Le Traité de Libre-échange avec l'Amérique Centrale et les États-Unis (CAFTA), approuvé à la suite d'un référendum populaire en octobre 2007, a été l'accélérateur d'un processus de libéralisation du secteur des télécommunications au Costa Rica, très similaire à celui vécu par la France. Le nouveau cadre juridique introduit une réforme du droit de la concurrence malheureusement applicable qu'au seul secteur des télécommunications. Le droit général repose encore sur les mêmes bases de la loi de 1994, qui comporte des lacunes critiquables. L'autorité de régulation des télécommunications sera responsable du contrôle de la concurrence dans le secteur, au détriment des compétences de l'autorité générale. De l'analyse comparée, il ressort un très grand parallélisme en dépit d'un retard notable dans le cas du Costa Rica. La présente étude met en évidence les atouts et les inconvénients des mécanismes de contrôle de la concurrence existant au Costa Rica, en faisant le point dans le secteur des télécommunications. Au vu de l'expérience française et communautaire, de nombreux efforts sont encore nécessaires pour aboutir à une législation qui est aujourd'hui encore loin d'être en pleine maturité. La forte présence d'entreprises multinationales sur le marché centroaméricain, et l'absence de mécanismes de contrôle quant aux stratégies anticoncurrentielles au niveau régional représentent un nouvel enjeu pour la mise en place d'un environnement concurrentiel. L’Accord d'Association entre l'Union Européenne et l'Amérique Centrale (AACUE) doit servir de base pour le développement d'un droit régional de la concurrence, selon le modèle communautaire. / The Central America Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), approved after popular referendum in October 2007, has sped up the liberalisation process of the telecommunications sector in Costa Rica, very much like in France before. The new juridical framework introduces a competition right reform, unfortunately only applicable to the telecommunications sector. The general law is still based on the 1994 law, which has questionable drawbacks. The telecommunications regulation authority will be in charge of monitoring competition in the sector, at the expense of the competences of the general authority. According to a comparative analysis there is a striking parallelism despite a significant delay in the case of Costa Rica. This study highlights the pros and cons of the competition monitoring tools existing in Costa Rica, by taking stock in the telecommunications sector. ln the light of the French and community experience, numerous efforts are still needed to lead to a legislation that is still far today from being full y mature. The strong presence of multinational companies on the Central American market and the absence of monitoring tools regarding the anti-competitive strategies on the regional level constitute a new challenge for setting up a competitive environment. The Association Agreement between the European Union and Central America should serve as a basis for the development of a regional competition right, according to the community law.

L’Union européenne conduit une ambitieuse politique de développement des énergies renouvelables, visant à porter à 20 % la part de ces dernières dans la consommation énergétique européenne à l’horizon 2020. A cet effet, le législateur européen sollicite des Etats membres qu’ils mettent en œuvre des soutiens nationaux à la production d’électricité renouvelable, susceptibles de relever du champ de l’interdiction des entraves et des aides d’Etat. Parallèlement, la politique de réalisation du marché intérieur de l’énergie impose aux Etats membres de libéraliser le secteur économique dans lequel s’inscrit l’électricité renouvelable. Par l’observation des règles du marché intérieur, la thèse évalue l’articulation entre ces objectifs visiblement contradictoires. Si la finalité environnementale qui sous-tend le développement de l’électricité renouvelable justifie une inflexion des règles du marché intérieur, elle favorise les cloisonnements nationaux et fait naître une concurrence normative entre les Etats membres. Chacun d’eux use de l’attractivité de son droit pour inciter les opérateurs économiques à exploiter des sources d’énergie nationales, indépendamment de leur répartition naturelle à l’échelle européenne. L’observation empirique de ce phénomène met en évidence les risques qu’il fait peser sur la cohérence globale de l’action de l’Union dans le domaine des énergies renouvelables. En prenant appui sur certaines évolutions du droit positif et de la pratique des acteurs privés sur le marché, la thèse évalue les hypothèses de renouvellement des mécanismes du marché afin qu’il devienne un instrument à part entière de promotion de l’électricité renouvelable dans l’Union européenne. / The European Union is pursuing an ambitious policy to develop renewable energy aimed at increasing its share to 20% in the European energy consumption by 2020. To that extent, the European legislator requests from all Member States that they implement national support for the production of renewable electricity, which may fall within the scope of the ban on restrictions and State aids. In parallel, the policy of achieving the internal energy market requires the Member States to liberate the economic sector in which renewable electricity is used. By observing the rules of the internal market, the thesis evaluates the articulation between these objectives that seem contradictory. While the environmental goal underlying the development of renewable electricity justifies an inflexion of the rules of the internal market, it promotes national separation and gives rise to normative competition between the Member States. Each of them uses the attractiveness of its own laws to persuade the economic operators to exploit national energy sources, independently of their natural distribution on a European scale. The empirical observation of this phenomenon highlights the risks it poses to the overall coherence of the European Union’s action in the field of renewable energies. By using some developments of the positive law and the practice of private actors in the market, the thesis evaluates the hypotheses to renew the market mechanisms so that the market becomes a full instrument for promoting renewable electricity in the European Union.

Depuis le début de la construction européenne, définir une politique énergétique européenne était un défi important. Malgré les Etats membres qui voulaient préserver l’autonomie de leur secteur énergétique, une vague de restructurations s’est mise en place dans le secteur européen de l’électricité et du gaz par la libéralisation du secteur. Dans ce cadre, le troisième paquet énergie avec la disposition de la séparation de la propriété qui envisageait de démanteler les grandes entreprises énergétiques, a suscité une grande polémique. En relation avec ce débat intensif, la genèse et l’institutionnalisation de la politique énergétique au niveau européen à partir de 1950 jusqu’à 2010 ont été étudiées. Le rôle des idées néolibérales, les pratiques quotidiennes des acteurs (les groupes d’intérêt, les fonctionnaires des institutions européennes, les parlementaires européens..), leurs rapports de force, les luttes de pouvoir dans l’établissement de cette politique ont été analysés. / From the beginning of the European integration, defining a European energy policy was an important challenge. Despite the Member States who intended to preserve the autonomy of their energy sector, a wave of restructuring has taken place in the European electricity and gas sector through the liberalization. In this context, the third energy package with the unbundling issue which envisaged dismantling the big energy companies, caused great deal of controversy and polemics. In connection with this intensive debate, the genesis and institutionalization of the European energy policy from 1950 to 2010 have been studied. The role of neoliberal ideas, stakeholders’ daily practices (interest groups, officials of the European institutions, MEPs...), their power relations, political struggles in the establishment of this policy were analyzed.

This thesis is concerned with teacher agency and how this is achieved within the autonomous schooling model of England’s academies programme. The enquiry draws upon the empirical work conducted in a single case study sponsored academy (‘Bucklands Academy’ ) in 2012. The research was conducted in order to investigate whether the autonomy and freedoms afforded to one such school extended to the teachers working in it and how this affected their professional roles as classroom educators. The thesis begins by sharing my research interest, which relates to whether greater levels of school autonomy enhance the pedagogical approaches taken by teachers. This interest then develops towards the notion of teacher agency and asks the fundamental research question: Is this academy a place where teacher agency can flourish? The study sets out the policy context for academies in England, including an analysis of the historical development of state secondary schooling since 1944. It is shown that the continued ‘need’ to develop a new approach to schooling, eventually in the form of academies, started with claims of unfairness, discrimination and waste of talent brought about by the tripartite system of schooling established by the 1944 Education Act. It then analyses later concerns about the alleged failure of the comprehensive system to achieve its aim of raising standards for all children. The political contexts of state schooling are considered, and particular attention is given to the neo-liberal ideology developed after 1979 of ‘rolling back the state’, introducing choice and competition between schools and increasing the role of the private sector in the delivery of public services. However, the scope of the investigation is not restricted to the national policy context; the research interest lies in establishing what the key reforms have meant for teachers in the classroom and how this has affected the agency they achieve. A number of themes emerged in the review of key literature, including school autonomy, teacher professionalism, the policy to practice paradox and discourses around the academies programme. This thesis sets out a clear theoretical position, which draws upon the critical realist social theory developed by Roy Bhaskar and Margaret Archer. This approach offers a centrist alternative to what Pring (2000b) describes as the false dualism of the two epistemological positions of educational research. Critical realism posits that the world is real and that its structures exist beyond our understanding, but that our knowledge of this stratified world is socially constructed. Within the structure-agency debate, the ecological view of agency developed by Priestley et al. (2015) is adopted, which sees it as being context-dependent and something that individuals achieve in concrete settings. The empirical work within this study consisted of semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary analysis. The main findings from the research are that the case-study school had significant autonomy to develop its own policies and approaches to raising standards. However, this autonomy did not extend to any significant extent below the level of the academy sponsors and the principal. The school had developed a highly performative culture where teachers’ work was centrally directed and through which they were held highly accountable for the attainment of their students. It was found that the way in which autonomy was distributed throughout the school affected the agency of key stakeholders. The sponsors achieved high levels of agency, the principal achieved restricted agency and teachers achieved limited agency. It was found that teachers took one of two approaches to a new curricular reform being introduced by the academy sponsors. They either adopted it or used their limited agency to modify it so that it aligned more closely with their own educational philosophies. There was no indication that any teachers rejected the school’s reform, and it is suggested that this may have been the result of them subordinating this key policy to their ultimate concern of working in a school recognised by school inspectors to be highly effective. This thesis concludes that, contrary to the policy rhetoric, teachers working in one sponsored academy may have had less autonomy than those teaching in local authority maintained schools. This in turn affected the agency they achieved, which appears to undermine the original vision and aims of the academies programme. The thesis concludes by offering possible areas for further research which emerged during this study.

Magister Legum - LLM / South Africa

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil

The objective of the study is to establish how original financial integration could be attained in southern Africa in order to attract more foreign investment and develop a financially robust and stable region in the southern part of Africa; also to deal with the challenges, risks and remedies of prospective future financial crises. Financial markets are rapidly integrating into a single global market. Developing countries of various regions are drawn into the process with little choice, and without having sound financial infrastructure and policies in place. It is against this background that countries and regions of global integration choose policies that would benefit their regional economy and avert potential economic shock. The challenges posed to countries and regions by the progressive global integration of financial markets are becoming more urgent by the day. These challenges need to be addressed more effectively, either nationally or regionally, as demonstrated by the 1998 financial turmoil in Asia. Private capital flows are becoming intra regionally concentrated, particularly in the USA, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Be that as it may, failure in one market is likely to have immediate and large regional repercussions. Globalisation also marginalises Africa and other Least Developed Countries (LDC), leaving them more impoverished and with greater disparities in terms of income, GDP and FDI. Regional financial integration has to be efficient and sound in order to prevent or contain currency and capital market crises in the southern African region. This study identifies macro economic challenges and risks associated with financial integration. Recommendations are made about methodologies of addressing these issues in order to realise the benefits of regional financial integration in southern Africa, which could be a building block in realising the dream of an African Monetary Union. The study contributes greatly to the debate around the most appropriate criteria that are to be met by the SADC countries, before monetary integration can become a reality. A comparison of the benchmark macro economic convergence criteria of the EU and of the African Monetary Union is done and the performance of SADC countries is assessed in terms of both sets of benchmarks. Southern African states are found to not even be at a comparable level with regard to the EU targets of 1997. The thesis is also critical to the impact of the political instability in the SADC region on prospective monetary integration. Most importantly, SADC would be at a permanent disadvantage and face a long-run depreciation of its common currency, should it continue to integrate financially at macro economic benchmark levels inferior to those of its major trading partner, the EU. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Economics / unrestricted

En 1957, l’État est l’organisateur du service public postal en France à travers son administration centrale. Cette même année est signé un traité à Rome entre six États européens autour de l’idée de marché commun avec délégation de souveraineté.Le service public postal et l’Europe du traité de Rome vont, tout d’abord, évoluer parallèlement. Mais, au début des années 1980, le contexte politique, économique et technologique change et l’Europe se saisit de la question postale ; d’une phase d’ignorance, on entre alors dans une phase de confrontation : l’Europe soumet le service postal au droit commun de la concurrence et remet en cause le monopole, organisation traditionnelle du service postal. Par ailleurs, le service public postal organique est transformé : La Poste, exploitant public doté de la personnalité juridique est née. Progressivement, la logique de confrontation laisse place à une phase de concertation entre l’Europe du traité de Rome et les États membres qui donne naissance à plusieurs directives. Ces dernières placent en leur cœur le service universel postal. En 2012, la libéralisation du service postal devient totale : il n’existe plus de monopole légal.Cette ouverture du marché est concomitante avec la révolution numérique. Ainsi, dans ce contexte de bouleversements idéologiques, technologiques et économiques, le service public postal connaît des évolutions significatives tant dans sa forme – La Poste devient une société anonyme – que dans sa mission : pour répondre aux nouveaux besoins d’intérêt général, raison d’être du service public, le service public postal est reconfiguré. / In 1957, the State is the organiser of the public postal service in France through its central administration. That same year, a treaty was signed in Rome between six European States around the idea of a common market with a delegation of sovereignty. At first, the public postal service and the Europe of the Treaty of Rome develop separately. But in the early 1980s, the political, economic and technological context evolves and Europe decides to take an active interest in the matter of the postal service. After a phase of disinterest in postal matters, we enter in a phase of confrontation; Europe submits the postal service to the competition law: monopoly, the traditional organisation of the postal service, is challenged. Moreover, the French public postal service is transformed: La Poste, independent public operator is born. Following the period of confrontation, a period of dialogue follows, bringing together the Europe of the Treaty of Rome and the States members to write the postal law. Several guidelines are adopted, focused in particular on the universal postal service. By 2012, the process of liberalisation of the postal service is complete: there is no legal monopoly in Europe. This new openness is concomitant with the digital era. The postal service must now continue to adapt to this new ideological, technological and economical context: in its form – La Poste becomes a public limited company – as well as in its mission to serve the public interest, the raison d’être of the public service, so the public postal service is reconfigured.

Une crise de grande ampleur laisse supposer d’importants changements en politiques publiques.Toutefois, les multiples accidents nucléaires ont souligné l’effet d’inertie du système de l’électricité en France comme au Japon et du maintien des acteurs dominants au sein de ce système. Le particulier focusing event que constitue Fukushima apparaît toutefois comme un vecteur important de changement dans un système fortement soumis à la dépendance au sentier et à un bouleversement des rapports de force,dépassant par là même les enjeux énergétiques. Au delà des questions de gouvernance de l’énergie, ce travail vise en outre à souligner les importantes transformations qui touchent le marché de l’électricité sous les effets d’une libéralisation toujours plus poussée. Dès lors cette analyse s’attache à fois à l’étude de la gouvernance de la politique de l’énergie mais également aux conséquences d’une ouverture plus progressive du marché sur les acteurs concernés dans une perspective principalement nationale mais aussi européenne. / While a widespread crisis would cause significant changes in public policies, nuclear accidents underline an inertia effect in the energy system in France and Japan. These cases lay out the maintenance of the position of dominant stakeholders within the system. Nevertheless, the particular focusing event of Fukushima appears to be an important driver of change in a system with strong path dependency, and disrupts the power balance of stakeholders. The change then goes beyond energy issues. In addition to the governance stakes, this thesis examines the significant alterations of the electricity market under the liberalisation dynamics . It also analyses the governance of energy policy and the consequences of the electricity market from domestic and European perspectives.

The thesis analyses influence of actors in the regulatory mode of legislative process of the EU on a case study of liberalisation and integration of the Internal Market in electricity and natural gas. The Internal Market is regarded as an example of postmodern international system. Key arenas used for analysis of individual actors and their partial interests and goals (including ways of their pursuing) are national, regional and supranational.