As oil bearing country, the issue of development in Nigeria has been a complex one that has attracted attention of both the government and scholars because oil politics appears to shape resource management and the development process. While academic focus has been on the analysis of national development, there is a paucity of academic studies on the internal dynamics at the regional level that shape the development process. This study therefore aims to: “examine the effect of oil resources on Nigeria’s development and the South-South compared with the situation in the South-West”, with an explicit focus on the complex nexus between oil, politics and regional development in Nigeria. The thesis adopts both methodological and theoretical triangulation to generate data to test the main and supporting hypothesis adopted for the study: “the oil industry has had an adverse impact on the development of Nigeria, and, in particular, the Niger Delta region in which it is concentrated”. In so doing, it explores the failure of oil politics to mix effectively to engender both national and regional development; leading to a regional development disparity. The study concludes that oil wealth failed to fuel development in Nigeria but instead, led to leadership failure. This failure is particularly found to have given vent to the negative impact of oil wealth on elite behaviour that is shaped by corruption, made worse by a dis-functional federal system where those with links major ethnic groups, get resource allocation and development advantage. The study consequently recommends that elite induced oil politics and attendant corruption, be tackled to pave way for both national and regional development in Nigeria. The study also recommend replication of this study in a larger scale in other oil bearing developing nations to further explore the relationship between management of resource wealth and regional development.

Freedom is universally valued and fundamentally affects social life. In this thesis, I examine how freedom affects an important dimension of business: long-term commitment (LTC). The LTC of corporations is vital for economic growth because economic development is reliant on entrepreneurs continuously investing in physical and social capital. Corporate opportunism will never lead to long-term economic growth. Specifically, this study examines the effects of political freedom (PF) and economic freedom (EF) on two LTC-related variables: investment and the commitment to maintaining a loyal shareholder base, both of which are essential topics in the business literature. This study consists of two essays. The first essay investigates the effects of a country's political versus economic freedom on corporate investment based on a sample of 19,605 companies operating in 49 countries for the timespan covering 1995 to 2015. First-differencing (FD) regressions show that PF and EF are positively associated with corporate investment, but PF's effect is larger. I also find that the effect of EF is conditional on the development of PF but not vice versa. Further, the effect of PF does not seem to be due to concurrent changes in uncontrolled factors: major changes in PF have larger effects than minor changes, and I do not observe a reversion in the effect of PF. Lastly, I find that an improvement in PF is associated with a larger growth in investment among firms with state ownership or political connections, suggesting a larger distorting effect of low PF on these firms' investment decisions. Overall, the findings shed new light on the economic reforms designed by policymakers: economic reforms, no matter how easy they seem, may not work well without political reforms. The second essay examines the impacts of a country's political compared with economic freedom on corporations' commitment to maintaining a loyal shareholder base. With a sample of 45 countries spanning 12 years, the FD result shows that PF and EF are positively associated with corporations' commitment to shareholder loyalty (CSL). More importantly, PF has a greater effect than EF. It is also determined that the impact of EF is dependent on the advancement of PF, but the reverse is not true. Furthermore, the impact of PF is not caused by concurrent changes in uncontrolled factors: major changes in PF are more impactful than minor changes, while a reversion in the impact of PF is not observed. Finally, I find that an enhancement to PF is correlated with a more significant increase in CSL among firms with state ownership or political connections than in firms without. This implies that low PF has a greater distorting effect on the CSL of such firms. In general, these results indicate that while it is comparatively easier for policymakers to enact economic reforms, their effectiveness may be reduced in the absence of concurrent political reforms.

This diplom papes deals with Rural regeneration programme and District development programme. It´s objectiv is influence increasing of these tools of district politics in Jihočeský, Pardubický and Plzeňský kraj. Partial programme changes have been proposed based on analyses district state charakteristics, development programme and performed comparison of embedded resource.

Countries with rich natural resource endowments suffer from lower economic growth and various other ills. This work tests whether the resource curse also extends to the quality of regulation and the level of corruption. A theoretical framework is developed that informs the specification of interactive random effects models. A cross-national panel data set is used to estimate these models. Due to multicollinearity, only an effect of metals and ores exports on corruption can be discerned. Marginal effects computations show that whether nature corrupts or not crucially depends on a country's institutions. A broad tax base and high levels of education appear to serve as inoculations for countries against the side-effects of mineral wealth.

The diploma thesis is divided into two basic parts. The first part focuses on the theoretical overview and explanation of basic concepts related to the issue of regional development, regional politics and development strategies. The second practical part focuses on the characteristics of the South – Moravian Region and focuses on competitiveness issues, calculates on the basic of statistical variables and is supplemented by SWOT analysis and identification of impacts that have an impact on the proposed regional development.

[pt] Esse trabalho tem como objetivo descrever o processo de institucionalização de políticas ambientais no Banco Mundial.Inicialmente, a dissertação descreve a organização internacional e suas formas de atuação sobre os países membros; tanto financeiramente quanto na incorporação e na disseminação de conhecimento. Na segunda parte são particularmente enfatizadas as mudanças organizacionais ocorridas em três fases - de 1970 a 1987, de 1987 a 1992, e de 1992 em diante -, cujo objetivo foi incluir as políticas ambientais nas rotinas e processos do Bird. / [en] This work intends to describe the process of environmental institutionalization occurred in the World Bank. Initially, the thesis describes the international organization not only as an economic resource provider to its members but also as an intellectual actor. Then, it was particularly emphasized three phases that led to organizational changes - from 1970 to 1987, from 1987 to 1992, and from 1992 on -, in order to include environmental aspects into the routines of the Bank.