For a long time, the European Parliament (EP) was viewed as a lobbying sideshow mainly to be targeted if interest groups were unsuccessful at getting their demands included in the European Commission’s proposal. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have a reputation for being particularly open to diffuse interests who, due to their limited resources, use ‘friendly’ MEPs to put pressure on the European Commission and the Council. The notion of the EP representing diffuse interests conflicts with the broader political science literature on interest groups, which dwells on business bias. There are, however, good reasons to doubt the EP’s reputation as a defender of diffuse interests. Much of our current knowledge about the EP’s interest group politics stems from a time when the EP’s legislative powers were more limited. Within the last twenty years, the EP has evolved from a ‘multilingual talking shop’ to a genuine co-legislator with the Council. The increased powers of the EP raise the question of whether EP interest group politics has normalised, whereby the assumptions of the interest group literature would seem to reflect the reality of the EP. A common assumption in the interest group literature is that diffuse interests carry limited weight in decision-making because their resources and interests remain subordinate to that of business. However, business influence differs across policy fields depending on how the costs and benefits related to policies are distributed. The aim of my thesis is to investigate how the distribution of costs and benefits of legislative proposals influence interest groups’ likelihood of winning particular conflicts in the EP. This is done by examining four legislative dossiers in the areas of employment, consumer, and environmental policies. The thesis draws on the process-tracing of EU documents, and 144 interviews with MEPs, EP officials, and interest groups.

No description available.

Nel primo articolo, stimiamo l'economia sommersa di 49 paesi dal 1981 al 2005. Il nostro studio si basa sull'utilizzo dei consumi elettrici filtrati per i cambiamenti tecnologici e le variazioni nella quota del settore industriale. Contrariamente agli studi basati sul metodo MIMIC, noi otteniamo una riduzione nella dimensione dell'economia sommersa. Contrariamente a La Porta and Shleifer (2008), inoltre, identifichiamo misure di qualità istituzionale che sono significativamente correlate all'economia sommersa, pur controllando per il PIL pro-capite. L'economia non registrata non può, dunque, essere considerata una conseguenza del sotto sviluppo. Al contrario, l’attività economica sommersa è relazionata a specifici aspetti istituzionali che possono sopravvivere con la crescita economica. Inoltre, identifichiamo un forte effetto sostituzione tra il settore ufficiale e quello non ufficiale. Questo risultato ha importanti implicazioni sia per la convergenza dei redditi che per la relazione tra volatilità e crescita. Nel secondo articolo, analizziamo il ruolo di istituzioni, crescita e politiche nel determinare l’economia sommersa. La forte separazione tra assunti teorici sulle determinanti istituzionali del sommerso e le tecniche di misurazione utilizzate rappresenta il primo aspetto innovativo del lavoro. Sfruttando, inoltre, la dimensione time-series del panel, siamo in grado di meglio analizzare il nesso tra crescita del PIL ufficiale e dimensione relativa del sommerso. Il terzo aspetto innovativo dell’articolo si riferisce al contributo apportato al lungo dibattito circa il ruolo di istituzioni e politiche nel determinare i risultati economici. In terzo articolo, rovesciamo l’approccio standard tipicamente seguito nella letteratura relativa all’economia sommersa. Invece di utilizzare i dati sulla domanda di moneta per ottenere stime sulla dinamica del sommerso, analizziamo gli effetti di lungo periodo dell’economia non registrata sulla velocità di circolazione della moneta. Il nostro contributo è duplice: i) apportiamo un miglioramento alla letteratura sulle determinanti della velocità di circolazione della moneta; ii) testiamo indirettamente la credibilità delle stime del sommerso presentate nel primo articolo della tesi. / In the first paper, we estimate the unrecorded economy in 49 economies from 1981 to 2005. Our study is based on electricity consumption series which are filtered to account for technological change and for the changing weight of the energy-intensive industrial sector. In contrast with studies based on the MIMIC method, we obtain a reduction in the weight of the unobserved economy. Unlike La Porta and Shleifer (2008), we identify measures of institutional quality which are significantly related to the shadow economy even after controlling for per-capita GDP. Thus the shadow economy should not be dismissed as the unpleasant side effect of underdevelopment. Instead it is related to some specific institutional aspects that may well survive even when the economy reaches higher development stages. We identify strong substitution effects between official and unofficial sectors both in the long run and over the business cycle. This has important implications for income convergence and for the relationship between volatility and growth. In the second paper, we investigate the distinct roles played by institutions, growth and policies in determining the shadow economy. The sharp distinction between theoretical priors on the institutional determinants of the shadow economy and the technique used for its measurement is the first novel contribution of the paper. The second innovation is that, by exploiting the time series dimension of our panel, we are able to better investigate the link between official output growth and the relative size of shadow economy. The third innovation is that we can contribute to a long-standing controversy about the distinct roles of "institutions" and "policies" in determining economic outcomes. In the third paper we reverse the standard approach typically followed in the literature on the shadow economy. Instead of exploiting money demand data to extrapolate the dynamics of the shadow economy, we explore the long run effect of shadow economy measures – obtained independently from money demand functions - on money velocity. By doing this, the original contribution of the paper is twofold. First, we improve the understanding of money velocity determinants. Second, we provide an indirect test of the reliability of the estimates on the shadow economy presented in the first paper of the thesis.

No description available.

This thesis addresses two central questions in the field of corruption: the relationship between corruption and some of its main determinants and the effect that these relationships have on economic development. The research presented in this thesis extends the literature on corruption in several directions. The third chapter studies the empirical relationship between press freedom and bureaucratic corruption. As one of the main democratic checks and balances, press freedom is thought to impose a curb on corruption. We investigate two related aspects. The first considers whether there exists a robust empirical relationship between press freedom and corruption. The second investigates the detail, by exploring which types of restrictions to press freedom are robustly related to corruption. Using robust regression techniques on a panel of countries we conclude that restrictions to media freedom are robustly associated to higher corruption. Also we find that both political and economic restrictions to press freedom are strongly related to corruption while legal and administrative restrictions are not. The fourth chapter studies the relationship between decentralisation, corruption and development in a dynamic macroeconomic model. We assess whether corruption is always harmful to development, whether decentralisation is always beneficial for development and the effect that corruption produces on the relationship between decentralisation and development. Our main finding from this model is that if corruption is absent, decentralisation is the best alternative for development but may not be preferable to centralisation if corruption is widespread in the economy. The fifth chapter examines the empirical relationship between decentralisation and corruption. This chapter has two main goals. First, to reconsider the available evidence in light of some newly assembled data. The second goal is to incorporate into the analysis several dimensions of decentralisation simultaneously. We find that the inconsistencies in the empirical literature arise due to the frequent omission of multiple measures of decentralisation. Secondly, that both fiscal decentralisation and constitutional centralisation are simultaneously associated with lower corruption. Finally, we find that certain forms of political decentralisation -local elections- weaken the positive effect of constitutional centralisation -unitarism- on corruption.

The underlying theme of this thesis is that to properly understand the process of European integration it is vital to understand the dynamics of the European policymaking process and the crucial role of the European institutions within this process. In this thesis the internal dynamics of the policy-making process within the European Commission in two directorates, DGV(Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs) and DGXIII (Telecommunications, Information Industries and Innovation), are explored. It is argued that a vital characteristic of the Commission's ability to influence any policy sector is its ability to respond rapidly to any 'windows of opportunity' ripe for EU intervention or, indeed, to facilitate the appearance of these windows. Yet, the means required to achieve this end, and the degree of success they meet, vary from sector to sector. It is argued that the Commission has an important role to play in EU policy-making, and ultimately in the integration process, thus it is vital to develop a detailed understanding of the functioning of its constituent parts, of the interrelationships between them, and of the influence of their activities upon the actions of the Commission as a whole.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of a purpose built, co-educational Roman Catholic comprehensive school that was conducted between April 1973 and July 1974, when the researcher took a part-time teacher role in the school. The main methods of social investigation were: participant observation, unstructured interviews and documentary evidence. The study examines the operation of the school from a teacher's point of view. Special attention is given to the ways in which teachers and pupils define and redefine situations within the school. An opening chapter surveys the problems, theories and methods that were used in the study. Part one locates the school in a social context and examines the extent to which its physical division into Houses and Departments influenced the Headmaster's conception of the school and the definitions and redefinitions of the situation that were advanced by Heads of Houses and Departmental staff. There are chapters on the Headmaster's conception of the school, House staff and Department staff, and an analysis of the social processes involved in three social situations. Similar themes are examined in part two in relation to Newsom pupils and their teachers. There are chapters on Newsom pupils and Newsom teachers and the definitions, redefinitions and strategies that were used in classrooms by teachers and pupils. The thesis concludes that the physical division of the school into Houses and Departments influenced staff recruitment, school organization and the ways in which teachers and pupils defined and redefined their activities. The evidence in this study suggests that although different pupils were brought together in a comprehensive school on a single site, it is doubtful whether one school was in operation as the label 'comprehensive' appeared to cover a diverse set of activities. An appendix examines the problems of conducting ethnographic research in a comprehensive school.

This thesis develops and tests a model of political representation based on the participation and specialisation decisions of individual MEPs. Political representation is determined by the institutional and party-political incentives that guide legislative behaviour at different stages of the policy process. Proportionality requirements, majority rule and intra-party politics affect whether MEPs engage in different legislative activities in the European Parliament and the extent to which they specialise in the policy areas that their national party stands for. The model can be adapted to a wide range of legislative activities and to different institutional environments. At the decision-making stage, majority rule makes participation most attractive to MEPs from party groups that are pivotal under the majority thresholds required to pass legislation. In contrast, minority MEPs limit their participation to the policy areas that are salient to their national party. In other words, minority legislators are more responsive than majority MEPs. In policy formulation, an auction system enforces a proportional allocation of committee reports, which favours the representation of a broad range of values and interests across the political spectrum. However, competition among party groups affects who gets the most desirable reports. Open rule enforces a distribution of salient reports in line with voting coalitions in the plenary and on the committee floor. Within party groups, the leadership distributes reports in an effort to maintain group cohesion. As a result, majority legislators who are loyal to their party groups are more responsive than other MEPs. Finally, in parliamentary oversight at Question-Time, party groups do not have any gate-keeping powers. Also, national parties rather than party groups are the primary actors in legislative-executive relations. MEPs without national party ties to the Commission attribute a greater role to overseeing the executive in a large range of policy areas than 'governing' MEPs. As a result, such 'opposition' MEPs are better represented at this stage of the policy process but they specialise less in salient policy areas.

No description available.

No description available.