In this thesis, I seek to engage with broad questions regarding religion and its interaction with the secular political world by examining a specific historical trend and a particular case study example of that phenomenon. In the American Christian tradition, religion and social justice have become inseparable entities; indeed, the Christian tradition has a long-standing relationship with justice initiatives in the United States. This relationship has taken many forms over the past two centuries. A current trend in Christian civic engagement in the United States is involvement with community organizing – which itself is a relatively new method of pursuing the cause of justice. Since the onset of community organizing, its relationship to religion in general and to Christianity in particular has been a defining characteristic of the movement. Over time, tensions have arisen within both the theory and practice of organizing that have inevitably had an impact on the religious groups and individuals participating in it. Those tensions include the question of why individuals should organize, and issues with the extremely delicate nature of the organizer-community relationship. This thesis examines how Christian theologies have addressed those tensions using the example of the First Presbyterian Church of Pomona, California. In short, I will argue that certain Christian theological values serve to answer those tensions effectively enough to motivate long-term organizing, particularly though scripture-based religious education.

Ecological research, both basic and applied, can inform management decisions on public land in a number of ways. Most importantly, it can illuminate any negative effects of a given land use practice as well as the causes behind that effect. This type of information can be important to a management agency, such as the BLM, with a multi-use mission as these studies indicate under what management regimes a land use is in contradiction with other goals, such as conservation or restoration. The current body of research, however, is flawed. In order to make fully informed decisions, land managers are in need of site or ecosystem-specific studies, which may not be available for the ecosystem in question. In addition, as is the case with investigations of the effects of extraction of natural gas, lack of baseline data and systematically controlled experiments lead to incomplete answering of questions pertinent to land managers. To produce research that is more pertinent to land managers, researchers and managers can work together more closely. This could be facilitated if funding were available to BLM field offices to solicit investigation into questions they need answered locally. This may necessitate a certain level of decentralization or at least more discretionary power given to local managers within the agency. Close collaboration between researchers and land managers from the beginning would ensure the produced results could better inform management decisions. Public land managers of the BLM cannot only consider scientific research when making land use decisions, however. Its multi-use mission statement requires an integration of conservation, restoration, recreation and resource use and extraction. This can lead to a number of conflicts or contradictions between goals. In addition, national, state, and local values and priorities play into which land use practices are deemed acceptable, often regardless of scientific research. In order to remedy the situation, boundary spanning, a transdisciplinary approach, and decentralization have been suggested.

Corporate income taxation has a profound impact on economic behavior in the United States. This dissertation focuses on two aspects: the impact of dividend taxation on investment and the impact of corporate income tax exemption on nonprofit organizations activity. The first essay compares dividend payout ratios of C and S corporations to test the validity of the traditional and the new views on dividend taxation. Average corporate income tax rate is used as an instrumental variable. The results support the traditional view. The second essay focuses on whether the exemption of nonprofit organizations from the corporate income tax affects the competition between for-profit and nonprofit hospitals. Time series and panel data analysis show that tax subsidies to nonprofit organizations have a positive impact on nonprofit hospitals’ market share.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the implications of networked public management on the design, implementation, and utilization of federal performance measurement systems. A multiple, instrumental case study of four public health programs funded by CDC and implemented nationally through vertical and horizontal network structures was conducted. Cross-case findings suggest that the networked implementation structures for the four federal-level, public health programs have important implications for the design of the performance measurement systems. Specifically, the performance measurement systems were affected by four consequences of the implementation networks: the political influence of collaborative stakeholders; network variability; dependencies on voluntary, horizontal network partners to achieve outputs and outcomes; and jointly produced outcomes that compromise assigning agency-specific attribution and accountability. While these four factors did not deter the use of performance measurement by any of the programs, all had important consequences for the development and subsequent design of the performance measurement systems, including limiting the choice and types of measures, level of measurement, potential uses of the measures, and resources needed to implement and support the systems.

This dissertation focuses on two distinct relationships: 1) classroom peer ability and student end-of-course test outcomes and 2) school tracking policy and student end-of-course test outcomes. Utilizing the education production function and hierarchical linear models, this dissertation contributes to the literature in the field of public policy by extending the work of previous scholars and focusing attention on these relationships in three high school subjects (English I, Algebra I, and Biology). In addition, I present a novel method for identifying tracking intensity within schools. The primary research questions addressed in the dissertation include: 1) To what extent does the ability level of classroom peers contribute to student test score performance?; 2) Does the variability of prior achievement within classrooms correlate with student test score outcomes?; and 3) Is there a relationship between school tracking policy and student test scores? Collectively these questions directly relate to policy options at the school, district, and state levels.

In a plural democratic society, the macro phenomena and policies are formed by individual cognition and choices. Thus the field of decision-making and judgment analysis based on individual cognitions has become the major analytical method in the public affairs management. The citizenship view of the republicanism requires citizens to reach consensus. The group decision-making method is so helpful for reaching consensus and overcoming the limits of individual cognition that it¡¦s necessary in forming public policies. By reviewing various group decision-making methods, the study found that there are at least Program Planning Method (PPM; Delbecq & Van de Ven, 1971), Policy Delphi (Turoff, 1970), Interactive Management(IM; Warfield & Cárdenas, 1994), and Social Judgment Theory(SJT; Hammond, 1965, 1996; Hammond et al., 1975, 1977, 1980) can be used to reach consensus in a plural society. Among them, the IM results have been proven effective for solving complicated problems and compliant with citizen participation spirit of a plural society ( Wang Min-shen & Chang Ning, 2002; Warfield & Cárdenas, 1994) . However, the accuracy of IM results can not be proven by the method and the weight between factors can not be identified, either. SJT can be used to analyze the assumption between decision criteria of different hierarchies and obtain the weights between different factors out of the same result so that SJT can examine the annotated graphics of IM. Besides, since SJT emphasizes cognitive feedback, it can facilitate reaching consensus by comparing various stakeholders¡¦ judgment principles dissolving the cognitive conflicts. Thus the study applied theoretical SJT to examine the validity of IM results. I discussed SJT procedure in a collective, hierarchic and large-scaled way. The study also adopted classic experimental design to compare the cognitive changes of participants before and after the SJT procedure to explore the performance of SJT results of group decision-making in public affairs cases in terms of consistency, individual learning effect and satisfaction. The results of this study show that SJT procedure can be operated in a large-scaled way while consensus with high satisfaction will be reached. In addition, the theoretical validity of IM results on psychological cognition provides the reason why participants accepted the results. Talking about the changes of the participants¡¦ cognition through SJT procedure, the participants using SJT have not improved their consistency, while the learning effect changes significantly towards group conclusion. In the subjective evaluations such as satisfaction, learning effect and caring degree, the participants who use SJT are better than those who don¡¦t, but not better than those who use IM procedure. In terms of policy significance, though the covert consistency between the participants who use SJT has not been improved, their overt satisfaction towards the group conclusion is better than those who don¡¦t. It shows that the conflict between participants has not disappeared yet, while they accept the consensus. Therefore, the way to wipe away the conflicts in a plural society is not to build up a single exclusive value, but to design a procedure allowing the stakeholders accept consensus.

The crucial point for winning the presidential election of Taiwan comes mostly from the trends of ¡§ Cross-Strait Policies¡¨ for each candidate takes. After Ma was elected as president of Taiwan, the rapid warming relations between cross strait make some local Governments to be caught unawareness. Being Compared with local government of northern Taiwan to be filled with resources from central government, local government in southern Taiwan facing with difficult situation. In this way, the major purpose of this thesis is on developing useful and feasible policies directions under the situation of three direct links. The thesis comes with the research method called ¡§Interactive Management¡¨. After two days of intensively meeting, the experts come out with implementing policies goals as below: (1)Reset the goal for Kaohsiung¡¦s development then building the brand and image for Kaohsiung city.(2) Clarify the future tourism direction of Kaohsiung city.(3)Develop cultural, art and creative industries of Kaohsiung city. (4)The positive and active attitudes for Kaohsiung city government to solve problems and enforce the policy propaganda.(5)Scheme the second period of sixth Container Terminal of Kaohsiung Harbor.(6)Build the southern international airport to integrate the other four airports.(7)The mass media to balance the reports toward Mainland China and educate Taiwan people to regard mainlanders in a perspective way.(8)Redraw the free trade zone and lift the related laws and decrees to accelerate the flows between human resources, cargos and funds.(9)Enforce the international Convention and Exhibition certifications and expand the human resources base of tour guides tour leaders. And most important of all: (10)Let more people to participate the discussions of public affairs by purposely and frequently forums involving programs. Another major purpose is to discuss how the central Government coordinative unit,¡¨ Executive Yuan Southern United Service Center, EYSC¡¨ to elaborate Kaohsiung city Government to cope with cross-strait affairs. This research based on the designed questionary with government officials from EYSC and kaohsiung city government. The experts sum up with the conclusions in the dimensions below :(1)Reduce the height between central and local government. (2)Redevelop the function of coordination. (3)Give direct help from EYSC to kaohsiung city government (including policy communications and coordination, the future policy implements, cross strait interactions and cooperation).

The Community Policing should not take only the policing viewpoint into consideration, but be carried out by taking the community as the core network functioning conformity. Strategic formulation of Community Policing cannot be self-lauded as police professionalism, but be understood in the context of solving policing problems connected with other topics that depend on widespread opinion consultation, research questionnaires and public verification. Community Policing is precisely what police and people share in mutual governance; it is a witnessing of public affairs participation that carries out democracy at the grassroots level. However, its foundation is established on effective communication, mutual understanding and confidence between the police and citizens. It also depends on environmental social capital to develop gradually. Therefore, it is the key to learn how to respect and yet contain different societies and individuals with cognition of their roles in such societies. Accordingly, we can try to seek collective mutual recognition. This research puts emphasis on the operation pattern of the ¡§partnership spirit¡¨ and the ¡§network governance¡¨ from the ¡§acts as circumstances permit¡¨ characteristic of Community Policing. In addition, it discusses the problem of lack of people-participation in Community Policing in the Penghu area by literature discussion (including area background material analysis), expert interview, interactive management (IM), questionnaire survey of society judgment theory (SJT), cross-territory analysis and so on. Through question analysis and interactive conference, 12 items of the first plan and enhancement drawings are obtained. It belongs to the fourth level according to the IM success rank, i.e. it can discover a suitable plan that promotes the participation of the populace, and thus can be recommended to the policing governance and relevant administration agencies. This research takes Penghu as the background and the IM as the interface. The community populace and the performers of Community Policing network (including government institution, private enterprise and Non-governmental organizations) are the main participants. Then, the collective consensus containing multi-dimensional individual cognition was delivered. Furthermore, the endorsement of the local policing decision-making group was investigated through the V-C-S strategic triangle analysis and the SJT questionnaire. Overall, the twelve plans of top priority can be categorized into three essential strategies: ¡§strengthen the policing management to respond to the populace¡¨, ¡§enhance community empowerment to form a policing network¡¨ and ¡§specialization community policing¡¨, separately presenting the viewpoint of three main participants: the experts, the populace, and the basic unit police. Moreover, ¡§specialization of Community Policing¡¨ was considered to be the top priority. However, taking the above essential strategies as the judgment cues to perform the SJT questionnaire to the local policing decision-making group demonstrates that the policing decision-making commanding officer most take seriously the notion of ¡§strengthen the policing management to respond to the populace¡¨, but the ground-roots staff most take seriously the ¡§enhance community empowerment to form policing network¡¨ strategy. Through the investigation, the IM model is proven to be effective in enhancing public participation in Community Policing affairs and reaching a consensus; through SJT questionnaires, the local policing decision-making group gave high approval to the key strategies from interactive deliberation. The result of the survey also shows that people in different positions could have various considerations and judgments. Thus, this research suggests that enforcement authorities can actualize their policies by adopting IM and reach consensus through public participation and mutual understanding.

Domestic violence is one of the most important issues about the public affairs. The incidents of domestic violence not only cause damage to the individual¡¦s mind, but depress the country¡¦s competition ability. The negative side effects also were hard to evaluate. Even the main spirit of the prevention of the domestic violence reveals as ¡§protection the right of victims and prevention of the behavior of domestic violence¡¨. This slogan gives its positive age meaning and attached with infinite wish of public. By the inspection and reflection of the increasing cases with days, it would corrode the individuals and the public eventually, then cause the malignant effects on the Social development of basic stock and flow conditions. Though the government endeavors to issue many protection and prevention system, the results were still not satisfied by the reason of the southern social conditions and the uneven levels population structure. The outcome is the breaks and leakages of policy connection. Based on the variety between the professional fields and the pertinent departments, the author try to integrate and observe the complex phenomena with various aspects. There are the reason-results relationships of multiple elements to each other. This study describes the PAM and SDM theoretical structure frame and conclude positively with the V.C.S methodology.,As a methodology the conclusions of the output, with an extension of a more positive point of view. The study explore with qualitative interview as major method. Then conclude the integrated results from the practical interviews with the networks practitioners. The prevention and protection of domestics violence is an extremely huge reconstruction engineer to the social. The achievement of value of justice is the critical catalyst to ignite the progress of the order of works. Pluralistic society in the face of the complex of environmental factors¡ACut from the PAM to do analysis of the problem can be drawn from a more complete picture. Sexual cognitive and sex equity are crucial value and the prevention and protection of domestic violence is also the most vital public value of the government. The immature of practitioners¡¦ concepts is the tremendous challenge. It also has the influence on the establishment of professional knowledge. IV The prevention and protection of domestics violence is an system problem among the social structure. The key is the basement of social condition during the development of Kaohsiung City's social conditions. Though the system of the professional prevention and protection is complete, the subjective cognitive of the party is most restricted with the traditional concepts. It contributes negative driving force. The construction of the order is to achieve the justice of the case. The inter-government prevention and protection system is absolutely important to the prevention of violence. But its pertinent policies, resources and strategies involved is deficient. The networks have no strength like the action of law and the inspection order across the vertical and horizontal. The authority should plan the integrated executing of the policies, the distribution of resources, personals, inspection managements, the evaluation and communication. The media inspection only focuses on the blockbuster report. The justice of disadvantaged majority of the society is damaged and need the support of the construct from the inspection system participated by the democracy society in the civic participation.

Illegal immigration incurs tremendous economic, social, and humanitarian costs for Europe and the Maghreb countries. Previous literature on illegal immigration focuses on “coping” (border security, repatriation, and rescue) and “resolving” (social integration of immigrants). This thesis attempts to direct the European policymakers’ attention to “preventing” policy model. In essence, the prevention model seeks to reduce the incentives of the Maghreb people to migrate. The thesis focuses on analyzing the migration pattern in Morocco, and its implications for Spain and Italy. Based on Morocco’s two-track migration pattern, the thesis argues that rural development could reduce the incentives of internal migration, and urban development could reduce the incentives of migration abroad. Finally, the thesis analyzes official development assistance (ODA) to Morocco from Spain, Italy, and the European Commission. The analysis shows that their development efforts do little to discourage Moroccans’ incentives to migrate. The thesis recommends that the Spanish and Italian governments adjust their development assistance in a way that targets either one of the two migration tracks.