of these two social policies. In order to do so, qualitative case study research methods involving interviews and document reviews are used. This thesis argues that policymaking is multi-causal, which means that focusing exclusively on conditionalities without accounting for the role of ideational and other factors obscure our understanding of the policy process in developing countries. By examining the policy process in Ghana, this study ascertains that, beyond imposition of policies through conditionalities, TNAs also deploy other mechanisms that are mainly ideational in nature. Ideational channels include conferences, field trips, technical cooperation, training and capacity building, as well as collaboration with civil society organizations. Beyond these, TNAs use their memberships in policy structures, such as Ghana’s cross-sectoral planning groups (CSPGs) and sector working groups (SWGs) as a crucial platform to purvey policy innovations. Additionally, in some cases, the mechanisms are also coupled to improve effectiveness. The study also shows the mediating role of national institutions and contexts more generally, a role that makes the adoption of new policy ideas a necessary part of the policy process. Moreover, there is an indication that using ideational mechanisms promotes a sense of policy ownership among national policymakers who actively participate in shaping policies in partnership with transnational actors.

The central contention of this dissertation is that political scientists have largely ignored the importance of ideational frameworks for resolving problems of policy-making in times of significant upheaval. In order to illustrate the genesis and contribution of these frameworks, the three papers in my dissertation focus on a diachronic comparison of two moments in Russian history that encapsulate maximal uncertainty, covering the aftermath of the imperial collapses in 1917 and 1991. The first paper focuses on state- and nation-building in the North Caucasus, arguing that the debates between the Bolsheviks and other members of the Second International, particularly Otto Bauer, provided the Bolsheviks with a coherent platform that could largely stem the fissiparous tendencies of the region in a way that Boris Yeltsin and his teams were unable to do in the early 1990s. The second paper examines economic policy and finds the reverse to be true: the economic debates of the Second International largely ignored the problem of the peasantry and the exiled status of many of the leading Bolsheviks meant they were unable to articulate a sufficiently detailed policy to apply to the Russian case. The post-communists under the leadership of Yegor Gaidar, were able to draw on decades of economic research, particularly the Chicago and Virginia Schools, that provided the intellectual rationale for dismembering the Communist command-system, but equally important was the years that Gaidar and his team spent developing an alternative in the twilight years of communism. The final paper considers the legacy of ideational frameworks by considering the rule of Stalin and Putin, arguing that the tasks left unfulfilled provide a basis for regime consolidation by subsequent rulers. / Government

This dissertation traces Social Security policymaking through most of its post-enactment history in search of ideational processes and schema in path-dependent, path-shaping, and path-breaking modes of institutional persistence and change. The study is grounded in the historical institutionalist literature, specifically the recent debate about the utility of path dependence frameworks in incorporating institutional change, with a particular focus on ideas as stimuli. As a case for tracing path-dependent policy processes, Social Security is overbroad. This breadth requires focusing more narrowly on the interaction between the major coalitions, business/conservative and liberal/labor, on retirement and disability pension (but not health care) issues through the venue of Social Security Advisory Councils. Council is used as a catch-all label for the six-decade succession of (mostly) citizen groups appointed by the secretary of HEW, Senate Finance Committee, and, in one case, the president to deliberate questions of Social Security policy and recommend changes, often enacted into law. A pattern-matching analysis points to a moderate level of path dependence, indicating that the exchange of ideas between coalitions fits the larger consensual pattern of give and take around an existing arrangement. An ideational narrative reveals early negotiations over the emphasis placed on equity versus adequacy, with manifestly ideational exchanges in the 1996 Council's deliberations marking a turning point in the coalitional interaction. A key implication of this research for the application of path dependence frameworks to U.S. political institutions like Social Security is to buttress moderate path dependence arguments, for instance, those advanced by Hacker and Pierson (2002), and to discount the relevance of path-shaping narratives that have been fashioned from European examples (Cox 2004). Yet the research also modifies understanding of path dependence as a self-perpetuating function of increasing returns by identifying an ideational strand that bound both coalitions to social insurance principles. Path-breaking developments apparent in the 1996 Council further implicated new ideas as institutional factors contributing to the loss of historical consensus on Social Security, bolstering the notion of ideational processes as an element of institutional persistence and pressing the argument for further research into ideas as dynamic elements fostering institutional change. / Ph. D.

The Republic of Cyprus is often thought of as a tourist destination and hot spot for sun thirsty expats. Hidden from plain sight amongst holiday homes and blue waters, it may thus seem counterintuitive that Cyprus is home to a toxic ethno-nationalist political conflict that has mandated one of the longest running United Nations peace interventions to date. Still, life in Cyprus does not resemble a conflict zone. This beckon the conceptual debate of peace as more than the absence of war and raises questions of how peace is perceived by involved actors and subsequently, how it is influenced by subjective ideas. With negotiations stuck in a cycle of stalling and reassuming, the peace process is often described as the Cypriot deadlock. The cause of the deadlock is debated without consensus, but frequently boils down to disagreements over policies and issues of intercommunal mistrust. Looking to nuance these notions, this thesis aims to explain the deadlock ideationally by analysing ideas of peace as expressed by political elites and assess how they influence the peace process. The research presents a typological method for mapping ideational biases corresponding to meta-ideas of International relations theory. The central argument of this thesis is that the Cypriot peace process is deadlocked due to divergent ideational biases of political elites, rendering the rationales and strategies (the ideational underpinnings) behind the peace process ideationally unviable. This desktop study of Cyprus is based of primary data from the official websites of the Republic of Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and the United Nations, published between January of 2019 and April of 2021.

No description available.

The dissertation attempts to explain the EU and China’s interventions or non-interventions in humanitarian crises. The research is motivated by the high-profile debate on humanitarian intervention in international fora, and the concepts of normative power and norms contestation. The main research question here is to what extent their professed principles and norms, for instance, Responsibility to Protect vis-à-vis Non-Interference in domestic affairs, have affected the policy-makings of the EU and China. After the reviews of the two international actors’ positions, principles, and policy-making processes on crisis intervention, the dissertation traces two empirical cases, the Darfur and Libyan crises. The research findings reveal that the ideational factors have permissive, regulative, and incentive effects on the EU and China’s policy-makings on crisis intervention. In return, the empirical study provides new reflections on the normative powers, as well as the EU and China’s global roles. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study investigates the ideational metafunction in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in order to explore the characterisation of Okonkwo, Unoka, Ezinma, Ekwefi and Mr. Brown. The study confines itself to the following objectives, namely, to identify process-types attributed to characters; identify the transitivity patterns embedded in process-types attributed to characters; establish the significance of transitivity patterns attributed in the characterisation; and establish the significance of process-type collocations in projecting the development of characters in the story. The present undertaking is drawn from the theoretical frontiers of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and the analytical lens of transitivity model, backed by the methodological locale of Corpus Linguistics (CL). The study reveals that although Okonkwo, Unoka, Ezinma, Ekwefi and Mr. Brown are attributed material processes (MaPs); mental processes (MePs); relational processes (RePs); and verbal processes (VePs), significant differences exist not only in how the allotted process-types are mapped per character but also on how they impact on characterisation. / 2023

I dagens samhälle blir kreativitet och nytänkande allt viktigare för företags överlevnad och konkurrenskraft. Därmed har även behovet av kreativa personer på arbetsplatsen ökat. Studiens syfte var att undersöka om kreativitet, genom Runcos ideational scale, kunde kopplas till något personlighetsdrag i Big Five samt till hur pass kreativt en person arbetar. Detta undersöktes genom en enkät med 66 frågor i 3 delar. Enkäten lämnades ut i både pappersform och som webenkät till ett stort antal företag. Resultaten av totalt 152 enkäter, som analyserades med hjälp av korrelationer och regressioner, bekräftade alla hypoteser utom en; samvetsgrannhet har en negativ korrelation med kreativitet. Även oväntade kopplingar kunde dras, såsom att det fanns en positiv korrelation mellan vänlighet och hur pass kreativt en person arbetar. Studien resulterade i slutsatsen att vissa personlighetsdrag har betydelse för hur kreativ en person är samt hur pass kreativt en person arbetar. / Sofia Tikkanen

I dagens samhälle blir kreativitet och nytänkande allt viktigare för företags överlevnad och konkurrenskraft. Därmed har även behovet av kreativa personer på arbetsplatsen ökat. Studiens syfte var att undersöka om kreativitet, genom Runcos ideational scale, kunde kopplas till något personlighetsdrag i Big Five samt till hur pass kreativt en person arbetar. Detta undersöktes genom en enkät med 66 frågor i 3 delar. Enkäten lämnades ut i både pappersform och som webenkät till ett stort antal företag. Resultaten av totalt 152 enkäter, som analyserades med hjälp av korrelationer och regressioner, bekräftade alla hypoteser utom en; samvetsgrannhet har en negativ korrelation med kreativitet. Även oväntade kopplingar kunde dras, såsom att det fanns en positiv korrelation mellan vänlighet och hur pass kreativt en person arbetar. Studien resulterade i slutsatsen att vissa personlighetsdrag har betydelse för hur kreativ en person är samt hur pass kreativt en person arbetar.

Abstract Some gender scholars who have studied Western welfare regimes have argued that dominant cultural assumptions about women (ideational forces) should be examined in order to understand the development of these regimes. On the other hand, gender scholars working on Iran’s social policy argue that religious assumptions and institutions have shaped the position of women in Iran’s welfare regime. However, none of these researchers have thoroughly and explicitly examined the role of ideas in the development of Iran’s social policy. In contrast, this thesis studies the role of ideational forces in the formation of the only Iranian social assistance program designed exclusively for women, Empowering Women Without Guardians (EWWG). It also examines the connection of these forces to non-ideational factors in order to further elucidate their impact on policymaking. As argued, multiple cultural assumptions influence policymaking on women’s issues in Iran. Traditional cultural assumptions reinforce and legitimize the unequal position of women in society, whereas reformist and secularist ideas assume that men and women are equal. As claimed, the interaction of these assumptions with institutional and structural forces empowers some of these ideas over others at different stages of policymaking regarding the formation of EWWG: Iran’s laws (institutional forces) have reinforced previously dominant traditional assumptions about women (ideational forces) in the problem stream; in contrast, reformist interpretations of structural factors challenged previously prevailing traditional ideas and resulted in the adoption of a policy, which is more consistent with reformist and secularist ideas. The relative power of these assumptions helps explain both policy continuity and change in Iran’s context of policymaking on women’s issues.