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The central argument of this thesis is two-fold: that association, in various modes, is one key to creative ideation; and that using a lyric inquiry with modes of association can aid in generating ideas for creative practice. I identify and explore these critical elements of the creative process using practice-based research revisited through a scholartistry angle (Elkins 2005, Knowles, Promislow, and Cole 2008, Neilsen 2002), aiming to facilitate idea generation for myself and university-level, student artists and designers. I focus on the liminal period of ideation, just before an idea for studio is fully formed. Throughout the thesis, I use traditional, academic text juxtaposed with lyric writing to present my research, staged in 'glass' (the concepts, material, hotshop, and history) because glass is unique in its contribution to human creativity, ideas, and innovation. Through my writing, I describe creativity research and theories, while simultaneously practicing the theories to investigate ideation and offer an inclusive, accessible approach to glass as a creative medium. My literature review reveals that modes of association (named differently in different fields) are present in critical studies and theories of creativity, ideation, and innovation across disciplines as diverse as psychology, advertising, business, and mathematics. I reposition theories such as Mednick's remote associates (1962), Koestler's 'bisociation' (1964), de Bono's 'lateral thinking' (1977), Johansson's intersections (2004), and Johnson's 'adjacent possible' and 'exaptation' (2010), tying them together and tracing them to Wallas' The Art of Thought and his theories of association in the creative ideation process (1926). I discuss how these theories and associative modes operate in early creative ideation and highlight how words and relationship awareness can be critical to idea formation. My practice-based research puts association theories into practice, supporting them, while also adding a new contribution: evidence showing the usefulness of lyric inquiry to idea generation. I embrace 'lyric philosophy' (Zwicky 2014), follow 'scholartistry'-a fusion of artistic inquiry and scholarship (Knowles, Promislow, and Cole 2008), and attend to creativity from a 'meta-creativity' approach (Runco 2015). By examining creative ideation from my practitioner's lens, I offer a shifted perspective for creativity research, conducted most often from non-practitioner viewpoints observing creatives. My creative outputs are incorporated within this written thesis, supporting my dissertation writing as primary sources of information: 'Word Triangulation' (a new ideation tool with positive trial results), a glass reading aid, lyric texts, and a book of ideas. Designed as an artist's book, my dissertation itself is a creative output, challenging the traditional thesis writing form and demonstrating a creative process. I offer it as a work of glass.

What makes scientific knowledge possible? The philosopher Immanuel Kant in his magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason, had a fascinating and puzzling answer to this question. Scientific knowledge, for Kant, is made possible by the faculty of reason and its demand for systematic unity (or, 'systematicity'). In other words, cognition about empirical objects can aspire to be scientific only if it is rationally embedded within or transformed into a system. But how can such system form once we take into account the perspectival nature of knowledge, i.e., its being situated in individual human cognitive faculties? My PhD thesis has a two-pronged objective: (i.) to reconstruct the complexity of the notion of systematicity in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; and (ii.) to defend its plausibility in contemporary debates on the unity or plurality of scientific knowledge. As far as (i.) is concerned, Kant's position is far from being clearly understood in the literature. Despite a renewed interest in Kant's notion of systematicity in recent decades, existing contributions fail to offer a satisfactory account of it. The aim of my thesis is to provide a unified reading of reason's systematicity as an essential feature of Kant's analysis of the sources of cognition. In particular, I defend a novel account of theoretical reason the aims to support the following claims: (a.) systematicity is grounded in a legitimate use of reason's ideas as prescriptive rules for empirical investigation; (b.) it is necessary to make empirical cognition possible and generate scientific hypotheses; and (c.) it gives us fundamental insights into Kant's 'empirical realism' and his understanding of the role of metaphysics in science. With regard to (ii.), I show that Kant's account of theoretical reason has much more to offer than generally acknowledged. In particular, I present it as providing a reconciling solution to the conflict between unity and pluralism in contemporary philosophy of science. Drawing inspiration from Kant's 'perspectivism,' I argue that unity and pluralism are to be thought as mutually inclusive principles of scientific knowledge.

This dissertation analyses the various factors behind the British East India Company’s metamorphosis from a mercantile corporation into a semi-privatised imperial agency in the crucial period between Lord North’s Regulating Act in 1773 and Pitt’s India Act of 1784. To untangle these factors, this dissertation engages with three core themes. Firstly, it posits a reciprocal constitutional and legal relationship between the East India Company and the British state, situating the Company as a central but destabilising force in domestic constitutional crises, while also arguing that domestic political factors fundamentally shaped the structure and development of the early British Raj. Secondly, building on the work of David Armitage and P.J. Marshall on imperial ideology, this dissertation examines contemporary thought and ideas on the concept of ‘empire’ and how the acquisition of territory in South Asia by a mercantile corporation profoundly challenged the prevailing normative conceptions that the British Empire was ‘Protestant, commercial, maritime and free.’ By drawing upon a wide range of sources including pamphlets, newspapers, handbills, speeches, and private correspondence this work exposes the diversity of contemporary views towards the newly-acquired ‘empire in the East’ and examines how they crystallised into movements for imperial reform. The third theme of this dissertation focuses on the effect of ‘distance’ on the governance of the East India Company and examines the ways in which reforms were influenced by this central factor as it intersected with notions of sovereignty and jurisdiction in the metropole. By utilising the attempts to remove Warren Hastings from the post of Governor General of Bengal as a case study, this chapter seeks to highlight London’s position as a discursive centre of the empire. It therefore engages with debates on the structure of empires, including the metropole/periphery divide, and the usefulness of network analogies. Analysing these political, constitutional, and ideological factors in East India Company reform throws into sharp relief the connections between British political and constitutional developments in this period and the unprecedented expansion of the Empire into far-flung and diverse locales.

Within the increasingly global agora of social policy-making, social protection has been constructed as a global policy idea by a broad epistemic community of transnational agencies, including the World Bank, ILO and DFID. Competing framings of social protection have influenced the models that have been introduced by these transnational agencies at country level. Cash transfers have gained particular attention, and been actively promoted to governments across sub-Saharan Africa. From its origins as a nation created by colonial borders to the interventions of international financing institutions through structural adjustment and subsequent debt relief, Zambia has long been shaped by external influences and forms of policy transfer. As with many countries in the region, the cash transfer model was introduced in Zambia by donors in the early 2000s, but initially resisted by the political stream. However, in 2013 the Zambian government increased their investment in cash transfers by 700% then rapidly scaled up the programme, and began searching for a targeting design with national character. Against this background, I trace the global policy idea of social protection in Zambia, first through social health insurance (SHI) and then social cash transfers (SCTs). This multi-level study examines the introduction and promotion of these models through the efforts of transnational agencies; their uneven adoption, with slow progress on SHI while SCTs have been adopted and implemented; and the rejection of a centrally designed cash transfer model in communities during implementation, leading directly to changes in design. I develop a framework that integrates policy transfer with multiple streams to analyse the politics of policy-making across global, national and local levels. The framework guides an in-depth qualitative investigation involving key informant interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis at multiple levels. The investigation goes beyond the phase of policy adoption to examine the interaction between global and local ideas during policy implementation, providing a holistic assessment of global policy transfer across these levels. Focusing on domestic receptivity to global policy ideas at different levels, I analyse the mechanisms through which domestic politics influences the global policy transfer process. I find that alignment between problem, policy and political streams continues to matter beyond agenda setting and policy adoption. It is also vital during implementation, which is a site of continued contestation and policy translation. In the case of cash transfers in Zambia, contested notions of social justice have emerged as being a key factor determining the alignment between global policy ideas and local ideas on the ground, centred on understandings of deservingness. The thesis concludes that the social cash transfer policy in Zambia has been shaped by the efforts of a transnationalised policy coalition to promote this global policy idea, interacting with national political dynamics and local ideas of deservingness. This case demonstrates that social and political receptivity to a global policy idea is determined by the level of alignment with domestic political interests, specifically survival strategies, as well as elite and popular paradigmatic ideas, shaping which global policy ideas travel and in what form.

This thesis explores the politics of elite commitment to promote local content and participation within Ghana's oil and gas sector. Since Ghana discovered commercial quantities of oil in 2007, debates over whether it would avoid the 'resource curse' have primarily taken place within a neo-institutionalist frame of analysis that emphasises the importance of establishing certain types of institutional arrangements which can help constrain and shape elite commitment to developing petroleum resources in the national interest. This thesis seeks to go beyond this framing by deploying new forms of political analysis which show that elite commitment is shaped not by institutions but by the wider configuration of power. It employs an extended 'political settlements' framework (incorporating ideas) that explains how elite interests and ideas shape developmental forms of political commitment to governing oil in the national interest. The analysis is based on three main cases - the politics of formulating and adopting local content legislation, the process through which this legislation was implemented and the effort put into building the capacity of Ghanaian firms to participate in the sector. The thesis argues that the underlying tendencies within Ghana's competitive clientelist political settlement (electoral incentives, coalition building, patronage politics and ideas) directly shaped the levels of political commitment to secure greater oil rents. Ghana's competitive political settlement generated incentives for politicians to use local content policy promises as a strategy to bring certain civil society and private sector elites within what would become a ruling coalition. This move, along with the resource nationalist ideology of the coalition in power at the time, in turn helped to generate relatively high levels of elite commitment to developing ambitious targets within the legislation. However, the process of implementation has been shaped more directly by incentives than ideas, particularly in terms of pressures to distribute participation opportunities in line with the clientelist logic of the political settlement, benefitting politically connected firms. In applying an extended political settlements approach, this thesis offers deeper political economy insights into the drivers of elite commitment to governing oil in the national interest, and shows how Ghana's efforts to avoid the resource curse have and will continue to be closely shaped by 'power relations', 'elite bargaining' and 'ideas'.

The thesis addresses the puzzle of the differential integration of former communist states in the Euro-Atlantic community of nations between 1989 and 2000. Notwithstanding the predominant universalist-rationalist assumption that the adoption of an institutional-administrative blueprint for reform could lead to convergence between East and West, countries such as Poland, Bulgaria and Russia did not converge similarly (or at all) on the West European normative model and framework of international relations. To account for this divergence, the thesis examines the impact of the culturally-historically informed, Polish, Bulgarian and Russian identities and conceptions of 'Europe' (as opposed to the formal-institutional transition from one system to another) on the process of foreign policy transformation. The doctoral research employs Constructivism, Social Psychological insights and an interpretivist methodology, drawing on 75 elite interviews. The main argument states that differential Europeanisation can be understood on the basis of differentiated levels of inclusion and establishment of relations of mutual recognition and belongingness - substantiated by a differentiated extent of ideational affinity (i.e., normative compatibility), which are (re)enacted in the interactive, mutually constitutive process of identification between Self and Other (i.e., between Poland, Bulgaria and Russia and (Western) Europe). Three propositions of 'thick', 'ambivalent' and 'thin' Europeanisation are derived from the argument (whereby the comparative benchmark of Europeanisation is an ideal-typical model of European-ness). Key contributions focus on the development of a refined Constructivist theory and a systematic empirical comparison of Polish, Bulgarian and Russian foreign policy identities. Also, the study's conclusions reinvigorate and reconfirm the importance of the continuity (rather than just constant flux) of culturally-historically shaped patterns of group self-understandings and sub-regional identifications as well as Constructivism's greater plausibility in accounting for the research puzzle than (Neoclassical) Realism through the stipulation of a mutually constitutive relationship between international and domestic factors and between ideational and interest-based considerations.

This research aims to provide a better understanding of the role of ideas in the policy process by not only examining whether, how, and to what extent ideas inform policy outcomes but also by examining how ideas might simultaneously be used by political actors as strategic discursive resources. Traditionally, the literature has treated ideas - be it implicitly or explicitly - either as beliefs, internal to the individual and therefore without instrumental value, or as rhetorical weapons, with little independent causal influence on the policy process. In this research it is suggested that ideas exist as both cognitive and discursive constructs and that ideas simultaneously play a causal and instrumental role. Through a process tracing analysis of Germany's policy on European monetary affairs in the period between 1988 and 2015, the research investigates how policymakers are influenced by and make use of ideas. Using five longitudinal sub-case studies, the research demonstrates how ordoliberal, (new-)Keynesian, and pro-integrationist ideas have importantly shaped the trajectory of Germany's policy on European monetary affairs and have simultaneously been used by policymakers to advance strategic interests. By empirically examining the dual and simultaneous role ideas play in the policy process, and by demonstrating that agents are both informed by and make use of their ideational environment, this research aims to make an original contribution to the literature and to strengthen the basis for a promising 'strategic constructivist' research agenda.

The research undertaken represents an in-depth study of gender and economics from a multi-disciplinary perspective. By drawing on economic, social policy and political science literature it makes an original contribution to the disciplines of economics and feminist economics by advancing ideas on a feminist theory of policy change and institutional design. Equally, the study develops a framework for a multi-method approach to feminist research with applied policy focus by establishing a pragmatic feminist research paradigm. By espousing multiple research philosophies, it extends understanding of gender differences in policy outcomes by connecting theories from feminist economics, feminist historical institutionalism and ideational processes. Jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK and the Scottish Government, this project attempts to answer three key questions: What is the relative position of men and women in the Scottish economy and how do childcare responsibilities influence these? Which institutions, structures and processes have been instrumental in embedding gender in Scottish economic policy? To what extent and how is the Scottish Government’s approach to economic policy gendered? Quantitative analysis reveals persistently disproportionate differences in men and women’s position in the labour market. Women remain over-represented in part-time employment and in the public sector in the 10years under investigation. Using panel data, the multinomial logistic regression estimation of patterns in labour market transitions equally reveal disproportionate gendered patterns, with families with dependent children 0-4years at a disadvantage to those without. Qualitative analysis indicates that these differences are partly explained by the fact that the unpaid economy still remains invisible to policymakers despite changes in the institutional design, policy processes and the approach to equality policymaking undertaken in Scotland. Unpaid childcare work is not represented as policy relevant and the way gender, equality and gender equality are conceptualised within institutional sites and on political agendas pose various challenges for policy development on unpaid childcare work and gender equality in general. Additionally, policymakers in Scotland do not integrate both the paid and unpaid economies in economic policy formulation since social policy and economic policy are designed separately. The study also establishes that the range of institutions and actors that make-up the institutional setting for regulating and promoting equality, influence how equality issues are treated within a national context. In Scotland, equality regulating institutions such as parliament, the Scottish Government, equality commission and the law are instrumental variables in determining the range of equality issues that are embedded in an equality infrastructure and the extent to which equality issues, including gender, are consequently embedded in public policy and government budgets. Significantly despite meeting all the attributes of an equality issue, unpaid care is not classified as a protected characteristic in the Equality legislation. These institutions can ameliorate, sustain or perpetuate the delivery of unequitable policy outcomes for men and women in the mutually dependent paid and unpaid economy. Thus, economic, social and political institutions are not independent from one another but are interrelated in complex ways that subsequently have material consequences on men and women in society. In summary, there are interlinkages between the law, labour market, the unpaid economy, the welfare state and gendered political institutions such that policy or institutional change in one will be dependent on or trigger change in another. These institutions are gendered, but are also interlinked and underpin the gender structure of other institutions to the extent that the gendered norms and ideas embedded in one institution, for example legislation or political institutions, structure the gendered dimensions of the labour market, welfare state, and the unpaid economy. By shedding light on institutional and political forces that regulate equality in addition to macroeconomic forces, the analysis reveals the important role of institutions, policy actors and their ideas as instrumental forces which constantly define, redefine and reconstruct the labour market experiences of men and women with significant material consequences.

This thesis uses insight drawn from fieldwork among people developing a civic parade in Manchester over 2011-12 to analyse what happens in the translation of ideas into entities for display. It argues for creativity as an adaptive process, a responsive, dynamic activity manifested by parade makers, as they sought to realise the imagined event. It traces the roles that underpinned parade production and how people made sense and use of allocated responsibilities, while working within and through organisational boundaries. It situates the parade as an ‘art object’ (Gell 1998), constituted of assemblages at different scales (De Landa 2006), each embedded in a web of relationships to show how: a civic attempt to bring a public into being provides insight on the constituting organisational structures; the operational style of the arts organisation commissioned to produce the parade, led to imagining it into existence; and how two community groups responded to the parade parameters according to their own social dynamics. The thesis builds on ethnographic analyses of collaborative activities to consider how organisational shapes combine and how their constitutions substantially affect evolving entities. Situating creativity as an adaptive process separates creative activities from art practices by emphasising how supporting people to respond productively to changing circumstances encourages them to be creative. This thesis makes an original contribution to anthropology by showing through ethnography how creativity is a process, enacted through purposeful adaptation to circumstances in order to realise something tangible. It also encourages the development of a comparative framework for contemplating the extent to which different cultural contexts enable adaptive endeavours.

This research focuses on agencification and quangocratisation (AQ) through a comparison of the experiences of South Korea and the UK. Although a number of studies of AQ have been produced recently, these reforms remain inadequately understood. Since AQ involves the structural disaggregation of administrative units from existing departments, executive agencies and quangos have distinct characteristics which are quite different from ordinary core departments. There are a number of factors which influence these changes; and this thesis explores nine existing theories which are available to explain these phenomena. Case studies are presented of Tate Modern in the UK and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), which are carefully analysed to examine the validity of those nine arguments. Although cultural agencies, which show some unique features, have become increasingly an essential part of the national economy, they have scarcely been researched from the viewpoint of public policy. This thesis endeavours to explore distinctive characteristics of this policy area; and moreover, it examines the diverse variables which have an impact on policy formation and its results through the process of comparison of arguments. The major tasks of this thesis are to investigate the applicability of the nine arguments and to weigh their merits. As a corollary of this comprehensiveness, it examines the whole public sectors of both countries, in order to show the broader picture and to understand the processes of changes and their backgrounds. More profoundly, similarities and differences between both countries are compared from both macro and micro perspectives. At the same time, the results of AQ are analysed through the comparison of outputs or outcomes before and after these changes, with a view to exploring whether their rationales are appropriate. Furthermore, it also examines the institutional constraints which influence not only the change of agencies but also their performances. Besides which, it seeks to find strategies for overcoming these constraints. This thesis adopts systematic and comprehensive approaches regarding basic concepts and data. It draws on theories of comparative research, the scope of the public sector, the classification and analysis of agencies and quangos, and theories underlying the detailed components of each argument and epistemological assumptions. Therefore, it suggests various aspects which enable us to broaden our understanding of the changes within the public sector; and to generate practical understanding to inform real world reform.

Abstractby RAYMOND TODD DUTKINAs a practitioner, I spent countless hours developing ideas, witnessing firsthand the shortcomings in organizational capacity to create them. In addition to these inadequacies, organizations struggle to keep up with and adapt to change, further exacerbating the situation. Given the rapidity of change, building the capability to createideas becomes more critical to the competitiveness of organizations. Through myresearch, I found that awe has the potential to help individuals create new ideas. However, few studies have linked our natural sense of awe or awareness of awe to idea creation. In this dissertation, I develop models across three empirical studies supporting the role of awe in this process. This dissertation demonstrates that a sense of awe can leadto “aha moments,” in which an abductive mode of reasoning, involving the generation of hypotheses joins our more familiar modes of inductive and deductive reasoning resulting in new ideas.I employ a sequential mixed-methods design to explore the relationship between awe and aha moments. My initial study was exploratory and used constructivist grounded theory to tease out the factors influencing idea creation among innovators, entrepreneurs, and founders. I provide evidence that curiosity and awe are instrumental in developing new ideas.xviBased on the findings from my qualitative study, I pursued a quantitative study to provide deductive empirical support for my initial findings. I developed a structural equation model demonstrating the relationship between curiosity and awe. Using validated instruments, I created a questionnaire with questions I adopted or adapted using talk-aloud and Q-sort methodologies. I conducted a survey (N = 403) of English-speaking adults living in the United States (U.S.), with a sample size of sufficient adequacy to test my constructs. Awe was my dependent variable, curiosity was my mediator, and openmindedness was my independent variable. Consistent with assimilation and accommodation theory, my analysis revealed a strong relationship between curiosity and awe (0.77; p = 0.00). I called these accommodative moments of awe “aha moments.”This study sparked a follow-up qualitative study (N = 79) to further understand the context around awe and aha moments. I extracted transcripts of individuals who experienced awe and aha moments from a secondary data source. I found that not all moments of awe resulted in aha moments, although about 50% did. Additionally, I discovered that an individual’s aha moments resulted in innovative outcomes about 50% of the time. Therefore, a 25% increase in new ideas could result from a better understandng of awe, aha moments, and abductive reasoning, which would be extremely valuable guiding practitioners in ttaking action to improve organizational performance.These three studies support that awe leads to aha moments, accommodates idea creation, and are consistent with theory, which encouraged me to develop a framework to explore the cognitive side of awe that reveals its relationship to systematic information processing. I applied these results to support individual and organizational needs to xviidevelop new ideas, translating this research into practice. As such, these findings extend research on awe and provide a context to bring them into management studies.

The study of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) has been dominated by various mainstream theories drawn from International Relations and European Studies. These have largely neglected the role of ideas, beliefs, values and practices regarding the use of police and military instruments, in other words, the strategic culture which shapes the security and defence policies of the European Union (EU). This strategic culture of the EU has become manifest in the way ESDP officials think about the deployment of military and police resources as well as in the way they plan ESDP missions. After introducing the concept in general terms, the thesis claims that the notion of strategic culture can be applied to the EU. Various innovative models of categorisationa re provided throughout the thesis in order to describe the state of development of EU strategic culture. An analysis of the development of the strategic culture of the EU is provided since the end of the Cold War up to the year 2007. Important developments such as the institutionalisation of ESDP and the establishment of influential policy networks are considered in detail. The study also takes into account the discourse of ESDP and questions the ideas that stem from it through interviews and questionnaires with ESDP officials. A cases tudy of the police and military missions of the EU in Bosnia Herzegovina is included in order to show how ideas regarding the use of force impact on the implementation of EU missions. In conclusion, the thesis claims that the EU has its own strategic culture which is characterised by a number of behavioural/structural elements as well as by certain ideas, values, beliefs and practices.

In this project, I am addressing my NPO: A healthy church nurtures a culture of humble exploration and responsive innovation. One of the key findings is that there is not enough material focused on how a healthy church can process and explore ideas. In addition, church leaders often feel ill-equipped for a process that requires creativity. Believing that God made everyone creative, especially the church, this project is a book that details a system to explore ideas, properly discern strengths and weaknesses, and prepare leaders to make informed decisions. I created the Gather-Discern-Decide (GDD) Process from research findings, personal experiences, and feedback to guide ideation for churches. The project targets pastors and church leaders with 400 or fewer members in congregationally led systems. The book currently contains six chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. Part 1 (chapters 1 and 2) of the book seeks to establish humanity’s partnership with God in the works of creation. It includes four values that a healthy ideation process reinforces in a congregation. Part 2 (chapters 3-6) details the GDD Process and its ability to leverage low-risk creative endeavors into larger, risky church goals. The GDD Process helps build a culture of humble exploration and responsive innovation.

Scientific modeling is a scientific practice that uses models to prepare elementary and middle school science teachers to engage students using scientific inquiry. Model-based inquiry (MBI) is a pedagogical teaching approach that engages students using scientific inquiry during scientific modeling. However, preservice teachers lack understanding of scientific modeling since they struggle to engage students while teaching using models. Also, the preservice teachers lack vital information about modeling when exposed to model-based teaching since they possess limited views when exposed to model-based teaching.Therefore, this study focused on exploring what the graduate science preservice teachers know about scientific modeling and MBI during a Methods of Teaching Course. In this study, five participants participated initially, and only three completed the study. The interviews were conducted at the beginning and the end of the scientific modeling activity, which required the participants to share their knowledge based on scientific Modeling, and MBI. The participants also completed the scientific modeling assignment, which required them to describe ways they could use while teaching scientific modeling. The study engaged an exploratory case study to analyze the data. The findings indicate that the participants understood scientific modeling before being introduced to scientific modeling activity by portraying the knowledge of evaluate step of scientific modeling. However, the participants did not understand the construct and revise steps of scientific modeling. Also, the participants’ knowledge of scientific modeling improved after the scientific modeling activity through better explanations during the evaluate steps of scientific modeling, but they did not understand the construct and revise step of scientific modeling. Also, the participants exhibited knowledge of all the stages of MBI: Teacher planning for students’ engagement, teacher eliciting students' ideas, teacher supporting students' ongoing changes in thinking, and teacher and students pressing for evidence-based explanations before they were introduced to scientific modeling activity; however, they were limited to the ideas of teacher planning for students’ engagement and teacher and students pressing for evidence-based explanations.Additionally, the participants improved their ideas of MBI at the end of the scientific modeling activity since they demonstrated better explanations in all the stages of MBI. However, the participants were limited to the ideas of teacher planning for students’ engagement and teacher and students pressing for evidence-based explanations. Further, the scientific modeling activity enabled the participants to describe better ways of teaching scientific modeling classes. This study indicates that the participants are not ready to teach scientific modeling and MBI since they could not learn all the steps of scientific modeling, and their knowledge of MBI was limited.

People are creative. We shape the world around us and then share that with others. While people are creative, I would posit that people are not original. I believe that what we call originality is, in fact, when we create new, novel ideas from old ideas. The term remix follows an equivalent definition, utilizing what came before to create something new. This is how we create; we remix. Though this seems straightforward, we as a society have a continuous link to Romanticism. The artistic movement from the 18th century emphasizes inspiration, subjectivity, and individuality. In other words, originality is divined upon an individual, not through outside influence. Modern copyright law is this link to romanticism in our common era. The law causes tension with creatives stating that one’s works and ideas are properties that are not to be shared. Though copyright law’s initial intention is to protect a creator's work so that the creator can profit for a period of time, copyright law has instead evolved to protect corporate assets, locking out works from the public domain well over the lifespan of the average person. However, there are guidelines and affordances embedded within copyright law called fair use. The fair use doctrine is a set of guidelines written in a revision of copyright law in 1978 for creators to claim originality in their work and defend themselves from litigation. Inspired by the work of filmmaker, writer, and speaker Kirby Ferguson, I wanted to see if there was a way to practically test his three-part philosophy of remix and arrive at the romantic ideal of originality while only utilizing the work of others. His philosophy states that every creative work is a remix following the steps of ‘copying, transforming, and combining old works and ideas into a new creation. The result of this inspiration became my thesis project dubbed DimensionalTelephone, where 15 artists and I created works of art in a sequence, each iterating from the previous work. I hope to show you through this process that originality can come from what came before, giving you a new perspective on the term remix and what it can mean for creativity going forward.

Successful writing practices involve confidence, idea generation, and productivity habits. Writers can lack confidence about their abilities or about the quality of their writing when pitted against the creative and technical challenges that come with writing. Fear—which leads to both insecurity and egotism—is often what drives confidence issues in writing. True confidence emerges from the middle ground—or balance—between insecurity and ego. Writers can also struggle to develop new ideas when the competition to come up with original material results in writer’s block. Writers must improve their productivity and follow through on their goals by developing grit. This thesis will reveal how to increase the quality of writing by following biblical guidance and advice from successful and productive writers, thus optimizing writing practices.

White supremacist rhetoric has long been part of the American political tradition. However, not all white supremacist movements have adopted the same rhetorical strategy. Though the Ku Klux Klan has traditionally been treated as a single movement that has undergone periods of resurgence, attuning to the distinct discursive practices and effects of each resurgent movement reveals how discourse can shape political development. This report argues that treating the Reconstruction-era Klan as a different movement than the Klan of the early-twentieth century offers an opportunity to study the “work” that Klan discourse can do. During Reconstruction, “Ku-Klux” did more than refer to the group that invoked it. It was also a synecdoche for white paternalism, mystery, domination, secrecy, Democratic party politics, and the proper role of the federal government. “Ku-Klux” discourse served as a vehicle to preserve antebellum ideas while simultaneously shepherding in reunification. By focusing on the “work” of particular discourses, we can better understand the role of rhetoric and ideas, including white-supremacism, on the direction of American political development

The chemical industry has historically favored increasingly larger plant designs to lower production costs for bulk chemicals and petrochemical products. The drawbacks of scale-up chemical plants, such as the growth in emissions and by-products treatment, have become more relevant due to tighter environmental regulations and more expensive energy resources. Process intensification (PI) is based on the search for radical improvements in chemical processing, substantially decreasing equipment volume, energy consumption or waste formation. Most of the developments in process intensification are based on experimental work while the development of a systematic approach for process intensification is still in its incipient stages. This dissertation proposes to address this problem by applying the IDEAS framework as a systematic tool for process intensification. The search for intensified solutions in chemical processes using nonlinear models can drive a nonlinear synthesis process to stop in one of the multiple local optimal solutions. In the IDEAS approach, nonlinear chemical processes are linearized through the induction of an infinite number of states, forming a convex system that has a guaranteed global optimum. IDEAS based formulations generate an infinite linear program (ILP) which has its infimum value approximated by a series of finite-dimensional linear programs of ever increasing size. Reactive distillation systems are natural candidates for process intensification due to the prompt removal of the product from the reaction by the separation process, usually leading to higher conversion, smaller processing systems, and reduced volumetric footprint. The rigorous identification of the intensification limits for ternary reactive distillation systems through the application of the IDEAS framework is presented in chapter 1, featuring the tradeoff between the system’s total capacity (a surrogate for size) and its total reactive holdup (a surrogate for catalyst use). In chapter 2, the tradeoff between the network size, captured by the total capacity variable, and the total utility consumption in a ternary reactive distillation system is investigated. The irreversibilities of reactive distillation systems are investigated in chapter 3 through the solution of the minimum entropy generation rate problem, and its relation to the capacity is assessed. In chapter 4, the potential benefits related to the use of multi-pressure reactive distillation systems are investigated for a ternary azeotropic mixture. The application of the IDEAS approach in problems involving a higher dimensionality in investigated in chapter 5 with the support of a column generation procedure, applied to solve the large-scale linear programming resulted in the assessment of the reactive separation of quaternary azeotropic mixtures.

For decades, the U.S. has experimented with accountability policy for public schools as a way to improve academic achievement and to draw attention to student inequalities. Accountability as a solution to the problems facing schools has become so widespread that it arguably has become a ‘policy paradigm’. A policy paradigm is a framework of ideas and standards that shape the way policymakers and influencers think about how to define a policy problem, how they think about goals, the instruments they rely on to solve the policy problem, and the expected results. A policy paradigm also includes important moral ideas about human nature, motivation, who is to blame for the policy problem, or ideas about who deserves what resources in society. A paradigm can become so universal that the core policy and moral ideas become common sense and simply taken-for-granted. Accountability arguably reached paradigmatic status in education with the culmination of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation in 2001, which thrust the regulatory force of the federal government on individual states and their respective school systems. From its inceptions, NCLB had inherent “bugs” in its design that led to unintended consequences for the schools. Most notably, the former law set an overly ambitious goal to close the achievement gap in 13 short years in the absence of capacity building. Some states reduced the cognitive complexity of statewide tests to comply with federal benchmarks while individual schools began to focus on basic skills and ‘teach to the test’ in order to ‘game’ the system and avoid possible sanctions. In addition, NCLB made very little progress on its goal to close the academic achievement gap; academic achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) actually declined in the first years of implementing NCLB. In December 2015, Congress and President Obama responded to the unintended consequences with a more flexible federal policy design—the Every Student Succeeds Act—that shifted many of the goal setting and accountability functions back to the states, giving states flexibility to select their own policy designs and tools to regulate school and student performance. What happens to a paradigm in that situation? Does it begin to lose legitimacy and fracture, or is it somehow maintained? The goal of this research project was to capture the ideas of influential state-level policy thinkers and opinion leaders following the collapse of NCLB to determine whether the accountability paradigm was still seen as a viable solution to solving education inequalities. I chose to study state-level policy influencers who could shape the public debate with new ideas about how to solve the problem of school inequality following the demise of NCLB. I targeted influencers who could entertain doubts, reflect critically, and think ‘outside the box’. By studying influencers, I could test the strength or weakness of the paradigm.All told, 65 leading policy influencers and opinion leaders—45 from California and 20 from Tennessee—were sampled to reveal a spectrum of thinking about how to go about solving the problem of student and school inequalities. I interviewed a cross-section of influencers involved in the accountability debate in each state. I identified influential state elected and appointed officials, academics, journalists and bloggers, civil rights activists, community organizers, and members of the business community to understand how they thought about accountability policy and alternative policy ideas in the aftermath of NCLB. The main thrust of the findings reveals that the accountability paradigm is firmly in tact but has stretched across different institutional venues. Some influencers preferred a Local Control and Professional Model of accountability that put trust in school professionals and local communities to solve the problem of school inequality. The policy influencers within this cluster shared a nurturing and trusting Humanist moral narrative that played out in their policy ideas. Others desired a State Control Model of accountability. These influencers turned to the state as a problem solver for inequality in society. Thinkers within this cluster shared a Structuralist moral narrative and were weary of the ‘dangers of localism’ and distrustful of human nature. They thought that without a collective body of governance (such as the state), narrow-mindedness, bias, and discrimination would take root in local politics and further inequalities in schools. Lastly, other influencers supported a Market Control Model of accountability. Market control thinkers firmly believed that students would be better served if “failing” schools were pushed to an alternative institutional environment by the state, or if students and families could exit low-performing schools by exercising school choice. Three very distinct moral narratives supported the market model of accountability. Social Justice Entrepreneurs saw reality through the lens of historic inequalities, racial oppression, and institutional exclusion, and they saw the marketplace as an exit from low-performing schools that kept poor and minority students locked into cycles of intergenerational poverty. They believed in the power of individual agency and were drawn to policy ideas like charters and vouchers because they reinforced the individual’s ability to act. Paternalists had a very different moral narrative. To them, standards of appropriate behavior, rule setting, external pressure, and discipline were important dimensions of their moral outlook. To overcome the shortcomings of ‘failing’ schools, they believed in the disciplinary aspects of the state and market to create conditions for school improvement. Lastly, there was a moral narrative of the Empiricists, who tried to rationalize their beliefs and values with technical language from the accountability paradigm. They turned to data and empirical research to make sense of consequences, school choice, and state takeover policies without delving into narratives of systemic inequalities or the complexity of the relationship between poverty and low performance.

Para afrontar con éxito los cambios en las organizaciones es imprescindible adoptar un enfoque antropológico que ponga en el centro a las personas y una cultura del encuentro basada en la esperanza, la confianza y la gratitud

Nabataean civilisation and the topic of their technology has been a subject of debate as long as the re-discovery of the ancient city of Petra in 1803 by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. The Nabataeans thrived in the deserted regions of today’s Israeli and Jordanian deserts by the usage of an elaborate water supply technology that was perfectly suited for their idea of life in the hostile environment. Water tanks and cisterns hidden in plain sight accumulated water during rainstorms. The same water was later used by travelling Bedouins. Their travel frequently involved conquering thousands of kilometres in order to exchange goods, considered exotic and high in value. The knowledge of hidden water basins and their water storing capabilities gave them a rather big advantage in terms of speed and travel safety. This work aims to describe the ideas and technology that the Nabataeans acquired, additionally trying to identify the source of those ideas whether to pin point their origin as completely self-created or largely influenced from different earlier existing cultures. The Nabataean Kingdom was established during the early 1st century B.C. as a loose conglomerate of nomadic tribes that engaged in the so -called Frankincense trade. During its lifetime, it became one of the most prominent players on the political and economic spectrum of the Arabian world. Described by Strabo in his Georaphica as a tribe of wealthy desert farers Nabataeans became Roman vassals sometime in the 1st century B.C. until the kingdom was disbanded after the death of its last monarch Rabbel the second in the year of 107 A.D. Organised society became even more creative and further advanced their technology. The entire mountainside of the city in Rock called by the ancients Petra was transformed by skilled architects to work as a water collecting vessel. Several tunnels and aqueducts were created for this sole purpose. The world-famous tourist attraction – The Petrean Siq is one of the fruits of this enterprise. Presented paper was divided into several different chapters with the aim of presenting the Nabataean tribe, its history and technological advancements in the field of water gathering and distribution to provide a greater context of its importance for this region. One chapter focused on the history of the archaeological framework done during the almost 200 years of European re-discovery of the region. Divided into two significant sections with focuses on different time periods of Arabian archaeology. The explorers section describes the bios of different names of the most prominent early explorers of the region like Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, Alois Musil and Thomas Edward Lawrence. All of them thoroughly engaged in the history and lifestyle of the region. Second part engages with the work of more modern archaeologists whose fields of expertise include Nabataean water supply technologies but also a different and wider spectrum of additional archaeological work. Sections on climate and geology provide additional understanding on how the Nabataean technology utilizes the natural properties of rocks and soil. Chapter Water Management Systems in different time periods of the Nabataean Kingdom provides a breakdown of known Nabataean technology between the 4th century B.C. and the 4th century A.D. Starting from the Early Bronze Age where we can find traces of people setting up different technological ideas for water capture. Beginning with the usual rock cut ponds that were very prone to water evaporation like the Thamila till the more advanced concepts like wadi terracing and underground water tunnels. With the beginning of the Iron Age technological advancement appeared in the shape of an upgrade that has been done to the water collection basins. Cisterns and water reservoirs littered the desert. Cut in the bedrock and waterproofed by hydraulic mortar they could have stored water for several months. This became a serious breakthrough for the prosperity of the later Nabataean people. Sabaean chapter focuses on a short history of the Sabaean people. A trading nation very much like the Nabataeans. They inhabited the region of today’s country of Yemen and engaged in the very profitable frankincense trade. Growing of the frankincense trees and trying to live in a very hostile environment of the Arabian Peninsula desert prompted the industrious Sabaeans to create and further develop their own water supply technology. Many of such constructions like to world famous Ma’rib Dam stands as a testament to that notion. Many of the Negev and Jordanian desert Bedouins engaged in desert faring trade with the Sabaeans. Their frequent excursions could be one of the elements that weighted very heavily on their knowledge of water supply facilities. Further Chapters go in depth about the water supply technology that the Nabataeans used and further developed over the years. Explaining the intricacies of how do they work and presenting their probable roots. The last chapter consists of Archaeological evidence segregated by country (Israel or Jordan) presenting the most important sites for the Nabataean culture.

According to Aquinas, formally speaking, the divine exemplarity depends on ideas existing in the mind of God. However, to interpret this statement within the context of Trinitarian monotheism requires consideration of the exemplary condition of both the divine essence and the personal Logos. It is necessary, therefore, to reflect on two pairings simultaneously: essence ideas and Logos-ideas. The fi rst is clarified by studying divine knowledge, the other by analysing the manifestation of creatures through the divine Word. This paper explores these two sets of ideas independently and in relation to one another in order to show their harmonic convergence in the Thomistic maxim: Deus est primum exemplar omnium.

David Hume’s project in A Treatise of Human Nature is founded upon his loosely-defined distinction between impressions and ideas. This distinction causes problems for his theory because it has difficulty accounting for the differences between species of perceptions. In this thesis, I try to solve some of these issues using a phenomenological account of the difference between impressions and ideas. My account supplements Stephen Everson’s “functional” account to create a more robust system for differentiating Hume’s perceptions.

This thesis examines the effects that economic ideas have on international coordination and how ideational change affects international economic coordination. It traces the international responses to the Mexican Peso Crisis, the Asian Financial Crisis, and the Subprime Crisis while focusing on the nature of the response from international bodies such as the IMF, the G7/8 and G20. It is argued that in the absence of an economic hegemon, ideas are central to the policy responses, as the ideas policy makers hold about how the economy works at the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels can promote or hinder international economic coordination. As the ideas of some leaders have changed while others have not, ideational conflict has resulted. The primary conflict is between neoliberals, who believe that markets work almost all of the time and liberal interventionists, who believe that markets work a lot of the time, but can still fail in many cases. These two viewpoints about the economy lead to different conceptions of the correct policies needed to restore growth and stability to the international economy and as a result of these ideational conflicts, international economic coordination has suffered.

In our complex and interconnected world, scholars of international relations seek to better understand challenges spurred by intensified global communication and interchange. This dissertation investigates how network-based solutions of knowledge creation and dissemination may enhance our capacity to produce better policies.This research suggests that in order to overcome policy problems transnationally, three critical aspects should be considered. First, as science and technology policy becomes increasingly critical to resolving global issues it should be regarded as an integral element of the foreign policy process. Second, as liberal IR theory argues, the increasing role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and transnational networks call for an alternative approach in unraveling patterns of cooperation in the twenty-first century. Third, scholars from various theoretical perspectives have emphasized the potential value of transatlantic governance in the global economy.This dissertation concentrates on the idea that knowledge network (KNET) participants constitute a “linchpin” in transatlantic relations. To test this empirically, this research uses hyperlink network analysis to investigate cooperative arrangements and virtual communication patterns between the European Union and the United States. This study reveals the knowledge-based structure of the transatlantic relationship as a core element of the international system, and a primary catalyst in the resolution of transnational policy problems. This research also demonstrates that there is a variety of actors actively involved in these transatlantic virtual networks. While state actors are not invisible, they are not predominant actors in these networks.

What are the causes and consequences of judicial empowerment? What motivates the political decision to delegate authority to independent judiciaries, and what explains the subsequent behavior of these institutions? Going against current trends in comparative judicial politics, this dissertation answers these questions by taking ideas seriously. Dominant accounts of judicial empowerment and behavior associate the emergence of rights protecting judiciaries with the actions of powerful political actors concerned with the protection and promotion of their political self-interests. In contrast, my analysis of Brazil and Colombia links the emergence of such institutions to the actions of groups and individuals who subscribe to the principled belief that courts should focus their efforts on the protection and promotion of constitutional guarantees. These ideational carriers use their resources to convince institutional designers of the suitability of their proposals, and exert powerful influence over the institutional outcome of constitutional transitions. These actors also influence the actions of newly empowered courts to the extent that they are able to entrench their ideational allies on the bench during the uncertainty of the transition. These findings contradict the arguments that judicial empowerment is designed to weaken electoral opponents or to insulate the political process from popular pressures, and that judges are rational-strategic actors whose main concern is to protect their institutional integrity.

Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Reid are philosophers who, while writing from very different historical and intellectual contexts, both share a common conviction as epistemological realists. This paper will argue that, despite any initial appearances of conflict, their arguments and conclusions are both compatible and complementary, and that through such an agreement we can come to a richer understanding of the realist tradition. At the heart of this unity lie the shared principles that: * Knowledge involves a direct apprehension of things themselves. * Ideas are not themselves objects or intermediaries, but the active means by which the intellect understands. * The relationship between the mind and its object is not one of a material likeness, but of a formal likeness. * The existence of external objects of knowledge is not demonstrable, but is a self-evident first principle.

The gradual blending of classical science and epistemology with indigenous/traditional practices and modes of understanding (particularly magic and religion) in the early western Middle Ages tends to be misunderstood. The purpose of this study is to address the reason(s) why the early medieval West has been labeled an irrational, unscientific "Dark Age" in order to point out that this conception's existence has more to do with limited historical perspectives than with reality. The anachronistic superimposition of modern presuppositions and methodological expectations is a very old phenomenon. Ironically, however, it has crept into the history of science and extended to ostensibly objective "scientific" historiography to such a degree that dismissiveness regarding the other ways of knowing that have informed our scientific and epistemological development frequently tends to obscure historical continuity. My goal in this undertaking is to firmly establish how we may understand that the intellectual revolution beginning in twelfth-century Europe was founded on a rich and multifarious tradition of knowledge and understanding; the preceding seven or eight centuries of the early Middle Ages was not one of intellectual "darkness" and should not be discarded as such. The approach I have taken is intended to demonstrate, rather than simply state, this goal by roughly imitating of the process of intellectual transmission in the early Middle Ages. Therefore, primary sources are supplemented by numerous secondary interpretations from various academic disciplines in the hope that collecting and reforming ideas in this fashion will draw out the inherent connectivity of ideological thought structures and approaches to the natural world.

With a view to understanding the root of what is today a confused, contradictory and limiting body of theory this thesis describes, analyses and advances the concept of ‘ideology’. The purpose of this thesis is to make sense out of that messy theory, understand the origin of its muddled definitions and ineffective formulations, and offer a new foundation from which a sound working alternative may be developed. This transdiciplinary thesis brings the sciences, philosophy and the history of ideas together. The aim here is to present a new theoretical model upon which a more comprehensive theory can be developed. This thesis has two distinct parts. Part One addresses the historical emergence of ‘ideology’ as a ‘science of ideas’, its ultimate inversion, and redefinition as an anthropocentric and negative rather than neutral concept. It is further suggested that that ‘negative conception of ideology’ gave rise to, influenced and limited the scope of modern theories of ideas and ideology. Moreover Part One uncovers a theoretical gap that is today manifest as characteristics and limitations in theory. Potentially those limitations may deny any researcher working within those areas access to the majority of their field of study. Free from the constraints imposed by traditional theories of ideology, Part Two sets out to develop a sound testable and useful theory of ideas, ideologies and ‘ideotectonics’. Looking at the big picture means understanding the definition of the word ‘idea’ to include non-cognitive ideas. It means thinking of ideas in respect to the concept described by the original Greek as well as in the modern sense. Considering Plato’s Theory of Forms and Destutt de Tracy’s Science of Ideas and the modern view of ideas as ‘human thought’ in respect of modern science enables this thesis to comment upon all ideas not just human ideas. It is further suggested that all ideas, ideologies and ideological apparatuses are expressions and/or functionaries of a single phenomenon here described as ideotectonic. Subsequently, this thesis examines ‘ideas’ important to the evolution of matter, living things, ecological, intellectual and social systems, and explores the ideotectonic processes, ideologies and ideological apparatuses that are associated with them. Ultimately this work represents a substantive departure from existing theory.

This study uses the Detroit, Michigan federal Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Communities program as an in-depth case study to examine the role that values and ideas play in the process of policymaking. It shows that values and ideas can be important resources for policy entrepreneurs who are advocating for policy change at the local level. Values and ideas are found to be important to policy change in several ways. Values and ideas can be used as strategic resources for getting a policy proposal on the local policy agenda, and for assembling partnerships of social production to help bring the policy idea to fruition. The values basis of policy ideas is also relevant to their success. However, this process of policy change is constrained by the predominant values and ideas within a given political culture, including the patterns and practices of local public and private institutions. Alternatively, the nature of values and ideas means that they can be captured by opponents of a policy proposal and used to block the process of policy change. When values and ideas are overlooked as potential resources for policymaking, our notions of the strategies that can be employed to effect policy change, and the actors most likely to engage in this process are too narrow. For example, community based organizations (CBO's) have typically been assigned a minimal and reactive role in many scholarly accounts of urban development policymaking, largely because they are perceived as lacking the economic and institutional resources considered to be critical to policymaking. This study argues that CBO's can be important and proactive agents for development policy change if they can use values and ideas as a strategic resource in the policy process. The study was conducted using case study analysis methods, employing interviews, documents, and field observations, to develop a descriptive account of the case with regard to the EZ program process and related development processes in Detroit from 1993--1995. This was followed by the generation of theoretical propositions and themes regarding the relationship between empowerment theory and empowerment program implementation, and generated theory were compared to existing theory found in the urban politics literature. A variety of data sources were utilized, including interviews, federal and Detroit city government documents, documents and publications from the Empowerment Zone program activities, newspaper and magazine articles, and documents from various local institutions (including CBO's).

The development literature considers Romania from both the sociological and economic standpoints as a developing country with a large agricultural sector. Due to the specific nature of the structure of its economy and society Romania encountered a series of specific problems in its process of social and economic development, a process that began in the mid 19th century. A constant problem for the Romanian policy makers over the last century has been how to shrink the country's agricultural sector and develop the industry and service sectors to reach a level comparable to that of more advanced economies. Romania tried to solve this problem with various policies based on and inspired by a set of sociological and economic views, theories and models. Those policies were only partially successful and today the problem of underdevelopment and unsatisfactory economic performance is still largely unsolved. In the hypothesis of a rational policy making process (defined as conscientious relationship with past experiences based on a rational learning process) the post 1989 agricultural reforms should have been informed by the lessons provided by both the pre-communist and communist periods. Taking as a starting point this premise my study is constructed around the following hypothesis: If the policy process was a rational decision-making process, we would expect that the ideas, concepts, and theories that led to policy failure and mixed results in the past be rejected or correspondingly adjusted to the new context. In order to test this hypothesis the study develops a twofold approach: First, it identifies the main sequences of ideas - policies - results - lessons that characterized each of the pre-communist, communist, and post-communist periods. Second, it compares the ideas, policies, and lessons that could have been drawn from past experiences in regard to agricultural development with the actual ideas and agricultural policies that have been implemented in the post-communist period. The comparison reveals the extent to which the rational decision making model was displayed. In order to make this comparison operational the research design proceeds along the following lines: The key post-communist legislation regarding agriculture that was passed after 1989 is identified. By the detailed analysis of this body of legislation and of one of the most comprehensive reports on agriculture issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in Romania in 1999-2000, the dominant agricultural policy paradigm of the period, the key ideas that were behind it, and the main consequences that followed for agriculture are distinguished. The major agricultural reform policies in the pre-communist and communist periods (1864-1948 and 1948-1989) and the basic concepts and theories that informed each of them are documented. Thereafter, an overview of the economic, sociological and structural consequences of these ideas and policies is provided and pinpoints the main lessons that could be eventually derived by looking in retrospect to each of the periods. In accordance with these objectives the study is structured as follows: Chapter 1 outlines the Romanian reform legislation between 1989-2000 and, in line with point one above, uses this legislation as a vehicle to reveal the key ideas, policies and consequences for agricultural development in the last, post-communist decade. Chapter 2 and 3 fulfill the objectives stated in point two above. More precisely, chapter 2 starts by looking at the policy reforms in the pre-communist period, while in parallel outlining the main ideas, policies, consequences, and lessons of the period. Similarly, chapter 3 describes the main policy reforms of the communist period and pays special attention to the lessons that could have been drawn from this period's policies and their consequences. The conclusions wrap up the analysis and discuss the extent to which the study's main hypothesis has been supported or infirmed.

The World Bank is now promoting good governance in developing countries. This study shows how the Bank adopted governance programs as a defensive measure in response to criticisms of its development activities and to reflect the growing interest in institutions in economics, the Bank's dominant intellectual influence. However the economic bias of the Bank's approach to governance as well as its aspirations to political neutrality hinder its efforts, increasing the gap between the Bank's rhetoric about governance and what it accomplishes. The governance agenda includes public management, government accountability, transparency of government processes, rule of law, and corruption. While the Bank has been concerned with the management of development projects and government programs since its inception, the governance agenda represents a significant change in direction for an institution that has presented itself as a politically neutral expert in economic development. The programs parallel changes in the economic assistance programs of its major shareholders and the ideas of economists about institutions and governance. The Bank has used a provision in its articles barring intervention in the politics of borrowing states as a way of limiting governance programs in order to maintain its image of political neutrality in dealing with borrowers. In considering the promotion of good governance the study employs Risse and Sikkink's spiral model and Kahler's bargaining model to explore the relationship between power and ideas in the promotion of ideas by international organizations. The Bank's experience in exercising power through loan conditionality has been of limited success because of its reluctance to terminate relationships with states that do not complete governance reforms and its unwillingness to become involved in the politics of borrowers. Its efforts to promote its ideas through technical assistance, while more promising where the technology is settled and political commitment strong, have been hindered by the bias of the Bank towards ideas based in economics and its lack of knowledge of the social and political context of governance problems.

This thesis is an investigation and an attempt at understanding the connection between the act of building and the act of being. Buildings are developed in the realm of ideas and images. This thesis speaks of a construct wherein the buildings act as a medium by which a dialogue takes place: a discussion of the ideas and conditions of their being. The project, which consists of two buildings, a house and a gallery for an artist, acts as the vehicle of investigation and finds its order through the basic diagram of a line and a curve. The project defines the juxtaposition of the static rigid line and the dynamic moving curve with respect to contextual sensibilities and a metaphorical dimension. The use of metaphor employs an experiential anchor in form of the human dimension. The house, a state of being, is a beginning in creativity. It is a place where water and fire meet. The gallery is a path of spatial perception and procession. It is filled with elements of movement and the metaphor of birth. This thesis is a search for an architecture that is inseparably universal and inherently specific.

The development of children's sense of their potential in athletics was investigated by interviewing 179 boys and girls from ages 8 to 16 who were involved in organized athletic programs. Children were asked about their self-esteem, their perceived competence in their sport, and their expectancies for the future. They also rated the importance of: (1) various attributions for their athletic competence, (2) different sorts of motivations they may have for participating in athletics, and (3) a variety of self-evaluation methods, including social comparison, internal standards, absolute measures (e.g., scores, times, win/loss record), and feedback from others. Children were also asked about their future possibilities in sports, i.e., what they hoped for and what they worried about. It was found that 8- to 11-year-olds had higher expectancies than older children. Older children were more likely to attribute their competence to determination and to participating in many sports, whereas younger children more often cited the attribute of luck. In terms of self-evaluation methods, younger children rated the importance of absolute measures higher than did older children. Younger children were also more oriented towards gaining social approval, whereas older children were more likely to be oriented towards winning and competing. Gender differences were also found. Boys were more likely than girls to say that being tall, fast and smart had helped them in sports, and that comparisons with opponents were important self-evaluation tools. Boys were more competitive and win oriented, as well. The findings are discussed in terms of how age and athletic programs may play a role in how children think about themselves in the athletic domain, but ability level and years of experience are important third variables that need to be considered. Gender effects (and the lack thereof) demonstrate that the athletic domain does not seem to be a male-dominated arena where girls value athletics little, have low perceived competence and have few expectancies. Instead it seems just that the competitive, physical, and social comparison aspects of sports have more importance to boys than to girls.

From its once pre-eminent position in state health policy, hospital rate setting has declined in use to a handful of states today. This study examines prospective hospital rate setting in four states that established aggressive programs. The decisions to deregulate by Massachusetts and New Jersey state governments, along with an anticipated decision in New York in 1996, are examined. Maryland state government's choice not to deregulate is also explored. Two rival theories are used as potential explainers of these developments: the theory of economic regulation emphasizing the role of interest groups, and the punctuated equilibrium model of policy change emphasizing policy ideas. Results. Hypotheses of the theory of economic regulation are not supported. While shifts in interest group support for regulation preceded deregulation, clear evidence that rate setting benefited hospitals more than consumers was not found; public officials, were not found to only respond to interest group agendas. Hypotheses of the punctuated equilibrium model are supported. Identifiable policy ideas could be clearly associated with rate regulation and the move to deregulation; clear institutional change is associated with each deregulation. New actors were identified who helped to undermine the rate setting policy monopoly. Factors associated with deregulation include: (1) a conflict with growing managed care systems in rate setting states; (2) political change from Democratic to Republican control in key governmental power centers; (3) regulatory failure and increasingly Byzantine reimbursement rules that undermined support; and (4) changed interest group support for deregulation. Maryland's record stands in contrast to the deregulated states. Lessons from rate setting include: (1) deregulation signifies an evolution to more advanced forms of prospective payment, chiefly capitation instead of per diem or per case methods; (2) the decline indicates a shift to a different role for state government in health regulation, including an explicit rejection of the public utility model; (3) rate setting's history demonstrates the broad ability of regulated entities to manipulate reimbursement systems; and (4) the experience indicates some strengths in state government to maintain systems to control costs and improve access.

Entre las distintas variables que intervienen en el proceso de instrucción, cada vez se le presta mayor atención al papel que la personalidad del profesor y su estilo de interacción en el aula, tienen en dicho proceso (Getzels y Jackson, 1963). Por otra parte, dado que hay suficiente evidencia empírica de que las ideas y creencias estables del profesor inciden directamente en los análisis explicativos que realiza (Schneider y Grasha, 1983), adquiere especial interés el estudio de los conocimientos y concepciones explicativas sobre los comportamientosde sus alumnos. En la presente investigación se evaluó en un grupo de 19 profesores, 1. sus conocimientos e interpretaciones sobre el comportamiento, 2. las estrategias que utilizaban en la resolución de problemas comportamentales en el aula, 3. la percepción que tenían sobre la gravedad de las conductas disruptivas y,4. la percepción que tenían de la eficacia de las estrategia que utilizaban. Tras la aplicación de un programa de entrenamiento en la resolución de problemas de comportamiento en el aula, se volvieron a evaluar las variables anteriores. Se presentan y discuten los resultados, analizando sus implicaciones sobre los estilos docentes.

This article carries out a weighed des cription of the methods and approaches of research on the effects of election campaigns, as well as their accommodation to the proposal of the "cultural perspective". After analyzing the elements which mitigate those effects and following the traditional schema that distinguishes cognitions, attitudes and behaviors, the author analyzes the effects of the images of the candidates, electoral debates and political spots on television. The revision of some theories that inspire research on effects -such as the "theory of selective perception", the "theory of priming", and the "theory on agenda setting"- concludes by stating the need for revising the traditional schema for measuring these effects.