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Modern liberal states are founded on individual rights and popular sovereignty. These doctrines are conceptually and historically intertwined but are in theoretical and practical tension. Locke's political theory is a source for proponents of both doctrines, and the same tension that runs through modern liberal thought and practice can be found in his theory. Rather than define the state in terms of a single sovereign authority, Locke constructs a sovereignless commonwealth with several coexisting claimants to supreme authority. He rejects sovereignty as what unifies the state, and he wants to replace the discourse of sovereignty theory with a language of obligation that will help bind together the sovereignless state. This language permits its adherents to articulate the reasonable basis and limits of political power. An understanding of Locke's sovereignless state helps us better comprehend the tensions embodied in discourses about individual natural rights, popular sovereignty, and governmental authority heard in the liberal state.

This paper reports a case study conducted at a local Government-aided primary school in Hong Kong to explore the teaching and learning of three students with special educational needs (SEN). The research aims to investigate the perceptions of the principal, teachers, social workers, students and parents on inclusive education, and look at the practicability and feasibility of the school inclusive policy. Results indicated that although the school embraces the inclusive ideology in principle, the interviewees expressed serious reservation on the Government promoted whole school integration approach to include all students with special educational needs. The study on one hand examined the government and school policy and practice on inclusion, and on the other hand identified the difficulties and obstacles encountered by the school, some of which were regarded as fundamental problems that require changes in the educational system. The paper ends with recommendations for further research that is worth exploring in order to achieve a true and effective inclusive educational system in the Hong Kong landscape. Research methodology is qualitative. Interviews were conducted with a number of school staff and two parents of the SEN students. The interviews focused on how school key personnel and teachers viewed their roles, contributions, and difficulties in implementing inclusive education, and how parents view the studies and growth of their children at the case school. A 10-week observations aimed at observing how the three students under the case study adapted, learnt and grew in a mainstream school environment. Through inductive reasoning, data collected was subsequently grouped into patterns and regularities. There are two recurrent themes brought up at the study. First, the success of inclusive education rests largely and predominately on the 'heart and soul' – the attitudes and values of the teachers in educating the SEN students; and second, the school does not have the right conditions, in particular, sufficient resources to provide a true inclusive environment for the SEN students with intensive support needs, where the system must change to adapt to the children's needs and not the vice versa. The general conclusion developed is that the case school, in face of the increasing number of SEN students, is forced to do more with less under the current government inclusive policy; and the SEN students themselves are forced to squeeze in the shoes of the regular students in a mainstream school. Without a system change, there is only partial inclusion at the mainstream school, and the SEN students must adapt to the regular classroom mode and curriculum, or fail. ; published_or_final_version ; Education ; Master ; Master of Education

"Marx's Capital examines the capitalist state in the abstract, and as it exists in advanced capitalism and peripheral capitalism, illustrating the ideas with evidence from the North and the South. Marx's Capital will interest scholars researching state-society/economy relations. It is suitable for university students as well as established scholars in sociology, political science, heterodox economics, human geography, and international development"--

"Marx's Capital examines the capitalist state in the abstract, and as it exists in advanced capitalism and peripheral capitalism, illustrating the ideas with evidence from the North and the South. Marx's Capital will interest scholars researching state-society/economy relations. It is suitable for university students as well as established scholars in sociology, political science, heterodox economics, human geography, and international development"--

In Finland, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is traditionally publicly provided. However, private ECEC provision has increased during the past decade, largely as a result of financial support from the public sector. Drawing on qualitative interviews with municipal decision-makers, this article identifies three frames within which publicly subsidised private ECEC provision and marketisation are rationalised: the pragmatic frame, the government frame and the choice frame. The results show that even though market logics and tendencies seem to have gained a strong foothold in local policies, there is a keen interest in universalism and maintaining public control over local ECEC provision. ; peerReviewed

This dissertation deals with how national higher education policy affects stakeholder influence in practice, i.e. how two selected higher education institutions, the University of Oslo and Telemark University College, have interpreted and adapted to national policy reforms. The aim of this dissertation is threefold. First, four stakeholder regimes: the expert, welfare, bargaining and entrepreneurial regimes, are developed. Second, these stakeholder regimes are used to investigate the evolvement of norms and structures for stakeholder influence over time, i.e. approximately 40 years, at the University of Oslo and Telemark University College, respectively. Third, historical institutionalism is used at an organisational level in order to reveal the evolvement of continuity and change in stakeholder influence at these two institutions. This dissertation argues that the two higher education institutions have both undergone an evolvement of stakeholder influence in three phases where the two first phases have paved the way for the ultimately dominant characteristics of the entrepreneurial regime. At the same time, the analysis shows that the initial institutional legacies of the University of Oslo and Telemark University College differed. The University of Oslo had an established institutional legacy where the professors had the most influence, whereas the participation of other internal stakeholder groups became part of the legacy during the 1970s. Recently, ideas of strong leadership have been added to the legacy. In contrast, the institutional legacy of Telemark University College was based on cooperation with external stakeholders already from the outset of the period studied here. On a general level, this dissertation argues that policy is more likely to change practice if the changes are incremental and introduced as layering modes of change on the structural aspects of the regime models. Along with these incremental changes – where the University of Oslo and Telemark University College become more alike in several aspects – both higher education institutions display a number of continuous practices; cooperation with external stakeholders is one example which can be traced back to the early stage of this study. However, Telemark University College initially opened up more to the outside world than the University of Oslo.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; I. Revolution and Modernisation: The Theoretical Context; Introduction: The Case for Comparing Russia and Iran; Ambivalence towards Western Modernity: To Be or Not to Be (like the West); Revolution; Modernisation; II. Historical Patterns of Modernisation from Above Impetus for Change: Sustaining the Russian; Impetus for Change: Sustaining the Russian Bear and the Iranian Lion; Peter the Great: Russia's First Modernising Autocrat; Alexander's Great Reforms; Rapid Reconstruction under Reza Shah; III. Modernising Romanov Russia and Pahlavi Iran.