Democratization has been studied by several scholars, who have argued about significance of various factors for democratization of a certain country. One of these scholars was Seymour Martin Lipset and he claimed that there is a linear correlation between democracy and socioeconomic development. Thus, the aim of this study is to test Lipset’s hypothesis in the case of Azerbaijan, which is an oil rich authoritarian country. The study was conducted with the help of mixed analysis methods (i.e. combination of qualitative and quantitative methods) and a case study research design.  To measure socioeconomic development’s impact on democratization of Azerbaijan, some socioeconomic indicators were chosen in this study, such as economic growth, income inequality, poverty and unemployment rates in the country. Results of the empirical data analysis showed that, socioeconomic development has a positive correlation with democratization and therefore, Lipset’s hypothesis is plausible in the case of Azerbaijan. In addition, socioeconomic development has a great impact on democratization of the country, i.e. of Azerbaijan. / Demokratisering är ett ämne som har studerats av flera forskare under flera år. Några av dessa forskare har hävdat att det finns diverse faktorer som kan ha inverkan på demokratiseringen av ett land. En av dessa forskare var Seymour Martin Lipset, som hävdade att det finns en positiv korrelation mellan demokrati och socioekonomisk utveckling. Därmed, syftet med denna studie är att testa Lipsets hypotes om socioekonomiska utvecklingens samband med demokratin på fallet av Azerbajdzjan. Azerbajdzjan är ett oljerik autoritär land som har upplevt hög ekonomisk tillväxt.  Studien har genomförts med hjälp av blandade analysmetoder (dvs. kombinationen av kvalitativ och kvantitativ analysmetod) och en fallstudie forskningsdesign. För att genomföra studien, några socioekonomisk utveckling indikatorer har valts, såsom ekonomiskt tillväxt, inkomstskillnader, fattigdoms- och arbetslöshetsnivån i landet. Resultatet av det empiriska data analysen visade att, Lipsets hypotes stämmer i fallet av Azerbajdzjan och det finns ett positivt samband mellan demokratisering och socioekonomisk utveckling. Därmed, socioekonomisk utveckling har en stor inverkan på demokratiseringen av landet, dvs. av Azerbajdzjan.

Determinants of financial development Abstract The paper studies effects of country level determinants on the rate of financial development and, in particular, assesses the empirical question whether democracy and political freedom can enhance financial development, as measured by Bank Private Credit to GDP and Liquid Liabilities to GDP. Using Fixed Effects estimation techniques and a panel data for a list of 39 countries over the period 1990 to 2011, we provide evidence that suggests positive link between political openness and financial development. The empirical evidence also confirms financial openness and real per capita income to be positively correlated to financial deepening and in contrast, we find that size of financial sector does not spur the rate of financial development.

This thesis seeks to develop our understanding of ideas about political liberty in the English Revolution by way of focusing on the issue of property, a topic unduly neglected in the secondary literature. Most writers of the period conceived of liberty as absence of dependence, but what has been little examined is the extent to which it was believed that the attainment of this condition required not only a particular kind of constitution but a particular distribution of property as well. Here the central ideal became that of self-ownership, and the thesis is largely devoted to tracing the rise, eclipse and re-emergence of this way of thinking about the connections between property and liberty. Chapter 1 considers the emergence, in the ‘paper war’ of the early 1640s, of the radical Parliamentarian view that all property ultimately resided in Parliament. It was to oppose this stance, Chapter 2 argues, that the Levellers began to speak of ‘selfe propriety’, transforming the Parliamentarian notion of popular sovereignty into an individualist doctrine designed to protect subjects and their property from not only the king but also Parliament. Elements of both the Parliamentarian and Leveller discussions of property were taken up by John Milton and Marchamont Nedham (Chapter 3), while James Harrington offered an alternative theory that eschewed the notion of self-ownership (Chapter 4). After a chapter considering the relationship between property and freedom in Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, the final chapter focuses on John Locke’s revival of self-ownership in his attempt to ground property rights in the individual’s ownership of his ‘person’. Although Locke is shown to offer a theory of private property, the Locke that emerges is not a proto-liberal defender of individual rights but a theorist of neo-Roman freedom whose aim was to explain the connection between property and non-dependence.

This study examines the concept of freedom in the philosophies of Jean Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt in the context of their relevance or irrelevance to politics in the context of political freedom, political activity, rights and responsibilities, individuality, plurality and humanism. The major concern is to question the possibilities of political reflection of their conceptions of freedom. In this respect, the study explicates densely enough Sartre&#039 / s and Arendt&#039 / s conceptions of freedom respectively and includes propositions and arguments that Sartre&#039 / s and Arendt&#039 / s conceptions of freedom have more conjunctions than disjunctions in certain points. This closeness and commonality in the meaning of freedom between two thinkers continue in politics. In that sense, the thesis put forwards that the conceptions of freedom in the philosophies of Sartre and Arendt are relevant to politics and also competent to derive a different spirit of political freedom. Their relevance to politics and their potency or adequacy to enable a new form of political freedom are based on their conjunction in the points of action, humanism, initiation and responsibility. To make explicit such political freedom, the study also compares it with liberal negative conception of freedom.

The research aims to investigate the relationship between economic freedom, political freedom and economic growth. The Arab Spring placed renewed interest on the topic of freedom, yet current economic conditions seemingly contradicted the established theory. The largest free economies were being outperformed by those with less political and economic freedom.Three objectives were specified to answer the research question. The first objective aimed to determine the association between economic freedom, political freedom and economic growth, for which Spearman’s correlation was used. The second objective aimed to investigate causal relationships between the variables, for which Granger’s causality was employed. The third objective aimed to examine complex relationships between the variables, for which vector autoregression was used.Economic growth was weakly correlated with the independent variables. Civil liberties, political rights and economic freedom, however, had strong correlations with each other. Economic freedom and economic growth had bi-directional Granger-causality. Political rights Granger-caused economic freedom whilst civil liberties Granger-caused political rights and economic freedom. Using vector autoregression, the model consisting of economic growth, economic freedom and civil liberties had the greatest explanatory power towards economic growth. Existing theory therefore remains valid: political freedom enhances economic freedom, which, in turn, enhances economic growth.The relationship between economic freedom, political freedom and economic growth / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Sustainable economic growth is vital to reduce poverty and a challenge to development. To aim and maintain a greater level of economic growth that will assist African countries in reducing poverty, they must investigate the specific determinants of economic growth. In this paper, we determine the impact of economic freedom, political freedom, and foreign direct investment on the gross domestic product. The gross domestic product was observed over a nine year-time period on a sample of 38 low-income and upper-income countries in Africa.

The purpose of this study is to explore the representation of national political freedom on web interface design by using power distance, one of the culture dimensions identified by Geert Hofstede, as a measurement. This study also aims to determine if there are any differences between government-based websites and business-oriented websites in representing national political freedom. A pilot study was conducted to validate ten power distance indicators identified from previous research on cultural dimensions with the intent of establishing a measurement for determining a country's national political freedom on web content and interface design. The result showed that six out of ten proposed indicators are valid power distance indicators. The seventh indicator, symmetric layout, demonstrated that its Web representation correlates with national political freedom level. Consequently, the principal research applied these seven indicators in coding 312 websites selected from 39 countries and analyzed national political freedom represented on these websites with content analysis method. The result of two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that large differences exist in web interface design, which in turn reflects the aforementioned national political freedom. The research showed that the mean effect of freedom level between free-country group, partly-free-country group and not-free-country group was statistically significant (p = .003). So was the mean effect of website type between government-based and business-oriented websites (p = .000). Furthermore, the interaction between the freedom level and website type was also significant (p = .041). Therefore, we conclude that web interface design represents a country's political freedom and government-based websites embody more of a nation's authority and supremacy than business-oriented websites do. It is expected that this study furthers our exploration in culture dimensions on web interface design and advances our knowledge in sociological and cultural studies of the web.

Chez Spinoza, la politique se construit essentiellement sur les bases de l'édifice de la liberté. En effet, la liberté se vit sous une forme institutionnelle, c'est-à-dire comme le dit Alain Billecoq, «à travers des lois qui garantissent sa stabilité et sa pérennité» (Billecoq, p. 132). Cela devrait donc exclure normalement toute éventualité de conflit entre les pouvoirs politiques et la liberté des individus. D’autant que l’État puise son fondement dans les droits et libertés qu’il se doit de garantir à ses citoyens. Autrement dit, on devrait supposer qu’il y a une certaine adéquation du pouvoir de l’État et de la liberté des individus. Or, ce n’est pas toujours le cas. Car de l’avis de certains, liberté et pouvoir de commandement ne sont pas tout à fait compatibles. Comment donc rendre possible une cohabitation de l’État comme organe de contrainte et de régulation, et de la liberté des individus, qui semble pourtant nécessaire? En passant par sa conception du droit naturel, de l’état de nature et de l’État, il sera démontré au terme de notre démarche que ce qui permet chez Spinoza la résolution de cette tension entre le pouvoir de l’État et la liberté des individus n’est rien d’autre que la démocratie. / For Spinoza, politics is made on the foundations of the edifice of freedom. Indeed, freedom is considered as an institutional form. Then, it is lived as Alain Billecoq says “through laws that guarantee stability and continuity”. This should normally exclude any possibility of conflict between the power of the Palace and people freedom. Especially as the State draws its fundaments in the rights and freedoms that it’s supposed to guarantee to its citizens. In other words, they would believe that there’s a certain balance of power of the State and freedom of individuals. But, it’s not always that which is happening. So for several people, freedom and power of command are not quite compatible. Then, how to make possible this coexistence of the state as an organ of control and coercion, and the freedom of individuals, which seems to be necessary? Following his opinion about the right natural, the natural state and the civil state, it will be proved with Spinoza at the end of our approach that this tension between state power and people freedom is resolved thanks to the democracy.

Ao longo da história da filosofia, John Locke tem sido frequentemente apresentado sob o rótulo de pai do liberalismo, o que decorre, invariavelmente, de um modo peculiar de interpretação da noção de liberdade para o filósofo, que estaria estruturada em torno da ideia de não-interferência. Derivada frequentemente de propostas analíticas realizadas em um vácuo histórico, em que as ideias de Locke são tomadas como uma estática coleção, tal conclusão expressa uma perspectiva que não considera o caráter essencialmente discursivo da filosofia política e o campo problemático em que os conceitos foram pensados pelo filósofo. Se tomarmos a obra de Locke a partir de um campo mais abrangente, constituído por diferentes atos de discurso, em que sejam considerados as condições e o contexto em que os elementos textuais foram enunciados, recuperando-se o aspecto polêmico do texto, pode ser evidenciado um traço marcadamente republicano no conceito de liberdade formulado pelo autor. Partindo da perspectiva de John Pocock acerca do processo de formação do republicanismo inglês, segundo a qual as matrizes republicanas foram recebidas na Inglaterra a partir do século XVI, desencadeando um longo processo de anglicização da república, no qual diferentes momentos podem ser identificados, e tomando como pressuposto a ideia de dupla filiação do conceito moderno de liberdade, proposta por Jean-Fabien Spitz, o propósito deste trabalho é colher os elementos que apontam em que medida a noção de liberdade defendida por Locke em sua obra política pode ser considerada tributária dos argumentos desenvolvidos nos momentos precedentes em que se expressou o pensamento republicano na Inglaterra, o que permitiria incluí-la como referência de um importante ato do longo discurso que culminou na formulação do conceito republicano de liberdade. / Throughout the history of philosophy, John Locke has often been presented under the label of \"father of liberalism,\" which invariably follows from a peculiar way of interpreting his concept of freedom, as structured around the idea of non-interference. Coming from analytical proposals often elaborated in a \"historical vacuum\", in which Locke\'s ideas are taken as a static collection, such a conclusion expresses a perspective that does not consider the essentially discursive character of political philosophy and the \"problematic field\" in which some concepts were thought by the philosopher. On the other hand, if we take Locke\'s work from a broader field, made up of different \"acts of discourse,\" taking into account the conditions and contexts in which the textual elements were enunciated, and recovering the controversial aspect of the text, we can reveal a republican feature in the concept of liberty formulated by the author. Starting from John Pocock\'s perspective about the English republicanism, according to which republican matrices were received in England from the sixteenth century, triggering a long process of \"anglicization of the republic,\" in which different \"moments\" can be identified, and considering the idea of double affiliation of the modern concept of freedom, proposed by Jean-Fabien Spitz, the purpose of this work is to gather the elements that indicate to what extent the notion of freedom defended by Locke in his political work can be considered tributary of the arguments developed in the previous \"moments\" in which the republican thought in England was expressed, which would allow to include it as reference of an important \"act\" of the long discourse that culminated in the republican concept of liberty.

Ao longo da história da filosofia, John Locke tem sido frequentemente apresentado sob o rótulo de pai do liberalismo, o que decorre, invariavelmente, de um modo peculiar de interpretação da noção de liberdade para o filósofo, que estaria estruturada em torno da ideia de não-interferência. Derivada frequentemente de propostas analíticas realizadas em um vácuo histórico, em que as ideias de Locke são tomadas como uma estática coleção, tal conclusão expressa uma perspectiva que não considera o caráter essencialmente discursivo da filosofia política e o campo problemático em que os conceitos foram pensados pelo filósofo. Se tomarmos a obra de Locke a partir de um campo mais abrangente, constituído por diferentes atos de discurso, em que sejam considerados as condições e o contexto em que os elementos textuais foram enunciados, recuperando-se o aspecto polêmico do texto, pode ser evidenciado um traço marcadamente republicano no conceito de liberdade formulado pelo autor. Partindo da perspectiva de John Pocock acerca do processo de formação do republicanismo inglês, segundo a qual as matrizes republicanas foram recebidas na Inglaterra a partir do século XVI, desencadeando um longo processo de anglicização da república, no qual diferentes momentos podem ser identificados, e tomando como pressuposto a ideia de dupla filiação do conceito moderno de liberdade, proposta por Jean-Fabien Spitz, o propósito deste trabalho é colher os elementos que apontam em que medida a noção de liberdade defendida por Locke em sua obra política pode ser considerada tributária dos argumentos desenvolvidos nos momentos precedentes em que se expressou o pensamento republicano na Inglaterra, o que permitiria incluí-la como referência de um importante ato do longo discurso que culminou na formulação do conceito republicano de liberdade. / Throughout the history of philosophy, John Locke has often been presented under the label of \"father of liberalism,\" which invariably follows from a peculiar way of interpreting his concept of freedom, as structured around the idea of non-interference. Coming from analytical proposals often elaborated in a \"historical vacuum\", in which Locke\'s ideas are taken as a static collection, such a conclusion expresses a perspective that does not consider the essentially discursive character of political philosophy and the \"problematic field\" in which some concepts were thought by the philosopher. On the other hand, if we take Locke\'s work from a broader field, made up of different \"acts of discourse,\" taking into account the conditions and contexts in which the textual elements were enunciated, and recovering the controversial aspect of the text, we can reveal a republican feature in the concept of liberty formulated by the author. Starting from John Pocock\'s perspective about the English republicanism, according to which republican matrices were received in England from the sixteenth century, triggering a long process of \"anglicization of the republic,\" in which different \"moments\" can be identified, and considering the idea of double affiliation of the modern concept of freedom, proposed by Jean-Fabien Spitz, the purpose of this work is to gather the elements that indicate to what extent the notion of freedom defended by Locke in his political work can be considered tributary of the arguments developed in the previous \"moments\" in which the republican thought in England was expressed, which would allow to include it as reference of an important \"act\" of the long discourse that culminated in the republican concept of liberty.