Symmetrical Concept of the State Abstract: The doctoral thesis uses the perspective of Public Choice (political economy) on a descriptive level and the perspective of philosophical anarchism on a normative level to critically assess the concept of modern state (and its crises and legitimacy), as it is used in Staatswissenschaften and political philosophy. Common theme of both paradigms is insistence on symmetry of assumptions when analyzing the state; particularities of the state, as compared to other social institutions, do not play the role of explanans, but that of explanandum. Traditional concepts of political philosophy (sovereignty, will of the people, legitimacy) are consistently put in the context of the general social phenomena, from which they are (or should be) derived. The symmetrical approach asserts itself primarily against the fictional nature of some political concepts; in this thesis, fictional concepts are approached as assumptions of a "political model" and their unrealistic nature is not seen problematic so far as they stay within the model. However, at the same time, the question about the external (normative and practical) relevance (validity) of such a model arises. First part of the thesis argues for applicability - and in fact, indispensability - of the economic toolkit...

Through a case study methodology this research explores the decision-making process regarding financing services provided by the Canadian federal government to individual citizens. From a transparency and accountability perspective, for those services that benefit individuals versus society as whole, it is important to understand why some services are provided through general taxation while others are financed through user fees. The study utilizes public choice theory as developed in The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy which is the initial attempt to illustrate how the tools of economics may be applied to political institutions using a rational choice approach with an emphasis on rules about how choices are made. Rather than focusing on ‘what’ government spends funds on, the study focuses on ‘how’ government generates funds by examining three major actors: government, citizen-voters and pressure groups. This study furthers scientific knowledge as there has been prior research on distinguishing between public versus private goods, and deciding on how to publicly fund such goods, but there has been limited research undertaken on the actual decision-making process in financing public goods and services. From an academic perspective, this study is the first time that The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy model has been adapted and applied to the Canadian federal government. The study concludes that it depends on what elected officials decide to do to appeal to citizen-voters in order to win votes: appear fiscally prudent thus charge user fees; advance its political agenda with decisions to sometimes charge user fees or other times not; or limit costs to private sector organizations by deciding to not charge user fees. While elected officials make the decisions whether or not to charge user fees, it is the bureaucracy that implements these decisions.

The diploma thesis analyzes, whether became in the case of the development of real GDP, inflation and unemployment in the Czech Republic and the USA to systematic influence these macroeconomic indicators of the ruling parties and their political orientation. The work is focused on the period from the beginning of the 1990's of 20th century to the present, with an emphasis on the pre-crisis and crisis periods of the current economic crisis. Tested are two fundamental theoretical concepts. The first one is a model of opportunistic theories of the business cycle, then the second one, the model of the ideological theory of the economic cycle. The work also analyzes whether there was in these two states deliberate influencing of government expenditure in electoral periods in order to increase the chances of government politicians for re-election. The work also explores the similarities and differences of the pre-crisis and crisis periods of the current economic crisis to the great depression of the 1930's of 20th century.

This diploma thesis deals with analysis of revenues and expenditures of state budget in the Czech Republic and investigate whether in the Czech Republic since its formation apply traditional theories and opinions regarding state revenues and expenditures or there is already almost no differences between the traditional right- and left-wing policy and populist politics that is not based on ideological grounds plays the primary role. In the theoretical part there is presented the basic theory in the area of ideology as the basis for following analysis of Czech political scene and Public choice theory as the basis for an economic analysis of political decision-making. Subsequently, this section also explains the basic theoretical knowledge of the state budget and understanding budgetary policy from the perspective of two most important ideologies, right- and left-wing. In the analytical part certain data about revenues and expenditures of the state budget variables are analyzed using a two-tailed Wilcoxon test which tests the equality of the medians of the selection group. Diploma thesis confirmed that the erasure of differences between right- and left-wing in budgetary policy in the Czech Republic are insignificant and since its formation still hold traditional views and theories about state revenues and expenditures.

School choice dominated discourses within educational policy in the last year; some have even described 2021 as “the year of school choice.” School choice allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs. This is often summarized by its advocates as “funding students over systems.” Generally, school choice allows market forces to influence education by providing more competition in the education market. Teachers’ unions have fought against school choice measures for years, but what impact do they have? This undergraduate thesis compares 49 states to determine if the proportion of public school teachers in teachers’ unions in a given state serves as a proxy to measure the impact of unions and to discover whether teachers’ unions influenced whether a state passed new school choice legislation in 2021. By employing a binary logistic regression analysis, the results provide evidence that as the share of public school teachers who are union members increases, a state’s likelihood to pass new school choice legislation increases. This thesis gives a broad view of the impact teachers’ unions have on school choice at the state level, but more research detailing the ways unions leverage these effects and how politicians respond to teachers’ unions in their states would be valuable.

The goal of this dissertation was to model and test whether political parties once in power skew the federal budget in favor of their base. The theory includes the formation of a comprehensive theoretical model, which divided the budgetary instruments into two categories: monetary and political transfers. Using statistical tools, the dissertation examines the budgetary bias itself, the timing of its usage across the electoral cycle, and the substitutability of the instruments. The results found that political parties do bias budgetary funds towards their base. However, they tend to use tools, which are less visible to the opposition party and more evident to their base. The results confirmed that when parties use more of one type of transfer, they use less of the other. Finally, parties use alterations in total transfers to influence their base early in the election cycle, and move on to other means, such as platform alterations, as the next election draws closer. / Economics

L'économie des organisations étudie l'ensemble des arrangements institutionnels permettant la mise en oeuvre de la production et l'échange de biens et de services. Dans cette thèse, nous analysons le comportement activiste des organisations non gouvernementales spécifiques au Liban. Il apparaît que le mode de gouvernance des ONG libanaises est fondé sur un concept de solidarité intra-communautaire. Comment expliquer le recours des Libanais aux services offerts par les ONG ? Ainsi, nous avons démontré que ces ONG locales sont conduites de manière à atteindre des objectifs de nature politique. La théorie de l’entrepreneuriat politique est parfaitement adaptable à ce cadre d’analyse. Un nouvel équilibre politique dans la société libanaise est trouvé. Afin de mettre en évidence l’activisme des ONG libanaises, nous avons proposé une méthodologie empirique, qui se base à la fois sur une démarche quantitative et qualitative. Le modèle proposé a pour objectif principal de montrer l’existence d’une relation entre la perception des bénéficiaires des services rendus par les ONG et leur appartenance communautaire. Ainsi nous avons démontré qu’au Liban, la plupart des bénéficiaires appartenant à une communauté particulière connaît et identifie les ONG qui leur sont favorables en matière de redistribution. Il s’agit d’une explication de la persistance du communautarisme. Les ONG libanaises comme les groupes de pression jouent un rôle intermédiaire sur le marché politique. Cette intermédiation de la démocratie représentative permet de penser les jeux et les stratégies des groupes de pression mais surtout de sortir de l’idéal normatif de la démocratie représentative égalitaire. / The economy of organizations examines the institutional mechanisms that lead to the production and exchange of goods and services. This thesis analyzes the mode of operation of NGOs which are specific to the Lebanese Society. It raises the following question: how can one explain the appeal of NGOs to the Lebanese people and the lure to use and benefit from its services? This thesis has demonstrated that these NGOs operate to achieve certain goals of political nature. The theory of political entrepreneurship applies to this concept and is considered as the theoretical framework of this dissertation. Accordingly, this thesis posits that a new political balance is achieved in the Lebanese society. In order to highlight the effectiveness of Lebanese NGOs, this thesis proposes an empirical methodology based on both quantitative and qualitative approach. The main objective of the proposed model is to underscore the existence of a relation between the perception of individuals benefiting form services rendered by NGOs and their sectarian affiliations. This dissertation reveals that the majority of people benefiting of NGOs services in Lebanon belong to a certain sect that favors people pertaining to its denomination in terms of redistribution. This signifies that the effects of sectarianism are still rampart in the Lebanese society. Lebanese NGOs can be considered as pressure groups that play an intermediary role on the Lebanese political scene. This intermediation of representative democracy allows a reconsideration of political strategies of pressure groups especially as to go beyond the norms of egalitarian representative democracy used in the Lebanese model of governance.

Les études et les travaux empiriques consacrés à l’impact de la structure du vote dans les organisations internationales dans le cadre de la théorie des choix publics sont très rares. Par conséquent, cette thèse s’attache à étudier de plus près l’impact de la structure du vote sur le fonctionnement et les performances des organisations internationales. L’analyse dans ce travail de recherche se veut, en premier lieu, empirique et en second lieu, positive. Cette dernière nous permettra de comprendre comment les organisations internationales réellement fonctionnent et réagissent (Lafay et Lecaillon, 1993). Nous avons montré que les organisations inter-gouvernementales avec une structure de vote "un pays – une voix" assurent une redistribution, en termes de contributions et de dépenses, des riches vers les pauvres et la classe moyenne, tandis que la redistribution en termes de contributions est moindre dans les organisations inter-gouvernementales à "vote pondéré". Toutefois, la redistribution des prêts dans les organisations à "vote pondéré" s’avère plus répartie parmi les classes de revenu. Ainsi, d’une part, les organisations avec une structure de vote "un pays – une voix" sont plus performantes que les organisations à ‘vote pondéré’ en termes de contributions et conformément au principe "d’équité" fondée sur la "capacité de payer" des pays membres. D’autre part, en termes de prêts et dépenses, les organisations avec une structure de vote "un pays – une voix" et à "vote pondéré" sont aussi performantes les unes que les autres par rapport à la nature de leur structure de vote et de leurs activités ou missions. / Empirical studies and literature on the impact of voting structure in international organizations within public choice theory are very scarce. Therefore, this thesis attempts to examine more closely the impact of the voting structure on the functioning and performance of international organizations. The analysis in this research is, first, empirical, and second, positive. The latter allow us to understand how organizations actually function and react (and Lecaillon Lafay, 1993). We show that the redistribution of contributions and expenditures in “one-nation, one-vote” inter-governmental organizations is from rich to poor and middle classes, while there is less redistribution in terms of contributions in “weighted voting” inter-governmental organizations. However, the redistribution of loans in weighted voting organizations is more spread among income classes. Thus, on the one hand, “one-nation, one-vote” organizations perform better than ‘weighted voting’ organizations in terms of contributions and in accordance with the principle of' “fairness” based on “capacity to pay” of member states. On the other hand, in terms of loans and expenditures, “one-nation, one-vote” organizations and “weighted voting” organizations are both effective relatively to the nature of their voting structure and their missions or activities.

Submitted by Leoná Rodrigues (leonarodrigues@id.uff.br) on 2017-07-20T20:09:21Z No. of bitstreams: 3 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) A Teoria da Escolha Pública - Leila Castro.pdf: 924834 bytes, checksum: 19c88505b1dde0d0a1a76446ac388d2b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Biblioteca da Faculdade de Direito (bfd@ndc.uff.br) on 2017-07-25T18:18:51Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 3 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) A Teoria da Escolha Pública - Leila Castro.pdf: 924834 bytes, checksum: 19c88505b1dde0d0a1a76446ac388d2b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-25T18:18:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) A Teoria da Escolha Pública - Leila Castro.pdf: 924834 bytes, checksum: 19c88505b1dde0d0a1a76446ac388d2b (MD5) / A dissertação pretende examinar a Teoria da Escolha Pública, de forma a empregá-la como limite legítimo do ato da Administração Pública brasileira, assim como controle judicial e legislativo, este último mediante Tribunal de Contas e Comissões Parlamentares de Inquérito. Apresentam-se também modelos procedimentais para tomadas de decisão esmiuçando a necessidade de aplicação técnica para tais. São abordados os aspectos das decisões estatais: questão de redução de gastos públicos e infraestrutura em transporte urbano na Região Metropolitana do Estado do Rio De Janeiro, participação popular nas políticas públicas, assim como questões ambientais, englobando políticas de sustentabilidade e de mobilidade urbana. / This dissertation pretends to examine the Theory of Public Choice , in order to employ it as a legitimate limit to the act of the Brazilian Public Administration , as well as judicial and legislative control , the latter by the Court of Auditors and Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry. Furthermore, also presents procedural models for decision making scrutinizing the need for technical application for such. Are addressed aspects of state decisions matter of public expenditure reduction and urban transport infrastructure in the metropolitan area of the State of Rio De Janeiro , popular participation in public policy , as well as environmental issues , encompassing sustainability and urban mobility policies.

<p>The Capturetheory wants to give an alternative explanation for the need of regulation. From this point if view the government does not have enough information to make an optimal regulation. There is a possibility for different interest groups to take advantage of the political arena by rent- seeking behaviour. An industry may be willing to be regulated to protect itself from competition. The objective of this paper is to account for the pros and cons of the theory of regulatory capture and also if it can be applied to the Swedish market of pharmaceuticals. The theory of regulatory capture is first and foremost a theory of the motives behind regulation. The Swedish market for pharmaceuticals has been analysed by looking into the underlying force of both the pharmaceutical industry and that of the State. There is room for the regulatory agencies to be captured by the industry because of the information provided to them by the industry. The concluding findings show that the Capture theory can applied to the Swedish market for pharmaceuticals.</p>