Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This study sought to examine Botswana’s most recent attempts at public sector reform, which, to a greater extent than its previous endeavours have reflected global trends. Specifically, it sought to evaluate the impact of performance management, privatization and anti-corruption reforms on the country’s public sector. The dissertation has primarily consisted of desktop documentary review of relevant literature and provides an extensive assessment of public sector reforms trends in developed and developing countries, as the background against which examination of the three reform initiatives undertaken by Botswana is made.

This dissertation uncovers the underlying structure of inter-organizational information sharing in the public sector from three different theoretical perspectives. Drawing on theories in social networks, policy networks and public management, this study answers the following questions: 1) why are city governments more likely to share information with one another when they belong to the same county? 2) when do local governments share information with one another under a competitive environment? 3) what motivational bases exist for public managers to willingly learn from other governments’ experiences, which, in turn, will lead to more frequent information sharing between governments. To answer the first question, one chapter explores why and when county jurisdiction helps city governments overcome the collective action dilemma in inter-governmental information sharing based on the insight of the ‘strength of strong ties’ hypothesis that ‘people help their friends first, acquaintances later (chum strategy)’. Using exponential random graph model (ERGM), the analysis of economic development information (EDI) sharing patterns among 34 cities in the Orlando metropolitan area confirms that EDI sharing between strong-tied municipal governments, ones sharing the same county jurisdiction, is more likely to take place under two specific conditions: 1) when cities are expected to get more collective demand for the information from others and 2) when they have greater demand for the information. This finding suggests that county jurisdiction boundary functions as a barrier in the exchange of EDI between municipal governments. Regarding the second question, a subsequent chapter investigates how inter-governmental competition affects the tendency of local actors sharing information with one another. Informal policy networks and formal contracts are distinctive governing mechanisms for addressing collaboration risks. Institutional collective action (ICA) theory suggests that a formal contract will be preferred over an informal policy network in inter-governmental relationships, as partner’s defection risk increases under a competitive environment. This paper builds on and extends this proposition by advancing and testing a more complete explanation for local government’s preference of one mechanism over another and investigating how it varies depending on the level of competition in each dyadic local government relationship. This is demonstrated through the development of a substantive measurement strategy for dyadic economic development competition between governments, as well as the assessment of the validity and reliability of the measure. Estimation of QAP network regressions reveals that local governments prefer a formal contract over an informal policy network with their partners when the competition between them increases. However, competition does not necessarily reduce the use of informal policy networks between local actors but rather results in more frequent informal networks between them. The conclusion discusses the practical implications of the findings for government managers and how the measurement approach advanced in this study can be applied to studies of inter-governmental relations in other policy arenas. Lastly, this dissertation additionally explores how public service motivation (PSM) is associated with government officials’ willingness to learn from other governments’ practices drawing on the debates of public sector benchmarking and PSM theory. Benchmarking between local governments has become an important topic in public administration. In benchmarking practice, local government officials play important roles in deciding what they learn, who they learn from and how to adopt and adapt to the lessons. However, less attention has been paid to why local government officials to willingly take lessons from their peer governments. Focusing on a particular type of motivational basis, public service motivation (PSM), this study assesses how PSM and its four dimensions are associated with local government officials’ willingness to learn from other governments’ practices. / A Dissertation submitted to the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / 2019 / August 27, 2019. / County Jurisdiction, Information Sharing, Intergovernmental Competition, PSM, Public Sector / Includes bibliographical references. / Richard C. Feiock, Professor Directing Dissertation; Robert Mark Isaac, University Representative; Frances Stokes Berry, Committee Member; Ralph S. Brower, Committee Member.

Discretionary decision-making plays a major role in juvenile transfer to adult court, yet little is known about how and why juvenile transfer is used. In particular, although substantial evidence exists that race and ethnicity play a role in the juvenile transfer decision, little is known about whether contextual race factors impact the decision. This study was designed to examine whether racial threat factors, operationalized by both percent Black and racial residential segregation, are related to increased use of juvenile transfer policies. Racial residential segregation is put forth as a key, yet often overlooked, component in understanding the race-punishment nexus. To examine these relationships, all youth eligible for transfer pursuant to statutory criteria (N=132,615 youth) were examined within the context of the 67 Florida counties. Results are overall supportive of the racial threat hypothesis. Due to the large group of youth eligible for transfer between 2003-4, the work also takes a policy focus. In particular, error rates, consistency, and monitoring of juvenile transfer policies are considered, as well as policy recommendations. These findings can enrich the work of scholars, policy researchers, and practitioners. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / June 19, 2018. / Criminal Justice Policy, Juvenile Transfer, Juvenile Waiver, Prosecutorial Discretion, Racial Disparities, Systems Theory / Includes bibliographical references. / Thomas G. Blomberg, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joyce L. Carbonell, University Representative; Kevin M. Beaver, Committee Member; Jillian J. Turanovic, Committee Member.

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda and practice has been a part of the global, academic and corporate debate for many decades. Policymakers are increasingly viewing the private sector as an important role player in contributing towards meeting the socio-economic developmental challenges. The research study has assessed the role of CSR in South Africa's mining industry with a focus on the basic education system; by unpacking the objectives and the key challenges of the provincial department of basic education in the North West and Limpopo provinces. This research study has made use of Anglo American Platinum's Corporate Social Investment (CSI) education programmes as a case study to further gauge the impact of CSR engagement and key challenges that prevail in the execution of CSI education programmes. The challenges pertain to poor coordination and cooperation, poor consultation and strategic planning and lack of consistent review of monitoring and evaluation of all the stakeholders involved. Therefore, the paper argues that company's interests, incentives and motives to engage in CSI education programmes is twofold: one; CSI is used to project public relations and as a 'window-dressing' exercise and two; businesses are gradually viewing CSI as a long-term investment towards social and human capital that will benefit the corporations in the future.

Renewed scholarly interest on chieftaincy hardly pays attention to the interaction between traditional leadership and modern democratic citizens. It is the state-chieftaincy relationship that has dominated much of the current research on traditional leadership in modern Africa. Even work that has been done on traditional leadership and the modern democratic state is mostly qualitative and speculative. This has led to the field being flooded by mostly qualitative and speculative assumptions on traditional rule. Botswana has not been immune to this anomaly. By employing public opinion data from the Afrobarometer surveys of 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2008, the study hopes to contribute towards the limited empirical research on traditional leaders, particularly in Botswana, which will make a valuable contribution to a more profound and grounded picture of traditional leadership in an era of heightened democratization resulting from economic development and modernization.

Public expenditure control is vital in countries because it is a key instrument for ensuring effective government strategic planning and policy priorities. In many countries, public expenditure control has been inadequately implemented because of weak accounting systems, a weak cash management system and a weak flow of information, among others, despite public finance management reforms implemented in developing countries. Public expenditure management has been a concern in Ghana's public service because of weak budget formulation, weak monitoring and evaluation, and an ineffective flow of information between the ministry of finance (MOF) and the key public institutions. The Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) has been introduced in Ghana's public service but it has been faced with challenges after the initial stage of implementation of the reforms. This study sought to examine why public finance management reforms appears to have failed to control public expenditure in Ghana, by investigating the ministry of finance's (MOF) role in implementing the MTEF. The study employs a qualitative method using interviews with officials from the MOF to examine the role of the MOF in implementing the MTEF. The key themes that the researcher sought to test through the research as potential factors behind poor expenditure control included the coordination amongst other government institutions, weak planning and forecasting, monitoring and evaluation capacity, information management systems and cash management systems, the political environment and the commitment control. The findings revealed that, despite the importance of political environment and the commitment control, planning and forecasting, the monitoring and evaluation capacity, information management system and the cash management and the coordination management government institutions in implementing the MTEF by the MOF, the new public management framework is not well implemented as it should be. The findings also revealed that in implementing the MTEF by the MOF, coordination among other government institutions such as the MOF and the NDPC has been improved and overcoming the shortcoming of implementing the public finance management reform in Ghana.

Although there is general acceptance of law enforcement’s use of criminal profiling, such actions become problematic when they appear to be discriminatory in nature. One of the most frequently examined and contested profiling tactics is related to the use of race and ethnicity to determine which drivers to stop for traffic violations. Much research exists regarding the constitutionality of racial and ethnic profiling as well as the existence of and attitudes toward this practice. However, the literature has rarely addressed the thought processes of social control agents concerning the appearance of racial and ethnic bias within their own enforcement practices. To address this gap, the current study focuses on official written responses from Missouri police agencies in reaction to evidence of racial and ethnic disparities within their mandatory annual vehicle stop reports. The quantitative findings indicate that African American and Latino motorists are stopped, searched, and arrested more often than White motorists. Further, although African American and Latino motorists are searched more often than White motorists, they are less likely to be in possession of contraband when they are searched. Additionally, the qualitative findings reveal that agencies use the written responses to justify the existence of disparities in their jurisdictions’ enforcement statistics, and that both typification and neutralization patterns are present within those written responses. Based on the qualitative thematic content analysis, agencies are most likely to typify crime in racial and ethnic terms and to use the denial of responsibility and condemnation of the condemners neutralization techniques. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 19, 2018. / Neutralization, Policing, Racial Profiling, Typification / Includes bibliographical references. / Eric A. Stewart, Professor Directing Dissertation; Stephen J. Tripodi, University Representative; Jillian J. Turanovic, Committee Member; Patricia Y. Warren, Committee Member.

A few ruling individuals from party organizations overpowered Indonesia’s post-authoritarian, representative democracy. The legislative process of the 2017 Election Act was the case study employed to examine this assumption. The underlying thinking was that there was a contest between “wealth power” (oligarchy) and “participation power” (democracy). The power of wealth controls the party and government institutions. Notwithstanding the presence of participation power, there was, however, no balance between wealth power and participation power, because the formal control of politics was in the hands of party oligarchs. The study purpose was to bridge the gap in knowledge by exploring how the party oligarchs maintained the policymaking, reputedly using cartelized strategies, to defend the status quo. By employing the oligarchy and cartelization theories, the central research question of this inquiry focused on how the party oligarchs, allegedly using cartel work-patterns, mastered the policy process in post-Suharto Indonesia. A qualitative case-study was used with in-depth interviews with 15 participants for data collection and the N-Vivo program for data analysis. Qualitative findings indicated that the party oligarchs engineered the legal process in parliament applying cartelized strategies to defend privileges they obtained from collusive interpenetration with the state. The implications for social change include informing members of parliament, other policymakers, and civil society groups of the cruciality of comprehending the modus operandi of oligarchic cartels. Understanding the “oligarchic cartelization” theoretical postulate is a fundamental step for party members to improve their performance in public offices. The results of this study can also be a useful reference for pro-democracy activists to defend the ontological essence of public participation in implementing representative democracy at an appropriate level.

Organizational culture and leadership styles of a leader are important to staff members' commitment in a nonprofit organization, yet little is understood about the role of leadership style and the degree to which staff are committed to organizational effectiveness in nonprofit organizations. Using Avolio and Bass' conceptualization of transformational leadership as the theoretical foundation, the purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the organizational culture, leadership styles, and nonprofit staff members' commitment in 1 large organization in the United States. Survey data were collected (N = 100) through an instrument that combined Cameron and Quinn's Organizational Cultural Assessment and Avolio and Bass's Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. These data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to examine organizational culture relative to leadership style. The statistical analyses in this study examined organizational commitment and organizational culture in each leadership style. There were differences in the proportion of organizational commitment and organizational culture among leadership style, which were measured using coefficients of variation. Notably, when participants perceived a leader to exhibit transformational leadership traits, there also were greater proportions of perceptions of organizational commitment and positive organizational culture within those groups. The implications for positive social change stemming from this study include recommendations to organizational leadership to identify the employees' backgrounds, cultures and practice, and to determine the organizational culture's relevance. These recommendations may increase engagement and job satisfaction, thus reducing turnover, increasing profitability and influencing organizational commitment, resulting in a highly productive workforce.

This dissertation examines racial inequality and affirmative action in Malaysia and South Africa, two countries with a politically dominant but economically disadvantaged majority group – the Bumiputera in Malaysia, and blacks in post-Apartheid South Africa. We aim to contribute comparative perspectives and current empirical research on affirmative action regimes and dimensions of inequality directly pertinent to affirmative action, chiefly, racial representation and earnings inequality among tertiary educated workers and in upper-level occupations. We discuss theoretical approaches to inequality and affirmative action, with attention to particular circumstances of majority-favoring regimes, then survey, compare and contrast affirmative action programs and their political economic context in Malaysia and South Africa. In the empirical portions, we outline patterns and evaluate determinants of racial inequality, focusing on the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. On Malaysia, we find that Bumiputera access to tertiary education has rapidly increased, but also observe disproportionate difficulties among Bumiputera degree-holders in participating in labor markets and in attaining upper-level occupations. Bumiputera representation at managerial and professional levels has remained static and dependent on the public sector. Econometric results indicate that quality of tertiary education impacts on the prospect of attaining upper-level jobs, and that Bumiputera are more adversely affected. Lack of data restricts our assessment of racial earnings inequality to a deduction that Bumiputera young graduates have experienced relatively greater decline in their earnings capacity. On South Africa, we find that blacks have steadily increased access to tertiary education, although disparities in quality of institutions and in student performance persist, which disproportionately and negatively affect black graduates. We observe that black representation has increased in upper-level, especially professional, occupations, largely in the public sector. We find that white-black earnings disparity declined substantially among degree-qualified workers, while not diminishing or not showing clear patterns among other educational and occupational groups. We conclude by considering, within the constraints of each country’s political economic context, implications that arise from our findings. Most saliently, while affirmative action raises quantitative attainment of tertiary education and representation in upper-level occupations for the beneficiary group, inadequate attention to qualitative development of institutions and progressive distribution of benefits may attenuate progress toward the ultimate objective of cultivating broadbased, self-reliant professionals and managers.