This thesis proposes a reading of David Gauthiers moral contractarianism (hereinafter Mb(CM)A) that demonstrates how cooperation can be rational in situations where expected utilities (EU) are stacked too high against cooperation. The dissertation critically examines Mb(CM)A and contends that it breaks down in the test of application, i.e. the problem of secession because of the conception of rationality it appeals to. Mb(CM)A identifies rationality with utility-maximization, where utility is the measure of considered coherent preferences about outcomes. Mb(CM)A links morality to reason, and reason to practical rationality, and practical rationality to interest, which it identifies with individual utility. On this view, an action (or a disposition) is rational if that action (or disposition) maximizes an agents EU. This conception of rationality the essay claims is both nave and misleading because it does not take into account an agents considered preference for the acts that are available, in addition to the EU of those acts. Therefore, the thesis argues that Mb(CM)As account of rationality be abandoned in favor of a decision-value/symbolic utilitys or morals by decision-value agreements conception of practical rationality. Morals by decision-value agreement (henceforth Mb(DV)A), the dissertation claims, handles serious problems, like the problem of secession in ways that Mb(CM)A cannot. Mb(CM)A breaks down in the test of application because when applied to the problem of secession, it suggests a single-tracked silver bullet solution. Specifically, it tracks only EU-reasons and claims that insofar as cooperation does not maximize the EU of better-off agents, it is not rational for them to cooperate with or support those that are less well-off. By contrast, Mb(DV)A offers a multi-tracked framework for solutions to the problem, namely: it factors in an agents considered preference for the acts that are available, in addition to EU of those acts. It is the argument of the thesis that when EU is stacked too high against cooperation, it may or may not be rational for an agent to cooperate, depending on which way symbolic utility (SU) for that agent points toward. If SU points in the direction of secession, then it is DV-rational for an agent not to cooperate, but if SU points toward non-secession, then it is DV-rational for that agent to cooperate.

Organizations play key roles in modern societies. The importance of organizations for a society requires an understanding of organizations. In order to fully understand public organizations, it is necessary to recognize how organizational settings affect subjects of organizations and organizing. Although public and private organizations interrelate with each other, the two types are not identical. In this dissertation, I attempt to describe public organizations in their own setting by discussing three important topics in public organization theory: (1) innovation adoption in the public sector; (2) representative bureaucracy; and (3) decline and death of public organizations. In Chapter II, I scrutinize early adoption of innovations at the organizational level and explore which public organizations become early adopters in the diffusion process. The adoption of an innovation is directly related to the motivation to innovate. That is, organizations performing poorly will have a motivation to seek new solutions. I estimate the strength of the motivation by observing prior performance. The main finding of the second chapter is that performance-based motivation has a twofold impact on early innovation adoption: negative for organizations with low performance, but positive for those with very high performance. This study estimates top 3.8% as the turning point defining which organizations attain outstanding performance and show the positive relationship between performance and innovation adoption. In Chapter III, develop a theoretical framework for predicting and explaining active representation in bureaucracy and test two hypotheses from the framework to test its validity. First, active representation requires the loss of organizational rewards. Second, a minority group mobilizes external support to minimize the cost of active representation. These findings support that active representation is a political activity in which bargaining between formal and informal roles occurs. In addition, I add evidence to the literature demonstrating that the two prerequisites – policy discretion and a critical mass – must be satisfied for active representation to occur. In Chapter IV, I argue that organizational change is a result of a relationship between an organization and the environment. And, I suggest and advance the theory of organizational ecology for examining environment effect on organizational decline and death. The theory has been extensively studies in the business sector, so I advance the theory to be applicable to the public sector. First, I add political variables, such as change in the executive branch and the legislature, unified government, and hypothesize that (1) an organization established by a party other than the one in the executive branch in any given year will be more likely to be terminated or decline; that (2) an organization established by a party other than the one in the legislature in any given year will be more likely to be terminated or decline; and that (3) if an unfriendly party controls both the executive branch and the legislature, organizations established by other parties are more likely to be terminated or decline. Second, the effect of the economic environment on the life cycle of public organizations is not as straightforward and simple as their effect on business firms.

Liberal thinkers have suggested different theories that legitimise the state's various processes, institutions, and use of coercive power. However, their theories cannot account for those motivations that cause men to put their lives in danger when standing against political oppression. The study of Montesquieu's theory of government can aid liberalism's incomplete account of the political motivations that incline men to defend their liberty. Toward this end, this thesis studies Montesquieu's notions of virtue and honour, and challenges the meaning they have been accorded in previous studies. This thesis suggests that Montesquieu combined these notions in order to conceive a type of motivation that inclines individuals to defend their liberty against encroachment. In order to recover this type of motivation, this study will adopt an approach of close textual analysis with attention to the context. Virtue and honour play a crucial role in Montesquieu's political thought because they foster the preservation of government. Virtue inclines citizens in republics to act with self-sacrifice. However, that virtue does not aim toward the attainment of excellence or of God's grace; rather, Montesquieu conceived virtue in relation to public utility. Honour inclines the subjects of monarchy to pursue their selfish desires in order to derive public benefits. However, Montesquieu did not conceive honour in connection with the liberal motif of the invisible hand; rather, he conceived honour in connection with the pursuit of glory. By combining honour and virtue, Montesquieu conceived a type of motivation that can foster the preservation of liberty in modernity. This motivation enables individuals to enjoy their liberty in times of peace by pursuing their selfish desires; in times of crisis, it inclines them to perform great actions in order to defend that liberty against political oppression. Considering Montesquieu's type can aid liberalism's account of political motivations in the contemporary debate.

In this paper, the author analyzes the alleged consent, stating their stance against it and proposing, instead, the alleged will, considering that the last is right for describe the legal fiction used to recreate the moment in which the legal holder knows the fact and have the possibility of providing consent to excute the ‘ilicit’ action. In this line, the author reviewed the theories that explain the legal nature of the alleged will, rejecting it as a noncriminal behavior and considering it an autonomous underlying justification. Also, the author describes the requirements of this alleged will, differentiating it from other situations as subrogation. Finally, the author makes a review of the two categories where the alleged will occurs: performances in foreign interest and actions on self-interest. / En el presente artículo, la autora analiza la figura jurídica del consentimiento presunto, señalando su postura contraria a dicha formulación y proponiendo, en su lugar, el término voluntad presunta, por considerarlo más exacto para describir la ficción jurídica utilizada para recrear el momento en el que el titular del bien jurídico habría consentido la actuación del autor, en caso de haber conocido el hecho y de haberse encontrado en la posibilidad de brindar su consentimiento. En dicha línea, la autora repasa las teorías doctrinarias formuladas para explicar la naturaleza jurídica de la voluntad presunta, descartando que se trate de una causa de atipicidad penal y optando por considerarla una causa de justificación autónoma. Asimismo, la autora describe los requisitos que deberá tener esta voluntad presunta para ser considerada válidamente como una causa de justificación autónoma, diferenciándola de otros supuestos como la subrogación. Finalmente, la autora hace una revisión de las dos categorías donde puede presentarse la voluntad presunta: las actuaciones en interés ajeno y las actuaciones en interés propio.

“Liberal Democracy” is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens’s political behaviour. This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to. It is an analysis of how the term is used in some of the authors’ texts, what it denotes and connotes. This is done against the backdrop of their respective deliberative theories; Habermas, Dryzek and Elstub were chosen qua Deliberative Democratic theorists, not just democratic theorists. Habermas’s usage of Liberal Democracy is inconsistent. On the one hand it is a rather “open” democracy (i.e., more Dahl than Madison) dependent on active citizens in the public sphere; on the other hand it is a rights-based society where the market forum serves as an imperative, where isolated individuals make political choices as if they where choices at the market forum and even the social interactions are market-structured. My conclusion is that the latter model takes precedence. The following chapter analyzes John Dryzek’s usage of the term. The democratic model Dryzek calls Liberal Democracy shares some similarities with Habermas’s model – the market forum serves as a model for the citizens’ political behaviour. Following Horkheimer and Adorno, Dryzek connects Liberal Democracy to an instrumental rationality considered to be repressive. The instrumental rationality (and the behaviour it creates) leads to a political strait jacket – the citizens’ preferences get reduced to their interests, and politics is nothing but a battle of the interests. Dryzek’s usage of the term is more consistent than Habermas’s. For Stephen Elstub, upholding autonomy is the telos of democracy, irrespective of model. In his discussions of liberal democracy he equates liberal theory (J.S. Mill and John Locke) with liberal democratic theory, and sees the real-life democracies as realizations of the theory. Elstub's discussions of liberal democracy focus primarily on the demos, citizens with endogenous preferences. Contra Habermas and Dryzek, Elstub’s model lacks the behavioural model based on the market forum. An important inconsistency in Elstub’s model is the State’s capacity for institutional changes; the “representative structures” are incapable of the changes necessary to deal with social pluralism, but at the same time the Liberal Democratic system is flexible enough to accommodate his dualist model of democracy. The last chapter sums up the results and places the liberal democratic model in a taxonomy of democratic theories. I argue that in spite of the differences of the authors’ models, they are basically one and the same, normatively and descriptively. It is not primarily a model of democratic institutions – more than anything it is a conception of demos. The demos consist of citizens focused on their self-interest as a basis for their political actions. The democratic taxonomy used in the essay is fairly inclusive, but I conclude that Liberal Democracy does not fit in; it is not so much a theory of institutionalised democracy as a psychological theory.

Financial scandals worldwide have led to an auditing profession crisis. Society has lost confidence in the profession because of a growing perception that it does not act in the public interest, but in its own interest only. The way in which the auditing profession is regulated may impact positively or negatively on the value of the audit function. Consequently there is danger that the profession may lose its very reason for existence. Conversely, the profession has an opportunity to re-invent itself, and by so doing, regain the trust of society. The South African auditing profession, as elsewhere, has begun to recognise this situation as an opportunity to introduce changes to the regulation of the profession. These regulations are the key to society’s willingness to trust the outcome of the audit process. While the current regulations are obviously flawed, it is believed that, once revised, society may regain confidence and trust in the profession and its services. To this end the Draft Auditing Profession Bill, 2004 was published in November 2004. In this thesis the profession’s regulations, including the Draft Auditing Profession Bill, 2004, are evaluated in terms of factors that are central to an effective and credible regulatory system. The burning issues involving the auditing profession are also identified in this study, and evaluated. In comparison with changes already made in other countries, it appears that those important regulatory system factors and the key public interest issues of credibility and trust are inadequately addressed by the proposed auditing profession regulations. The fundamental reasons for this failure are the proposed composition and financing of the regulator and associated bodies. Hence, in this study a normative framework for regulating the auditing profession in South Africa is proposed in an effort to regain society’s trust. / Thesis (DCom (Accounting Sciences))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Auditing / unrestricted

The core of House M.D. is its assertion that current Western civilization lives in a perpetual state of dissonance: we desire to have the rawness of emotion but we can only handle this rawness when we combine it with intellect, even if that intellect lies to us. This is the ontological paradox that the televisual text grapples with. Through the use of archetypal analysis and allegorical interpretation, this thesis reveals that dissonance and its relationship to contemporary Western society. Through House M.D. we realize that there are structures to the paradoxes that we live and there are paradoxes in our structures. Dr. House is a trickster in an allegory of American capitalist culture. The trickster metaphorically pulls away from society the rules protecting cultural values. Dr. House and House M.D. participate in revealing the cultural disruption of the current moment of Western society. While playing on the genres of detective fiction and hospital dramas, House M.D. is an existential allegory exposing the paradox that we can never be free while still seeking our own self-interest.

One of the central questions in political theory deals with the nature of rights. What sorts of rights do people possess? How are these rights justified? How ought these rights be reflected and related when seen in political, economic, and social institutions? Following the publication of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971) and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), rights have once again returned to dominate much of contemporary political theory. However, natural law, which was the historical basis of the early Enlightenment theories of rights, is no longer the primary system appealed to when discussing rights. In fact, classical natural law has been all but discarded in most of political theory today. There has also been renewed debate over the nature of public neutrality, and what the relationship ought to be between the public and private sphere. The mainstream view of how our liberties relate to our rights, as well as what kinds of rights we have over our private affairs, has come under fire from a newly emerging political philosophy known as communitarianism. This thesis will present a robust theory of rights that provides a new understanding of the relationship between positive and negative rights through a defense of classical natural law as an ethical foundation for political theory. It will side with the communitarian critics of public neutrality, and offer a practical method of determining when the state is justified in limiting private liberties due to public interest.

Ce mémoire vise à comprendre les motivations des États à intervenir militairement dans un autre État pour mettre fin aux violations graves des droits de l’homme tel que le nettoyage ethnique et le génocide. Plus précisément, nous cherchons à comprendre pourquoi il y a eu une variation dans la position américaine face aux cas de génocide au Rwanda en 1994, au Kosovo en 1999 et au Darfour de 2003 à 2008. À partir d’une approche réaliste en Relations Internationales qui met l’accent sur l’intérêt national égoïste comme facteur principal explicatif du comportement des États, nous procédons à l’étude des cas de la position américaine lors de trois crises humanitaires. Plus précisément, nous cherchons à comprendre la non intervention des États-Unis lors du génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda en 1994, l’intervention américaine au Kosovo en 1999, et enfin la non intervention américaine au Darfour de 2003 à 2008. En somme, nos études de cas démontrent que c’est l’intérêt national qui motive les États d’intervenir ou de ne pas intervenir lors des cas de nettoyage ethnique ou de génocide. D’une part, lors du génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda en 1994, les États-Unis ne sont pas intervenus car l’intérêt national interprété comme le repli sur les affaires internes américaines ne serait pas maximisé par l’intervention militaire. Ensuite, l’intervention des États-Unis et de l’OTAN au Kosovo en 1999 est expliquée par l’intérêt national américain dans un contexte de l’après guerre froide d’approfondir son engagement sécuritaire en Europe et de préserver sa position hégémonique et son prestige sur la scène internationale, d’assurer la stabilité régionale et de préserver la crédibilité de l’OTAN. Finalement, l’intérêt national défini en termes de sécurité dans un contexte de la guerre au terrorisme explique la non intervention américaine au Darfour de 2003 à 2008. / This master’s thesis seeks to analyze what motivates a state’s military intervention in another state in order to stop mass human rights violations such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Particularly, it tries to explain the United States inconsistent behavior towards genocide and ethnic cleansing during the Rwanda 1994, the Kosovo 1999, and the Darfur 2003 to 2008 humanitarian crisis. Using arguments of the realist approach in International Relations, whose main explanatory factor for state behavior is egoistic national self- interest, this paper examines the United States position during these three human rights crisis. Specifically, we seek to understand the United States non intervention during the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the United States intervention in Kosovo in 1999, and finally the United States non intervention during the mass killings in Darfur in 2003 to 2008. These case studies demonstrate that shifting definitions of the national self-interest motivate states to intervene or not intervene in ethnic cleansing and genocide crisis. First, during the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, the United States chose to not intervene because the national interest, defined as the concentration on domestic affairs, would not be maximized by a military intervention. Secondly, the United States and NATO military intervention during the Kosovo crisis in 1999 can be explained by the pursuit of national self-interest maximization: in the post cold war context, the United States seek to strengthen their security engagements in Europe, to preserve their position and prestige in the international arena, to ensure regional stability as well as the NATO credibility. Finally, it will be argued that the national security self-interests motivated the United States non intervention in Darfur 2003 to 2008.

Ce mémoire vise à comprendre les motivations des États à intervenir militairement dans un autre État pour mettre fin aux violations graves des droits de l’homme tel que le nettoyage ethnique et le génocide. Plus précisément, nous cherchons à comprendre pourquoi il y a eu une variation dans la position américaine face aux cas de génocide au Rwanda en 1994, au Kosovo en 1999 et au Darfour de 2003 à 2008. À partir d’une approche réaliste en Relations Internationales qui met l’accent sur l’intérêt national égoïste comme facteur principal explicatif du comportement des États, nous procédons à l’étude des cas de la position américaine lors de trois crises humanitaires. Plus précisément, nous cherchons à comprendre la non intervention des États-Unis lors du génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda en 1994, l’intervention américaine au Kosovo en 1999, et enfin la non intervention américaine au Darfour de 2003 à 2008. En somme, nos études de cas démontrent que c’est l’intérêt national qui motive les États d’intervenir ou de ne pas intervenir lors des cas de nettoyage ethnique ou de génocide. D’une part, lors du génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda en 1994, les États-Unis ne sont pas intervenus car l’intérêt national interprété comme le repli sur les affaires internes américaines ne serait pas maximisé par l’intervention militaire. Ensuite, l’intervention des États-Unis et de l’OTAN au Kosovo en 1999 est expliquée par l’intérêt national américain dans un contexte de l’après guerre froide d’approfondir son engagement sécuritaire en Europe et de préserver sa position hégémonique et son prestige sur la scène internationale, d’assurer la stabilité régionale et de préserver la crédibilité de l’OTAN. Finalement, l’intérêt national défini en termes de sécurité dans un contexte de la guerre au terrorisme explique la non intervention américaine au Darfour de 2003 à 2008. / This master’s thesis seeks to analyze what motivates a state’s military intervention in another state in order to stop mass human rights violations such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Particularly, it tries to explain the United States inconsistent behavior towards genocide and ethnic cleansing during the Rwanda 1994, the Kosovo 1999, and the Darfur 2003 to 2008 humanitarian crisis. Using arguments of the realist approach in International Relations, whose main explanatory factor for state behavior is egoistic national self- interest, this paper examines the United States position during these three human rights crisis. Specifically, we seek to understand the United States non intervention during the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the United States intervention in Kosovo in 1999, and finally the United States non intervention during the mass killings in Darfur in 2003 to 2008. These case studies demonstrate that shifting definitions of the national self-interest motivate states to intervene or not intervene in ethnic cleansing and genocide crisis. First, during the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, the United States chose to not intervene because the national interest, defined as the concentration on domestic affairs, would not be maximized by a military intervention. Secondly, the United States and NATO military intervention during the Kosovo crisis in 1999 can be explained by the pursuit of national self-interest maximization: in the post cold war context, the United States seek to strengthen their security engagements in Europe, to preserve their position and prestige in the international arena, to ensure regional stability as well as the NATO credibility. Finally, it will be argued that the national security self-interests motivated the United States non intervention in Darfur 2003 to 2008.