This study explores the impact of economic governance on the trade in accounting and audit services. A lot of research has been conducted on the trade in goods, but a lot less research on the trade in services. Similarly, as much as research on economic governance has been conducted, little research is available on the impact the rule of law, the control of corruption and the quality of institutions has on the trade in accounting and audit services in Africa. Institutional theory was used to structure the study, particularly in unpacking the importance for a country to have a well-structured institutional framework enabled by formal and informal institutions that are effective. The research comprised of semistructured interviews conducted with nine senior executives from three large firms, two mid-tier firms and the South African regulator. The study found that membership of the firms to global networks enabled them to possess the necessary systems, processes and procedures to assess and develop appropriate strategies to respond to the state of economic governance in countries they operated in, or intended to operate in. The study also established that, in arriving at the decision to enter or continue operating in a territory, firms did not only rely on the assessment of the state of economic governance, but took into account factors. The study contributes to the firms, professional bodies and regulators in the potential enhancements to processes and standards aimed at further capacitating formal institutions in creating an environment conducive to economic activity, whilst also contributing to areas where the firms can strengthen their capacity to assess and respond to the state of economic governance. / Mini Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MPhil (International Business) / Unrestricted

The thesis focuses on theoretical and empirical analysis of concepts of competitiveness that are further applied to the case of the European Union and its system of economic governance. Aim of the thesis is to explain the relationship between competitiveness` concept and economic governance of the EU. The matter is whether the European Union, which has belonged to the most successful examples of regional integration, has strong and flexible tool for itself and for its member states to cope with changing conditions of the globalized world economy, demographic and environmental challenges and whether economic governance of the EU takes principles of competitiveness development into consideration and so application of these principles would make the EU economic governance more effective.

No presente contexto de redistribuição de poder e da consequente reorganização da ordem mundial, as economias emergentes têm gradualmente alcançado maior espaço nas deliberações multilaterais a respeito da governança econômica global. Esta ascensão tem ocorrido em níveis e ritmos distintos em diferentes instâncias da governança econômica global, como, por exemplo, no âmbito do FMI e do G20. Estas instituições internacionais, ainda que diferentes em sua composição, formalização, estrutura e governança, possuem aspectos importantes de sua missão que se sobrepõem, como o diálogo multilateral a respeito de políticas macroeconômicas e a promoção da estabilidade econômica e financeira mundial. Considerando que as economias emergentes têm investido na consolidação de seu recém-adquirido status no sistema internacional, este estudo pretende avançar na compreensão da sua atuação nestas instituições internacionais por meio de uma análise comparativa da configuração institucional do FMI e do G20. Na segunda parte deste estudo, partindo do fato de que as economias emergentes têm empreendido esforços para que as instituições internacionais aprimorem seu modelo de representatividade, no sentido de refletir em suas decisões as posições específicas destes países, pretende-se investigar a atenção que cada uma destas instituições dedica aos temas mais caros a uma destas economias emergentes em particular, o Brasil. A hipótese que norteará a pesquisa é a de que o consenso expresso pelo G20 apresenta maior conformidade em relação ao posicionamento oficial do governo do Brasil do que aquele expresso pelo FMI. / In the present context of redistribution of power and the resulting reorganization of the global order, emerging economies have gradually attained more influence in multilateral discussions regarding global economic governance. This rising has been taking place at different levels and paces in different fora of global economic governance, such as the IMF and the G20. These international institutions, though distinct in their composition, formalization, structure and governance, share important aspects of their mission, such as the multilateral dialogue concerning macroeconomic policy and the promotion of international financial and economic stability. Taking into consideration the notion that emerging economies have been working to consolidate their recently acquired status in the international system, this study intends to contribute to the comprehension of the actions of these countries within these international institutions through a comparative analysis of the institutional configuration of the IMF and the G20. In the second part of this work, taking notice of the effort that emerging economies have been applying to the improvement of representativeness within international institutions, so they can better reflect these countries\' positions in their decisions, the present study intends to investigate the attention that both of these institutions grant to the most relevant themes according to one of these emerging economies in particular, Brazil. The hypothesis here is that the consensus expressed by the G20 shares a higher level of conformity with the official positions of the government of Brazil than that expressed by the IMF.

No presente contexto de redistribuição de poder e da consequente reorganização da ordem mundial, as economias emergentes têm gradualmente alcançado maior espaço nas deliberações multilaterais a respeito da governança econômica global. Esta ascensão tem ocorrido em níveis e ritmos distintos em diferentes instâncias da governança econômica global, como, por exemplo, no âmbito do FMI e do G20. Estas instituições internacionais, ainda que diferentes em sua composição, formalização, estrutura e governança, possuem aspectos importantes de sua missão que se sobrepõem, como o diálogo multilateral a respeito de políticas macroeconômicas e a promoção da estabilidade econômica e financeira mundial. Considerando que as economias emergentes têm investido na consolidação de seu recém-adquirido status no sistema internacional, este estudo pretende avançar na compreensão da sua atuação nestas instituições internacionais por meio de uma análise comparativa da configuração institucional do FMI e do G20. Na segunda parte deste estudo, partindo do fato de que as economias emergentes têm empreendido esforços para que as instituições internacionais aprimorem seu modelo de representatividade, no sentido de refletir em suas decisões as posições específicas destes países, pretende-se investigar a atenção que cada uma destas instituições dedica aos temas mais caros a uma destas economias emergentes em particular, o Brasil. A hipótese que norteará a pesquisa é a de que o consenso expresso pelo G20 apresenta maior conformidade em relação ao posicionamento oficial do governo do Brasil do que aquele expresso pelo FMI. / In the present context of redistribution of power and the resulting reorganization of the global order, emerging economies have gradually attained more influence in multilateral discussions regarding global economic governance. This rising has been taking place at different levels and paces in different fora of global economic governance, such as the IMF and the G20. These international institutions, though distinct in their composition, formalization, structure and governance, share important aspects of their mission, such as the multilateral dialogue concerning macroeconomic policy and the promotion of international financial and economic stability. Taking into consideration the notion that emerging economies have been working to consolidate their recently acquired status in the international system, this study intends to contribute to the comprehension of the actions of these countries within these international institutions through a comparative analysis of the institutional configuration of the IMF and the G20. In the second part of this work, taking notice of the effort that emerging economies have been applying to the improvement of representativeness within international institutions, so they can better reflect these countries\' positions in their decisions, the present study intends to investigate the attention that both of these institutions grant to the most relevant themes according to one of these emerging economies in particular, Brazil. The hypothesis here is that the consensus expressed by the G20 shares a higher level of conformity with the official positions of the government of Brazil than that expressed by the IMF.

The EU-Russia Energy Dialogue was launched in October 2000. Its goal was a binding energy agreement between Russia and the European Union, and possibly a wider political partnership. Today, however, the Energy Dialogue seems all but forgotten. How and why did the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue fail to define and create a legally binding energy partnership? There is scant literature about the Energy Dialogue. To the limited extent that the literature addresses the failure, it identifies either ideational, political, economic, geo- economic or institutional variables. But this separation is artificial. To bridge this divide I have developed a novel analytical framework using narratives and Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue. In this respect, the thesis is ideational or constructivist. However, unlike conventional constructivist accounts, which tend to downplay politics, this account emphasises power and conflict: Not dialogue as dual meaning, but many meanings, or ‘heterologue’. Narratives, as opposed to variables, are always in flux. To answer the how question: The dialogue failed because it could not forge a common narrative for the EU-Russia energy trade. Russia sought investment, whereas the EU wanted legal reform. Yet, the Energy Dialogue was a heterologue of conflicting narratives, both between and within Russia and the EU. I have coined six narrative clusters, used as Weberian ideal types: The ‘EUropean’, ‘EU15/25/27’, ‘Euro-Asian’, ‘Dual State’, ‘Statist’ and ‘Post-Imperial’ narratives. To answer the why question: Narratives unfold in time-space, and the initial misgivings were exacerbated by pre-existing narrative divergences (chapter 1), but also by subsequent political (chapter 2), business (chapter 3), geo-economic (chapter 4) and legal developments (chapter 5) – all influenced by the ebbs and flows of world oil prices. Thus, the failure of the Energy Dialogue was never pre-determined, or caused by a singular factor or event. It was shaped in the multidimensional, unfolding time-space of Russo-European relations.

This thesis argues that corporations have outgrown the theoretical frameworks that were devised to explain their dynamics at the turn of the 20th century. Contemporary conditions result in crises of legitimacy between corporations and their public contexts. With their amplified scales of operation and wide-reaching physical, economic, political, and social consequences, corporations of the 21st century demand revised theoretical, legal, and pragmatic interpretations that are better suited to grappling with present-day dynamics and to addressing critical challenges. This research examines contemporary controversies between corporations and publics from a critical legal perspective. Analysis of corporate dynamics is informed by geographically oriented themes of space and scale, contingency and attribution, and materiality and risk as they bear relevance to theoretical and real enactments of the corporation. This thesis grounds its claims with reference to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) discourse; taking advantage of its reach and popularity while maintaining enough distance to note its limitations and internal contradictions. This thesis finds that the present-day account of CSR is originated and advanced by an ideological orientation that is universalizing, materialist, positivist, formalist and rationalist. Such an orientation is confronted and contested in this work by a more critical rationality that is concerned with power dynamics, as well as questions of agency and self-determination. This rationality is elaborated through four empirical chapters which find that: 1) appeals to a CSR agenda as an effective mechanism for addressing the corporation’s public impacts assumes the existence of a modern, liberal political context; 2) community ‘materiality’ presents an opportunity to bridge the notional public/private divide that is a core tenet of liberal theory; 3) the global corporation extends into plural territorialities and legal jurisdictions, and its public identity as interpreted through legal text sets the parameters for the accountability regimes devised to manage its impacts 4) pragmatist and aspirational legal agendas might be coordinated to advance issue-focused as well as case-based corporate liability reform. This work advances an account of the corporate-public relationship that carries relevance to a range of actors; corporations, public communities, policy makers and legal scholars. Each group has an integral part to play in addressing the challenges presented by the modern corporate arrangement and devising regimes that contain its public implications.

Following the controversial Federal election in Ethiopia in 2005, in which the ruling party regained power amidst allegations of state-sanctioned violence, the World Bank, along with other bilateral donors, stopped providing Direct Budget Support. In 2006, the Bank formed an agreement with the Ethiopian Government for an International Development Association (IDA) grant for the Protection of Basic Services. The project design for the grant was one of the most complex in the Bank's operations worldwide and featured a component for the implementation of social accountability, financed by a Multi-donor Trust Fund. This thesis critically examines the evolution within the Bank of this policy of 'social accountability' in relation to aid. Situated within the literature on the re-politicisation of aid, it questions the plausibility of implementing such a policy in Ethiopia where the dominant party was seeking ways to extend its power over society. Fieldwork for this thesis was conducted at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and in Ethiopia: in Addis Ababa, and in the region of Tigray. The evidence assembled in this thesis is drawn from 135 semi-structured interviews and a range of primary source documents. Using an historical method, this thesis argues that the primary purpose of social accountability was rhetorical and the deployment of this language by actors was cynical. Not only did donors have a limited purchase on a complex social reality in Ethiopia, but they also tolerated the misuse of social accountability by the dominant party to extend the power of the state. What was produced in Ethiopia was radically outside of what donors imagined, although they were remarkably relaxed about this fact. This thesis challenges the conventional assumptions that actors in aid negotiations are rational and that aid programs involve the imposition of rationalising high-modernist schemes.

La tesi intende fornire un’analisi critica dello sviluppo dell’Unione Economica e Monetaria (UEM) alla luce della crisi del debito sovrano. A partire dal 2009 sono state progressivamente attuate diverse riforme che hanno limitato l’autonomia degli Stati Membri nell’esercizio delle loro prerogative sovrane ed hanno fornito alle istituzione europee nuovi poteri nell’ambito di diverse politiche. La ricerca investiga i trasferimenti di sovranità in corso dal livello nazionale a quello europeo focalizzandosi sulle trasformazioni sia dell’Unione Economica che di quella Monetaria. Nel primo capitolo la tesi analizza i carattere originali dell’UEM dalla sua creazione fino alla ratifica del trattato di Lisbona. Il secondo capitolo considera la creazione dei meccanismi di stabilizzazione introdotti per salvare i paesi a rischio default e garantire la stabilità finanziaria della zona euro nel suo complesso. Il terzo capitolo studia gli interventi della Banca Centrale Europea durante la crisi, analizzando in che modo la necessità di proteggere la moneta unica abbia sviluppato il ruolo della BCE ed esteso il suo mandato. Il quarto capitolo studia la riforma della governance economica tramite il rafforzamento della disciplina fiscale degli Stati Membri. Il quinto capitolo analizza la riforma della governance bancaria e la creazione dell’Unione Bancaria, che è stata finalmente introdotta per interrompere il circolo vizioso tra crisi del debito e crisi bancaria. Nello sviluppo della tesi le diverse riforme verranno analizzate dal punto di visto della loro legalità, efficacia e legittimità democratica. / The thesis aims to provide a critical analysis of the development of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the light of the sovereign debt crisis. Since 2009 a number of measures have been progressively implemented, which have limited the autonomy of Member States in exercising their sovereign prerogatives and have granted EU institutions new powers in key policy areas. The research will investigate the ongoing transfers of sovereignty from national to European level focusing on the transformation of both the Economic and the Monetary Union. In the first chapter, it will consider the original features of the EMU, from its introduction at the intergovernmental conference of Maastricht until the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The second chapter will focus on the creation of rescue and stabilization mechanisms put in place to save Member States from imminent default and to ensure the financial stability of the Eurozone as a whole. The third chapter will study the interventions of the European Central Bank during the crisis considering how the necessity to protect the single currency has developed its role and extended its mandate. The fourth chapter will focus on the reform of the economic governance through the fiscal discipline of Member States. The fifth chapter will take into consideration the reform of the banking governance and the establishment of the European Banking Union, which was finally introduced to stop the vicious cycle between the debt and banking crisis. By developing the thesis, the analysis will consider each reform from the point of view of its legality, effectiveness and democratic legitimacy.

This thesis examines the EU's influence on regional cooperation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Mercosur in South America and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) by drawing on concepts from diffusion studies. It argues that conventional perspectives have tended to view different cases of regionalism as independent phenomena reflecting particular structural, institutional or ideational conditions, mainly internal to the respective region itself. I propose instead to conceive of regional organisations as asymmetrically interdependent, in that the EU as the most successful regional grouping in the international system influences other regional organisations in important respects; yet in ways that are ill-captured by the conventional depiction of external influence as a form of coercion. The central question addressed in this thesis is thus: Under what conditions and in what ways does the EU affect the trajectory of formal rules in regional cooperation elsewhere? I advance three main arguments. First, I suggest that given the EU's ideational and material power in global regionalism, it is likely to act as a focal point in debates about regional rule change around which actors' expectations converge when being confronted with an exogenous cooperation problem. This renders EU influence difficult to escape. Second, I argue that there are two dynamics by which EU influence affects outcomes in global regionalism - the EU as switchman and as driver. While the former leads policy-makers to choose EU-type rules instead of similarly viable alternatives given a particular cooperation problem, the latter affects the very incentives for regional rule change and thereby acts as an independent driver of regional cooperation. Third, I argue that, in terms of outcomes, EU influence has been highest in SADC, lower in Mercosur and lowest in ASEAN, mainly reflecting different degrees of material and ideational interdependence between the EU and other regions. Yet, policy-makers' widespread reluctance to share national sovereignty has sharply delineated the boundaries of EU influence in all three regions. I test these arguments across three central areas of regional cooperation: market building, institution building and community building.

This thesis addresses the puzzle of why changes in relative donor contributions to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) did not reflect shifts in their relative economic capabilities. It addresses the grand debates about how power transitions shape a US-led hegemonic international system by exploring one specific international organisation. Drawing primarily on archives, elite interviews, and participant observation, I examine sixteen rounds of IDA replenishment negotiations from 1960 to 2010. There are three puzzles a close empirical analysis throws up. The first is why the hegemon maintained its burden shares regardless of rise or fall in economic status; I call this ‘Hegemonic Lag’. The second is why ascending powers were slow to assume greater burden-shares despite economic ascents; I call this ‘Challenger Inertia.’ The third puzzle is why significant burden-shifting occurred on a much greater scale than shifts in relative economic weight; I call this ‘Accelerated Burden-Shifting.’ Two conventional explanations – donors’ relative ‘ability-to-pay’ and their ‘country-specific interests’ – offer a first-cut analysis of donors’ ability and willingness to contribute. However, they fail to uncover how bipolar geopolitics and World Bank governance shaped IDA burden-sharing dynamics. This thesis tests whether the hegemon will maintain its shares even if its relative economic capacity wanes, if its bipolar rival poses a more intense external threat. Equally it tests whether a hegemon and/or waning powers with a desire to expand total IDA resources will cede voting rights to ascending powers in exchange for financial support to IDA. Finally, the research examines whether a hegemon violating the ‘fairness’ principle by shirking obligations but pursuing undue influence will face secondary states willing to take ‘exit/voice’ measures to restore an implicit contribution-to-influence equity line; and whether such countermeasures would be postponed if secondary states are structurally dependent upon the hegemon and/or lack viable outside options. In-depth case studies are used to test these hypotheses. Overall the thesis reveals that the US maintained or cut its burden share as the Soviet threat waxed and waned; and that as the Soviet Union collapsed the US abandoned both its leadership for IDA expansion to counter the Soviet threat and its self-restraint in controlling the World Bank, provoking the fairness concern among secondary states – the most potent factor in explaining IDA burden-sharing dynamics in the post-Cold War era.