Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Neoliberalism in Translation: Economic Ideas and Reforms in Spain and Romania(2011) Ban, Cornel; Conca, Ken; Tismaneanu, Vladimir; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Most political economists studying the global spread of neoliberalism have seen it as a form of policy diffusion. Recently constructivist political economists have pointed to the important role of the spread of neoliberal economic ideas in this process. However, they have not provided a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms through which neoliberal ideas travel across national policy spheres. To address this gap, this dissertation draws on the claim made by some sociologists that ideas do not stay the same as they travel from one social setting to another, but are "translated" by idea entrepreneurs called "translators". More specifically, this dissertation aims to specify what shapes the result of translation, the pace at which it occurs, and the means through which it can shape policy. In doing this, it makes three contributions to the study of political economy. First, it argues that the content of adopted neoliberal ideas is shaped by the context-specific choices made by translators who employ "framing," "grafting" and "editing" as translation devices. Secondly, the pace of translation is shaped by the density of transnational ties between domestic policy stakeholders and external advocates of neoliberalism. Finally, translated neoliberal ideas are likely to serve as templates for economic policies when they are shared by an intellectually coherent policy team inside a cabinet that can effectively control economic policy decisions. To make thesearguments, the dissertation draws on a comparative historical analysis of the spread of neoliberalism in two "crucial cases": postauthoritarian Spain and Romania.Item INTEGRATED ECOLOGICAL ECONOMIC MODELING OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES FROM THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON RAINFOREST(2004-10-26) Portela, Rosimeiry G.; Costanza, Robert; Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation links the natural and social sciences, using modeling techniques to enhance understanding of the functioning of a complex ecosystem and its relevance to humans. For this purpose, I developed a Regional Unified Metatomodel of the Brazilian Amazon (RUMBA) to simulate the Amazon forest provision of ecosystem goods and services and their contribution to human economy and welfare. The model was also used to simulate the potential effect of an incentive to reduce deforestation in return for a payment for avoided releases of carbon into the atmosphere. Simulation was done from 1975 to 2100, with calibration performed for the first 25 years, and for four scenarios: a baseline scenario, based on historical trends, and four alternative scenarios based on different assumptions and policy choices. The baseline scenario shows deforestation proceeding at high rates, leading to decreasing provision of forest goods and services and increasing economic growth. The growth of GRP per capita, on the other hand, remains much smaller than that of GRP. Regional welfare decreases significantly over the simulated period. The overall monetary contribution of ecosystem goods and services to the regional economy is estimated as 5 times the GRP in year 2100. Scenarios of increased investment in development yielded higher economic growth accompanied by lower levels of welfare, while opposite trends were found for scenarios of higher investment in human, knowledge and natural capital. Finally, results also show that in order for a monetary compensation to represent a significant incentive to land owners to reduce deforestation, higher prices for avoided carbon emissions would have to be set than current prices of the emerging carbon market. Main research findings are that increasing land use change in the Brazilian Amazon incurs significant losses of ecosystem services without this being adequately offset by increasing monetary income or welfare of people. This reseach has also found that in the absence of significant incentives from global beneficiaries for any one ecosystem service, or a combination of incentives addressing several types of ecosystem services, rational land uses at the local level lead to sub-optimal provision of these services from the global perspective.