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This thesis challenges the neoclassical and the state-oriented views on economic and industrial development, using a strategic decision making theory framework and by focusing on the changing governance of the Korean water sector as an in-depth case. This research finds that a governance structure controlled by a few elites from the market or the state inevitably fails to meet the public interest. Strategic decision making theory (SDT) in this research incorporates Barzelay’s institutional processualism (Barzelay, 2003, Barzelay and Gallego, 2006) and Moe’s concept of purposive incentive (1981), in order to explain ‘changing’ governance and the reasons why some actors voluntarily participate in democratic decision making despite ‘collective action problems’. The Korean water sector, the case of this research, illustrates these ideas by showing that governance changes result from intense interaction between interested and purposive actors, critical events, and context. SDT analysis is complemented by an econometric analysis, which shows that the decentralisation of decision making power does not necessarily come with better performance unless proper governance is introduced. Solutions suggested in this thesis are democratic industrial governance and, as an intermediate means, a democratic regulatory agency, which is beyond merely (economic) regulation to remedy ‘market failure’ and economic bureaucrats pursuing long term career path.

The study of Ezra-Nehemiah has been revolutionised in recent years by a growing rejection of the long-established belief that it was composed as part of the Chronicler's work. That shift in scholarly paradigms has re-opened many questions of origin and purpose, and this thesis attempts to establish an answer to the most important of these: the question of authorship. The first part deals with preliminary questions, reviewing the relationship with Chronicles and the unity of the work, and investigating current theories of origin. It affirms that Ezra-Nehemiah should be considered a single, independent composition, to be dated to the late fifth century B.C., and establishes that the author most probably belonged to one of the clerical groups of priests or Levites. The second part examines the attitude toward Levites in Ezra-Nehemiah, and compares it to the treatment of Levites in other, more or less contemporary literature. This comparison shows that the work is unlikely to have been a priestly composition, since priestly texts of the period show a consistent determination to portray the Levites as clerus minor, subordinate to the priests. On the other hand, the portrayal in Ezra-Nehemiah is quite compatible with that of the Levitical stratum in Chronicles. The third part explores the ideology of Ezra-Nehemiah in the context of Persian rule. It establishes that the author was pro-Persian, despite good reasons for Jewish discontent with Achaemenid policies, and shows that this would not have been inappropriate for a Levitical author by the time the work was written. It also explores the socio-political ideology of the book, concluding that its concerns with decentralisation, cooperation and reform are unlikely to have been voiced by a priestly writer. The dissertation concludes, therefore, that the most probable origin for Ezia-Nehemiah lies in Levitical circles, and that it was composed at a time when Levites had established an improvement in their status and authority, following Persian disenchantment with the priesthood. The implications of this conclusion, literary and historical, are explored briefly in the final chapter.