Botswana has recently garnered analytic attention as an anomaly of the “resource curse” phenomenon. Worldwide, countries whose economies are highly skewed towards a dependence on the export of non-renewable natural resources such as oil, diamonds and uranium, have been among the most troubled, authoritarian, poverty-stricken and conflict-prone; a phenomenon widely regarded as the “resource curse". The resource curse explains the varying fortunes of countries based on their resource wealth, with resource-rich countries faring much worse than their resource-poor counterparts. However, Botswana, with diamond exports accounting for 50percent of government revenues and 80percent of total exports, has achieved one of the fastest economic growth rates in the developing world in the last 50 years. Furthermore, the Freedom House ranks it as the safest, most stable, least corrupt and most democratic country on sub-Saharan Africa. In attempting to answer why Botswana apparently escaped the “resource curse”, this research assumes that both formal and informal institutions within the state acted as intermediary variables in determining its fortune. This research thus addresses the deeper question of where Botswana obtained its unique institutional quality that facilitated its apparent escape of the resource curse. It traces Botswana’s history through four lenses: legitimacy and historical continuity, political culture, ethnicity and identity management, and external relations; as having explanatory value in understanding the Botswana exception. The research finds most evidence of Botswana’s institutional quality emanating from the country’s political culture which it found more compatible with the institutions of development and democracy that facilitate both positive economic and political outcomes. It also found evidence of legitimacy and historical continuity facilitating the robustness of both formal and informal institutions in Botswana, and identity management through assimilation as having buffered against the effects of ethnically motivated resource plunder. It however, found the least support for the assertion that external relations contributed to institutional quality.

The aim of the work Failed States in International Relations is the examination of this phenomenon regarding the terminological discrepancy, causes of the state fragility, security and social aspects and the various attitudes from the side of the international communities. A special part is dealing with so called "successfully failed states" where despite the obvious non-functioning the state is able to survive due to the revenues from the natural resources. The ?ndings are represented on the case study of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - a country with huge potential but miserable performance by now.

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.

Les modèles de régression paramétrique fournissent de puissants outils pour la modélisation des données lorsque celles-ci s’y prêtent bien. Cependant, ces modèles peuvent être la source d’importants biais lorsqu’ils ne sont pas adéquats. Pour éliminer ces biais de modélisation, des méthodes non paramétriques ont été introduites permettant aux données elles mêmes de construire le modèle. Ces méthodes présentent, dans le cas multivarié, un handicap connu sous l’appellation de fléau de la dimension où la vitesse de convergence des estimateurs est une fonction décroissante de la dimension des covariables. L’idée est alors de combiner une partie linéaire avec une partie non-linéaire, ce qui aurait comme effet de réduire l’impact du fléau de la dimension. Néanmoins l’estimation non-paramétrique de la partie non-linéaire, lorsque celle-ci est multivariée, est soumise à la même contrainte de détérioration de sa vitesse de convergence. Pour pallier ce problème, la réponse adéquate est l’introduction d’une structure additive de la partie non-linéaire de son estimation par des méthodes appropriées. Cela permet alors de définir des modèles de régression partièllement linéaires et additifs. L’objet de la thèse est d’établir des résultats asymptotiques relatifs aux divers paramètres de ce modèle (consistance, vitesses de convergence, normalité asymptotique et loi du logarithme itéré) et de construire aussi des tests d’hypothèses relatives à la structure du modèle, comme l’additivité de la partie non-linéaire, et à ses paramètres. / Parametric regression models provide powerful tools for analyzing practical data when the models are correctly specified, but may suffer from large modelling biases when structures of the models are misspecified. As an alternative, nonparametric smoothing methods eases the concerns on modelling biases. However, nonparametric models are hampered by the so-called curse of dimensionality in multivariate settings. One of the methods for attenuating this difficulty is to model covariate effects via a partially linear structure, a combination of linear and nonlinear parts. To reduce the dimension impact in the estimation of the nonlinear part of the partially linear regression model, we introduce an additive structure of this part which induces, finally, a partially linear additive model. Our aim in this work is to establish some limit results pertaining to various parameters of the model (consistency, rate of convergence, asymptotic normality and iterated logarithm law) and to construct some hypotheses testing procedures related to the model structure, as the additivity of the nonlinear part, and to its parameters.

The resource curse hypothesis suggests that resource-rich countries show lower economic growth rates compared to resource-poor countries. We add to this literature by providing empirical evidence on a new transmission channel of the resource curse, namely, the negative effect of rents on the quality of education. The cross-country analysis for more than 70 countries shows a significantly positive effect of oil rents on the quantity of education measured by government spending on primary and secondary education. Hence, the underspending hypothesis championed by Gylfason (2001) no longer holds with newer data. However, we find a robust and negative effect of oil rents dependency on the current objective and subjective indicators of quality of education, controlling for a set of other drivers of education quality and regional dummies. Despite spending significant shares of GDP on education, oil-rich countries still suffer from an insufficient quality of primary and secondary education, which may hamper their growth potentials. The significant negative effect of oil rents dependency on education quality can be explained by both the demand (e.g., skill acquisition) and supply (e.g., teacher quality) side channels.

There are many different ways that the power of a word is expressed in the New Testament. In most cases, this power is bound to the person of Jesus Christ, and its outcome is positive. Through his word Jesus not only heals, exorcizes, and brings the dead back to the life, but he also curses. This thesis discusses the question, what the New Testament says about various imprecations, maledictions and many other negative appearances of a word and the demonstrations of its power. This thesis comprises an overall outline of the passages from the New Testament and their commentaries, which appear to be close to the selected theme. In the first part the thesis deals with the notion and relevance of a "word" and "human speech" for people and their relationship with God. In the second part, this thesis delves into the area of imprecations and maledictions. The third part is dedicated to promises and oaths. The fourth part aims to the theme of wrath and how its expressed in words in the texts of the New Testament, that are connected with the selected theme, including the commentaries. The aim of the thesis is primarily to present the issue of the impact of negative words on human life including the accessible interpretations of selected parts and their evaluation, which is a subject, in my opinion, that in general...

The main objective of this Master thesis was to test the claim that economic dependence on oil exports impedes enduring democratic stability in the case of Venezuela in the period of 1970-2010. This assumption was based on a broad resource curse theory which addresses negative economic, political and social consequences of precious resource export dependency. The hypothesis was that exogenous variables could intesify these malign consequences. In this study we focused on the role(s) performed by multinational oil corporations (MICs) in Venezuelan petroleum industry, on the impact of the nationalization of the oil sector and on the impact of the foundation of a state-owned corporation PDVSA, which became responsible for subsequent development of oil extraction. Fist, I proved that the nationalization led to profound restructuring of institutional and power relations that had negative impact on economic prosperity and stability of the democratic regime in a long-term perspective. Soon after its establishment the national oil corporation became an independent actor able to follow its own agenda and to promote its own economic and political interests and therefore polarized the already divided society. Second, I documented empirical evidence that corroborated most of the previous theoretical...

This thesis constitutes the gender analysis of the Kateřina Tučková's work Žítkovské bohyně. The methodological and theoretical part defends feminist literary criticism as a legitimate approach to the text, represents a method of feminine writing and reading and examines the question of literary canon. Besides it analyses archetypes, which are demonstrated with using classical feminist texts, which depict typological attributes of characters as well as some model situations of the novel. The characters are related to archetype of witch, Demeter narrative and seductress, which all are interdependent. Except for archetypes, the thesis also discusses the issue of stereotypical display of feminity and masculinity, spirituality connected with women characters, interprets nature of myths and reflects mutual relationship among characters of the novel in the gender system. The proper analysis of female and male characters focuses on the main female characters, which are influenced by male partners and theme of the curse, which is the key for this analysis.

The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)

The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)