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In the context of the search and tuning for novel magnetic materials, transition metal compounds exhibit remarkable features where the spin-orbit interaction is crucial. The collective interactions between various effects, like spins and charges, create different classes of unique magnetic systems. For heavy transition-metal compounds, the strength of spin-orbital coupling is enhanced. The jeff. = 1/2 Mott insulating state emerges from the combination of the spin-orbit interaction and the electronic correlations. The quantum-chemistry methods are employed in this thesis to investigate single- and two-site magnetic interactions of the selected transition-metal compounds. We also provide different estimations for the single- and two-site magnetic interactions based on the level of calculation accuracy. In this thesis, we apply ab initio quantum-chemistry methods to explore the electronic and magnetic properties of several d/f compounds. The thesis structure is as follows: In Chapter 1, the introduction of the thesis provides a short discussion of the electronic correlations and magnetism in transition metal compounds. In Chapter 2, the fundamentals of the quantum chemistry wavefunction-based approach are covered. This chapter gives an overview of the applied methods in this thesis. In Chapter 3, we discuss the quantum chemistry approach to investigate the material candidates to host Kitaev physics. The technique to obtain the strength of two-site magnetic couplings, including the Kitaev coupling, is discussed in-depth. In Chapter 4, we apply the technique, which is described in Chapter 3, to investigate the two-site magnetic interactions in the H3LiIr2O6, and Cu2IrO2 compounds as Kitaev candidates. The two-site magnetic couplings are reported in these compounds. In Chapter 5, we use quantum chemistry methods to investigate the on-site electronic and magnetic properties in the KCeO2 compound where 4f1 Ce3+ ions form a triangular two-dimensional lattice with sites of effective spin-1/2. Similar ytterbiumbased delafossites had been investigated as candidates for quantum spin liquid ground states. The absence of ordinary magnetic order is characteristic of quantum spinliquid states where quantum entanglements and fractionalized excitations are enriched. In Chapter 6, the magnetic properties of Co 3d8 ions doped in the Li3N crystalline solid are discussed. The results of the quantum chemistry investigation are been set side by side along with the experiment’s results. The Co ion in such a rare environment gives rise to single-site magnetism of an easy-plane anisotropy.:Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vi Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 1.1 Electronic correlations and magnetism in transition metal compounds ...........1 1.2 Thesis outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 Quantum chemistry methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2 Many-electron Hartree-Fock approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3 Multi-configurational self-consistent field and multi-reference configuration methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.4 Spin-orbit interaction and g-factors calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.5 Embedded cluster approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3 Quantum chemistry investigation of Kitaev material candidates . . . . . . . . . . .21 3.1 Introduction to the Kitaev model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3.2 Kitaev materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.3 Two-site quantum chemistry calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 3.4 Effective Model of Two Spin-1/2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3.5 Non-canonical correspondence between two-site QC results and the effective Hamiltonian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 3.6 Pseudospin coordinate system and canonical correspondence between two-site QC results and the effective Hamiltonian . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3.7 Signs of the g-tensor in the Kitaev limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 4 Kitaev material candidates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 4.2 Details of QC calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4.3 QC investigation of H3LiIr2O6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 4.4 QC investigation of Cu2IrO3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.5 Impact of local symmetries on the obtained sets of magnetic couplings ......... 82 4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 5 Ce ions in two-dimensional triangular spin-1/2 lattices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 5.1 Spin-1/2 frustrated triangular lattice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 5.2 Correlated 4f -compounds as frustrated triangular lattices . . . . . . 94 5.3 Crystal structure of KCeO2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.4 QC results for the electronic structure of Ce3+ ions in KCeO2 . . . . 100 5.5 The competition of SOC and crystal field splittings in KCeO2 . . . . 102 5.6 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 6 Co-ion substitutes with linear coordination in Li3N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 6.2 Crystal structure of Li2(Li(1−x)Cox)N and spectroscopic measurements .......112 6.3 QC computational details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 6.4 Ab initio QC investigation of the Co+ 3d8 electronic structure doped into Li3N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 6.5 Chapter summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135

This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations? Do parties react differently at different levels of government? And finally, how do VNSAs capture political selection across at different levels of government? I argue that in regions where there is high "uncertainty," candidate selection becomes highly important for both party leaders and DTOs. Second, I argue that as violence increases and the number of DTOs also, criminal organizations, as risk-averse actors, will capture candidate selection. I posit that as violence increases, there is a greater likelihood that candidates will have criminal connections. To test my theory, I use the case of Mexico. Violence in Mexico and the presence of criminal organizations across the country has experienced a great deal of variation since the 1990s. In Chapter 2, I find that violence affects the gubernatorial candidate selection of the PRI, PAN and PRD. In high violence states, parties select gubernatorial candidates with long experience in subnational politics compared to other types of experiences. In chapter 3, however, I find that at the municipal level not all the parties respond equally to violence. As a municipality becomes more violent, the PRI and PAN party leaders are more likely to select mayoral candidates who were either state or federal deputies or candidates who were both. In contrast, the PRD is likely to recruit state deputies as a function of violence, but not national deputies or candidates who were deputies at both the state and federal level. Interestingly, I find that as the municipality becomes more violent, party leaders are less likely to recruit inexperienced candidates. This result suggests that parties do indeed respond to levels of violence. Finally, in Chapter 5, I show that criminal organizations capture candidate selection to reduce uncertainty. As utility-maximizing actors, DTOs seek to influence the selection of candidates as a function of violence. At the state level, criminal organizations are more likely to capture candidate selection in states with the presence of multiple DTOs. Party capture is more likely to happen in states where more than one DTO are fighting to control the turf. I show that criminal organizations at the state level equally capture all parties. This finding reveals that DTOs are diversifying their political connections. While under the dominant party regime, they colluded with PRI officials, under the new political Mexican democratic configuration, DTOs are establishing other political relationships with different political parties.

Essay 1 (with Mikael Elinder): We show that house prices in general did not respond to a large cut in the property tax in Sweden. Our estimates are based on rich register data covering more than 100,000 sales over a time period of two and a half years. Because the Swedish property tax is national and thus unrelated to local public goods, our setting is ideal for causal identification of the property tax on house prices. Our result that house prices did not respond to the tax cut at the time of implementation cannot be explained by early capitalization at the time of announcement. Two other stories appear to explain our results. First, it is possible that house buyers expect an offsetting increase in the supply of housing. Second, house buyers might simply not understand how the tax cut affects total future costs of owning a house. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to disentangle the two mechanisms, and we must therefore conclude that both may be relevant. Essay 2:  I investigate government consumption smoothing (sensitivity) under a balanced budget rule in Swedish municipalities. In general, I find Swedish municipalities to be highly consumption sensitive. Municipalities consume 87.6% out of predicted current revenues in the time period leading up to the implementation of the balanced budget rule, and they consume 76.3% out of predicted current revenue in thetime period following the implementation. Fiscally weak municipalities are found to be more consumption sensitive than fiscally strong municipalities. Very weak municipalities have become more consumption sensitive compared with very strong municipalities since the implementation of the balanced budget rule. Thus, I find indicative evidence that both credit market constraints and formal budget rules such as balanced budget rules increase municipal consumption sensitivity Essay 3: Using the Swedish municipal sector as my political laboratory, I study the effect of a coalition partner on policy outcomes. I use a version of Regression-Discontinuity Design (RDD) specifically suited to proportional systems to define close elections, which can be used for identifying the effect of the Left Party as coalition partner to the Social Democrats. The Left Party is found to have a positive and medium sized effect on the municipal income tax rate. The positive effect is in line with what we expect given the policy preferences of Left Party representatives, but also given the predictions from political fragmentation theory. I find no effects on expenditures or debt, and the negative result for investments is not robust. Essay 4 (with Linuz Aggeborn): In a model where voters and politicians have different preferences for how much to spend on basic welfare services contra immigration, we conclude that established politicians that are challenged by right-wing populists will implement a policy with no spending on immigration if the cost of immigration is high enough. Additionally, adjustment to right-wing populist policy is more likely when the economy is in a recession. Voters differ in their level of private consumption in such a way that lower private consumption implies higher demand for basic welfare services at the expense of immigration, and thus stronger disposition to support right-wing populist policies. We propose that this within-budget-distributional conflict can arise as an electorally decisive conflict dimension if parties have converged to the median voter on the size-of-government issue. / <p>Felaktigt isbn: 978-91-85519-61-3</p>

The study of electoral defence and its stated advantages are an integral part of American political science. Post-war, much academic literature has emerged in an attempt to identify and explain rising re-election rates of congressional incumbents and the political consequences of such a phenomenon (Mayhew 1974; Fiorina 1977; Cain, Ferejohn &amp; Fiorina 1987; Gelman &amp; King 1990; King 1991). Conversely, the study of political incumbency in Britain can be attributed to a handful of scholars who tend to consider the repercussions at parliamentary level (Williams 1967, King 1981, Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina 1984, Norton 1990 &amp; 1994, Norris, Valance &amp; Lovenduski 1992). Consequently, incumbency advantage at the local level remains a relatively under-researched topic in England, confined to the sub-chapters of Rallings &amp; Thrasher (1997). The aim of this thesis is to research and present evidence in support of incumbency effects in English local elections and the extent to which they influence their outcome, in that, incumbent candidates fare better than less experienced candidates, to different degrees across the three major parties. It will do so using survey and electoral data collected by The Elections Centre at Plymouth University, drawing on established methods from the literature and demonstrating via a variety of data and methods, that incumbency advantage is indeed a real phenomenon effecting the outcomes of local elections in England. The research provides substantial evidence for Sophomore Surge and Retirement Slump effects throughout the period examined (1974-2010). These methods of estimation feature alongside a number of others, which are constructed to uncover the significance of defending, rather than challenging for a council seat. A number of influences on the advantage that defending councillors maintain are also presented, including district magnitude, ward size and rural/urban classification. Results reveal a modest advantage for Conservative and Labour incumbent candidates, whilst the effects are shown to be stronger for the Liberal Democrats, a finding that is in step with the existing literature on electoral trends and the local campaign strategy of the party (Dorling et al, 1998; McAllister et al, 2002; Russell &amp; Fieldhouse, 2005; Cutts 2006).

Cette thèse concerne la combinaison du lambda-calcul et de la réécriture, dont nous étudions principalement deux propriétés : la confluence et la normalisation forte. Nous commençons par étudier sous quelles conditions la combinaison d'une relation de réécriture conditionnelle confluente au lambda-calcul donne une relation de réécriture confluente. Ensuite nous nous intéressons aux preuves de normalisation forte de lambda-calculs typés utilisant la technique de réductibilité. Notre contribution la plus importante est une comparaison de diverses variantes de cette technique, utilisant comme outil de comparaison la manière dont ces variantes s'étendent à la réécriture et dont elles prennent en compte les types unions et les types existentiels implicites. Enfin, nous présentons un critère, basé sur un système de types contraints, pour la normalisation forte de la réécriture conditionnelle combinée au lambda-calcul. Notre approche étend des critères de terminaison existants qui utilisent des annotations de taille. C'est à notre connaissance le premier critère de terminaison pour la réécriture conditionnelle avec membres droits d'ordre supérieur qui prenne en compte, dans l'argument de terminaison, de l'information issue de la satisfaction des conditions des règles de réécriture / This thesis is about the combination of lambda-calculus with rewriting. We mainly study two properties: confluence and strong normalization. We begin by studying under which conditions the combination of a confluent conditional rewrite relation to the lambda-calculus leads to a confluent relation. Next, we study strong normalization proofs of typed lambda-calculi that use the reducibility technique. Our main contribution is a comparison of variants of this technique, with respect to how they extend to rewriting and how they handle union and implicit existential types. Finally, we present a termination criterion for the combination of conditional rewriting and lambda-calculus based on a constrained type system. Our approach, which extends known criteria that use sized types, is to our knowledge the first termination criterion for conditional rewriting with higher-order right-hand sides that takes into account in the termination argument some information generated by the satisfaction of the conditions of the rewrite rules

Being a lecturer and serving in the Higher Degrees Committee of the Department of Public Administration and Management at Unisa for several years, gave me exposure to master’s and doctoral candidates’ scholarly work. I realised that the doctoral candidates, in particular, were facing methodological challenges. This realisation triggered my curiosity in the methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates. My scholarly curiosity prompted me to undertake a preliminary literature review which has identified a number of scholarly contributions on the quality of research in Public Administration. These studies have not established or attempted to establish conceptual frameworks for understanding this phenomenon. I deduced that the lack of scholarly contributions on the methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates indicates a knowledge gap that compromises scholarly understanding of methodological preparedness, both as a concept and a phenomenon. The main purpose of this research was to generate theory, by means of the development of a conceptual framework, in response to the identified knowledge gap in the literature. Consequently, a qualitative theory generating research design was chosen and actualised in three interrelated research phases. Phase 1 provides a theoretical perspective by turning to the scholarly literature and institutional documents to obtain a deepened understanding of the concept methodological preparedness relevant to Public Administration doctoral candidates. This phase serves, firstly, to provide an overview of the characteristics of the doctorate in Public Administration as an immediate context for methodological preparedness, and secondly, to do a concept analysis to identify and describe the meaning of the concept methodological preparedness with reference to a doctoral candidate. Phase 2 aimed to make sense of the methodological preparedness of Public Administration doctoral candidates at Unisa by exploring, through an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), how doctoral candidates and supervisors make sense of this phenomenon. This study makes a methodological contribution by employing the IPA for the first time in the South African Public Administration fraternity. Phase 3 generates a conceptual framework for understanding the methodological preparedness of Public Administration doctoral candidates at Unisa. The framework contributes to the understanding of the under- vi researched concept and phenomenon methodological preparedness of doctoral candidates in Public Administration. This study has shown that a candidate’s methodological preparedness (the state of being competent to independently make a methodological decision relevant to his or her doctoral research project), is not a once-off gate-keeping phenomenon, but an ongoing and fluent state of being. / Public Administration / D. Litt. et Phil. (Public Administration)

This study asks whether and how the presidential inaugural address influences American audiences. The current study explores how the 2017 Presidential Inaugural Address of Donald Trump influences audiences. Two areas were studied: Candidate image and the state of the nation. I hypothesized that participants who watched the address would have different attitudes regarding candidate image and the state of the nation compared to non-viewers. I also hypothesized that viewers of the address who voted for Donald Trump would respond differently to candidate image and the state of the nation when compared with those who did not vote for Trump. With one exception, none of the findings was significant. That is, attitudes of inaugural address viewers and non-viewers were similar, and attitudes of those who voted for the president and those who did not vote for the president were also similar. The exception was noted between those who voted for the candidate and oppositional voters: Those who voted for Donald Trump reported the nation is headed "in the right direction" while dissenters disagreed.

Les plantes sont soumises durant leur vie à de nombreux stress environnementaux. Face à ces contraintes, les végétaux ont développé au cours de l'évolution différentes stratégies. La plus emblématique est la mise en place du métabolisme spécialisé, représenté par une grande diversité chimique et fonctionnelle. Bien que ce métabolisme soit de plus en plus étudié ces dernières années, de nombreuses lacunes persistes à son propos, liées notamment (i) à la complexité des modifications métabolomiques engendrées par la perception de stress, (ii) aux coûts et avantages que ces métabolites imputent à la plante les accumulant, et (iii) aux voies métaboliques menant à cette diversité de composés. Pour appréhender ces différentes problématiques, nous avons adopté une stratégie combinant des approches de phytochimie, de biologie moléculaire et de génétique. Dans un premier temps, nous avons étudié les changements métaboliques globaux engendrés par l’application de deux stress environnementaux, l’ozone et la blessure mécanique, sur une plante modèle au laboratoire, le panais, en fonction du temps. Les résultats de ces travaux nous ont permis d’identifier 40 métabolites différentiellement accumulés dans ces conditions, dont certaines furocoumarines. Par la suite, nous avons focalisé notre étude sur ces molécules en évaluant leurs profils d’accumulation, en condition de stress par blessures mécaniques, par la biais d’analyses différentielles. A partir de ces données, nous avons initié la recherche et l'identification de gènes candidats potentiellement impliqués dans cette voie à partir de plusieurs banques transcriptomiques et génomiques de panais. La fonction des gènes sélectionnés a été évalué par des approches d'expression hétérologue dans la levure. En parallèle de ces travaux, nous avons développé une stratégie destinée à mieux comprendre le coût métabolique de la synthèse de métabolites spécialisés. Pour ce faire, nous avons adapté aux furocoumarines une technique de clonage multigénique permettant de transférer dans une plante, et en une seule opération, plusieurs gènes impliqués dans la même voie de biosynthèse. Cette méthode nous a permis d'initier la génération de lignées stables ayant intégré les deux premiers gènes de la voie. Ces plantes seront comparées à des plantes sauvages et permettront ainsi d’étudier les coûts métaboliques et physiologiques de l’introduction de cette nouvelle voie de biosynthèse ainsi que ses bénéfices en termes de défense de la plante. / Plants are subjected to many environmental stresses during their life. Faced with these constraints, plants have developed different strategies during their evolution. The most emblematic is the establishment of a specialized metabolism, represented by a great chemical and functional diversity. Although this metabolism has been studied more and more in recent years, many gaps remain, related in particular (i) to the complexity of the metabolomic changes generated by the perception of stress, (ii) to the costs and benefits that these metabolites impute to the producing plant, and (iii) to the metabolic pathways leading to the diversity of compounds. To cope with these different issues, we adopted a strategy combining approaches of phytochemistry, molecular biology and genetics. First, we studied global metabolic changes caused by the application of two environmental stresses, ozone and mechanical wounding, on parsnip. The obtained results allowed us to identify 40 metabolites differentially accumulated under these conditions, including some furocoumarins. Subsequently, we focused our study on these molecules by evaluating their accumulation profiles under mechanical wounding stress condition, using differential analyzes. From this data, we initiated the search and identification of candidate genes potentially involved in this pathway based on transcriptomic and genomic parsnip libraries analyses. The function of the selected genes was evaluated by heterologous expression approach in yeast. In parallel to this work, we have developed a strategy to better understand the metabolic cost of specialized metabolites synthesis. To do this, we have adapted a multigene cloning method to furocoumarines, allowing to transfer several genes involved in the same pathway in a plant, in a single operation. This method allowed us to initiate the generation of stable lines having integrated the first two genes of the pathway. These plants will be compared to wild plants and will thus allow to study the metabolic and physiological costs of the introduction of this new biosynthetic pathway and its benefits in terms of plant defense.