Suchergebnisse

When members are elected to the House of Representatives they have a certain freedom to decide how they will act as members and how they will build their reputations. Just as in the market place entrepreneurs build businesses, so in the House of Representatives members have the freedom to choose to build legislative programs that will enhance their reputations in the institution. And yet entrepreneurship is also costly to members. Gregory Wawro explains why members of the House engage in legislative entrepreneurship by examining what motivates them to acquire policy knowledge, draft legislation, build coalitions, and push their legislation in the House. He considers what incentives members have to perform what many have perceived to be the difficult and unrewarding tasks of legislating. This book shows how becoming a legislative entrepreneur relates to members' goals of reelection, enacting good public policy, and obtaining influence in the House. The analysis differs from previous studies of this behavior, which for the most part have employed case study methods and have relied on anecdotal evidence to support their arguments. Wawro analyzes legislative entrepreneurship in a general and systematic fashion, developing hypotheses from rational-choice-based theories and testing these hypotheses using quantitative methods. Wawro argues that members engage in legislative entrepreneurship in order to get ahead within the House. He finds that the more legislative entrepreneurship that members engage in, the more likely it is that they will advance to prestigious positions. This book is of interest to students of Congress, legislative behavior and institutions, elections, and campaign finance. Gregory Wawro is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

Northern Iraq's Christians are a second-order minority. That is, they are a minority within a minority. They occupy a tenuous position between the Arab-dominated central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government. All Christians in northern Iraq desire to remain in their historic homelands. Yet efforts to advance a common political goal have been rare. Differences within the Iraqi Christian community center on three interrelated points: 1) the adoption and advancement of the Assyrian ethno-nationalist identity; 2) the struggle for leadership of the community between secular parties and church officials; and 3) the securing of group rights through either Baghdad or Erbil, which is typified by the debate over a province for minorities in the Nineveh Plain. The Islamic State's invasion in June 2014 made this dynamic even more complex. This dissertation explores how a second-order minority mobilized to protect its homelands during state breakdown and state recalibration. It examines how an Iraqi Christian political party, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), responded to the rise and spread of the Islamic State. More specifically, it analyzes the ADM's creation of a self-defense force, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU), and how the party positioned itself for the post-conflict state. Data generated through ethnographic fieldwork, combined with existing primary and secondary sources, reveals a detailed process whereby security threats shaped mobilization. Notions of historic homelands and distrust of both the central government and KRG were the central factors shaping this outcome. The ADM created the NPU to liberate occupied lands. More importantly, the NPU was created to ensure Christians retained a place in their historic homelands after the Islamic State was evicted. The use of the name "Nineveh Plains Protection Units" held strategic importance. The binding principle of the NPU was an indigenous-based attachment to the Nineveh Plain, including the right to defend it, and Christianity in Iraq. Both elements captured the common threads among all Iraqi Christians and the claim they make on the state. The ADM, therefore, was particularly attuned to Iraq's pre-Islamic ancient Mesopotamian heritage. This ironically echoed earlier efforts by the Ba'ath regime to instill a Mesopotamian identity among citizens by glorifying a common Assyrian and Babylonian heritage all could presumably share. Second-order minority status meant the ADM had to eventually align with either Baghdad or Erbil. The ADM chose Baghdad, effectively balancing against ISIS and the KRG in the Nineveh Plain. Baghdad proved a willing partner for a time. The ADM, however, was left alone to navigate the Nineveh Plain's position in the September 2017 Kurdistan referendum on independence. ; PHD ; This dissertation examines the Assyrian Democratic Movements response to the Islamic State. It analyzes the ADMs creation of a self-defense force, the Nineveh Plains Protection Units, and how the party positioned itself for the post-conflict state. Data generated through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in northern Iraq combined with existing primary and secondary sources reveals a detailed process whereby security threats shaped mobilization. Homeland claims and distrust of both the central government and KRG were the central factors driving this process. Second-order minority status meant the ADM had no choice but to pick sides between Baghdad and Erbil. The party eventually aligned with Baghdad. However, it was left alone to navigate Nineveh Plains position within the Kurdistan independence referendum.

This dissertation presents a critical perspective on modern practices of humanitarianism by following histories of the imperial-era Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) from its inception in 1877 until the formal dissolution of the Japanese empire in 1945. In the decades after its founding the JRCS became the most prominent humanitarian institution in the Japanese empire and the largest national Red Cross society in the world, drawing its leaders from among the most powerful of the ruling elites as well as the imperial family. As an state-sanctioned voluntary organization for the relief of human suffering, the JRCS continuously promoted the philosophies and institutions of humanitarianism by applying them across a wide range of political, social, and economic spheres. I argue that the leadership of the JRCS in efforts to rescue the sufferers of war, natural disasters, and disease made it an exemplar of humanitarian imperialism, or the continuous expansion of political domination by state and non-state agencies which operated according to a logic of promoting the life, health and well being of ordinary people. JRCS humanitarian thought and activity formed a key element of the ideology and institutions of imperial rule through five key conceptual categories--nation, law, production, hygiene, and gender. Chapter one shows how humanitarianism became an important element of Japanese nationalism by tracing changes in the early historiography of the origins of the JRCS during the Satsuma Civil War of 1877. Chapter two looks at affinities between practices of international humanitarian law and imperialism through the writings of Ariga Nagao--JRCS director, battlefield lawyer, and scholar of public administrative law. Chapter three argues that the JRCS relied upon and bolstered capitalistic ideas of wealth production through the representation of capital, land, and labor as sources of profit. Chapter four narrates the entry of the JRCS into the field of hygiene education. Chapter five concludes the work by analyzing the figure of the Red Cross nursing woman in the constitution of imperial gender subjectivities

This thesis has two distinct research threads. One thread examines the effectiveness of technology support on the performance of focus groups. Unlike previous research, the work described in this thesis addresses the fundamental issue that groups are social systems, and that comprehensive measurement of the effectiveness of group activities requires assessment of both the task-oriented and social aspects of the group activity. In this research, four different communication modes are used to compare group effectiveness. The second research thread in this thesis is the use of Systems Thinking, and specifically Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), as the framework for inquiring into the effects of technology support on group effectiveness. The strategy in this thesis for developing and evaluating hypotheses extends the general descriptions and guidance in the literature on using SSM for hypothesis testing. Systems thinking also provides the basis for examining the prevailing 'profile deviation' view that the better the fit between the group task and the technology support the greater the group performance. Using the six perspectives of fit developed by Venkatraman (1989), the most common GSS models and other models developed to examine Task-Technology Fit (TTF) are analysed. The results show that group performance models are most often tested from a 'profile deviation' perspective and TTF models developed from a profile deviation perspective claim to have predictive and descriptive validity for assessing the level of group performance. To assess whether an SSM based approach can improve the predictive and/or descriptive analysis of the impact of technology support on group work, a field experiment was conducted at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Twenty focus groups of officer cadets assessed their military training program using a GSS in one of four communication modes. The results showed little predictive or descriptive support for the profile deviation perspective of TTF when measuring the group's overall ...

Mit dem Begriff "Archipel ZATO" (zakrytye administrativnoterritorial'nye obrazovaniya) wird diejenige Gruppe russischer Städte bezeichnet, deren Existenz bis zum Zusammenbruch der UdSSR geheimgehalten wurde und die heute als "geschlossene Städte" bekannt sind. Diese Städte werden außerhalb der regionalen Haushalte direkt aus dem Föderationshaushalt finanziert. Der Verfasser legt eine Fallstudie von 13 "geschlossenen" Städten vor, in deren Mittelpunkt die Einnahmen- und die Ausgabenseite der kommunalen Haushalte dieser Städte stehen. Ein Vergleich mit anderen russischen Städten zeigt, daß die kommunalen Haushalte der "geschlossenen" Städte sich bis auf ihre hohe Abhängigkeit vom Föderationshaushalt nicht grundsätzlich von denjenigen anderer Städte in Rußland unterscheiden. Diese Abhängigkeit sowie die damit verbundene Ausklammerung der "geschlossenen" Städte aus den regionalen Budgets wird jedoch unter finanzsystematischen Gesichtspunkten als bedenklich beurteilt. (BIOst-Wpt)

This thesis set out to ascertain the position of recent Australian Governments on the latest instalments of Asian regionalism in the context of an assessment of whether there has been a redefinition of Asia and thus a redefinition of Australia's engagement with Asia. It will concentrate on the broad themes of politico-strategic and economic engagement. Whilst there has been extensive research and documentation on the Asian economic crisis there has been less work on the issue of a new Asian regionalism and the implications for Australia's complex and variable engagement with the region. This is the basis for the claim to originality of this thesis, a claim supported by its focus on the practical and policy implications of Australia's engagement, or lack of it, with regional institutions. The process of regional integration has been extremely slow, thus supporting the conclusion that there is no evidence of a major redefinition of Asia. Efforts at Asian regionalism are meeting obstacles that pose immense challenges. Asian regionalism remains nascent and poorly defined. This reflects the diversity and enormous disparities in cultures, political systems and the levels of economic development and differences over economic philosophies within East Asia. What is discernible is that the regionalism is proceeding more rapidly on financial issues than on trade, and in the security area it is conspicuously absent. This research highlights the fact that the question of Asian engagement remains a sensitive issue in Australia and continues to grow more complex. Australia's engagement with Asia since 1996 has been variable because of the Howard Government's broader balance of priorities between global and regional issues, and because of the changing nature of the Asian region. The perception gleaned from sources is that, for the Australian Government, regionalism initiatives are characterised by much discussion but lack substance. Consequently, this appears to have led the Government to the position that exclusion from some ...