<p>The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has long been recognized as a major engine behind the European integration project for its role in passing judgments expanding the powers and scope of the European Community, while member states have consistently reacted negatively to judgments limiting their sovereignty or granting the Community new powers. It is this interplay between the Court and member state interests that cause the ECJ to pose a threat to the future of integration. Using a combined framework of neofunctionalism and rational choice new institutionalism, six landmark cases and the events surrounding them are studied, revealing the motivations behind the Court’s and member states’ actions. From the analysis of these cases is created a set of criteria which can be used to predict when the ECJ will make an activist decision broadening the powers of the Community at the expense of the member states as well as when, and how, member states will respond negatively.</p>

This thesis tries to identify the new city-governance mechanisms deployed in the Western Aegean small town of Seferihisar, following the town&lsquo / s membershipto the international Cittaslowassociation of small towns. The membership has quickly transformed the place into a yearlong touristic destination, while leading several other agendas for the improvement of theurbanquality of life in the town. Regarding Turkey&lsquo / s EU Accession Process, this thesis regards Cittaslow as a multi-scalar meta-governance mechanism, which guides the municipalities of small towns in rescaling their urban governance as tailor-fit to their corresponding sociospatial specificities. The thesis argues that the social-democratic municipality in Seferihisar plays a key energizing role in the

The aim of this study was to examine the view that officials involved in youth unemployment have on the significance of collaboration between organizations working with unemployed youth. The study was based on nine qualitative interviews with officials from PES offices and from municipalities such as job coaches. The results were analyzed based on qualitative content analysis. The analysis led to two different themes: conditions and the individual. In the analysis two different theories were used, new institutionalism and Lipsky's theory about street-level bureaucrats. The analysis led us to the conclusion that these officials find collaboration important both for their work and for the unemployed youth and that they collaborate with the individual’s interests in mind.

This study develops an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding institutional change and resistance to change towards sustainability. The research rests on two leading theories of change within the social and ecological sciences: the New Institutionalism and Panarchy theory. A theoretical framework integrating insights from the two theories is applied in an analysis of the development of the Town of Caledon’s mineral resources policies. The research suggests that institutional change and inertia are interconnected and interdependent and, depending on the case and context, they may interact with each other across spatial and temporal scales. There may be overlap in the emergence of pressures for institutional inertia and change across temporal and spatial scales, and both institutional change and inertia may be present when opportunities arise for renegotiation of the “rules of the game”. Results show that the two theories share many concepts (e.g., thresholds or tipping points, fast and slow moving variables, etc.) to aid in understanding the dynamics of institutional and ecological realms. Moreover, the integrated theoretical framework can help to explain the dynamics of institutional systems in a way that overcomes the limitations in Panarchy and the New Institutionalism theories by themselves. Key concepts within Panarchy theory (e.g., regime shifts, etc.) complement the New Institutionalism’s ability to capture important contextual factors influencing institutional change and inertia, and help to overcome the current limitation in its capacity to explain the nonlinear, multi-scalar dynamics of institutional systems. In turn, key concepts within the New Institutionalism (e.g., uncertainty, etc.) complement and enrich Panarchy theory’s capacity to illustrate the social and economic dimensions of institutional dynamics. Results of the case analysis demonstrate that a range of overlapping, historic and immediate, local-to-provincial factors (e.g., socioeconomic costs, uncertainty, path dependent effects, etc.) and institutional elements (e.g., interests and values, power and resources, issues of fit, etc.) drove institutional change and inertia in the development of Caledon’s mineral resources policies. The slow moving institutional variables in Caledon’s case (core Town, industry and provincial government values and interests) were perhaps the greatest determinants of institutional change and resistance to change towards sustainability. The story of the development of Caledon’s mineral resources policies, then, is about the resilience and resistance efforts of a small Town committed to maintaining core community values under the constraints of a resilient and resistant, ecologically destructive and inequitable institutional system.

In the past few years many businesses has suffered some serious setbacks and some banks have even undergone bankruptcy. That’s why Corporate Governance (CG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have increasingly become very important in the recent years. This thesis investigates the role played by CG and CSR in business expansion. Further it examines what is CG and CSR and how it can bring about growth in a business. For better understanding of the theories we used a case study approach and chose Grameen Bank (GB) a Bangladeshi bank because of its tremendous success and growth over the years even in the middle of the turbulent financial crisis. We wish to find out the role CG and CSR played in this success critically. The expected contributions of this work will be to see the visibility of CG CSR in a bank like GB which has deviated from conventional banking models and how this has influenced its growth.

This study develops an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding institutional change and resistance to change towards sustainability. The research rests on two leading theories of change within the social and ecological sciences: the New Institutionalism and Panarchy theory. A theoretical framework integrating insights from the two theories is applied in an analysis of the development of the Town of Caledon’s mineral resources policies. The research suggests that institutional change and inertia are interconnected and interdependent and, depending on the case and context, they may interact with each other across spatial and temporal scales. There may be overlap in the emergence of pressures for institutional inertia and change across temporal and spatial scales, and both institutional change and inertia may be present when opportunities arise for renegotiation of the “rules of the game”. Results show that the two theories share many concepts (e.g., thresholds or tipping points, fast and slow moving variables, etc.) to aid in understanding the dynamics of institutional and ecological realms. Moreover, the integrated theoretical framework can help to explain the dynamics of institutional systems in a way that overcomes the limitations in Panarchy and the New Institutionalism theories by themselves. Key concepts within Panarchy theory (e.g., regime shifts, etc.) complement the New Institutionalism’s ability to capture important contextual factors influencing institutional change and inertia, and help to overcome the current limitation in its capacity to explain the nonlinear, multi-scalar dynamics of institutional systems. In turn, key concepts within the New Institutionalism (e.g., uncertainty, etc.) complement and enrich Panarchy theory’s capacity to illustrate the social and economic dimensions of institutional dynamics. Results of the case analysis demonstrate that a range of overlapping, historic and immediate, local-to-provincial factors (e.g., socioeconomic costs, uncertainty, path dependent effects, etc.) and institutional elements (e.g., interests and values, power and resources, issues of fit, etc.) drove institutional change and inertia in the development of Caledon’s mineral resources policies. The slow moving institutional variables in Caledon’s case (core Town, industry and provincial government values and interests) were perhaps the greatest determinants of institutional change and resistance to change towards sustainability. The story of the development of Caledon’s mineral resources policies, then, is about the resilience and resistance efforts of a small Town committed to maintaining core community values under the constraints of a resilient and resistant, ecologically destructive and inequitable institutional system.

The idea of ¡¥semi-presidential system¡¦ was proposed by Duverger (1980), and it aroused substantial following studies. Newly rising democratic countries have also adopted semi-presidential system. After 1990, Taiwan also adopted a semi-presidential systems right after the constitution revised. As the member of the system, the understanding and improvement of theoretical and practical for the system is necessary and timing. This study will plan to compare the constitutional frameworks and operational types of semi-presidential countries between France and Taiwan. We try to find the variables that influence the constitutional operation. We expect this study can provide a causal model for the further empirical research. After compare the constitutional statues and its operations difference between France and Taiwan, we have the constitutional statues boundary of semi-presidential system. We also have the constitutional operations basic rule by constitutional interpretation. To be a normative constitution, that is, its norms govern the political process or the power process adjusts itself to the norms, constitutional operations should be operate between the ¡§boundary¡¨ and the ¡§basic rule¡¨. We expect this study can provide a dialogue platform between political science and law and construct an operative standard for judicial review.

In recent years, methodology of new institutionalism has gradually been the crucial feature of the researches on constitutional system. By pointing out the political actors who affect constitutional operation, the context of institution that constructs constitutional rules, and the social structure accompanied with constitutional culture, etc., the new institutionalism even replaces the old institutionalism in constitutional analysis. However, due to incompatible roots in methodology, new institutionalism has raised more and more disputes. In addition, derived from the same origin that presented historically and methodically, new institutionalism and its old counterpart share some assumptions that make it difficult to divide on institutional approach. Therefore, by the comparative viewpoint of old and new institutionalism approaches, this thesis will integrate them into the analysis of institutional change, and apply to the constitutional change in R.O.C. (1947-2007). Through this way, this thesis will base on the design and operation of the constitutional system of R.O.C. and carry on cause and effect analysis according to the historical context. By several specific time sequences of the path of institutional change, include: crucial moments and changes of the system origin, institutional structure and crisis met, interactive actors¡¦ preferences and tactics, this thesis will also plan to observe the starting point, development of the path and assess its prospect. Moreover, abide by the old and new institutionalism approaches are derived from the same origin, meanwhile, the concepts of ¡§constitution¡¨ and ¡§constitutionalism¡¨ also do combine with them, the purpose of this thesis is to confirm the dimensions of ¡§constitutional law¡¨, ¡§constitutional operation¡¨ and ¡§spirit of constitutionalism¡¨ in Taiwan¡¦s semi-presidential system. Thus, by the comparative viewpoint of old and new institutionalism approaches, this thesis will analyze three main problems of Taiwan¡¦s constitutional operations revealed by the president-premier-Legislative Yuan interactions through the perspectives of ¡§constitutional law¡¨, ¡§constitutional operation¡¨ and ¡§spirit of constitutionalism.¡¨ The concern of this thesis is to establish a new analytical framework which could find out constitutional problems effectively, and propose the solutions.

This study analyzes the process of the diffusion of structures and practices in an organizational setting using the theory of new institutionalism as the theoretical basis. The explanation of the diffusion process has been subject to major variations due to epistemological and ontological reasons. Former theories of organizational reality looked at organizations as their sole units of analyses and accounted for the diffusion process accordingly / however, today, it is widely observed and accepted that organizational behavior is shaped by historical and environmental factors. This investigation aims to provide evidence for how certain structures and practices diffuse through organizational settings while others do not. Consequently, a qualitative design was conducted to explore the diffusion process in the case of the Council of Higher Education, a high-level bureaucratic organization in Turkey. Fifteen key informants, present or former university rectors and members of the Council, were interviewed and the accumulated data were analyzed qualitatively. Also, the findings were matched and supported with relevant documents analyzed additionally. The findings drawn from the investigation indicate that the emergence of the Council implicates a pattern visible throughout the history of Turkish higher education. The Council is spotted as an important agent in redefining Turkish higher education and thus creating a new organizational field for it. Yet, highly dynamic and interactive face of today&rsquo / s higher education calls for reconsideration of the Council and its functions. A major conclusion that can be reached in this context is that the issue of legitimacy depends on the satisfaction of several demands and expectations at various levels. Therefore, even a formal and regulative organization, such as the Council of Higher Education is prone to the pressures of the organizational field it operates within and is called upon to redefine its structures and implementations accordingly in order to secure its legitimacy.

<p>This paper provides a study about human trafficking with sexual motives performed in European states and the measures taken from national, international and Non-Governmental organizations with the purpose to oppose human trafficking. According to the UN human trafficking has increased and shows tendencies to continue escalating, regardless of the measures taken by various organisations. In this study, four countries with associations to human trafficking have been chosen and organisations related to these countries are studied. The purpose is to inquire into how these organisations work against human trafficking and which objectives and guidelines these organisations strive for together with their values. The aim is to find out which result the organizations efforts gets and if, according to my hypothesis, the efforts oppose themselves. If so, what could be a possible explanation?</p><p>The central conclusions after performing this study is that the policies from international organisations given to institutions at state level are not always implemented. There are also difference in the measures taken by each state and their valuations. Every actor’s behaviour in a network is important and scarcity in one actors behaviour leads to a weakened result. One of the studied states has shown tendencies of disregarding the issue which effects collaboration between the studied organizations.</p>