Browsing by Subject "European Union"
Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Achievement and Opportunity Gaps in Mathematics Education in Turkey Compared to European Union Countries(2010-12-08) Yetkiner, Zeynep 1978-One of the main purposes of this dissertation was to examine gender- and socioeconomic status (SES)-related mathematics achievement gaps among Turkish middle-school students compared to achievement gaps in European Union (EU) countries. A further purpose of the present study was to investigate qualified mathematics teachers? distribution in relation to student SES among Turkish middle schools. Finally, relationships between mathematics teacher quality indicators and students? mathematics achievement within Turkish middle-school classrooms were explored. In this dissertation, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2007 data were used. Sample countries were Turkey, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, and Slovenia. Achievement gaps by gender and SES were examined using Cohen?s d effect sizes and 95 percent confidence intervals. Relationships between mathematics teacher quality and students? mathematics achievement were investigated using hierarchical linear modeling. Results showed none or only negligible gender differences but substantial SES-related gaps in Turkish students? achievement in mathematics, overall, or in various content and cognitive domains. Correlations between students? SES levels and their achievement were the largest in Turkey compared to the sample EU countries. Among the sample EU countries, only Hungary had as large or even somewhat larger disparities as Turkey between low- and high-SES students? mathematics achievement. The current study also identified SES-related inequities in access to qualified mathematics teachers in Turkey. Low-SES students were more likely to be taught by mathematics teachers who had less than 3 years of experience or who did not hold a degree in mathematics or mathematics education. On the other hand, years of experience and a degree in mathematics or mathematics education were found to be substantially related to Turkish eighth-grade students? mathematics achievement. Low-SES students? mathematics teachers were also more likely to report lack of confidence in their preparation to teach various mathematics contents. To narrow achievement gaps, Turkish policy-makers can explore and benefit from policies of the countries identified in the present study as more equitable in terms of student achievement than Turkey. The current study also shows Turkish policy-makers importance of the equitable distribution of qualified mathematics teachers in closing the mathematics achievement gap in middle schools.Item Analysis of the European Union’s grain sorghum import demand and its impact on the world’s grain sorghum trade(2012-08) Kustudija, Milos; Malaga, Jaime; Hudson, Darren; Wang, ChenggangThe European Union sporadically imports large quantities of grain sorghum from the United States, causing trade distortion among the U.S., Mexico, and Japan, currently the only "large trading countries" of grain sorghum. The objective of this project is to analyze the causes of the European Union's (EU) irregular large import demand of grain sorghum, and to develop import demand and probability econometric models in order to estimate their future grain sorghum demand. Single import demand and probability equations were solved using ordinary least squares (OLS) and logit regressions, respectively. Estimated parameters have the expected sign, are large in magnitude and statistically significant. After the models' validation, their results were used in conjunction with the Texas Tech University's Grain Sorghum Model (TTUGSM) in order to forecast the impact of the EU's occasionally large grain sorghum import demand on U.S. sorghum exports to Mexico and Japan, and U.S. sorghum price. The forecast period was from 2012 to 2022. Previous validation of TTUGSM indicates the model's capability to estimate grain sorghum trade among the U.S. Mexico, and Japan, meaning that our findings accurately take into consideration the effect of the EU's intermittent presence on world's grain sorghum marketItem Comparing public policies in multilevel governance systems: tobacco control in the European Union(2009-05-15) Goerdel, Holly ThompsonThis is a comprehensive study of tobacco control policy and politics in the European Union, 1970-2000. I develop an instrumental theory of public policy which establishes an approach for connecting policy instruments to policy outcomes. I investigate ways in which political, bureaucratic and interest group (particularly the tobacco industry) factors influence the success of policy instruments aimed at reducing cigarette consumption. I also explore whether and how supranational mandates and directives influence the success of national-level efforts to control tobacco. I test hypotheses empirically using pooled time-series methodologies. The substantive conclusion is that non-price policies are only a qualified success when controlling for addiction, price policy and factors in the policy environment. Price policy is consistently effective, cross-nationally and the public health bureaucracy is a key player in curbing consumption of cigarettes. Major theoretical conclusions include affirmation that supranational policy actions can shape national policy outcomes, that interest group pluralism favors those with a comparative advantage in organizing (in this case, the tobacco industry), and that while policy instruments can be evaluated according to their behavioral attributes, caution should be exercised when simultaneous policy adoption is occurring.Item Denizen politics : a comparative analysis of opposition to immigration in the European Union(2014-08) Mohanty, Peter Cushner; Gregg, Benjamin Greenwood, 1954-; Givens, Terri E., 1964-; Luskin, Robert C.; Jessee, Stephen; Murer, JeffreyThis dissertation presents a series of observational studies of opposition to immigration (OI) in the European Union. A substantial portion of the public seems to prefer a more exclusionary form of democracy, but how large, how vocal, and how organized that portion is varies considerably. I investigate exclusionism, a dimension of individual belief about how extensive political membership should be that tends to reflect how denizens prioritize political and cultural aspects of membership. In situating exclusionism, I shed light on three puzzles: Which of an individual’s concerns are the strongest determinants of OI? Which national developments are the strongest determinants of an individual’s OI? How are the effects of an individual’s concerns shaped by national context? Exclusionism predicts OI in more countries in the EU than do ideology or religion. Post-9/11 conflicts increase OI but not as dramatically as do increases in the Muslim population (suggesting perhaps that Islamophobia outpaces security risks). OI is highest in new countries of immigration, but polarization is most pronounced in older countries of immigration, where ongoing national developments have created unusually large generational gaps, religious differences, and disagreements about exclusionism. Political interest is key for explaining large differences in opinion, too. Exclusionism increases OI, even in low-immigration countries, among individuals with little interest in politics but only slightly; at high levels of individual interest and immigration, exclusionism’s effects are substantial. My findings reveal major challenges to integration policy in high-immigration countries: migrants and natives are unlikely to see eye-to-eye at any level of political interest, and there is near complete disagreement on immigration policy between politically-interested Muslims and politically-interested Christians. Methodologically, I introduce techniques to analyze polarization, and my findings have implications for best practices in cross-national survey research.Item Econometric modeling of the European Union cotton demand(Texas Tech University, 2004-05) Lopez, Jose AntonioNot availableItem FAIR ETD Repositories of G20 Countries: comparative studies with respect to NDLTD’s Global ETD Search(Texas Digital Library, 2023-05-18) Patra, Sukanta KumarETDs are primary information sources, that originate from doctorial theses or dissertation submitted to university for the doctorial award. The FAIR ETDs are those electronic theses and dissertations, which are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). The study intends to cover ETD initiatives by G20 Member countries, comprising of 19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States) and the European Union. The G20 Member countries represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population. This study aims to analyze the current state of the FAIR ETD repositories of the G20 member countries and to describe their characteristics and performance in brief. The major objectives of the study are to analyze the importance of ETD in global context, to find out linkage between Global ETD and ETDs of G20 member’s Countries, and analyse the comparative scenario of ETD initiatives with respect to NDLTD repositories. Among G20 Member countries, 14 countries have national ETD repositories, except the countries of European Union. The twelve European Union countries have national ETD repositories, including France, Germany and Italy, overlapping as individual members of G20 and also members of European Union. By taking in to consideration the findings, at the end of the study, there are some proposals of recommendations to further improve the status of national ETD repositories.Item Ideology and interests : a hierarchical Bayesian approach to spatial party preferences(2013-08) Mohanty, Peter Cushner; Jessee, Stephen A., 1980-This paper presents a spatial utility model of support for multiple political parties. The model includes a "valence" term, which I reparameterize to include both party competence and the voters' key sociodemographic concerns. The paper shows how this spatial utility model can be interpreted as a hierarchical model using data from the 2009 European Elections Study. I estimate this model via Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) using a block Gibbs sampler and show that the model can capture broad European-wide trends while allowing for significant amounts of heterogeneity. This approach, however, which assumes a normal dependent variable, is only able to partially reproduce the data generating process. I show that the data generating process can be reproduced more accurately with an ordered probit model. Finally, I discuss trade-offs between parsimony and descriptive richness and other practical challenges that may be encountered when v building models of party support and make recommendations for capturing the best of both approaches.Item Institutions and issues, values and priorities: a re-examination of parties of cultural identity(Texas Tech University, 2004-12) Justice, Jeff WilliamCurrent research on parties of cultural identity tends to classify them using unidimensional dichotomous means. However, nationalist parties tend to operate in multi-dimensional space, meaning that the single criterion on which they are often classified reduces them to the point where their classification ignores one or more of their vital elements. This dissertation establishes a two-dimensional classification scheme for nationalist political parties based on two of the variables most commonly used to classify them: The first establishes whether the party deliberately excludes others from its identity group. The second establishes the geopolitical identity and goal of the party: supporting an existing nation-state, a regionalist party that desires autonomy for the region, or a regionalist party that desires to withdraw the region from the nation-state. The dissertation focuses on the member-states of the European Union of the 1990s as well as those countries which were candidates for membership during this same time period. Upon classifying each viable nationalist party into a nationalist cleavage using the two-dimensional scale mentioned above, I engage in a series of models that examine the differences in each cleavage in terms of the demographics of party supporters, their ideological beliefs, their attitudes toward outsiders, their geopolitical identities, and the sources of their frustration (i.e., the state, the political system, or the people in government). Upon establishing the utility of the classification system, I then apply it as a means of predicting where a party in a given cleavage will fall on a given political issue. In this case, that issue is confidence in the European Union.Item Politics of collective belonging: loyalties in the European Union(Texas A&M University, 2007-04-25) McGee, SibelWhy do some citizens of the European Union feel indeed European and others do not? Although the officials of the European Union introduced many symbols and discourses of unity, empirical studies show that the development of a sense of belonging at the popular level is slow. This dissertation, by drawing upon the established social identity theories, takes the investigation back to basics. It develops a model consisting of the basic premises of the identity theories as well as factors deriving from national and individual contexts that condition individual experiences relating to the aforementioned premises. Rather than developing new theories, this work's contribution to the study of European identity is that the study presents as complete a model as possible based on the existing theoretical frameworks as a cross-sectional analysis. Doing so, it unifies the disconnected literature on the issue within a consistent theoretical logic and cross-validates the patterns found in 15 countries through a large N multivariate analysis based on the Eurobarometer 2000. Results yield that social identity theories are confirmed in the case of European identity except for external demarcation principle.Item A supranational elite theory of neofunctionalist European integration(2004) Stephens, Mark Spencer; Higley, JohnItem Value in Turkish model of civil-military relations(2012-05) Steidl, Luke Ryan; Di-Capua, Yoav, 1970-; Okur, JeannetteThe Arab Spring catalyzed dramatic transformations in the Middle East and initiated a long process that will eventually lead to new governing structures throughout the region. The prominence and growing influence of Turkey in the international arena has spurred some Western pundits, academics, and diplomats to advocate the “Turkish model” as a template for creating stable institutions in the Middle East states of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Civil-military relations factor prominently into this model. Before recommending the Turkish model to any state, it behooves the international community to thoroughly vet every component. Previous to 1997, the military occupied a central role in determining the political, economic, and social trajectory of the Republic of Turkey. This guardian role conflicted with Western notions of healthy civil-military relations emanating from Europe and the United States. Since initiating the EU accession process in 1997, however, Turkey has implemented drastic reforms bringing the Turkish model of civil-military relations into alignment with European standards. Political leadership, incarnated in the Justice and Development Party, has encountered significant resistance from civilian and military opposition in the process of bringing the military under democratic control. Nonetheless, under the political leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this resistance has been overcome. The Turkish model, as it exists today, evolved in response to unique historical and cultural contexts, continuing through great barriers. As such, facsimile transfer of the model to other states is bound to fail. However, lessons gleaned from Turkey’s difficult transition to more democratic controls over the military might inform similar transitions in Arab states. Careful analysis of the great obstacles political leadership has overcome in bringing the military under democratic civilian control may prove more valuable to Arab states than the Turkish model itself.