Recollecting the history of the United States, which is inextricably entangled with westward expansionism (Manifest Destiny) and the construction of borders, is also a complex and troubling reexamination of the American identity itself. This is evident in critical perspectives that analyze our violent past and the narratives that continue to govern not only contemporary culture but also the academic sphere as Native scholars have been proposing over the last twenty years. However, what remains vital to this conversation is how to better include the narratives and voices from both native peoples and Mexicans—especially in the southwest borderlands—which also counteract the dominant narratives mentioned above. However, these alternate narratives can be affirmed and authorized as crucial histories by utilizing Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra and at the same time, act as a form of resistance. By reevaluating three crucial moments in The Crossing, Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, and employing a heuristic I will call the rhetoric of violence, I hope to highlight the importance of such marginalized narratives and the voices that occupy them in American history.

This study examined factors related to the teaching effectiveness of adjunct faculty in higher education. Specifically, it explored the relationship between personality, as defined by the Five-Factor Model, occupation, and student ratings of teaching effectiveness. Results indicate that personality is correlated to an instructor's classroom behavior and education goals, which in turn are related to teaching effectiveness. In addition, instructors with occupations in social services and education had significantly higher mean teaching effectiveness scores than those from other occupations. Finally, there was an inverse relationship between age and teaching effectiveness in this study, and a positive relationship between teaching experience and teaching effectiveness. Although instructors may not be able to change their personality, they can modify their behavior and teaching practices to increase their effectiveness as educators.

This study identifies the prevailing scarcity of urban public services and the conceptual relations among service delivery, patronage, bureaucratic activities and structural factors in the Lagos Metropolitan region. It examines the extent to which clientelism, bureaucratic decision rules and structural theoretical models explain water service delivery patterns in Festival Town (Festac), a suburb of Lagos, Nigeria. The unprecedented pace of growth of the Lagos Metropolis since the mid-twentieth century gave rise to the spectacular spatial expansion of the continuous built up region. Urban industrial and governmental institutions have not kept pace with the population growth rate of Lagos. This demographic trend also continues to tax the urban service delivery system. The federal government policy proscription entailed the planning and creation of a new town, Festival Town (Festac), as a response to addressing the urban public service problem in the Greater Lagos. Festac is well serviced with modern urban infrastructural facilities for the delivery of water supply and water related services. In recent years, however, the local residents of Festac have been faced with a similar problem in water supply which is not different from that experienced by urban residents in other parts of Lagos. The painstaking efforts that detailed a pre-planned, designed and carefully considered development of a new urban community have not succeeded in creating a regularly functioning delivery of water supply and water related services. Various analytical tools were utilyzed in conducting the study. The study concludes that the central factors in the prevailing scarcity of water supply in Festac are technology and infrastructural dependence and dwindling federal state revenues, all of which exacerbate the internal production of essential urban public services and thereby making delivery problematic. The findings presented in this study demonstrate the significance of the specific articulation expressed in the link between the Nigerian export sector, the fiscal capacity of the federal state and public service financing. This study recommends that if the Nigerian public service delivery system is to overcome its contemporary problems, policies should be adopted which largely depend on existing internal resources.

The Renovation Program - Ðổi Mới in Vietnam since 1986 have posed a puzzling policy question: why have some policy areas experienced radical changes while others have experienced only limited and incremental changes? This policy puzzle provided the focus for this dissertation in which a model of major policy change was developed to provide a new way of explaining the policy reforms in Vietnam over the past two decades. The model was developed based on three bodies of literature: (1) the most well-developed theories and models of policy change process created in the U.S and their application to the non-U.S policy contexts; (2) the Policy-elite model as an alternative to explain the policy reforms in developing countries; (3) critical and unique regime characteristics of Vietnam that play an important role in shaping the policy contexts for the policy processes and outcomes in Vietnam. Taken together, these bodies of literature provided the basic concepts and suggested potential causal mechanism of major policy change for a conceptual framework to build a major policy change model for Vietnam. The proposed policy model identifies four policy factors (stressor, leadership predisposition, change in policy image and consensus on the political priority) that need to occur at different stages of the policy process in Vietnam to make radical change happen. Owning to the unique regime characteristics of Vietnam, the model differs from other policy process theories and models in the way that it strongly emphasizes the role of the Communist Party and the predisposition to reform embraced by the policy elites in the process of major policy change. It also reflects the collective and consensus-based policy making style of the Vietnamese Communist Party and government in the transitional period of the country. The explanatory capacity of the proposed policy model was validated by four policy case studies in higher education, international trade liberalization, state economic sector, and legal reform in foreign investment in Vietnam. The empirical evidence drawn from the case studies has affirmed the usefulness and relevance of the policy factors and the causal flow embedded in the proposed model. Concretely, the two cases with radical policy changes witnessed the presence of all four policy factors and the processes of change followed the causal arguments of the model. Whereas, in the two cases without radical changes, the legacy of a Socialist state in Vietnam has impeded the significant changes in the policy image of the policy elites in respective policy domains. As the result, no innovative policy change alternative has been advanced to the agendas of the Vietnamese government, which in turn prohibited radical policy changes in the areas of higher education and state-owned enterprise over the past two decades. In the last chapter, the cross-case comparison has found that in all four cases, there have been strong stressors and the leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party and government have felt great pressure to reform. The Party has shown the predisposition to reform in various guiding resolutions in the four policy sectors. Yet, in the cases of higher education policy on institutional autonomy and state-owned enterprise management policy, the lack of significant change in the policy image of the leaders has been the main reason for the absence of innovative policy change. In contrast, in the cases of international trade liberalization and legal reform in setting the level playing field for enterprises of all economic sectors, all the policy factors have occurred to produce radical policy changes in these two areas.

Researchers suggest that restorative justice processes in schools are a successful alternative to traditional punishments for school discipline, and are used for both reactive and proactive responses to behavior issues. However, the processes are not sustainable if the administration implementing restorative justice do not promote a restorative justice ideology (RJI), and if all systems that impact the student are not aligned. Therefore, study was conducted to compare the level of restorative justice ideology between groups of administrators, teachers, and parents with a validated restorative justice ideology survey instrument that includes cooperation, restoration, and healing, and an accumulative score for RJI as a whole. Data were collected and analyzed with a One-Way ANOVA test at a selected convenience sample of 45 schools in a Western state. Using the theories of restorative justice, pedagogy, and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model, the comparison of ideologies between these groups indicated a statistically significant difference between administrators and parents in the restorative justice ideology belief of restoration, and in the overall belief of restorative justice ideology, showing a lack of alignment. The findings can impact social change by the identification of barriers in sustainable implementation of restorative justice in schools. The findings can also be used to suggest an evidence-based model that includes parents and families in all stages of planning, implementation, and continued practice, along with consideration that restorative justice is a belief system rather than a behavior intervention.

This thesis is a study of social divisions and an assessment of the impact of neoliberalism upon them. Its purpose is to investigate the nature of contemporary social divisions, and whether or not the ????underclass???? is a useful way of conceiving the social and economic marginalisation of some individuals. The underclass thesis crystallises in a powerful and contentious way some fundamental premises that underpin the neoliberal philosophy, namely that the welfare state is considered a threat to freedom, discourages work, and is socially and economically damaging. Thus there ought to be a reduced role for the state in the provision of welfare. There are two fundamental weaknesses in social democratic critics???? contributions to debates about welfare reform. The first relates to a focus on residual welfare and measurements of poverty, largely neglecting the systems of power that underlie welfare distribution. The second relates to the omission of agency. Critics???? responses have tended to ignore the behaviour of the welfare beneficiaries targeted by current reform. In order to address both of these issues, I have formulated a critical post-traditional paradigm of social divisions. The study comprises three stages. The first is an historical overview of neoliberal policy developments and a quantitative analysis of social divisions. The findings indicate that neoliberal nations have the lowest commitment to welfare, and the highest levels of poverty and widening inequality. In Australia, labour market changes and educational underachievement are likely to contribute to new and emerging divisions, and the cumulative nature of disadvantage is apparent within low socio-economic areas. The second stage of the study examines the policies of the Howard Coalition Government in Australia and focuses on the prevalence of the underclass phenomenon in current welfare reform. Records central to the Government????s welfare reform agenda are analysed to examine policy makers???? normative beliefs. The findings reveal that the underclass thesis is an ideological construct that legitimises a reduction of welfare provision and control of the unemployed. The third stage of the study focuses on the experiences of unemployment among young people, and the views and experiences of welfare providers who work with them. The data show that individuals make decisions about their lives from the range of options they perceive to be available to them at a particular point in time. These options are not limited to those made available by the provisions of the welfare state, nor are they solely the product of inter-generational welfare. The welfare providers enforce the Government????s position on welfare reform by endorsing a version of the underclass thesis in their work and directing their interventions at the individual. Considered together, the findings reveal that a conservative neoliberal social policy fails to capture the complex interaction that occurs between individuals and their social environment, and the impact this has on their labour market activities. By successfully converting the problem of welfare dependency into a private issue, a neoliberal social policy is legitimised and current social arrangements are maintained. / PhD Doctorate

Depuis les années 1970, les propositions de réforme des systèmes de protection sociale se sont multipliées dans les pays industrialisés. Parmi celles-ci, l'idée d'introduire un "revenu inconditionnel" (RI) constitue l'une des plus controversées. Sous cette appellation, on regroupe ici trois propositions : l'allocation universelle, l'impôt négatif, et le revenu de participation. Nulle part le RI n'a été mis en œuvre, et certains en ont déduit que ses chances politiques étaient extrêmement faibles. Pourtant, durant la période 1970-2003, on a pu relever d'importantes avancées. Alors que dans certains pays les stratégies des promoteurs du RI ont été vouées à l'échec, ailleurs la proposition a gagné en crédibilité. Ce travail porte en son cœur la question de recherche suivante : quels sont les déterminants de la faisabilité politique d'un revenu inconditionnel ? Il procède en six grandes étapes. Les trois premières sont de nature théorique, alors que les trois dernières sont résolument orientées vers l'investigation empirique et comparative, au départ d'études de cas portant sur cinq pays de l'OCDE : Belgique, Canada, France, Irlande et Pays-Bas. Ce faisant, nous traitons de la question du destin politique du revenu inconditionnel, et indiquons pourquoi la notion de « faisabilité politique » devrait occuper une place centrale en analyse des politiques publiques. Trois grandes conclusions de la thèse peuvent être très brièvement résumées. On relève premièrement que le débat sur le RI confirme l'impact des institutions de protection sociale sur la faisabilité politique des réformes. Le RI a été sérieusement discuté dans deux pays de tradition libérale, le Canada et l'Irlande. Deuxièmement, on note que les organisations de travailleurs sont structurellement enclines à s'opposer à toute progression politique vers un RI. Cette opposition, ouvertement exprimée ou anticipée par les décideurs, affecte la faisabilité politique de la proposition. Enfin, en France et aux Pays-Bas des organisations de chômeurs autonomes ont émergé au cours des années 1980. Elles ont été capables de construire un discours revendicatif distinct du discours syndical, dans lequel le « droit au revenu » a dès l'origine occupé une place centrale, ce qui a manifestement contribué à accroître la faisabilité politique d'un RI. Notons que le modèle explicatif développé, à la différence de la plupart des études portant sur la mise à l'agenda des instruments de l'action publique, n'attribue pas de place décisive aux entrepreneurs politiques individuels. / The idea of introducing an “unconditional minimum income” constitutes one of the most controversial reform proposals in the field of social policy. Under this label or alternative designations such as “basic income” or “citizen's income”, one generally refers to the payment of an income by a political community to all its members, on an individual and regular basis, without means test or work requirement. Such a benefit would differ from existing minimum income schemes, since the latter are means-tested, targeted at the needy, and related to work requirements. Even if it has already been considered by utopian thinkers during the nineteenth century, the proposal has mostly been discussed from the 1960s onwards, first in North-America and later in Europe. In all countries where this idea has been debated, significant oppositions have slowed down or even stopped its political progress. Nowhere a true unconditional minimum income has been implemented, and some have concluded that it was “politically unfeasible”. The research question which constitutes the main thread of this thesis is the following: is it possible to identify explanatory factors which determine the political feasibility of an unconditional income in industrialized countries? To answer this question, the thesis starts with a theoretical overview of the scientific literature on “basic income” and related proposals (a “negative income tax” and a “participation income”, in particular), as well as of comparative welfare state research. It also focuses on the misleading interpretations of the very notion of “political feasibility” that are too often found in political science. It then turns to a systematic comparison of historical outcomes in five OECD countries: Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. In this perspective, a significant part of the thesis is devoted to a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of the political feasibility of an unconditional income. We show that when it is used together with in-depth analyses of cases, QCA is superior to purely quantitative or qualitative techniques for the study of a small number of cases (small-N). In the case of this research, the Qualitative Comparative Analysis shows that the political feasibility of an unconditional income is negatively affected by the existence of a system in which unions run the subsidized unemployment insurance systems (a so-called Ghent system) or, more surprisingly, by the presence of a social movement advocating the introduction of such a minimum income scheme. From this, one can infer that a major redistributive reform which would take the form of an unconditional income is much more feasible if it is debated outside of the public sphere where many actors can express their views. As should be the case for all studies using Boolean algebra, in the concluding chapter of the thesis one then goes back to a detailed comparative analysis of cases to test this hypothesis. The crucial impact of labor unions and social movements is confirmed, but somewhat qualified, and the importance of taking institutional factors into account – such as the liberal character of the welfare system – is strongly emphasized.

Der Begriff „Arbeit“ hat Hochkonjunktur. Jedoch bleibt das grundsätzliche Verhältnis zwischen Arbeit und Politik weiterhin unbestimmt. Unsere Autoren beschäftigen sich mit ökonomischen Spielräumen und ungenutzten Handlungsoptionen. Sie wagen hierbei den Blick über den deutschen Tellerrand und suchen gezielt die europäische Perspektive. Im Eröffnungsbeitrag diskutiert Peter Ulrich nicht nur Fragen zur Effizienz, sondern zu einem gerechten Arbeitsmarktes und sinnvollen Arbeitsformen. Am Beispiel der Internetökonomie diskutieren Raphael Menez, Josef Schmid und Stefanie Springer das Spannungsfeld zwischen Arbeitspolitik und industriellen Beziehungen. Wie sich Arbeitspolitik mit all ihren Dilemmata auf der europäischen Bühne konkret abspielt, zeigen Milena Büchs, Kilian Kindelberger und Annerose Poleschner in ihren Artikeln exemplarisch auf. Unter welchen Bedingungen finden Investitionswettbewerb und Sozialpolitik in der „Ära nach Hartz“ statt? Diesen Fragen gehen Britta Rehder, Christine Trampusch und Klaus Deimer nach.

This thesis is a case study of the Swedish Rehabilitation Reform of 1992. Vocational rehabilitation is described as an organizational activity which takes place in the interaction between social policy regulations and organizational execution. The analytical point of departure is made up of two complementary theoretical perspectives (Chapter 3): New institutional theory and the concept of 'negotiated order'. New institutional theory can aid inter-organizational analysis as it assumes that organizations are not only influenced, but also permeated by institutional and technical frameworks. The 'negotiated order' perspective can provide an understanding of actors' motives when they work together. This perspective also acknowledges that actors are able to exercise 'episodic power', and that this differs from 'formal power'. The first empirical study (Chapter 4) analyses the political motives behind the Rehabilitation Reform of 1992. It shows that at the time of the Rehabilitation Reform economical and political interests were pushing for a tighter regulations in Swedish social policy. The following three empirical studies focus on the 'organizational field' in which rehabilitation is practised. This field consists of the social insurance office, employment agencies, primary health care centres and occupational health service centres. Chapter 5 deals with the regulations and environmental factors influencing the various organizations and their representatives. It points to five external forces that influence the performance of the four type of actors. The social insurance office is influenced by a judicial social insurance logic, the employment agencies by a holistic labour market policy logic, and the physicians in primary health care centres and in occupational health centres by a 'holistic' medical frame of reference, which contrasts with that often found in other medical sub-specialities. Finally, employers are influenced first, by a logic of profit which has a technical and institutional dimension and second, by an institutional welfare state logic. Chapter six shows that the largest 'domain conflict' in the initial phase of the rehabilitation trajectory has to do with defining 'capacity to work'. Domain conflicts are seen as resulting from different institutional logics, implying different views on illness and capacity to work. Numerous and frequent personal interaction make it possible for physicians and rehabilitation officials to avoid conflict. The operative phase is associated with two major domain conflicts. The first is related to negotiations between the social insurance office and the employers about transferring employees to other duties. Both sides avoid exercising power that may damage clients and future trust. Episodic power resources are used to exercise the strategy of 'the golden middle path'. The other domain conflict is related to the judgement of work capacity. The labour market officials' view of work capacity differs from that of the officials at the social insurance office. Chapter seven compares cooperative rehabilitation projects with regular rehabilitation activity. The results show that actors in cooperative projects break the sequential work order used in regular rehabilitation activity and thereby projects quickly collect comprehensive information about individuals. Cooperative projects can also achieve flexible solutions tailored to an individual clients needs. Further, cooperative projects allow time for unconventional initiatives, which regular activity do not. The process of 'returning to work' poses a challenge both kinds of work organizations. Individuals who are disabled in some way are required to meet the same labour market demands as healthy and well educated are expected to meet. Finally, regular rehabilitation work tends uses standardize clients while cooperative projects tend to treat them as individuals. / digitalisering@umu

Swedish postwar aid to Germany from 1945 to 1954 is described and analyzed, especially as an expression of Swedish attitudes developed over a long period of societal evolution. As early as 1943/44 both Swedish voluntary agencies and the Swedish government began to plan program of postwar aid to Germany. Older and more recent attitudes to Germany, the views of Germans living in exile in Sweden and the intentions of the Western allies toward a conquered Germany were central in determining the nature and scope of Swedish aid. Programs incorporated the values of traditional Christian charity, secularized philanthropy and applied methods developed for emergency aid abroad and for social assistance at home. The new concept of the welfare state, strong in Sweden at the time, led to aid also being aimed toward long-term socio-political goals. Children, young people, mothers, refugees, displaced persons and what was regarded as the German elite were the main recipients of various aid efforts. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, aid came to be increasingly directed to West Germany. Postwar aid, with Germany as the main non-Scandinavian recipient, was Sweden's first experience as a long-term aid donor. While the efforts of voluntary agencies were concen­trated abroad, the Swedish welfare state developed rapidly at home, leaving no room for privately sponsored social work. Even after 1950/54, therefore, the work of Swedish voluntary agencies was directed at needs abroad, mainly to so-called undeveloped countries outside Europe. The premises underlying such aid and its contents were largely the same as for postwar aid to Germany. / digitalisering@umu