South Korea, having experienced a recent transition from developing to developed country, is useful for examining the application of theories about U.S. disaster policy process, and the April 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster provides a particularly salient case study for this purpose. Focusing on the Sewol Ferry disaster, this study examines policy changes through three competing policy theory lenses. The Sewol Ferry disaster was more than a mere tragedy; it quickly became a major political issue. As a result of the immensity of the disaster and the sheer number of fatalities, new agendas and laws on emergencies were enacted, including three significant acts specifically referenced to the Sewol accident. To illuminate agenda setting processes related to these three Sewol Acts, this study conducts three parallel qualitative case studies, employing a single case (embedded) design, so that the parallel case analyses are intended to illuminate three theoretical perspectives about policy development: Multiple Streams Approach (MSA), Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), and Blame Avoidance Motivation (BAM). Based on three case studies (chapter 4-6), this study seeks to reveal gaps between theoretical and practical solutions (fitness or similarities to the policy theory lenses and differences from the theories) based on three case studies by applying the three theories originating in the U.S. on the Sewol Ferry disaster in South Korea. In chapter 7, this study draws on recent disaster policy frameworks generated in the United States and holds them up similarly to the Sewol disaster. This analysis draws also on a model of indigenous administrative theories to illuminate how imported theories often require being filtered through a receiving country's traditional deep cultural values; societal domains of politics, economics, and culture; and management modeling, tools, and techniques. This study finds similarities and differences between U.S. and Korean disaster policy experiences based on the Sewol Ferry disaster and concludes with implications for transferring these lessons to other national contexts, including less developed countries. / A Dissertation submitted to the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / February 23, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Ralph Brower, Professor Directing Dissertation; Steve McDowell, University Representative; Frances S. Berry, Committee Member; Keon-Hyung Lee, Committee Member.

archives@tulane.edu / People living through changes in their surroundings react to it unexpectedly. Exogenous political, economic and legal changes impact individual behavior in an unpredictable manner. This dissertation uses three papers to give evidence of exogenous shocks affecting individual behavior. First, I study the impact of an economic change. Using business cycle indicators, I show that a change in the employment status of parents causes them to invest higher time with their children instead of exploring new job opportunities in the early months of unemployment. The short term impact of unemployment is favorable for child development even though literature has shown that long term unemployment is detrimental to child well-being. Second, I explore the impact of a spillover of a policy intended to save energy. The Daylight Savings Time was implemented during the World Wars to conserve energy. Over the decades, its impact on energy conservation has diminished. My research shows that there are clear evidences of serious disruption in daily lives of those subjected to the clock change twice a year, causing higher stress and lower sleep in the early weeks of the time change. Third, I study the legalization of medical marijuana on consumption of marijuana and alcohol patterns, as well as criminal behavior among those subjected to it. The results show that even though there is a slight increase in marijuana and alcohol consumption among adults, there is no evidence to support that it encourages teenagers to explore marijuana consumption. There is also no evidence of any change in criminal behavior. / 1 / Sanjukta Basu

Researchers and clinicians alike have struggled with limited success to understand and treat the most troubled adolescents of our time, those who have been variously described as delinquent, conduct disordered, or aggressive. The very nature of their disruptiveness has sometimes obscured their complex psychological problems, yet psychoanalytic object relations theory provides a rich framework for understanding the interplay of intrapsychic factors and overt symptoms in producing the phenomena of conduct disturbance. The self and object relations of 19 conduct disturbed adolescents were compared to those of 15 nondisturbed adolescents via the analysis of data from the Thematic Apperception Test. Conduct disturbed adolescents demonstrated greater levels of impairment on four dimensions of object relations, measured with the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (Westen, Lohr, Silk, Kerber, & Goodrich, 1985): Complexity of Representations of People, Affect Tone of Relationship Paradigms, Capacity for Emotional Investment and Moral Standards, and Understanding of Social Causality. Impairments in object relations were related to teacher assessments of conduct problems but were unrelated to self-reported externalizing symptoms or relationship problems, suggesting that a combination of objective reports and assessments of intrapsychic relational constructs may be particularly useful in understanding adolescents with conduct disturbances. A model based on observed symptomatology and object relations effectively predicted membership in the conduct disturbed and nondisturbed groups.

In July 2013, the social media Facebook campaign, Save the Miami-Dade Public Libraries (SMDPL) sought to influence the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners to reverse proposed budget cuts and maintain existing library funding levels. In this study, I examined the SMDPL campaign by conducting a discourse analysis of Facebook discussions that included posts, comments and any artifacts referenced such as other websites, mainstream media, public official memoranda and public documents, among others. I examined the expressions of value and the policymaking process using Moore's Creating Public Value Theory. This study found that Creating Public Value offered an examination of public institutions as subsets of public sector governance. The study found that discourse is an element of the public value created that resulted in expression of public value outcomes and operational capacity for communities. However the study also found that public library advocates missed opportunities to demonstrate rather than assert, specific public library values. Information sharing using social network sites can be important sources of what a community values in their libraries and their public sector institutions. Future research could examine how these values influence the actions of public officials and the discourse can become a source of examining what all types of communities' value in libraries. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / April 4, 2016. / advocacy, discourse analysis, Facebook, public libraries, public policy, social network sites / Includes bibliographical references. / Lorraine Mon, Professor Directing Dissertation; Stephen McDowell, University Representative; Charles R. McClure, Committee Member; Marcia A. Mardis, Committee Member.

The aim of this dissertation is to fill in the vacant spots in the innovation and diffusion study, which are meaningful but have not had much work done previously. First, most policy diffusion studies have focused on the adoption of a new policy. However, the diffusion of the repeal of an old policy also occurs across organizations and governments. Thus, the first essay in this dissertation, diffusion of the repeal of a state prevailing wage law, contributes to enrich the theoretical development of policy innovation and diffusion from a different angle, and help us learn more about why governments terminate established policies. The economists have provided economic justifications about why state prevailing wage law should be upheld or abolished depending on their stances. However, the empirical result shows that economic justification is not the most persuasive reason. In other words, other factors are also influential in the repeal of prevailing wage law: regional diffusion, political ideology, union power, socio-economic conditions, minimum wage law and so on. This result accords with the arguments of previous policy termination literatures (Cameron, 1977; Deleon, 1987) Second, policy innovation and diffusion studies have not seriously considered the role of the judicial branch as one of the important actors in the process of public policy until now, even though it is one of three branches of a modern democratic government. In this dissertation, a systematic examination regarding this issue is attempted to see what impact court rulings have on the diffusion of state adoption of a same sex marriage ban. The result shows that the backlash of gay-friendly court rulings, state public opinion favorable to same sex marriage, Federal DOMA, and supportive institutions for homosexuals in a state are influential factors when a state introduces the first same sex marriage ban regardless of state DOMAs and constitutional amendments. Furthermore, we also find that the backlash of judicial decisions does not always occur by additional multi-state analysis. More specifically, the influence of gay-friendly court rulings has changed from negative to positive in the transition from state Defense of Marriage Acts to state constitutional amendments against same sex marriage. Third, more effort is needed to reflect the innovative characteristics of policy decision-makers on policy decision making under the theoretical framework of innovation and diffusion studies. The original question of policy innovation and diffusion was about whether a state’s policy innovativeness was a general trait of the policy decision-makers (Walker, 1969). However, policy innovation and diffusion studies have, since the early 1970’s, generally focused on a specific policy over time (with several exceptions, such as Boushey, 2010; Boehmke and Skinner, 2012; Nicholson-Crotty, Sean C., et al., 2014). Thus, the third essay of this dissertation attempts to show how state innovativeness works over multiple adoptions in a specific policy arena: alcohol impaired driving policies. We find that all of the aspects of state innovativeness -- general, traffic safety, and organizational -- increase the likelihood a state adopts alcohol impaired driving laws more comprehensively. Also, the institutional bandwagon is founded as one of the important factors to increase the comprehensiveness of state adoptions of drunk driving policies. / A Dissertation submitted to the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2016. / November 1, 2016. / Alcohol impaired driving, Backlash of court rulings, Diffusion, Innovativeness, Prevailing wage law, Same sex marriage / Includes bibliographical references. / Frances S. Berry, Professor Directing Dissertation; Patrice Iatarola, University Representative; Richard C. Feiock, Committee Member; Kaifeng Yang, Committee Member.

In recent years, the legalization of medical marijuana in states has been a controversial topic. Despite conflicting with the federal government ban on marijuana use, 28 states and D.C. have legalized medical marijuana by the year 2016 and other states are currently considering adopting the law every year. Why do some states adopt medical marijuana laws and others do not? This study lays out an approach that explains what and how the predictors of the adoption of medical marijuana laws affect legalizing medical marijuana in a state, using a mixed methods approach. In the quantitative research, this study examines the diffusion of medical marijuana laws by analyzing policy adoption from a morality and economic development perspective through three policy typologies such as morality policy, economic policy and multidimensional policy. For the qualitative research, this study uses short case studies of three states (California, Colorado, and Illinois) based on news reports to draw out the politics surrounding the issues and reasons why the policies were adopted. This study finds that the morality policy characteristics as policy diffusion factors -- religious groups, citizens’ liberal ideology, and a ballot initiative process -- have a significant effect on the adoption of a medical marijuana law. Economic indicators -- fiscal capacity growth, incarceration, and cost of justice system -- also have a significant effect on the adoption. As internal characteristics, a major proponent group (number of marijuana users) and state regulatory environment (mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses and the size of the regulatory bureaucracy) are important predictors of diffusion. Overall, this study shows that the diffusion of a medical marijuana law is mainly determined by the citizens’ opinion rather than elected officials’ political ideology or government's fiscal health conditions. Also, we demonstrated that a multidimensional policy model provides a superior explanation for predicting when a state will adopt medical marijuana policy; policy typologies are still a useful framework for clarifying and understanding characteristics of each policy type and its unique politics pattern. These findings contribute to the literature of diffusion, and they have important implications for the diffusion of multidimensional policies that transcend classical typological boundaries. Moreover, in terms of practical implication, this study provides policy makers and American civil society useful information about which factors impact medical marijuana adoption and why. / 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. / Fall Semester 2016. / October 24, 2016. / Economic policy, Medical marijuana law, Morality policy, Multidimensional policy, Policy innovation and diffusion, Policy typology / Includes bibliographical references. / Frances S. Berry, Professor Directing Dissertation; William G. Weissert, University Representative; Ralph S. Brower, Committee Member; Keon-Hyung Lee, Committee Member.

This thesis examined Bill C-46 as a case study of the constructed nature of public policy as inspired by Foucault’s (1982) argument that this construction, over time, can become “truth.” Our main research question was if the Canadian governments' construction of the problem of cannabis-impaired driving, which was used to justify the necessity and the content of new offences in Bill C-46, was contested in whole or in part during the parliamentary debates that resulted in the adoption of this law or, was the construction of cannabis-impaired driving accepted without contest by most of the parliamentarians and witnesses? This thesis used Bacchi and Goodwin’s (2016) What’s the Problem Represented to be (WPR) framework to answer this question. Our two main findings of this thesis were first, that the construction of the problem was not substantially contested by parliamentarians or witnesses during the debate and second, that inequality is embedded in the content of Bill C-46. Our analysis presented the constructed division between “good citizens” who are not punishable by criminal sanctions for impaired driving or problematic driving behaviours such as driving while fatigued, or distracted driving. On the other hand, the “bad citizens”, including drivers who had consumed cannabis, were perceived as deserving of criminal punishment despite not necessarily being impaired. The Liberal Party was concerned more with political viability of cannabis legalization resulting in a problem construction that generates ineffective solutions to the objective of promoting road safety.

This doctoral thesis analyzes the introduction, development, evolution and impacts of the Multi-Year Accountability Agreements, which were introduced to the Ontario post-secondary sector in 2006. The analysis uses an eclectic theoretical framework that builds on the accountability literature, public policy implementation theory, organizational theory, principal-agent theory and the study of instruments in the French tradition. This allows for analyzing the original object of study using multiple lenses. The field work was extensive and consisted of a documentary analysis including the agreements for Ontario’s twenty universities between 2006-07 and 2009-10, as well as thirty-seven semi-structured interviews undertaken in 2012 with representatives from Ontario universities, the Ontario government and other sector organizations. The thesis moves away from a speculative definition of accountability as it clarifies how this concept is interpreted and constructed by the actors involved in its implementation and how its dimensions evolve over time. Accountability is thus conceptualized as a “moving target” – a challenge that is not unique to the post-secondary sector, as these kinds of processes are observed in other areas of the public sector. Therefore, although accountability is often presented as a tool of “good governance” intended to reduce waste and increase trust, is actually operationalized in a highly symbolic fashion and the gaps between the public discourse, the perceptions of actors and the final implementation are demonstrated. This thesis also shows how the choice of instrument facilitates acceptance of a new requirement in the sector and helps balance the government’s need for control with the universities’ need for independence. On one hand, the type of instrument is coherent with government discourse for increased accountability. On the other hand, the instrument, presented as an agreement embodies the negotiated character of the relationship, and conveys the idea to different actors that their needs are being met. However, when the objectives are ambiguous, uncertainty is pervasive, and negotiation is limited, the increase in control reduced and the changes in autonomy are negligible. Despite the promises of the instrument, symbolic and rhetorical compliance may be the sustainable equilibrium between governments and governed.

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Youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) face significant barriers to social inclusion (Hill, Davis, Prout, & Tisdall, 2004; Koller, Pouesard, & Rummens, 2018; Simplican, Leader, Kosciulek, & Leahy, 2015) that are counter to their fundamental rights (Browne & Millar, 2016) and associated with negative social and emotional outcomes (e.g., Koller et al., 2018). It is therefore critical that research uncover strategies for removing these barriers. Extracurricular activities provide an important context for fostering social inclusion of youth with ID/DD, and federal law has language specific to ensuring students with disabilities access to extracurricular activities (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 2004, § 614[d][1][A][i]; U.S. Department of Education, 2011). However, relatively few students with ID/DD participate in extracurricular activities compared to students with other disabilities and students without disabilities (e.g., Lipscomb et al., 2017). States hold increasingly significant power and autonomy over the implementation of federal educational policy (Knackstedt, Leko, & Siuty, 2018). Yet, heretofore there has been no systematic, state-level analysis of policies related to social inclusion for youth with ID/DD in extracurricular activities. This study provides a state-level analysis of policies related to social inclusion of youth with ID/DD in extracurricular activities. Directed content analysis found that states varied widely in their number and content of policies regarding inclusion of students with disabilities in extracurricular activities. No states used the terms inclusion or social inclusion in their policies, highlighting the divide between academia and policy in defining and examining special education issues. There was no finding of a formal, regular mechanism federally or by states to measure and report extracurricular activity participation for students with disabilities. Through the lens of a rights-based, leisure justice, socio-ecological framework, several areas for potential research were identified and recommendations are provided for researchers, federal and state policymakers, school districts, extracurricular program staff, students, and families. These results can inform stakeholders of potential avenues for increasing participation of youth with ID/DD in extracurricular activities, and in turn can help to optimize the social inclusion of youth with ID/DD.