Human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing global crime, which finally gained its due attention in the late 1990s. This thesis provides a critique of governmental anti-human trafficking efforts, in particular the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report. Additionally, this thesis focuses on Argentina and its federal capital, as a case study of the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of governmental reports on human trafficking, as well as the contributions made by non-governmental anti-human trafficking efforts. This thesis argues that due to many factors, government corruption being one of the main ones, it is important to be critical of state power and the knowledge it produces surrounding the issue of human trafficking. It is also crucial that governmental anti-human trafficking efforts strengthen coordination and increase collaboration with regional and local NGOs and other non-governmental anti-human trafficking efforts, in order to more effectively fight to eliminate this transnational and international crime.

This thesis focuses on subnational corruption law enforcement in a new democracy: Indonesia. It seeks to understand temporal and spatial variation in corruption prosecutions in the post-Suharto era, and answer three core research questions: Why has the number of corruption cases steadily increased over the past twenty years? Why is there significant subnational variation in the investigation and prosecution of corruption? And why are some cases of local corruption investigated and prosecuted while others are ignored? The argument developed in the thesis consists of three inter-linked components: that corruption generates complex collective action problems for law enforcement; that ostensibly public law enforcement regimes in Indonesia are informally privatised public law enforcement regimes; and that, in the context of these hybrid regimes, the availability of resources and the formation of coalitions is critical to understanding when individuals and groups mobilise corruption laws at the subnational level. The project uses a mixed methods research strategy—combining qualitative case studies, formal game theoretic modelling, and quantitative regression analysis—to develop and provide evidence for the argument. The research strategy required twelve months of fieldwork in Indonesia. In total over one hundred interviews in Jakarta and Central Java were conducted, and a unique dataset of local corruption cases was coded for two additional provinces. The thesis's argument and methodological approach has implications for literature that spans the field of law and politics: the political economy of prosecution, theories of legal mobilisation, socio-legal studies, and studies of politics and power in contemporary Indonesia.

This thesis explores the effects of institutions on macroeconomic performance. It does so in two main chapters, a summary of each of which is given below. In the first main chapter of the thesis, the interactions between government spending, government borrowing, political corruption and political turnover were examined. Incorporating these factors in a sovereign default model, we show how sovereign default decisions and business cycle fluctuations are affected by the level of corruption. In particular, we show that when there is turnover, corruption can generate higher risks of default and higher credit spreads when there is enough stability. Intuitively, we establish that a change in power from a less corrupt to a more corrupt government is more likely to cause default than the reverse. The results also shows that households suffer welfare losses as a result of corruption. As regards business cycles, the general effect of corruption is to alter business cycle statistics. Further, we estimate an empirical model using data on sovereign default, corruption, political stability and other macroeconomic variables for a sample of emerging economies. The results of this provide strong evidence of a positive relationship between both corruption and political stability and sovereign default. The second main chapter of the thesis looks at the effects of limited financial contract enforcement in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework where firms have access to both internal and external means of finance. The results shows how limited enforceability affects fluctuations in key macroeconomic variables (e.g., output, employment and price) through its impact on key financial variables (e.g., interest rates, risk premium, default risk and leverage). In particular, we find that weaker enforcement tends to amplify the effects of shocks, creating greater volatility, as well as lowering small firm funding. We provide some empirical evidence to support our results. Using cross-country data on measures of financial market imperfections, we find that limited enforcement has a negative effect on output and that this effect is exacerbated by poor credit information. We also find that weaker contract enforcement is associated with higher output volatility.

The overall aim of this research was to understand the essential elements/factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the content of codes of conduct in the public service in addressing corruption. The ultimate objective was to compare the South African public service code of conduct with practical guidelines to determine whether it complies with international practice. The international guidelines used in this research were that of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on codes of conduct, the Technical Guide to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the United Nation’s International Code of Conduct for public officials and the Council of Europe’s Model Code of Conduct for public officials. The findings of this research confirmed that the South African public service code of conduct is deficient in some areas and it is recommended that these deficiencies be addressed, having regard to the provisions of the International Guidelines. / Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Auditing / unrestricted

Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right which is important not only for the intellectual integrity of an individual but also for the healthy development of the whole society. The work represents both general arguments for freedom of expression and codification of freedom in two different legal cultures. In the United States the freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, which complements the rich jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States. In Mexico, the right is regulated in Article 6 of the Constitution. The work shows how both countries reached the current legislation on the basis of examination of legal developments and cultural values. The values of the societies are presented on the basis of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. The core of the thesis is to compare the legal limits, which is made primarily on the basis of judicial practice of the Supreme Courts of both countries. Emphasis is placed on four main areas which are related to freedom of speech: (i) fighting words including hate speech, (ii) symbolic speech, (iii) obscenity, and (iv) defamation. In addition to the legal limits the work interprets also the most significant actual limits in both countries. Finally, the author examines the relationship between freedom of expression and...