Throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Member states, a number of significant policy reforms have coincided with significant changes in their socio-economic trajectories. This is especially evident within the employment domain, where a rapidly increasing labour force challenges the capacity of the regions domestic labour markets to provide employment. With increasing unemployment rates, combined with the region’s burgeoning young population, of whom some are well educated and seeking first-time employment, strain is placed on labour markets that were traditionally characterised by high levels of inactivity, a low skills base for the native population, the substantial presence of migrant labour and extensive segmentation and inequalities across wage and gender lines. The political implications for the future political stability and regime legitimacy in these states are easy to imagine and the challenges ahead are substantial. Moreover, policies aiming to sustainably increase the capacity of domestic labour markets to provide employment for the national citizenry are currently developed in a context where the Gulf States have to navigate their repositioning in the global economic architecture by diversifying their economies and reorganizing their socio-political formations towards ‘late rentier’ governance structures. Against this background, this thesis explores how GCC governments are attempting to transform their rentier based political economies, by comparatively analysing recent labour market reforms in three Gulf states, namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. A mixed methodological approach has been adopted, whereby through conducting a policy analysis on key labour reforms, namely the Kafala sponsorship system and Nationalisation based policies, alongside elite semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, this thesis has contributed to the identification of the emerging trends which characterise the post-rentier labour market governance structures in the GCC. Furthermore, due to the different development visions adopted by these three states, this thesis highlights the marked diversity within the regionally adopted policies of the Kafala system and Nationalisation based reforms and, thus, contributes to our understanding of the emerging variety of late rentier political economies in the region and their likely future developmental paths.

O processo de projeto, em Arquitetura, busca a interdisciplinaridade entre diferentes áreas de conhecimento e pressupõe a interlocução de diversos profissionais no diálogo com as propostas idealizadas pelo arquiteto. Assim, é exigido do profissional o exercício de múltiplas aptidões para solucionar os problemas adequadamente, com criatividade e mínima racionalidade, por meio das ferramentas que lhe dão liberdade de soluções. Uma dessas aptidões, de relação intrínseca à produção, está no enfrentamento do projeto arquitetônico com os custos da construção: tema amplamente discutido como um campo ainda a se desenvolver na Arquitetura. Neste contexto, apesar da disponibilidade financeira trazer limitações construtivas que afetam os valores arquitetônicos, a expressividade dos custos da produção comumente não dialoga com as questões valorizadas no projeto; pois este, em sua maioria, privilegia a definição dos espaços e suas respectivas formas para compreensão programática e volumétrica e não necessariamente analisa as especificidades construtivas indispensáveis para a execução do objeto arquitetônico. Para tal dilema, a pesquisa se propõe a analisar o enfrentamento entre projeto arquitetônico e canteiro de obras a partir dos custos da produção, do preço de venda e do valor da obra arquitetônica nas áreas de conhecimento correlatas à Arquitetura, como a Arquitetura dos Custos(na procura por orçar idéias a partir das correlações do espaço arquitetônico com os custos da construção), a Engenharia dos Custos (orçamentação tradicional da economia da construção, a partir do objeto arquitetônico definido, para obtenção e maximização dos lucros) e a Crítica da Economia Política que, ao trabalhar a teoria do valor-trabalho com investigação socioeconômica na produção, discute a possibilidade de incongruência entre o preço de venda inserido no capital global, e o valor de produção advindo do processo construtivo específico para a realização da mercadoria. / The process of design, in Architecture, searches for interdisciplinarity between different areas of knowledge and requires the interchange of various professionals in dialogue with the proposals devised by the architect. Thus, it is required of the professional exercise multiple skills to solve problems adequately with minimum rationality and creativity, using the tools that give him freedom of solutions. One of these skills, with intrinsic relation to the production, is the ability to deal with the architectural design in relation to the construction costs: theme widely discussed as a field yet to develop in Architecture, because the budgeting processes have little emphasis on the training of architects. In this context, despite the fact that the availability of finance bring constructive limitations that affect the architectural project, the importance of production costs do not dialogue with the issues valued in the project, for it mostly focuses on the definition of spaces and their shapes in terms of programmatic and volumetric - and not necessarily examines the constructive specificitys needed to implement the architectural object. For this dilemma, the research aims to analyze the confrontation between architectural design and construction site from the costs of production, selling price and value of architectural work in the areas of knowledge related to architecture, such as\' Architecture Costs \'(in the search for budget ideas\' from the correlations of the architectural space with the costs of construction), \'Cost Engineering\' (traditional budgeting economy of construction, from the architectural object defined for obtaining and maximizing profits ) and the \'Critique of Political Economy\', while working theory of labor value to socio-economic research in the production, discusses the possibility of inconsistency between the sale price - inserted into the global capital, and production value - coming from the building process for the realization of specific goods.

Políticas públicas sobre as mais diversas dimensões socioeconômicas têm sua avaliação tipicamente estruturada acerca de seus retornos efetivos, observáveis após sua instaura ção, e sua implementação conduzida leviana ou ao menos ingenuamente no que diz respeito ao seu potencial de sucesso e aos recursos empreendidos. Um aspecto alternativo de avaliação, por outro lado, consiste na contemplação de políticas quanto ao seu impacto potencial previamente à sua implementação, questionando-se os interesses dos envolvidos em sua aplicação. Ou seja, temos no estudo de trade-off\'s de economia política permeando a sua prática um componente fundamental. Por meio da análise de uma particular reforma de descentralização, procuramos investigar de que modo se configuram as preferências governamentais sobre plataformas políticas e, com isso, o potencial apresentado por mecanismos de escolha pública em promover os resultados pretendidos para os programas. Levando em consideração a associação de cenários de descentralização das responsabilidades políticas a esforços de aprendizado { possivelmente social { por parte dos governos locais, direcionamos tal foco à investigação de quais informações sobre os distintos efeitos da provisão recém-assumida têm sua captação mais valorizada por tais governantes. Resumidamente, apresentamos evidências de que o processo de decisão político é basicamente motivado por questões eleitorais - sobrepondo-se a interesses genuínos e diretos quanto ao bem-estar social - e de que o alinhamento partidário entre governantes pode representar um fator essencial ao pleno exercício de políticas públicas. / Public policies over several economic dimensions are usually subject to an evaluation built on its observable impacts, following their implementation, and are thus associated with a naive conduction with respect to the employed resources. An alternative aspect of evaluation comprehends, on the other hand, the analysis of potential effects of such policies and the interests of the agents responsible for their coordination. In other words, we believe that the study of political economy trade-offs is an essential component for understanding and improving political practice. By analyzing a specific decentralization reform we proceed to the determination of how officials\' preferences over policies are configured and question the potential of public choice mechanisms in promoting the originally intended results. While acknowledging that decentralization programs are typically characterized by the lack of experience of local governments in conducting the decentralized policies and thus by a (possibly social) learning effort with respect to several of the policies\' details, we investigate what kind of information about policy outcomes are mostly valued by the officials involved. In short, we present evidence that the politicians\' decision making proc- ess is fundamentally based on electoral and opportunistic considerations - above ideology issues - and that party cohesion among officials may constitute an essential factor to the appropriate exercise of public policies.

This thesis examines and compares current labour migration management of non-EU workers in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. It aims to explain cross-national similarities and differences from an interpretive policy analysis perspective. The research entails analyses of 33 legal documents and in-depth interviews with 25 high-ranking policy-makers and is anchored in case contexts. In order to gain comparative explanations the analysis maps legal classifications and rights regimes governing incoming migrant workers, explores meanings policy-makers vest in these, and thereby reconstructs the economic, social and political normative references these meanings entail in comparative perspective. By conceptualising migration policy as border-drawing I challenge the main stream migration policy literature, offering an alternative approach which changes the parameters of policy analysis more generally. While most migration policy research concentrates on explaining the control gap between restrictive admission policies and de facto migratory flows, I shift the analytical focus towards states’ power to define legal and illegal positions through policy and allocate rights in a differential way. Empirically, I overcome partial policy accounts by contributing a multidimensional analysis of labour migration policy across its economic, social, and politico-formal dimension, and develop an innovative methodology to explain crossnational variation in the interaction of these aspects. By associating each dimension with a specific borderdrawing site – capitalist coordination system, welfare state regime, and citizenship model – the thesis utilises regime theories to develop benchmarks for the empirical analysis while at the same time testing the explanatory scope of these theories in the field of labour migration. Migrant workers are selected by skill level and labour scarcity in all three cases in line with widely shared economic values surrounding labour migration agendas. Yet, the analysis also pinpoints considerable divergences when selecting migrants by origin, social cohesion concerns or with annual caps. The variable labour geographies into which migrant workers are admitted – mainly relating to post-colonial relationships, distinct uses of EU free movement, and demographic context – are seized by policy actors to selectively contextualise economic border-drawing. It is this distinct socio-political contextualisation of a shared cultural political economy of labour migration which explains similarities and differences in European labour migration management. The thesis hence contributes an empirically detailed understanding of an integrating EU common market which coexists with persistently diverging labour geographies and societies. Findings bear considerable policy implications in terms of European integration and the unequal distribution of labour mobility rights for migrants in Europe.

Background: In this dissertation I examine the political economy of the post-socialist mortality crisis as experienced in deindustrialising towns in Hungary. I develop and apply a relational political economy of health framework, putting emphasis on the economic institutions of post-socialist dependent capitalism in Hungary, as embedded in the semi-periphery of the global economy, their gendered implications and their cultural construction. Methods: I follow a mixed-method strategy combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. I rely on a novel dataset comprising data on settlement, enterprise, and individual levels. 260 companies and 52 towns were analysed in two waves. I group towns into severely and moderately deindustrialised categories (1989-1995); as well as into dominant state, domestic private and foreign ownership dominated categories (1995-2004). Population surveys in these towns collected data on the vital status and other characteristics of survey respondents' relatives. I assess the relationship between deindustrialisation, dominant ownership and the mortality of individuals by random intercept multilevel discrete-time survival modelling. I also investigate the health implications of the lived experience of economic transformation in four towns with diverging privatisation and deindustrialisation histories through a qualitative thematic analysis of 82 in-depth semi-structured interviews. Findings: Severe deindustrialisation is associated with a significantly larger odds of mortality for men between 1989 and 1995 (OR=1.12; 95%CI=1.00-1.26; p=0.042). On the other hand, prolonged state ownership is related to a significantly lower odds of dying among women, compared to towns dominated by domestic private ownership (OR=0.74; 95%CI=0.62-0.90; p=0.002) or towns dominated by foreign investment (OR=0.79; 95%CI=0.65-0.96; p=0.019) between 1995 and 2004. The multi-sited semi-structured qualitative interviews revealed that companies are central institutions in the cognitive maps of workers and that the fates of these companies affected the health of workers in multiple ways, whereas state involvement was perceived as a cushioning mechanism. Interpretation: Severe deindustrialisation was a crucial factor behind the post-socialist mortality crisis for men, whilst prolonged state ownership was associated with the protection of life chances for women. The indirect economic benefits of foreign investment do not translate automatically into better health. Rapid economic transformations threaten health; they should be avoided where possible, but if this is not possible, strong safety nets should be in place.

Submitted by Mariana Dornelles Vargas (marianadv) on 2015-05-13T18:32:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 telenovela_economica.pdf: 910860 bytes, checksum: 87af8b3f9585bb6bb955ad99b58b50d2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-13T18:32:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 telenovela_economica.pdf: 910860 bytes, checksum: 87af8b3f9585bb6bb955ad99b58b50d2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-03-10 / CNPQ – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / A dissertação analisa as estratégias de internacionalização do mercado latino-americano de televisão, com ênfase nos realizadores do Brasil, México e Argentina. A partir do advento do videoteipe, que no final dos anos 50 viabiliza a gravação simultânea de som e imagem em fita magnética, empresas de comunicação passam a incrementar a circulação de seus produtos para diferentes territórios. Somado ao favorecimento da conjuntura econômica liderada pela instauração de uma política liberalista, já nos anos 70, realizadores de telenovelas agregam nova função econômica à sua ficção seriada: após o término da produção, o bem simbólico é estocado para que continue gerando receita a seus investidores, através da aquisição transnacional. Nesta ambiência, Globo e Televisa implementam estratégias direcionadas ao mercado externo, enquanto que o mercado argentino, através de sua lógica de produção horizontal, atravessa um período de proliferação de produtoras independentes, que passam a vender conteúdo para emissoras nacionais e estrangeiras. O padrão tecno-estético transcorre os diferentes modelos de produção dos três países, estabelecendo nexos entre indústria cultural, economia e comunicação. Sob a perspectiva da Economia Política da Comunicação (EPC), são desenvolvidas questões que buscam especificar as inter-relações do capitalismo contemporâneo com os sistemas de comunicação globais, desencadeados num esforço reflexivo sobre as estruturas deste específico mercado latino-americano e suas respectivas barreiras à entrada. Ainda, recupera-se o advento dos atores estudados, traçando um histórico global sobre teledramaturgia e os movimentos das indústrias televisivas, tal como suas políticas de ação e fatores econômicos desencadeados desde a reconfiguração do capitalismo. / This dissertation analyzes the internationalization strategies of the Latin American television market, with emphasis on producers of Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. With the advent of the videotape, which in the late 1950s enables the simultaneous recording of sound and image on tape, communications companies begin to increase the circulation of their products for different territories. In addition to facilitating the economic situation led by the establishment of political liberalism, in the 1970s, telenovela producers of aggregate new economic function to their serial fiction: after completion of production, the symbolic good is stocked to continue generating revenue to its investors through transnational acquisition. In this ambiance, Globo and Televisa implement strategies towards the international market, while the Argentine market, through its horizontal logic of production, is experiencing a period of proliferation of independent producers, who begin to sell content to national and foreign broadcasters. The techno-aesthetic standard runs through the different production models for the three countries, establishing links between the cultural industry, economy and communication. From the perspective of Political Economy of Communication, we discuss questions that seek to specify the interrelationships of contemporary capitalism with global communication systems, initiated in an effort reflecting on the structures of this particular market and their respective entry barriers. Still, we recover the advent of the studied economic actors, tracing a global history about telenovelas and the movements of the television industry, such as their action policies and economic factors triggered since the reconfiguration of capitalism.

International monetary and financial crises have punctuated US hegemony since 1945. With US hegemony likely to endure and crises likely to recur, we need to understand how the US reacts to such events: benevolently or exploitatively? Using a case study of US behaviour during the 1969-76 international monetary crisis, this thesis challenges narratives that interpret events in terms of the concentration or deconcentration of power in the US hegemon, and favours an explanation of US behaviours based on the interplay of US domestic politics and international security imperatives. Using a Constructivist definition of hegemony and a neoclassical realist theoretical framework, I analyse the crisis from the perspectives of the international monetary order and system, respectively. I introduce a novel division of Strange’s concept of structural power into its negative and positive components (the power to disrupt or create international structures, respectively). Using these analytical tools, I analyse documents held in the UK and US National archives, President Nixon’s White House tapes and the Bank of England archive. Key and original findings include: - US tactics veered between hegemony by consent and, when that failed to yield the desired results, hegemony through domination; - domination tactics could be brutal, as when President Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Kissinger, tried to wreck European integration by destroying its first attempt at monetary union. Their intention was to advance the US’ security agenda by weakening EEC states; - Kissinger intervened in the Committee of Twenty’s negotiations to delay agreement on international monetary reform (despite the US being on the verge of achieving its objectives) until European states had acceded to what he wanted on security in the “Year of Europe” negotiations. Delay killed US plans to return to fixed exchange rates; - hegemonic stability theory-based explanations of events are challenged by the US terminating its Bretton Woods regime, persuading follower states to introduce generalised floating and blocking international monetary reform; - structural Realist and Marxist narratives of the crisis are challenged, inter alia, by President Ford abandoning Nixon’s attempts to strengthen US hegemony in favour of a laissez-faire solution to the international monetary crisis; - the decisions creating the basis of a neoliberal international monetary order (the introduction of floating exchange rates and free capital mobility) were taken for US international security or domestic political reasons, as neoclassical realism theory would predict. These decisions had profound economic consequences, but were not taken for economic reasons.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-08-26T13:15:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Edson Mendonça da Silva.pdf: 1135430 bytes, checksum: 248dbb6f87823b883639c1107de54a81 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-26T13:15:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Edson Mendonça da Silva.pdf: 1135430 bytes, checksum: 248dbb6f87823b883639c1107de54a81 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-05 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In search of an understanding of the financialization process in major developed economies, the paper presents and explores the main interpretations of the phenomenon in political economy. For this, the paper analyzes the reference studies the issue, especially the Marxist, post-Keynesian and regulationist approaches, which offer a broad panorama of the debate and the main themes. And in order to analyze each contribution to the debate, work will focus on the effects of financialization on the process of capital accumulation and the accentuation of profiteering as striking feature of contemporary capitalism / Em busca de uma compreensão do processo de financeirização nas principais economias desenvolvidas, o trabalho apresenta e sistematiza as principais interpretações do fenômeno na Economia Política. Para isso, o trabalho analisa os estudos de referência ao tema, principalmente as abordagens marxista, pós-keynesiana e regulacionista, que oferecerem um amplo panorama do debate e dos principais temas. E com objetivo de analisar cada contribuição ao debate, o trabalho se concentrará nos efeitos da financeirização sobre o processo de acumulação de capital e a acentuação do rentismo como traço marcante do capitalismo contemporâneo

O chamado Problema da Transformação de Valores em Preços de Produção é um terreno privilegiado para se discutir a validade e o estatuto científico da teoria do valor-trabalho. Neste trabalho, dedicamo-nos a compreender dois de seus aspectos principais. Em primeiro lugar, estudamos seu sentido na apresentação categorial de O Capital. Mostramos que a transformação é fundamental para a regulação da economia pela Lei do Valor e, por conseguinte, para viabilizar a própria acumulação de capital. Em segundo lugar, estudamos os seus principais desdobramentos modernos, com ênfase da linha interpretativa mais recente: o Sistema Único Temporal. Discutem-se os principais problemas teóricos e computacionais presentes no debate, buscando uma conexão com a análise precedente. Ao final, propõem-se algumas questões para pesquisa futura. / The problem of the transformation of values into prices of production provides a suitable basis on which to discuss the validity and the scientific status of the labor theory of value. In this thesis, we attempt to understand two of its main aspects. First, we study its meaning in Marx?s presentation of the categories of the capitalist economy in Capital. We show that the transformation is a fundamental process in that it enables the Law of Value to effectively regulate the economic system and, by doing so, allows for capital accumulation. Second, we study the main modern interpretations that have followed the publication of Marx?s transformation procedure in Capital Volume III, with emphasis in the most recent of them, the Temporal Single-System Interpretation. We discuss their main theoretical and computational problems in connection with the preceding analysis. In the end, we propose a few questions for future research.

A tese procura sustentar que Adam Smith atenua seu posicionamento crítico com relação à busca por acumulação de riquezas nas sociedades comerciais entre a Teoria dos Sentimentos Morais e A Riqueza das Nações. Tal mudança se associa a um novo personagem das relações econômicas que surge na última dessas obras: o acumulador de capital. A diferença entre a busca pela fortuna e a acumulação de capital, segundo defendemos, se associa a uma diferença conceitual entre riqueza e capital, diferença essa que se deveria, conforme nossa concepção, à influência do pensamento fisiocrático, e particularmente do Quadro Econômico de Quesnay, sobre a ideia smithiana de progresso da opulência, e mesmo, talvez, sobre sua visão geral da sociedade. Sustentamos, finalmente e esse é nosso ponto principal , que Adam Smith procurou conciliar tal mudança com o que havia escrito em sua primeira obra. Essa tentativa se patenteia por aspectos sutis, porém relevantes, das modificações que o filósofo introduziu no texto da Teoria dos Sentimentos Morais em sua última revisão, de 1790. / The thesis sustains that Adam Smith attenuates his critical position with regard to the search for wealth accumulation in commercial societies between the Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Such a change is associated with a new \"character\" of economic relations that emerges in the last of these works: the accumulator of capital. The difference between the search for fortune and the accumulation of capital, we argue, is associated with a conceptual difference between wealth and capital, which is owed, according to our conception, to the physiocrat\'s influence over the Smithian idea of \"progress of opulence,\" and perhaps even over his general view of society. Finally, we argue - and this is our main point - that Adam Smith sought to reconcile this change with what he had written in his first work. This attempt was evidenced by subtle but relevant aspects of the modifications that the philosopher introduced in the text of the Theory of Moral Sentiments in his last revision of 1790.