This thesis covers the topic of hukou system in the People's Republic of China also known as household registration system. The thesis explains how was the hukou system created. In the following part socioeconomic impacts of hukou are analysed. Furthermore the reform process of the hukou system is explained including cases of Chongqing and Shenzhen.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The prime aim of this thesis is to examine the link between fiscal decentralization and local financial governance in fiscally empowered woreda administrations (districts) of the Amhara region in Ethiopia. Local financial governance has been one of the reasons and arguably the crucial one that drives many countries to subscribe to fiscal decentralization. The presumption is that public finance mobilization and spending can be implemented in a more efficient, responsive, transparent and accountable manner at the local government level than at the centre. Nonetheless, empirical studies show that the linkage between fiscal decentralization and these local financial governance benefits is not automatic. Several developing countries that have tried to implement fiscal decentralization have failed to realise the promised financial governance gains largely due to design and implementation flaws. A review of the various theoretical perspectives suggest that local financial governance is not a factor of just devolution of fiscal power but also other intervening forces such as financial management system, citizen voicing mechanisms and the social and political context. It is within the framework of this theoretical argument that this study sought to investigate how the mixed and incomplete efforts of the district level fiscal decentralization program in the Amhara region has impacted on financial governance of woreda administrations. The study assesses the efficacy and role of various initiatives of the district level decentralization program of the Amhara region, such as the fiscal empowerment of woredas; financial management system reforms; citizen voicing mechanisms and political party structures and system in influencing woreda financial governance. To this end, the investigation process largely took the form of an interpretative approach employing a combination of various methods of gathering the required qualitative and quantitative data from respondents and documents in the selected four case woredas or districts. Findings on the assessment of the intergovernmental relations to measure the adequacy of devolution of fiscal power indicate that, despite the constitutional provision that affords the woredas the power to mobilize and spend public finance for the provision of various local public services, several design and implementation shortcomings have constrained woreda administrations from exercising such power effectively. As a result, the district level fiscal decentralization framework of the Amhara region appears to have features of decentralization by de-concentration rather than by devolution. Despite the extensive financial management reforms that have been undertaken, the research findings indicate that the financial management system in woreda administrations faces a range of challenges triggered largely by important design and implementation shortcomings. It is observed that the ‘getting the basics right first’ reforms in various financial management processes of woreda administrations are not only incomplete but also found to be inconsistent with each other and therefore could not serve their purpose. Furthermore, there has not been any other change in the last two decades since the initial implementation of these reforms despite such serious shortcomings. Most importantly, woreda administrations could not properly implement the techniques, methods, procedures and rules that constituted the reform process due to serious implementation problems such as the lack of manpower competency and problems associated with the lack of administrative accountability. The results of the study’s assessment regarding the practice of social accountability show that currently there is no arrangement for citizens to participate in public financial decisions and controls. In general, people have little interest in participating in the meetings organised by woreda government. Formal and informal community based organizations suffer from important capcity constraints, and the lack of strong civil society organizations to support these community based organizations makes such problems more difficult to resolve. However, local communities did indicate that they would be interested in participating in financial and budgeting processes if a number of conditions were satisfied. These included the availability of adequate and relevant information; the introduction of genuine forms of participation in which citizens were empowered; and evidence that popular participation was making a visible impact on financial decisions related to service delivery in their surroundings. The assessment of the ruling party structure and system suggests that the centralized system of the regional ruling party has created a dominant relationship between party organs at various levels so much sothat it has undermined the fiscal discretionary power of woreda administrations; blurred relationship between party and woreda financial management systems; and undermined direct voicing. Consequently, the genuine devolution of fiscal power, the effective implementation of the decentralised financial management systems, and direct participation of citizens are unlikely to be realised within the current ruling party system and structure. Moreover, the study shows that the intergovernmental relations, the implementation of financial management reforms and direct involvement of people influence each other. The evidence suggests that the effective implementation of the financial management reforms is not possible without genuine devolution of fiscal power and arrangements for the activeinvolvement of citizens. Despite these limitations and shortcomings, the research nevertheless reveals that the decentralization process has achieved some positive results, such as the expansion of access to basic services; the economic use of resources for such expansion; the mobilization of resources from local communities; and the streamlining of a number of bureaucratic processes. However, the prevalence of various financial governance challenges such as excessive budget transfers; low budget execution; uneconomical procurement; illicit spending; budget pressure; inadequate revenue collection; poor financial transparency; and compromised accountability in fiscally decentralized woreda administrations means the promised local financial governance benefits of fiscal decentralization are remain largely unrealized. The evidences in the study strongly suggest that the shortcomings in the design and implementation of intergovernmental relations, financial management system reforms, and direct voicing mechanisms areresponsible in combination with each other for these local financial governance challenges. Thus, the study concludes that local financial governance is a result of a complex network of interactions of intergovernmental relations, public financial management arrangements and social accountability mechanisms. The success of initiatives to improve local financial governance is dependent on contextual factors such as the capacity of civil society organizations and the ruling party system and structure. Therefore, while recommending further efforts of genuine devolution of power, in particular through the continuation of the financial management reform processes towards full-fledged reforms, the study contends that opening enough space for the proliferation of civil society organizations and alternative political parties will be the main priority.

Durant la grande récession, les interactions entre fluctuations du prix de l’immobilier, du travail et de l’entrée des firmes sur le marché des biens, ont mis en avant l’existence de relations étroites entre ces marchés. Le but de cette thèse est de mettre en lumière les interactions entre le marché du travail et le marché des biens ainsi que des cycles financiers, en utilisant les récents progrès des modèles DSGE. Dans le premier chapitre, nous avons trouvé un fort rôle joué par la création de firmes dans l’amplification des dynamiques de l’emploi. En introduisant le mécanisme du modèle de Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides sur le marché du travail, nous avons pu étudier sous un nouvel angle les fluctuations du taux de marge des firmes. Comparé aux travaux théoriques utilisant un marché du travail sans frictions, nous avons trouvé un taux de marge moins contracyclique dû au coût marginal acyclique d’un modèle avec frictions. De plus, le rôle accordé à la création de firmes dans la détermination du taux de marge est moins important que dans les papiers précédents. Dans le second chapitre, nous avons lié la capacité d’endettement des ménages avec leur situation sur le marché de l’emploi. Grâce à cette microfondation, les nouveaux arrivants sur le marché du travail entrainent un plus haut niveau de dette immobilière tandis que ceux qui perdent leurs emplois sont exclus du marché du crédit. En conséquence, le ratio LTV devient endogène et répond de manière procyclique aux fluctuations de l’emploi. Nous avons montré que cette modélisation était empiriquement fondée et résout les anomalies d'une contrainte de crédit standard. Dans le dernier chapitre, nous avons étendu l’analyse précédemment effectuée en intégrant des firmes qui s’endettent dans le but d’obtenir un cycle financier plus complet. Le premier résultat est qu’une contrainte de crédit pour les firmes intégrant à la fois les biens immobiliers, le capital et la masse salariale permet de mieux rendre compte des fluctuations sur le marché du travail comparativement aux contraintes n’intégrant qu’une partie de ces trois composantes. Le second résultat met en évidence le rôle des fluctuations immobilières et du crédit sur l’emploi. Les deux derniers chapitres ont d’importantes implications pour les politiques économiques. Une réforme structurelle du marché du travail visant à le déréguler entraine une forte hausse de la dette immobilière pour les ménages ainsi que du prix de l’immobilier et une augmentation moindre de la dette des firmes. Notre approche révèle qu’une politique macroprudentielle visant à restreindre la capacité d’emprunt des ménages conduit à des effets positifs à long terme pour l’économie tout en limitant les effets sur le marché immobilier (dette et prix). A l’inverse, une politique macroprudentielle visant à réduire l’emprunt des entreprises conduit à l’effet inverse avec des effets négatifs à long terme pour l’économie. / During the Great Recession, the interactions between housing, labor and entry highlight the existence of narrow propagation channels between these markets. The aim of this thesis is to shed a light on labor market interactions with firm entry and financial business cycles, by building on the recent theoretical and empirical of DSGE models. In the first chapter, we have found evidence of the key role of the net entry as an amplifying mechanism for employment dynamics. Introducing search and matching frictions, we have studied from a new perspective the cyclicality of the mark-up compared to previous researches that use Walrasian labor market. We found a less countercyclical markup due to the acyclical aspect of the marginal cost in the DMP framework and a reduced role according to firm's entry in the cyclicality of the markup. In the second chapter, we have linked the borrowing capacity of households to their employment situation on the labor market. With this new microfoundation of the collateral constraint, new matches on the labor market translate into more mortgages, while separation induces an exclusion from financial markets for jobseekers. As a result, the LTV becomes endogenous by responding procyclically to employment fluctuations. We have shown that this device is empirically relevant and solves the anomalies of the standard collateral constraint. In the last chapter, we extend the analysis developed in the previous one by integrating collateral constrained firms in order to have a more complete financial business cycle. The first result is that an entrepreneur collateral constraint integrating capital, real commercial estate and wage bill in advance is empirically relevant compared to the collateral literature associated to the labor market which does not consider these three assets. The second finding is the role of the housing price and credit squeezes in the rise of the unemployment rate during the Great Recession. The last two chapters have important implications for economic policy. A structural deregulation reform in the labor market induces a significant rise in the debt level for households and housing price, combined with a substantial rise of firm debt. Our approach allows us to reveal that a macroprudential policy aiming to tighten the LTV ratio for household borrowers has positive effects in the long run for output and employment, while tightening LTV ratios for entrepreneurs leads to the opposite effect.

À partir d’une enquête portant sur deux syndicats majeurs et des centres universitaires spécialisés sur le syndicalisme et les relations professionnelles, cette thèse traite des transformations du syndicalisme états-unien, des mouvements sociaux des années 1960 aux années 2010. Souvent associées à l’idée d’une « revitalisation syndicale », ces mutations sont analysées ici comme des processus de mise en réforme réalisés par des acteurs pluriels (syndicalistes, universitaires, éducateurs syndicaux, consultants, militants associatifs) qui, pour des raisons différentes, ont promu un rapprochement du champ syndical de l’espace des mouvements sociaux et du monde associatif. Des stratégies et des modes d’action devant permettre de syndiquer de nouveaux membres ont été valorisés, de même que des recettes organisationnelles utilisées ailleurs (dans des entreprises et des associations principalement). Ces acteurs ont entendu faire des syndicats des organisations plus « militantes » et « efficaces », en recourant à des savoir-faire et à des représentations de mobilisations des années 1960, ainsi qu’à des dispositifs managériaux. Contrairement à d’autres contextes, notamment à cause d’une adhésion généralement obligatoire pour bénéficier d’une représentation syndicale et être couvert par les accords collectifs négociés avec les employeurs, la réponse apportée à la « crise du syndicalisme » a moins été de chercher à assimiler les adhérents actuels et potentiels à des clients d’organisations leur fournissant des services, qu’à des militants. La thèse montre que ces entreprises réformatrices ont conduit à partiellement délégitimer des pratiques syndicales, des formes d’organisation et les acteurs qui les portent. Elles ont également contribué à structurer les mobilisations syndicales sous forme de campagnes pilotées par des permanents spécialisés, où les membres ne sont bien souvent amenés qu’à jouer un rôle symbolique, éphémère et dirigé. / Based on a study of two large labor unions and labor centers, this dissertation deals with the transformations of unionism in the United States from the social movements of the 1960s to the 2010s. Usually associated with the idea of “union revitalization”, these changes are analyzed here as reform processes conducted by various actors (unionists, academics, labor educators, consultants, activists) who—for different motives—advocated for reducing the gap between the labor union and social movement fields as well as the non-profit sector. Actions for organizing new members were promoted in addition to organizational recipes utilized elsewhere (mainly in corporations and in non-profit organizations). Those actors wanted to make labor unions more “militant” and “effective” by mobilizing tools and views from mobilizations of the 1960s as well as managerial techniques. Contrary to other settings, partly due to union shop—a form of union security clause which requires that any new employees of a unionized worksite become members within a certain amount of time—the answer to the “crisis of labor unionism” has not been to make current and potential members clients of organizations who provide them services, but instead to encourage them to be activists. The dissertation shows that these reforming enterprises led to partially delegitimize labor union practices, forms of organization and the actors who embody them. They also contributed to shaping labor union mobilizations in the form of campaigns managed by specialized staff, in which members tend to have little initiative and only play a symbolic, short-lived part.

<p>The purpose of this critical ethnographic dissertation research was to explore the multiple and diverse ways in which university student activists in Honduras constructed oppositional political cultures within the institutional constraints and possibilities of the university and the broader neoliberal and authoritarian postcoup context. In this research, I considered studying up and down and anything in between a necessary task to understand the complexity of student activism in relation to the university’s complicity with the coloniality of power and knowledge (Nader, 1972; Quijano, 2000, 2007). Critical ethnography, decolonial, space and place, and collective action theory provided the philosophical, methodological, conceptual, practical, political, and ethical commitments to understand how the University Student Movement’s political culture resisted neoliberal higher education reform. This research, in addition, offers an ethnographic analysis and interpretation of the student movement’s political culture and the role it played in democratizing the university. First, I used a historical perspective to contextualize reemerging student movements in Honduras. After tracing Latin American student movement’s origin to the Cordoba Student Movement of Argentina, I examined the ways in which the student movement of Honduras adopted, reclaimed, and extended the democratic principles implemented in the former. University autonomy, ideological pluralism, democratic governance, academic freedom, and curriculum reform were salient points of analyses. Second, I examined the student movement’s horizontal organization, identified the democratic social practices and political culture that emerged after the coup of 2009, and interpreted student activists’ knowledges born in struggle through a decolonial lens concomitant with a sensitivity to space and place and collective action. Particularly, the direct participation of students in all decision-making processes within the student movement was interpreted as an act of resistance to reclaim democratic spaces within a sociopolitical context increasingly becoming dictatorial. Third, I analyzed the student movement’s impact in democratizing the university’s governance structure and resisting neoliberal higher education reform. Fourth, I shared the knowledge produced collectively by student activists. The way students conceived of the university and its curriculum and governing practices unsettled the authorial individualism still present in educational research. The knowledges born in struggle, I argued, have sociopolitical, cultural, and decolonial implications. In addition to the analytical and interpretive work which included the research, knowledges, and practices student activists shared with me during the 12 months of fieldwork and participant observation in Honduras, I highlighted how the emergence of a heterogeneously articulated student movement slowed down, at the very least, the neocolonial and neoliberal reconfiguration of the university. This dissertation thus addressed the political relationship between the global and the local. The re-localization of politics here must not to be confused with reactionary politics. It means instead to recognize how the particular is enmeshed in a more complex web of power, domination, resistance, and reexistence. To resist locally means that collective actors engage global powers, even if indirectly and unintentionally. Student activists, who were able to put a stop to the series of neoliberal reforms implemented since the coup of 2009, reminded those in power (local, national, and global) that neoliberal higher education reform within a re-politicized autonomous university with an organized student movement will be faced with resistance. This ethnographic account will hopefully reveal the ways in which student activist built a politically culture characterized by alternative forms of organizing to resist what is too often conceived fatalistically as the inevitable neoliberalization of education. These fatalistic perspectives will hopefully be unsettled throughout the dissertation. The significance of this study is that it is oriented toward an ethnographic understanding of higher education reform and student resistance in Latin America, a region with a student population which continues to be engaged in collective action. The educational significance of this work revolves around the need to rethink and rebuild universities in radically democratic terms. This rethinking involves the need to not only democratize access to higher education but rather to democratize governance, curriculum, knowledge, research, and ways of knowing and being. Transforming the university into a democratic place in which students are directly and meaningfully involved in governance and curriculum reform opens a path toward decolonial futurities where knowledge is no longer dictated from above but rather deconstructed and reconstructed from below. This dissertation research, lastly, as it works at the intersections of curriculum studies, decolonial theories, methodologies, pedagogies, and emerging university student resistance in Latin America, offers, I hope, a valuable way to do curriculum inquiry in higher education institutions within international contexts. </p>

MEDCS / Department of Curriculum Studies and Education Management

<p>Splatterpunk was a short-lived, but explosive horror literary movement birthed in the 1980’s that utilized graphic depictions of violence in its prose. Drawing parallels to other subversive and radical art movements like Dada and Hardcore Punk, this paper examines through a Marxist lens how Splatterpunk, influenced by the destructive nature of 1980’s neoliberalism, reflected the violence, categorized as direct and structural, of its period of creation and used extreme vulgarity as an act of rebellion against traditional horror canon.</p>

Le droit d'accès au tribunal garantit au justiciable un accès concret et effectif à un juge afin d'obtenir une décision de justice. L'Etat doit offrir aux justiciables un accès aux juridictions qui répond aux attentes de ses usagers. Cependant, l'application d'une vision managériale en matière budgétaire pousse l'Etat depuis l'adoption de la LOLF à réformer le service public de la justice selon une logique de performance et de gestion des flux qui recherche à désengager l'Etat et à réduire les dépenses publiques. Cette vision risque alors de s'opposer à la promotion d'un accès au tribunal. Ainsi, la thèse s'attache à examiner les réformes de l'organisation juridictionnelle non pas au prisme d'une vision managériale mais au prisme des attentes du justiciable. Deux aspects du droit d'accès au tribunal doivent alors être analysés. D'une part, l'accès au tribunal nécessite de s'interroger sur les conditions permettant d'accéder réellement à la juridiction. La capabilité du justiciable permettra de dégager ces conditions. D'autre part, le droit d'accès au tribunal poursuit une finalité courte qu'est la décision de justice et une finalité longue qu'est la pacification sociale. Afin de tendre à ces finalités, le droit d'accès au tribunal doit rechercher l'acceptabilité de la décision de justice par le justiciable. / The right of access to the Courts is to provide litigants a concrete and effective access to judges in order to obtain a Court's decision. The State has to ensure such an access to the Courts in a way to better adress litigants' needs. However, the State's managerial vision on the national budget since the LOLF Reform steers Justice reforms towards a performance logic and workflow management resulting in a State withdrawal. Such an approach is contravening the promotion of a right of access to the Courts. This research aims to tackle Justice reforms regarding litigants needs without regards to the management point of view. Two aspects of the right of access to the Courts shall be analysed in this respect. Firstly, one shall look at the concrete conditions to access Courts. Litigants' capabilities is a usefull concept in this respect. Secondly, the right of access to the Courts aims at providing a judicial decision (short purpose) and at providing peacekeeping (long purpose). To fulfill those two purposes the right of access to the Courts is to based on and has to ensure litigants' acceptance of judicial decisions.

Constitutional amendments in federal political systems have to be negotiated between national and sub-national actors. While theories of negotiation usually explain the outcome by looking at these actors, their preferences and bargaining powers, the theoretical model developed in this article also includes their interaction orientation. The article determines a typical sequence of bargaining and arguing and identifies favourable conditions for cooperation based on different interaction orientations. The article states that actors can reconcile the conflicting logics of intergovernmental or party competition and joint decision-making in constitutional politics through a sequence of bargaining and arguing. However, constitutional amendments negotiated in this way run the risk of undermining the legitimacy and functionality of constitutions.

Thesis PhDr. Radek Buben Deconsolidation of Venezuelan Democracy: Erosion of the Party System, Neo-Populism, and Repoliticization of the Armed Forces The thesis Deconsolidation of Venezuelan Democracy: Erosion of the Party System, Neo- Populism, and Repoliticization of the Armed Forces addresses the process of deconsolidation of democracy in Venezuela between 1973 and 1993. The analysis is based on both theoretical and comparative approach embedded notably in institutional comparative political science (analysis of systemic and institutional conditions of the analyzed process), historical sociology and political theory (phenomena of populism and neo-populism) and approaches of traditional historical analysis of political process in a particular period of time. The theoretical part of the text is focused on the issue of democracy in Latin America in general. More concretely, it concerns with typologies of political regimes, institutionalization of party systems, civil-military relations and the so-called resources curse theory. The great deal of the text covers analysis of populism, its definition and the existing research of the phenomenon. The starting point of the empirical part presents the establishment of the petrostate and bipartism in 1973. The analysis ends with the decomposition of the...