This thesis offers an interpretation of Royalist literature of the first civil war. It particularly addresses the importance of spatial metaphors and material realities to loyalist notions of identity and meaning.I illustrate how royalist space was predicated upon scientific and mathematical notions of authority and hierarchy, and how this sense of 'absolute space' inflected royalist conceptions of a variety of other locations: gender, society, language, the public. The thesis traces how Charles attempted to use economic, political and juridical measures to create a context in which he could impose certain sociospatial relations and structures of identity. Proclamations and royal protocols polemically reconfigured the institutional life of the country. Licensing of the presses provided a controlled textual mediation of information and fostered particular definitions of national identity. Against this background discourse Charles and his court created a model of Royalism which inflected and created social relations and in particular notions of allegiance. Modes of behaviour that seemed outside the bounds of institutionally and socially defined normality were caricatured as external, alien and other. The model of Royalism I postulate throws into new relief studies of Parliamentary texts, and restructures our thinking about allegiance, text and identity during the Civil War period. My thesis falls into two sections. The opening two chapters establish the material contexts and constraints of publication during the war. Chapter one looks in depth at the relocation of the court within the city of Oxford, considering the institutional and political manifestations of this movement. Chapter two analyses censorship and licensing, circulation and the status of text. The second part of the thesis considers a wide variety of texts published at Oxford, considering specific modes (panegyric, elegy) and forms (speeches, satires, epic, topographical verse). These works are analysed by reference to the contexts outlined in the opening section. By considering tracts, newsbooks, sermons, institutional reform, painting, poetry, hitherto unconsidered manuscript material, political theory, translation and linguistic textbooks I contextualise in depth and further our understanding of Royalist culture.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-235).

Thèse--Universit́e de Toulouse. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-155).

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / The relationship between the executive and the legislature in South Africa is determined by the Constitution. The study focuses on the separation of powers in a single party-dominant system and examines the role of the Leader of Government Business in parliamentary processes. The Leader of Government Business is appointed by the President in terms of Section 91(4) of the Constitution. The role is outlined in the terms of National Assembly Rule (150), while the functions have been developed over time since 1994. Though an executive function an office in parliament was established to act as conduit between the executive and the legislature on matters relating to the legislative and oversight processes. The office mainly fulfills its role by monitoring government‟s legislative programme and ensuring that government‟s priorities are achieved. Over the past 15 years, the office of the LOGB has developed into one that performs a dual function supporting both the executive and the legislature. Parliament relies more and more on this office in executing its oversight responsibilities with regard to the functions of programming in ensuring the availability of the executive, tracking matters of executive compliance and tracking vacancies in institutions that support democracy. The study employed a combination of research methods. It used a desk top study approach by consulting relevant literature on the subject matter. Interviews were conducted with both politicians and relevant officials in the South African Parliament and the House of Commons in Britain to gauge their perceptions, knowledge and experiences in respect of the role of the executive and the legislature in the legislative and oversight processes. Reports of Portfolio and Select Committees on deliberations during the legislative and oversight processes were consulted.

Canada’s federal prison population has been rising for the past 10 years. This is perplexing given Canada’s national official crime rate has been declining since the 1970’s. One possible explanation for the rising prison population could be related to the restrictive measures imposed on parole policies during the last forty years. This thesis intends to analyze the recent parliamentary discourses surrounding recent legislative changes brought to parole by the conservative government. In doing so, a document analysis is conducted on the Parliamentary debates pertaining to section 6 and section 7 of Bill C-10 as well as the content of the amendments within section 6 and section 7 of Bill C-10. The purpose of the document analysis is to analyze the themes within these documents and determine whether or not these themes represent a potential change in the punitive approach towards parole. Given that a more punitive approach could have negative impacts on certain offenders and on society in general, this thesis aims to better understand the discourses and values of the Parliamentary debate participants’ changes to the legislation and the potential impacts these restrictions may have for Canada’s federal prison population.

Several scholars have identified institutional and regulatory conditions under which Information Communication Technologies (ICT) reforms can accomplish positive public policy outcomes. This literature pays little attention, however, to the role of parliaments in these reforms. The institutional factors determining the degree and nature of parliamentary participation in ICT sector reforms in Africa is what this thesis examines. Drawing from the political economy tradition, this thesis explores the interplay between the executive, the parliament and the various sectoral interests that determine ICT sector reforms in developing countries. It does so by placing parliament in a conceptual framework that combines the concept of ICT as a complex ecosystem with that of a constellation of institutions. The gathered empirical evidence is studied through this conceptual lens to build the cases of parliamentary participation in Kenya and South Africa - two of the most dynamic ICT markets in sub-Saharan Africa - which are then analysed comparatively. Some of the information is gathered through a self-assessment survey by members of the ICT parliamentary committees and complemented by high-level interviews with the main sector players. The findings are triangulated with those from an extensive document analysis. This thesis contextualises institutional analysis in specific political circumstances of the two countries in order to understand the relevance of parliament in sector reforms. The findings have important implications for our understanding of structural and institutional constraints on parliaments in developing countries and nascent democracies. Parliaments lack capacity to simply fulfill their legislative and oversight roles, let alone creating an enabling environment for innovative public policy, sector investment and public interest outcomes as required by this dynamic sector in any modern, globalised economy. Systematic coding of the data revealed national governance and institutional arrangements as key determinants of an ICT ecosystem that adapts to local and international conditions, confirming parliament as not simply a neutral legal structure but a significant power broker, reflecting competing interests at play. The formal legal system in both countries is uneven and underutilized, ineffective in achieving robustly-contested public interest outcomes. In order to manage political interests, parliament structures and serves principal agent-relationships, vetoes ICT policy and decision-making processes, links interest groups to government and party agendas, resolves conflicts and, sometimes, builds consensus among key players. The examination of institutional designs of both parliaments identifies critical capacity deficits that are at the heart of the negative outcomes in national legislative and oversight processes. In South Africa, the reason for these deficits is primarily that the parliamentary system promotes political party and executive dominance, which undermine multi-party and participatory structure of parliamentary processes to achieve party preferences and control outcomes. In Kenya, whilst the combination of distinct separation of powers and a constituency-based electoral system provides a legal basis for greater parliamentary accountability, the highly fragmented sector arrangements compounded by lack of internal capacity to utilize parliamentary instruments and mechanisms constrain parliament's participation. These weak institutional arrangements and designs, in both Kenya and South Africa, limit independence of parliament from the executive and sometimes industry, compromising the parliamentary oversight and visionary leadership expected from specialized portfolio committees. This calls for a transformation of arrangements to uphold and reinforce constitutional mandates that give parliament the power and ability to fulfill its role in policy reforms.

No description available.

No / Many current threats to security arising from terrorism, 'rogue' states and civil wars are highly complex and often transnational in nature and effect. Such threats can no longer be meaningfully addressed at the national level alone but require an international response. Since the end of the Cold War, the use of force under international auspices (UN, NATO, EU) has increased substantially. However, such actions have not necessarily been accompanied by improvements in their democratic accountability. Pre-existing problems and inadequacies of parliamentary oversight of armed forces and use of force at the national level of many democratic states are mirrored, and even magnified, at the international level. The effect of imperfect democratic controls at the national level and the challenges to provide transparent and accountable multilateral responses results in the so-called `double democratic deficit¿ of the international use of force. Each chapter in this innovative work analyses the challenges of parliamentary and democratic supervision of international security structures and puts forward proposals on how to improve democratic accountability of multinational responses to complex security challenges.

Isaiah Berlin pensait que la démocratie libérale se fonde sur le pluralisme radical. Érigeant le « scepticisme » en « valeur éternelle », il définissait le libéralisme comme le fait d'accepter les opinions divergentes et « d'admettre que ce sont peut-être vos adversaires qui ont raison ». Dans toute démocratie libérale, ce scepticisme se traduit entre autre par l'existence d'une opposition parlementaire. Au début du siècle dernier, Fahlbeck expliquait que « l'élément permanent » du parlementarisme, « c'est l'antagonisme entre le parti de gouvernement et de l'opposition ». Le juriste Adolf Arndt définissait la démocratie comme « un État avec opposition » : « le rang accordé à l'opposition détermine, dans une démocratie, le rang du parlement ». Alors qu'elle a été reconnue tôt dans les pays anglo-saxons, sur le continent l'opposition est longtemps restée ignorée du droit. C'est pourquoi il convient de voir comment la France et l'Allemagne, deux systèmes continentaux suffisamment proches pour être comparés mais simultanément différents, ont abordé le problème. Si dans un cas comme dans l'autre l'opposition parlementaire est « reconnue », elle ne l'est qu'« imparfaitement ». Dans quelle mesure le droit peut-il encadrer et institutionnaliser l'opposition parlementaire, fruit de contingences politiques ? Afin qu'elle remplisse efficacement ses missions de tribune, de contrôle et de contre-pouvoir, le droit peut-il contraindre l'opposition ? L'opposition parlementaire exerce-t-elle les mêmes fonctions selon que l'on se trouve de ce côté-ci ou de ce côté-là du Rhin ? Par quels canaux ces fonctions tendent-elles, le cas échéant, à être remplies ? / Parliamentary opposition is certainly an evidence of parliamentarism, but it is not easily defined because of its extreme institutional and behavioural variability, to such an extent that constitutional law fails to be realized. This opposition is partially unwritten as its foundation and practice have preceded its the official recognition by strict law. But, by definition, formal law cannot cover all the oppositional phenomenon’s configuration possibilities, as proven by the importance of conventions beyond written law. Despite everything, its institutionalization was finally required. The vocation of constitutional law is indeed to fix fulcrums for political game, but the question of the juridicity of such a phenomenon must be dealt with. The aim of this work consists of underlining the delicate connection between constitutional law and the parliamentary opposition in Germany and France. If law struggles (imperfectly) to capture it, then in return the opposition mobilizes the juridical instruments that are placed at its disposition. However, this relationship is ambiguous, since constitutional law does not limit itself to writing and because some determinant variables have influenced the implementation of juridical texts. Thus the “performance” of the oppositional phenomenon is not assured, even if it was recognized by the law. The examination of the legal significance of the opposing minority tends to reveal the intrinsic tensions of constitutional law and its political character. Far from being purely static, normativy seems to conceal a certain dynamic.Keywords : parliamentary opposition, system of parliamentary government, parliamentarism, constitutional law, parliamentary law, political law, constitutional order.