Policy Studies

This paper explores the tension within advanced capitalist economies between the growing need for social security and emerging pressures to scale back the Welfare State. Empirical evidence related to recent Welfare State developments is surveyed along three dimensions: (1) summary statistical indicators of state redistribution efforts; (2) specific policy areas that affect the level of employment, distribution of employment, distribution of earnings, and redistribution of income; and (3) public management practices. The results show that the primary building blocks of the postwar Welfare State have eroded significantly. Important design considerations for future Welfare State reforms are then discussed.

What happens when similar measures are being introduced in different national contexts? This article studies the ways in which patient choice has been articulated in public and official reports on health care in the two contexts of Sweden and the UK, whose welfare systems are typically comprehended as different. Specific interest is directed towards the construction of patient positions, and policy documents are analyzed using discourse theory. The results show many similarities between the national contexts; choice is primarily articulated with individuality, autonomy, consumption, and responsibility, as well as with support from state agencies, and patient choice is relentlessly normalized as the way forward. But there are also important differences that reveal that the presuppositions differ, for example, when pinpointing the stakeholders of patient choice reforms and how the different policies work to take the well-known edges off of patient choice ideology.

Scholars have qplauded and critiqued the "equity" dimensbas of the four-year mayoral administration of Harold Washington in Chicago (1983-1987). Much of the debate has centered on how to assess the progress of equity planning and implementation in specific contexts, whether it has produced concrete outcomes for poor communities, become imtitutionalized, or changed civic decisionmaking structures. This article attempts to capture the contested and emergent quality of kquity planning in the Washington administration by examining its focus on jobs in some detail. The jobs goawerived from neighborhood experience of economic change-becarne a central element of Washington's 1983 mayoral campaign and one of the key development goak of the administration. The aahinktrationpursued an array of jobs policies and program. attempting to link economic development with employment services, hold accountable those f i r m receiving public incentives, retain manufacturing, and provide equitable access to city resources. By the end of Washington's fwst term, many economic development accomplishments had been achieved but the administration also expw'ienced dilemmas that challenged the jobs goal and its equity potentia-or example. the connection between local investment and regional and M t i o~l economic policies. Consideration ofthe early qeriences of the Washington administration in Chicago in formulating and implementing job policies and programs clarifies the dificulties of a broad-based and sustainable equity program. These lessons are particularly useful today as many low-income advocates. municipalities, and states struggle to reform workforce and economic developmenf systems.

1. ถอดรหัส “พรมแดน” นโยบายศึกษา
2. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Welfare Economics: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะการสร้างความเป็นอยู่ที่ดีของสังคมส่วนรวม
3. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Public Choice และ Behavioral Economics: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะของแนวทางการปรับเปลี่ยนพฤติกรรมของปัจเจก
4. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Information Processing/ Data Analytics: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะของการตัดสินใจบนฐานของข้อมูลสนับสนุน 
5. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Social Structure: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะกลไกภายใต้โครงสร้างสังคมที่สลับซับซ้อน
6. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Management: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะเครื่องมือการบริหารจัดการ
7. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Political/policy Process: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะส่วนหนึ่งของกระบวนการทางการเมือง
8. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Comparative Politics/ Public Policy: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะบทเรียน (ที่ดี) จากที่อื่น
9. นโยบายศึกษาในมุมมอง Political Philosophy/ Thoughts/ Theories: ศึกษานโยบายในฐานะเส้นทางสู่การสร้างสังคมการเมืองที่ดี 
10. ทำไมต้องมี “School” ด้านนโยบายสาธารณะ?

This article analyzes factors affecting countries ' commitment to mitigating global climate change within the scope of existing international institutions. The commitment level is operationalized as an ordinal variable ranging from an agreement with the international institutions (signature and ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change) to the actual implementation of the internationally negotiated modes of behavior (enactment of domestic environmental policies). A theoretical model of governments' decisionmaking is presented and tested for 91 countries at different levels of economic development with different

Environmental "public voluntary programs" (PVPs) involve government offers of positive publicity and technical assistance to firms that reach certain environmental goals. A growing body of empirical work suggests these programs generally have little impact on the behavior of their participants. A natural policy conclusion would be to eliminate PVPs, but we argue that such a conclusion is premature. Many PVPs are best viewed as information diffusion programs, so identifying their effects econometrically is difficult because information is likely to diffuse to nonparticipants. Thus, after the early phases of even a successful PVP, it may well be impossible to detect a difference in the performance between participants and nonparticipants. We argue that new estimation approaches are needed to identify the effects of PVPs. We also explore the design of PVPs in detail, showing how PVPs can potentially enhance the diffusion of cost-effective techniques for pollution abatement.

The article reviews three major controversies in the microfinance field: vehicles, technologies, and performance assessments for financial service delivery. Then it proposes that these controversies be resolved by a perspective emphasizing institutional plurality and external and internal eficiencies for individual programs. Questions for further research are discussed in the conclusion.

In this article, we examine long-term state budget trends to find evidence of punctuated equilibrium. We use the American states as a broad set of institutional variation with which to examine the nature of policy change through the lens of incrementalism and punctuated ...

"Since ‘9/11’ and the global war on terrorism that followed, Muslim clerics and intellectuals in India have been under pressure from various quarters to publically denounce terrorism. This demand has come from media, political parties and fellow non-Muslim citizens. On 31May 2008, the leading Islamic Seminary Darul-Uloom Deoband (based in Uttar Pradesh) issued a public “Fatwa against terrorism” at a public rally of no less than 100,000 Islamic clerics in Delhi. This paper analyses the background to the declaration, the contents of the Fatwa by the Deobandis and the responses from the ruling Congress Party government, the right wing (Hindu fundamentalist) opposition BJP, the Delhi Police and also Muslim intellectuals."

Recently, the policy community has been paying particular attention to Local Exchange and Trading Schemes (LETS) as potential bridges into work for the unemployed. Up until now, however, there has only been piecemeal evidence on whether LETS are effective in this regard. In this paper, therefore, the full results of the first comprehensive evaluation of LETS are reported. In order to feed into the'evidence-based policy-making'process, we evaluate whether LETS are effective first, as bridges into employment, second, as bridges into self- ...

To avoid molecular damage of biomolecules due to oxidation, all cells have evolved constitutive and responsive systems to mitigate and repair chemical modifications. Archaea have adapted to some of the most extreme environments known to support life, including highly oxidizing conditions. However, in comparison to bacteria and eukaryotes, relatively little is known about the biology and biochemistry of archaea in response to changing conditions and repair of oxidative damage. In this study transcriptome, proteome, and chemical reactivity analyses of hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ) induced oxidative stress in Sulfolobus solfataricus (P2) were conducted. Microarray analysis of mRNA expression showed that 102 transcripts were regulated by at least 1.5 fold, 30 minutes after exposure to 30 mM H 2 O 2 . Parallel proteomic analyses using two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE), monitored more than 800 proteins 30 and 105 minutes after exposure and found that 18 had significant changes in abundance. A recently characterized ferritin-like antioxidant protein, DPSL, was the most highly regulated species of mRNA and protein, in addition to being post-translationally modified. As expected, a number of antioxidant related mRNAs and proteins were differentially regulated. Three of these, DPSL, superoxide dismutase, and peroxiredoxin were shown to interact and likely form a novel supramolecular complex for mitigating oxidative damage. A scheme for the ability of this complex to perform multi-step reactions is presented. Despite the central role played by DPSL, cells maintained a lower level of protection after disruption of the dpsl gene, indicating a level of redundancy in the oxidative stress pathways of S. solfataricus. This work provides the first ''omics'' scale assessment of the oxidative stress response for an archeal organism and together with a network analysis using data from previous studies on bacteria and eukaryotes reveals evolutionarily conserved pathways where complex and overlapping defense mechanisms protect against oxygen toxicity.

Since 2014, the Education Bureau (EDB) has provided additional recurrent funding to primary and secondary schools for Enhanced Chinese Learning and Teaching for Non-Chinese Speaking Students (“CSL Funding”) as well as After-school Support for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Learning Chinese (“After-school CSL Funding”). The aim of the funding is to support the school-based implementation of the “Chinese Language Curriculum Second Language Learning Framework” (Learning Framework), with the objectives to ensure equal opportunities for all non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students in learning Chinese on par with their Chinese-speaking counterparts and to create an inclusive learning environment in schools. Depending on the number of NCS students in the school, the amount of funding ranges from $50,000 to $1.5 million per year for each funded school. Approximately $200 million was spent every year.
Strong quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation, and accountability mechanisms are necessary to ensure the implementation of policy goals. The objective of this research is to assess the accountability and transparency of the aforementioned funding and the Learning Framework. School websites and uploaded annual school plans and reports of 97 primary schools and 86 secondary schools in Yau Tsim Mong, Yuen Long and Eastern districts were examined. Information related to the receipt and use of the additional funding were recorded and coded for frequency analysis. To further evaluate the accessibility of funding information to non-Chinese speakers, language used in the websites and annual plans and reports were recorded and analysed.

In this article, we present for the first time systematic evidence that the percentage of minority faculty has a significant positive relationship with overall college matriculation rates in urban school districts across the nation. Although there is little discussion in the education literature of how minority teachers might influence achievement by students of all races, there is a widespread assumption that minority teachers improve the performance of minority students. Our data support this assumption, but they also suggest an important caveat. We will explain why this finding could mean that systemic school district behaviors cause the higher rates of college attendance, while the ethnic makeup of faculty acts as a proxy for these behaviors. This finding has important policy implications, as focusing only on the role-modeling hypothesis might lead to incomplete or incorrect reform remedies for urban school districts.

The era of public management change is said to challenge traditional "command and control" modes of governance, encouraging a move toward either more informal forms of (co-) governance or markettype incentives and competition. Regardless of whether these claims are made by reform advocates or by more sceptical observers within the wider governance debate, less attention has been paid by either side on the mechanisms that are supposed to facilitate the spread of new forms of control. This article seeks to advance this state of affairs in two ways. First, it utilizes the notion of institutional isomorphism to explore the nature of change of modes of control. In particular, it assesses the mechanisms for change, whether control mechanisms are changing due to coercive, mimetic, or professional mechanisms. Second, it explores the impact of these mechanisms in the federal context of Germany in two policy domains, prison and local government supervision (in the field of building administration). Finally, this article suggests that cultural theory offers considerable insights for the study of institutional isomorphism by emphasizing conflicting worldviews and the diversity of related policy ideas as driving forces of change in modes of governance.

There has been a continuous attack on education, particularly alternative, progressive, democratic and liberatory forms of education that seek social justice and an equality of opportunity for all to develop.  In the UK this has led to an attack on educators as 'the enemies of promise' by the Secretary of State for Education.  However, what is being proposed by policy makers are the old 'know your station in life' strategies of managing inequality.  These have always resulted in a violation of the intelligence of people.

Ireland's Early Childhood Education and Care Sector is now a full and vibrant one. A dynamic policy context underpins practice within a framework of quality service provision and an evolving and developing professional workforce. This situation has come about through a wide range of policy initiatives to develop the sector. This is particularly the case in relation to the last decade.

We investigate the central premise of the theory of markets in education, namely that parents value academic standards. We ask what parents really want from schools and whether different types of parents have similar preferences. We examine parents' stated preferences and revealed preferences for schools (their actual choice of school as opposed to what they say they value in a school). More educated and higher socio-economic status (SES) parents are more likely to cite academic standards, whilst less educated and lower SES parents are more likely to cite proximity. More advantaged parents choose better performing schools, particularly in areas with many schools and therefore a lot of potential school choice. More advantaged parents also choose schools with much lower proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, relative to other schools available to them. Hence whilst parents do not admit to choosing schools on the basis of their social composition, this happens in practice. Most parents get their first choice of school (94%) and this holds both for more and less advantaged parents, though this is partially because poorer parents make more 'realistic', i.e. less ambitious, choices. If, in areas where there is a lot of potential competition between schools, more advantaged families have a higher chance of achieving their more ambitious choices that do poorer parents, this could tend to exacerbate social segregation in our schools.

This Impact Report identifies and summarises the diverse impacts, resulting from the £500m of UK funding of Science and Technology in 2013, using numerous quantitative metrics and short case study extracts.  It shows how the varied impacts of a national science and technology organization and its many funded programmes can be annually identified, captured, tracked, and summarised in a public document.

The report was produced for, and by, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) -  the UK Research Council responsible for funding: (1) all UK astronomy, particle and nuclear physics research, (2) related UK science and technology facilities (e.g. as Harwell and Daresbury), (3) the UK contribution to international science (e.g. CERN, international telescopes and space missions), (4) innovation and business spin-off programmes, and (5) UK public engagement activities.

The Report was co-researched and co-authored by the STFC Impact Team, including myself while Impact Evaluation Manager in 2013, with Dr. Claire Dougan-McCallie (lead author/Head of Impact) and Jenny Beard, with additional input from senior managers, and many data and case study contributions from other key managers across STFC.

Varied key impacts are identified and reported including:

• Research amongst the best (by citation impact) in astronomy, nuclear and particle physics.
• Supported research of 226 Principal Investigators in 70 universities, led to 1,100 peer-reviewed papers in 2012.
• Facilities (the Diamond Light Source, ISIS and CLF) were used in 2012/13 by over 4,200 unique users , in over 2,400 experiments, producing over 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

• Technology from CERN benefited the UK economy by over £100 billion every year.
• Funding the development of the UK’s space, internet and computer animation industries, returned over £500 billion to the UK economy per annum.
• Funded Innovation Campuses hosted over 230 enterprises and supported over 5,000 jobs.
• UK industry won £43 million in contracts from the international subscriptions funded, and had accumulated a total of £150 million since 2005.

• Funded research inspired future generations to study STEM subjects, attracting 90% of UK undergraduates to study physics, funded 782 PhD students  and 16,800 student training days.
• Between 2009 to 2012 public engagement programmes engaged people on 58 million occasions, with 2 million people engaged in face-to-face activities in 2013 alone.

Media economics in India has been triggered from three quarters: debates in the political economy of media culture; reflections on sectors of media businesses; and, over the last decade, by the flashpoints in media policy. This undulating scholarly corpus has nevertheless drawn sustenance from a wide variety of theoretical and methodological quarters. These varied influences reflect, to a large extent, conscious desires to grasp the ‘economic’ phenomenon constituting the media in their deeper, often peculiarly Indian, social and historical contexts. This is also perhaps why we find scholarship on India largely remaining aloof of intellectual orthodoxies marking the field media economics elsewhere in the world.

... Eric Lindquist is Associate Research Scientist and Associate Director of the Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas ... EDUH, Higher education institutions; university affiliated research centers and programs, 16, 5.9 ...

Discussing Foucault’s and Deleuze’s work on meaning-making, the article argues that we might make better use of the intersubjectivity of a meaning when interpreting emotions. Interpreting emotions in texts remains complicated because discussion on the ontological character of emotions sustains an opposition of emotion to meaning structures. Both Foucault and Deleuze conceive meaning-making through permanent oscillation between the subjective accounts of a meaning and its collective interpretation. These two dimensions are not in conflict but create meaning through their interdependence. On the basis of this interdependence, we can conceive of an interpretive analysis of emotions as a way to study language means that label particular emotions as relevant, legitimized, or useful. This shift of the debate on emotions away from what emotions <em>are</em> and toward what they <em>mean</em> enhances the critical shape of interpretive analysis of emotions because it...

ing implementation of plan recommendations were resources (funding and a full-time coordinator), willing land owners, and networks. In the Lower Saxony cases, collaborative plans were seen as less impactful, but nevertheless the process of plan development did foster networks for implementing some actions to improve water quality.

The popularity of governance can be seen across academic genres. In some ways, the tremendous amount of theorizing on the subject has created contentious areas of debate. However, the approach that I argue will move the discussion forward is a focus on areas of agreement, where studying governance as a form of statecraft is considered. In order to advance the governance conversation, this essay speculates on the intersections of future governance research areas and maintains that making governance studies meaningful involves more empirical testing and inductive explorations by scholars.

There has been immense growth of financial services worldwide in the past few decades. This globalisation has led to increased cross-border activities enhancing global financial intermediation. Unfortunately, this development has been accompanied by a spate of transnational financial crimes. Financial crimes involve prohibited acts yielding financial benefit or the unlawful conversion by the wrongdoer of the ownership of property belonging to another person to the wrongdoer’s own personal use and benefit. The most prominent form of financial crimes that has attracted the attention of policy and law makers alike in recent times is Money Laundering.

Money laundering affects whole economies adversely and works against the economic, political and social development of economies worldwide. It has thus become pressing among the needs for countries to have strong anti-money laundering mechanisms coupled with the enhancement of transparent financial integrity to check the proliferation of this illegal act.

Ghana’s enactment of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, 2008 (Act 749), together with the ECOWAS initiative illuminate further, the effort of countries in the sub-region in joining in the global effort to minimise the scourge of money laundering.
This paper seeks to examine the causes and nature of money laundering as an organised crime and how it detrimentally impact on the wellbeing of national economies. It shall further delve into the regulatory efficacy of the anti-money laundering initiative in solving and minimising the illegal activity.

Education policy in Pakistan, as in other developing countries, faces the challenge of poor implementation. The article explores the history of education policy in Pakistan and describes the conventional accounts of policy failures. It particularly highlights the issues of unclear goals, political commitment, governance, centralisation, resources and foreign aid. Generally, it is assumed that overcoming these conventional challenges will result in better policy outcomes. Although this is partially true, Spillane, direct our attention to the cognitive factors that play a critical role in policy implementation. They argued that implementing agents try to make sense of policy provisions before acting on them. This article extends their views to emphasise that a more deepened understanding the process of sense-making requires incorporation of insights from the neuro-cognitive sciences. Based on the neuro-cognitive understanding of learning that is developed in this article, some cognitive constraints on learning and sense-making are proposed. It is argued that both conventional and neuro-cognitive constraints need to be optimally satisfied to avoid serious policy failures.

วิทยานิพนธ์  “การเมืองของถ้อยคำในชายแดนใต้/ปาตานี: การประกอบสร้าง “สันติภาพ” ในความขัดแย้งชาติพันธุ์การเมือง” มีคำถามหลักว่าในความขัดแย้งทางการเมืองที่มีการใช้ความรุนแรงกันถึงตายนั้น ลักษณะหน้าตาของการต่อสู้/การปะทะต่อรองทางความคิดเป็นเช่นไร? โดยใช้กรอบการวิเคราะห์การเมืองของการเรียกขานและถ้อยคำที่เคลื่อนตัว ตลอดจนการให้ความสำคัญกับ “การแบ” เรื่องเล่าที่เห็นต่างหลากหลายในความขัดแย้ง งานศึกษาพุ่งความสนใจไปยังการปรากฏตัวและเลือนหายไปของถ้อยคำเรียกขานสถานการณ์ความรุนแรงที่เกิดขึ้น ตัวแสดงในความขัดแย้ง ดินแดน/พื้นที่ และผู้คน ตลอดจนวิธีการหรือยุทธศาสตร์ในการรับมือกับความขัดแย้งเหล่านั้น โดยการมุ่งวิเคราะห์ถ้อยแถลงที่เป็นทางการของคู่ขัดแย้ง ผ่านการวิจัยเอกสารของรัฐไทยและขบวนการปลดปล่อยปาตานีเป็นด้านหลักและเสริมด้วยการสัมภาษณ์แหล่งข้อมูลที่เป็นตัวแสดงสำคัญในความขัดแย้ง วิทยานิพนธ์ชิ้นนี้ตีกรอบเวลาในการศึกษาที่เริ่มต้นตั้งแต่ปี 2544 ซึ่งเป็นช่วงที่ความรุนแรงเริ่มปรากฏขึ้นมาในแบบแผนใหม่ ผ่านจุดเปลี่ยนสำคัญหลายห้วง จนกระทั่งการพูดคุยเพื่อสันติภาพปรากฏต่อสาธารณะในปี 2556 และดำเนินต่อเนื่องมาจนถึงปัจจุบันในปี 2559
การศึกษาพบว่าเมื่อ “รัฐไทย” เผชิญหน้ากับ “ขบวนการปลดปล่อยปาตานี” รัฐได้พยายามกำหนดถ้อยคำเรียกขานสำคัญที่เกี่ยวข้องกับความขัดแย้งเพื่อสะกดสถานการณ์ไม่ให้พัฒนาไปสู่จุดที่ไม่พึงปรารถนา พร้อมทั้งสกัดกั้นความหมายของความรุนแรงไม่ให้ยกระดับไปเป็นประเด็นปัญหาการเมืองระหว่างประเทศ ถ้อยคำทางการทำหน้าที่ในการลดทอนความเป็นการเมืองให้กับความขัดแย้ง กร่อนเซาะความชอบธรรมของฝ่ายตรงข้าม และเสริมน้ำหนักของเหตุผลรองรับการบังคับใช้กฎหมายพิเศษในพื้นที่ความขัดแย้ง แต่อำนาจในการควบคุมความหมายของรัฐก็มิได้มีอย่างเบ็ดเสร็จเด็ดขาด เพราะมักจะถูกท้าทาย ช่วงชิง และต่อรองจากตัวแสดงอื่น ๆ เสมอ ดังที่ปรากฏหลังจากที่การพูดคุยเพื่อสันติภาพเผยตัวสู่สาธารณะ ซึ่งได้ส่งผลให้ปรากฏถ้อยคำที่ขัดแย้งแตกต่างหลากหลาย อันมีคุณูปการต่อการใคร่ครวญทบทวนความหมายของอัตลักษณ์ทางการเมืองและยุทธศาสตร์ในการรับมือกับความขัดแย้งอย่างที่ไม่เคยมีมาก่อน อาจกล่าวได้ว่าการถกเถียงเกี่ยวกับความหมายของถ้อยคำเหล่านั้นได้มีส่วนในการค่อย ๆ แปลงเปลี่ยนความขัดแย้งที่ความรุนแรงเคยผูกขาดครอบงำไปสู่การก่อร่างสร้างรูปความขัดแย้งที่สร้างสรรค์ขึ้น
การพูดคุยเพื่อสันติภาพส่งผลให้บทสนทนาเกี่ยวกับ “ถ้อยคำ” และ “ความหมาย” ดำเนินอยู่อย่างต่อเนื่อง วิธีที่ผู้คนจากหลากหลายภูมิหลังต่อรองกับความหมายของถ้อยคำข้างต้นนี่เองที่เปิดที่ทางให้มองเห็นความเป็นการเมืองของความขัดแย้งที่ถึงตาย ทำให้การแสดงความไม่เห็นด้วยนั้นเป็นไปได้ ปรากฏถ้อยคำสำคัญแปลกประหลาดอย่าง “ชายแดนใต้/ปาตานี” หรือ “Pa(t)tani” ซึ่งเปิดโอกาสให้ผู้คนได้มองเห็นโฉมหน้าที่ซ่อนอยู่ของความขัดแย้งนี้อย่างจริงจังว่าปมสำคัญนั้นอยู่ที่ปัญหากรรมสิทธิ์และความเป็นเจ้าของบนฐานความชอบธรรมที่แตกต่างกัน ซึ่งถึงที่สุดแล้วเอื้อต่อความเป็นไปได้ที่จะจินตนาการถึงทางเลือกอื่น ๆ ที่จะเผชิญกับความขัดแย้งนี้ นั่นเอง

This thesis “Politics of Words in Pa(t)tani: Constructing ‘Peace’ in Ethnopolitical Conflict” raises the question concerning the faces of struggle or ideational negotiation in deadly political conflict in southern Thailand or “Patani”. Covering the period from 2001 to 2016, the study applies “Politics of Naming” and “Words in Motion” as analytical frameworks and emphasizes how different narratives unfold in conflict. Analyzing political statements made by members of the Thai state and Patani liberation movements, this study considers the presence and absence of words used to identify violence, actors of conflict, means and strategies to deal with conflict.
The thesis finds that the Thai state successfully prevented conflict from reaching undesirable ends by trying to name and define words that are crucial to conflict dynamics. At the same time, it also tried to prevent violence from escalating by deinternationalizing and depoliticizing conflict, delegitimizing others, and justifying special laws currently used in the regions. However the state cannot completely control meanings of words of their choices, since they are challenged by other stakeholders. With the advent of peace dialogue, various words have been contested which in turn result in an unprecedented reexamination of political ideology and conflict strategy by parties involved. Consequently, contestation of these words and their meanings influence how these conflict, once dominated by violence, has been transformed to be more constructive.
Finally, peace dialogue helps conversation to continue about words and their significations. The ways in which people from difference backgrounds negotiate how politics of deadly conflict can be properly understood make genuine disagreement possible. Strange words especially “Pa(t)tani” reveal the face of deadly conflict which is the issue of “ownership” based on different legitimation bases. Seeing such a face makes it possible to imagine meaningful alternative future in engaging with conflict for the people.

At the core of this dissertation is a critical examination of the disjuncture between the policy and practice of sport for development. Drawing on a vertical case study of gender, sport, and education in the Pacific Island nation of Sāmoa, the study illuminates how a healthy islands through sport (HITS) policy world centered around using sport to create healthier bodies for a thriving nation is discursively created in inter/national policy but effectively separate and detached from the gendered logics guiding already existing translocal practices of sport for development. This practice, as described to me by my interlocutors, observed through twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, and quantitatively surveyed, includes ideas about development centered around the translocal ʻāiga (family) rather than the territorial boundaries of the nation, tautua (service) rather than health behavior change, and alofa (love) rather than one’s body size. Locally imagined sport for development also intricately ties together notions of transnational mobility and globalization with shifting practices of masculinity and muscularity, raises important questions about the purpose and kind of education needed for development, and highlights a local field of action that ironically coexists with a prescribed policy world focused on using sport to recalibrate unruly bodies into virtuous bio-citizens. Contrasting etic and emic constructions of sport in development, this dissertation makes two arguments. First, it highlights how many Samoans view sport as a roundtrip ticket off island toward economic opportunity and the imagined good life. In this case, it is not necessarily the quest to produce a healthy body that attracts Samoan youth, especially men, to sport but rather its potential to move bodies into more central locations within a global economy of remittances that makes sport popular. Second, this study demonstrates how inter/national development policy does not drive local practice. Instead, development actors sustain policy through a strategic process of social interpretation and translation that serves to align practice with policy at the surface while concealing deeper disjunctures of practice below. By juxtaposing what sport for development policy in Sāmoa is intended to achieve with how it is actually practiced, imagined, and socially managed, this dissertation foregrounds a dialectic of development imaginations that multiply shape the ways “playing for the future” has been incorporated into the development imaginations of Samoan youth, educators, community leaders, and government officials.

The armed conflict in the state of Jammu and Kashmir has touched the lives of all the people living in the valley in some way or other. Though, many women have become direct as well as indirect victims of this conflict. This paper is a sociological account of the experience of the women who became victims to this conflict going on in the valley from last two and half decades. Drawing upon personal account of these women it focuses on their experience of loss, the ostracism and stigma faced by them. The researchers utilizes the research tools of in-depth interview to understand and highlight the multiple experiences of deprivation and loss faced by these women.

Understanding the influence of policy knowledge (analysis, evaluation) on policy change represents a long-standing quest in the policy sciences. Despite attempts of Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) scholars, the first to embark systematically on this quest, utilization and policy process literatures still run parallel. Through a critique of ACF and utilization studies, we argue that the inability of policy theory to include how and which information decision makers use is the foundational issue hindering efforts to link process and substance in policy theory. Situating utilization studies in the policy design approach offers an improvement in conceptualizing relationships between policy knowledge, process, and change.

This paper dwells in a large space of encounter between theorizing poverty and the poverty of theorizing, through operating with ‘theory’ as means for [and end of] activating tropes as, and for, political interventions. In the first part, I explain how the paper weaves that space of encounter (the theoretical tools), why it weaves it on (and for) a vigorously located empirical background (The Romanian Carpathians), and what are the stakes of the whole enterprise. Then, the second part unpacks the cultural circuit of poverty, resource management, and industrialisation in the Romanian Carpathians along three relations (industrialization and poverty, justice and poverty, patriotism and poverty) creatively activated by the communist practices of governmentality, so as to make scarcity more bearable. The rather optimistic conclusion signals the need to consider the body an effective site of resistance to the practices of governmentality, and alternative directions of thinking scales and regions, and insists on the politics and potentialities of critical theorizing.

Key words: governmentality, materialist semiotics, environmental transformation, human and natural resources, poverty, development, justice, nationalism

This study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the girlchild affirmative action policy in secondary schools in Zimbabwe using Christian and Ndarama high schools as case studies. Both theoretical study and empirical research methods were used to ensure a balanced evaluation of the problem. Ninety nine of the 230 Form six students at the two schools were used as questionnaire respondents, and 2 focal point teachers of the 20 A level teachers at the schools were sampled for the interviews. Case study, descriptive survey and qualitative participatory approaches were used as the main research methodologies. The study established that male students are more than female students in all advanced level disciplines studied at the schools; both male and female students do not support the idea of affirmative action in their schools; authorities are not doing enough to conscientise both teachers and their students on the need for affirmative action in schools; the affirmative action policy is not being implemented in secondary schools in Zimbabwe and thus the policy is not yet effective in meeting the desired goals. The main challenge faced by secondary schools in the implementation of affirmative action was found to be mainly the issue of negative attitudes towards affirmative action. Entering school at lower points than boys reinforces the idea that women are academically weaker than men. The study recommends intensive awareness campaigns and advocacy to remove negative attitudes towards affirmative action; formal training sessions on affirmative action in the schools to help students contextualise the concept of affirmative action; government monitoring and follow-ups to ensure that the affirmative action policy is being implemented; among other recommendations.