Party agency and the religious-secular cleavage in post-Communist countries: The case of Romania

Research focusing on several post-communist countries has found evidence of social cleavage effects on political behaviour similar to those found in Western Europe. In some post-communist countries, however, social cleavage effects appear far weaker (if at all). To understand why this is the case, I perform a case study of Romania, focusing on the religious–secular cleavage. Drawing upon research that emphasises the role of parties in forming cleavages, I argue that the reason for the absence of social cleavage effects is due to party competition for the same group of voters by parties from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum. By shifting their positions, some parties have prevented the appearance of cleavages by shaping individuals' perceptions of the parties and, in doing so, have even altered individuals' own left–right self-placements.

Exercise agency? The role of elite actors in local democracy in English local government: the local democracy maker.

The way in which employed senior elites in English local government exercise their agency in the practice of local democracy and local governance is considered in this thesis. The research posits the notion that elite Officers act as Local Democracy Makers as they draw on their own traditions and ideologies in responding to the dilemmas of changing policy and politics in the public realm. The study is located in the latter part of New Labour?s term of office and applies an interpretive and reflexive approach to three studies of the exercise of well being powers. The approach is one of applied ethnography through the examination of literature reviews, interviews and observations of decisions taken in the exercise of the powers of economic, environmental and social well-being are used to examine how and why the Local Democracy Makers make sense of their world in the way that they do. The research suggests that, despite prevailing narratives, local governance arrangements depend on a system of hierarchy, employed elites and local politics. The challenges of re-configuring local democracy and attempts at "hollowing out" the state have secured an influential role for the non-elected official. How officials interpret, advise, mediate and manage the exercise of local governance and local democracy presents a challenge to assumptions that public services are governed beyond or without local government. New narratives and reflections on the role of the local government Officer and the marginalisation of the elected Councillor are presented in the research. In particular, how the senior elite occupy managerial, strategic and political roles as Local Democracy Makers, offers an insight into the agency of strategic actors in localities. Consequently, the success of changes in public policy is materially influenced by how the practitioner responds to such dilemmas. The thesis concludes by suggesting that integral to the design and success of public policy implementation is the role of the Officer, and especially those practitioners that advise governing arrangements and democratic practice.

Deployment of Elite Tropical and Subtropical Hardwoods

Commercialisation agreements supporting plantation development, carbon sequestration, climate change of hardwood species in Queensland.

Gene to Phenotype Integrative Science and Modelling Applied to Pioneer elite

This project aims to use simulatiion modelling to improve our understanding of the genetics and physiology of complex traits with a view to increasing the rate of genetic gain in plant breeding programs.

Elite Bargaining and the Evolution of Centre-Periphery Relations in Post-Soviet Russia : A Comparative Analysis

This work is concerned with presenting a modified theoretical approach to the study of centre-periphery relations in the Russian Federation. In the widely accepted scientific discourse, the Russian federal system under the Yeltsin Administration (1991-2000) was asymmetrical; largely owing to the varying amount of structural autonomy distributed among the federation s 89 constituent units. While providing an improved understanding as to which political and socio-economic structures contributed to federal asymmetry, it is felt that associated large N-studies have underemphasised the role played by actor agency in re-shaping Russian federal institutions. It is the main task of this thesis to reintroduce /re-emphasise the importance of actor agency as a major contributing element of institutional change in the Russian federal system. By focusing on the strategic agency of regional elites simultaneously within regional and federal contexts, the thesis adopts the position that political, ethnic and socio-economic structural factors alone cannot fully determine the extent to which regional leaders were successful in their pursuit of economic and political pay-offs from the institutionally weakened federal centre. Furthermore, this work hypothesises that under conditions of federal institutional uncertainty, it is the ability of regional leaders to simultaneously interpret various mutable structural conditions then translate them into plausible strategies which accounts for the regions ability to extract variable amounts of economic and political pay-offs from the Russian federal system. The thesis finds that while the hypothesis is accurate in its theoretical assumptions, several key conclusions provide paths for further inquiry posed by the initial research question. First, without reliable information or stable institutions to guide their actions, both regional and federal elites were forced into ad-hoc decision-making in order to maintain their core strategic focus: political survival. Second, instead of attributing asymmetry to either actor agency or structural factors exclusively, the empirical data shows that both agency and structures interact symbiotically in the strategic formulation process, thus accounting for the sub-optimal nature of several of the actions taken in the adopted cases. Third, as actor agency and structural factors mutate over time, so, too do the perceived payoffs from elite competition. In the case of the Russian federal system, the stronger the federal centre became, the less likely it was that regional leaders could extract the high degree of economic and political pay-offs that they clamoured for earlier in the Yeltsin period. Finally, traditional approaches to the study of federal systems which focus on institutions as measures of federalism are not fully applicable in the Russian case precisely because the institutions themselves were a secondary point of contention between competing elites. Institutional equilibriums between the regions and Moscow were struck only when highly personalised elite preferences were satisfied. Therefore the Russian federal system is the product of short-term, institutional solutions suited to elite survival strategies developed under conditions of economic, political and social uncertainty.

Designing to maintain human agency in context-aware systems

This paper describes a series of design games, specifically aimed at exploring shifts in human agency, how they are managed, and the impact this will have on the design of future context-aware applications. The games focussed on understanding information handling issues in dental practice with participants from the University of Queensland Dental School playing an active role in the activities. Participatory design activities reveal how technology solution impact on dental practices. By finding methods of representing technological possibilities in ways which can easily be understood we enhance the contribution that dentists can make to the design process.

Maintaining human agency in the design on context-aware systems : Design games in a dental surgery

This paper describes a series of design games, specifically aimed at exploring shifts in human agency in order to inform the design of context-aware applications. The games focused on understanding information handling issues in dental practice with participants from a university dental school playing an active role in the activities. Participatory design activities help participants to reveal potential implicit technical resources that can be presented explicitly in technologies in order to assist humans in managing their interactions with and amidst technical systems gracefully.

Inter-agency working : good intentions and interaction dynamics

This paper explores inter-agency working and examines the implications of inter-agency operations for delivering multi-domain service outcomes. Cross-agency collaborative approaches to service delivery are suggested to provide the vehicle for achieving integrated service and policy goals. However, it is argued these need to be crafted ‘fit’ for purpose’ and may not be the requisite approach for all joint purposes. Moreover, some commentators suggest that the optimism about these partnership arrangements and cross-agency actions to resolve complex multi-dimensional problems may be misplaced and propose that further research into the actual rather than desired consequences of these arrangements may find that, at times, partnership working creates negative effects. While collaboration and partnerships are often framed as the way to achieve real breakthroughs in service delivery across agencies, there remain key challenges to interagency working. As more and insistent calls for agencies and other community actors to work together in resolving complex social problems are heeded, the implications of working across organizational boundaries need to be further investigated. This paper investigates cases of inter-agency programmes to understand the dimensions and limitations of inter-agency working. The paper concludes by offering a framework for better inter-agency working that has applicability across all sectors.

De-colonising Shakespeare? : Agency and (masculine) authority in Gregory Rogers's The Boy, The Bear, The Baron, The Bard

Underlying social space are territories, lands,geographical domains, the actual geographical underpinnings of the imperial, and also the cultural contest. To think about distant places, to colonize them, to populate or depopulate them: all of this occurs on, about, or because of land. […] Imperialism and the culture associated with it affirm both the primacy of geography and an ideology about control of territory.

Real estate agency practice and profitability : an analysis of house sales and agency profitability in Sydney

Large cities provide a broad range of residential property types, as well as a range of socio-economic locations. This results in a significant variation in residential property prices across both the city itself and the individual suburbs. The only constant across such a diverse range of residential property is the need for the majority of residential property owners to employ the services of a real estate agent to sell their property or to purchase a residential property. This paper will analyse the Sydney residential property market over the period 1994 to 2002 to determine the change in real estate offices numbers over the period, the profitability of real estate agency offices based on the residential house price performance of houses and units in these specific locations and the extent of changing residential house prices on agency profitability. Suburbs have been selected to provide a full range of housing types, socio-economic areas, older established and developing residential suburbs and location from the

The true cost and performance of individual residential property investment and the implication on real estate agency practice

Investment in residential property in Australia is not dominated by the major investment institutions in to the same degree as the commercial, industrial and retail property markets. As at December 2001, the Property Council of Australia Investment Performance Index contained residential property with a total value of $235 million, which represents only 0.3% of the total PCA Performance Index value. The majority of investment in the Australian residential property market is by small investment companies and individual investors. The limited exposure of residential property in the institutional investment portfolios has also limited the research that has been undertaken in relation to residential property performance. However the importance of individual investment in residential property is continuing to gain importance as both individuals are now taking control of their own superannuation portfolios and the various State Governments of Australia are decreasing their involvement in the construction of public housing by subsidizing low-income families into the private residential property market. This paper will: • Provide a comparison of the cost to initially purchase residential property in the various capital city residential property markets in Australia, and • Analyse the true cost and investment performance of residential property in the main residential property markets in Australia based on a standard investment portfolio in each of the State capital cities and relate these results to real estate marketing and agency practice.