Cette thèse tentera de démontrer, dans un premier temps, si les idéologies religieuses conservent une grande importance aux États-Unis, et ce, malgré la sécularisation apparente de la société. Une analyse du processus politique qui est à l’œuvre dans la mobilisation et l’action du Christian Coalition – organisation de la nouvelle droite chrétienne – permet de cerner la place qu’a le religieux dans la sphère publique, et plus particulièrement, dans la sphère politique. Plus spécifiquement, nous observerons les stratégies et les actions que le C.C. entreprend dans le but d’exercer des pressions et d’influencer les débats et le pouvoir politique, tout en déterminant la nature des enjeux qui motivent une mobilisation pour ce groupe protestant conservateur. Une évaluation basée sur le courant des mouvements sociaux illustrera la mesure dans laquelle la nouvelle droite chrétienne détient une partie du pouvoir social et jouit du rôle d’acteur politique par son institutionnalisation dans la sphère politique.

This qualitative comparative case study examined factors related to politics that might explain the notably different active transportation (AT - walking, cycling, and public transit use) rates achieved in Helsinki, Finland (a leading European city in AT, where 77 per cent of people use primarily AT for daily transportation) and Ottawa, Canada (a leading North American city in AT, but where the AT rate is 28.5 per cent). Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) - a policy process theory - individual focused interviews were conducted with 47 active transportation experts from the two cities. Document review was employed as a secondary method. The results are discussed in three articles written for peer reviewed journals – the first two concentrating on the findings from Helsinki and Ottawa respectively, and the third article comparing the findings from both cities. Overall, differences stemming from the ACF category of relatively stable parameters (i.e., stable background-level factors) including land use, transportation planning traditions, and political systems were identified as likely important in explaining the discrepancy in AT rates.

The diploma thesis deals with party system stability and its aim is to verify the hypothesis, that the countries with the longest continuity of the political regime prove the highest level of party system stability. The author tries to confirm this hypothesis by analysing the party system stability in six chosen cases, which include the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Portugal, Spain, Austria and Germany. To confirm the hypothesis the author use qualitative and quantitative analysis based on the concept that focuses on relations between political parties, structure of party competition and patterns of coalition formation. This approach defines the party system stability by setting four criterions: frequency of government alternation, type of government alternation, innovation of governing formulas and access of political parties to government. The thesis analyses according to this concept the party systems of the six states in the term 1993-2013 and also covers the historical context of party systems development in the selected cases from the end of the World War II. The author stresses in the whole thesis the case of the Czech Republic.

Os estudos a respeito do funcionamento do Congresso brasileiro não deixariam dúvidas: os trabalhos no interior da arena legislativa são organizados em termos partidários. Os atores políticos raramente conseguem agir individualmente. Partidos políticos estruturam e viabilizam a atuação dos parlamentares. Contudo, a despeito deste acordo sobre a importância dos partidos, haveria um momento específico do processo político em que os parlamentares conseguiriam agir individualmente, sem sofrer os constrangimentos dos partidos políticos: na alteração do orçamento. Seria esse o momento ideal para que os parlamentares ajam informados exclusivamente por seu interesse individual. Seria este também o momento oportuno para que o Executivo negocie com os parlamentares para obter o apoio que necessita para aprovar matérias. Os partidos sairiam de cena e o parlamentar individual viria para o centro do palco. Esse trabalho, no entanto, segue na contramão dessa vertente argumentativa e buscará mostrar como até nesse momento de atuação individual, a presença dos partidos políticos não apenas pode ser detectada, como ainda se mostra crucial. O objetivo geral aqui será o de mostrar como os parlamentares atuam por meio de seus partidos políticos ao promoverem alterações no orçamento. / The literature on the decision-making process in the Brazilian Congress asserts that partisanship is the main factor organizing the legislative arena. Brazilian legislators are rarely able to act individually (i.e. without the support and authorization of their party leaders). However, in spite of this agreement on the importance of the parties, part of the literature also states that members of congress have the ability to operate without suffering the constraints of political parties in amending the budget bill introduced by the Executive at this crucial moment of the legislative process. Individual interests should show up exactly at this crucial moment of the legislative process. Moreover, the budget-making process should configure an excellent opportunity for the Executive to negotiate with legislators in order to obtain support for its own policy agenda. By this argument parties are absent and legislators, as individuals, would come to the center of the stage. My work, however, goes against this perspective and seeks to show the reasons why even when one should expect individual behavior, political parties show their strength and importance. My overall goal is to demonstrate that, against the expectations, partisanship matters for the budget-making process in Brazil.

O principal objetivo deste trabalho é mostrar que, no presidencialismo multipartidário brasileiro, as políticas públicas implementadas pelo Executivo são resultantes do processo de agregação de preferências dos diferentes atores partidários que integram o gabinete de governo. Posto que os partidos aceitam integrar coalizões de governo em função da expectativa de agregar suas preferências à agenda de políticas do Executivo, os conflitos intragabinete são derivados da não efetivação desta expectativa. Argumento que, embora sejam delegadas aos integrantes do gabinete áreas ministeriais específicas, os partidos da coalizão monitoram as áreas de policy dos seus parceiros de governo, na tentativa de diminuir a assimetria de informação e agregar suas preferências às políticas que lhes interessam. Para tanto, investigo de que forma os parlamentares utilizam as suas prerrogativas de controle horizontal - [i] Requerimentos de Informação (RIC), [ii] Propostas de Fiscalização e Controle (PFC) e [iii] Projeto de Decreto Legislativo (PDC) - para obter informações sobre a implementação de políticas nos ministérios dos partidos parceiros do gabinete. A análise compreende o período entre 1995 e 2014, nos governos Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), Luís Inácio da Silva (LULA) e Dilma Rousseff (DILMA). As evidências apresentadas neste trabalho sugerem que a taxa de controle horizontal intragabinete varia positivamente com o grau de dispersão de preferências dos partidos representados no governo. Em função da motivação policyseeking dos atores que integram o gabinete, os partidos que possuem mais recursos para a implementação de políticas públicas são também aqueles que recebem o maior volume de controle dos seus parceiros de gabinete. Como consequência, são os partidos da coalizão de governo os principais responsáveis por monitorar as ações de implementação de políticas públicas do Executivo. Ao contrário do que ocorre no momento de formulação das políticas no gabinete e no parlamento, o peso legislativo dos partidos integrantes do governo importa pouco para a capacidade destes atores agregarem suas preferências às policies. Isso explica o que ganham os partidos que aceitam integrar as coalizões de governo e revela qual o mecanismo que viabiliza a manutenção de um pacto político firmado entre atores com preferências distintas e heterogêneas. / The aim of this study is to show that public policies implemented by the executive branch in the Brazilian multiparty presidential system are the result of aggregating the preferences of different party members within the government cabinet. Parties agree to integrate into the coalition government because they expect to be able to add their preferences to the government policy agenda. However, when parties are unable to influence the policy agenda, it often results in intra-cabinet conflicts. I argue that, although the chief executive delegates specific portfolios to each cabinet member, the parties scrutinize the policies carried out by the government members in an attempt to reduce the asymmetric information and add their preferences to policies that concern them. For this purpose, I investigate how legislative membres use their horizontal control prerogative - [i] Requerimentos de Informação (RIC), [ii] Propostas de Fiscalização e Controle (PFC) e [iii] Projeto de Decreto Legislativo (PDC) - to obtain information on the policy process of policy implementation within the portfolios held by cabinet members. This study analyzes data from 1995 to 2014, in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), Luís Inácio da Silva (LULA) and Dilma Rousseff (DILMA) administrations. The evidence presented in this study suggests that the intra-cabinet horizontal control varies positively with the degree of dispersion of policy preferences in the cabinet government. As a result of the policy-seeking motivation of the actors who comprise the government coalition, parties with more resources for the implementation of public policies are also those that receive the greatest amount of control over other members of the cabinet. Thus, the government coalition parties are primarily responsible for monitoring the implementation of federal programs. Unlike what is observed at the time of policy formulation in the cabinet and in parliament, the proportion of coalition seats/votes a member contributed is of small importance to the ability of these actors to aggregate their prefered policies. This explains what the parties receive when they agree to integrate into the cabinet and reveals the mechanism that enables the maintenance of a political pact between actors with different and heterogeneous preferences.

One important issue in mechanism design theory is to model agents’ behaviors under uncertainty. The classical approach assumes that agents hold commonly known probability assessments towards uncertainty, which has been challenged by economists in many fields. My thesis adopts alternative methods to model agents’ behaviors. The new findings contribute to understanding how the mechanism designer can benefit from agents’ uncertainty aversion and how she should respond to the lack of information on agents’ probability assessments. Chapter 1 of this thesis allows the mechanism designer to introduce ambiguity to the mechanism. Instead of informing agents of the precise payment rule that she commits to, the mechanism designer can tell agents multiple payment rules that she may have committed to. The multiple payment rules are called ambiguous transfers. As agents do not know which rule is chosen by the designer, they are assumed to make decisions based on the worst-case scenario. Under this assumption, this chapter characterizes when the mechanism designer can obtain the first-best outcomes by introducing ambiguous transfers. Compared to the standard approach where the payment rule is unambiguous, first-best mechanism design becomes possible under a broader information structure. Hence, there are cases when the mechanism designer can benefit from introducing ambiguity. Chapter 2 assumes that the mechanism designer does not know agents’ probability assessments about others’ private information. The mechanisms designed to implement the social choice function thus should not depend on the probability assessments, which are called robust mechanisms. Different from the existing robust mechanism design literature where agents are always assumed to act non-cooperatively, this chapter allows them to communicate and form coalitions. This chapter provides necessary and almost sufficient conditions for robustly implementing a social choice function as an equilibrium that is immune to all coalitional deviations. As there are social choice functions that are only implementable with coalitional structures, this chapter provides insights on when agents should be allowed to communicate. As an extension, when the mechanism designer has no information on which coalitions can be formed, this chapter also provides conditions for robust implementation under all coalition patterns. Chapter 3 assumes that agents are not probabilistic about others’ private information. Instead, when they hold ambiguous assessments about others’ information, they make decisions based on the worst-case belief. This chapter provides necessary and almost sufficient conditions on when a social choice goal is implementable under such a behavioral assumption. As there are social choice goals that are only implementable under ambiguous assessments, this chapter provides insights on what information structure is desirable to the mechanism designer.

Bostadsfrågan har blivit allt större då bristen av bostäder har spridit sig från större städer till mindre orter i landet. Lösningen på problemet är olika för de olika riksdagspartierna eftersom deras övertygelser ligger till grund för deras respektive policy. Genom att analysera dessa övertygelser kan möjliga koalitioner identifieras över en längre tid. Syftet med denna uppsats är att lyfta fram de olika policyer som partierna har genom att analysera deras valmanifest. Som teoretiskt ramverk används Advocacy Coalition Framework med fokus på Policy Core Belief. Som metod används en kvalitativ textanalys för att identifiera partiernas policy från deras valmanifest, motioner och propositioner. Resultatet visar att olika koalitioner har kunnat uppstå över en längre tid då partiernas Policy Core Belief har skiftat. Detta resultat belyser hur möjliga koalitioner kan uppstå och även att avsaknaden av förändring grundar sig i bristande samsyn på policyfrågor. Detta kan eventuellt förklaras med partiernas Deep Core Belief samt brist på en policyförändring, något som skulle kunna leda till fortsatt problematik längre fram i tiden.

This article aims to analyse the process of constitute district's counsils in Czech Republic after elections in 2000 and 2004. At first it defines the theory of games, theory of rational choice and theory of coalition and it gives their interpretation. It also talks about electoral and party systems as factors which influence the formation of coalitions. Afterwards it focuses on the electoral period since 2000 and it evaluates the results of election to the representative districts in Czech Republic. It talks about the electoral period after 2004 in detail. Generally it evaluates the results of election and compares the theoretical precondition with the origin coalition. It also observed factors which complicated the bargainings about the coalitions. In the conclusion generalize some factors with the influence on the bargaining. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Diploma thesis "Comparation of the Italian political system between 1945 - 1968 and the Czechoslovak political system between 1918 - 1938" compares both these two political systems, deals with their common characteristics and differences and tries to explain the origins of similar settlement in both countries in the followed periods. For these purposes it uses also attempts of the most common Italian political scientists to characterize Italian political system, where there stand above all two thesis on "centripetal polarism" (Giovanni Sartori) and "imperfect bipartism" (Giorgio Galli). An interesting supplemental Tudory is also Farnetti's thesis as some kind of the "third way". Subsequently, those thesis are applied on the case of the ČSR too and it is judged its validity as one of the possible explaining concepts.

The resort to coalition governments following the disputed presidential elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe pioneers a new trend in unlocking political gridlock in Africa. This dissertation analyses this trend with a view to establishing its viability in guaranteeing sustainable peace and democracy. It is argued that the resort establishes a precedent in which incumbent presidents, upon losing elections, may refuse to vacate office in the hope that a power sharing agreement will be negotiated with opposition leaders. Concludes that while the resort to coalition government in the aftermath of a disputed election and electoral violence may rescue a country from disintegration, it is not a guarantee to sustainable peace and democracy / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Prof. Nico Steytler, Faculty of Law, University of Western Cape, South Africa / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM