Many economies throughout the world were devastated by the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Ireland in particular experienced a severe collapse in its housing market. Despite the progression of European-influenced planning policy that was meant to promote balanced regional development in Ireland, the country's housing market vastly overbuilt, exacerbating a housing market crash that ended the Celtic Tiger era. Drawing on Europeanization and historical institutionalism as theoretical frameworks, this thesis argues that the link between these EU-influenced policy principles and local Irish planning practice was weak during an important phase of Ireland's economic growth. This conclusion is demonstrated through the analysis of a case study, McEvoy and Smith v. Meath County Council. The findings show that while Ireland's national government created an ambitious National Spatial Strategy modeled on EU principles, non-binding Regional Planning Guidelines allowed local authorities to continue granting zoning changes and permissions. These decisions were therefore uninhibited by the constraints of population projections, consideration for infrastructure provision, and overall good planning practice. This research calls into question the effectiveness of transferring policy principles from the EU to Member States. It suggests more generally that to implement policy and law successfully, policy makers must appreciate the societal and economic context in which these rules will operate.

Cette thèse propose une analyse du développement économique à partir du concept de facteur humain qui apparaît en économie institutionnelle à travers les institutions informelles. Ces dernières sont responsables du caractère spécifique de chaque structure institutionnelle nationale qui forme le cadre incitatif de l'économie. Composée de règles formelles et informelles, la structure institutionnelle représente un ensemble évolutif. L'objectif élargi de cette recherche est donc de comprendre l'évolution et le changement des structures institutionnelles en étudiant particulièrement l'impact international sur ce processus. L'objectif spécifique de ce travail est d'appliquer l'approche développée au cas de la Russie afin de contribuer à une meilleure compréhension de la structure institutionnelle russe actuelle, de son efficacité pour le développement économique du pays et de l'impact de l'ouverture économique sur son changement, et notamment sur le facteur humain russe. Avec l'adhésion de la Russie en 2012 à l'Organisation Mondiale du Commerce cette question est d'intérêt particulier car le pays s'ouvre aux nouveaux attributs de la mondialisation. En mobilisant le cadre théorique croisé entre l'économie institutionnelle, l'économie de développement et l'économie internationale, cette étude nous conduit à présenter la mondialisation en tant que processus institutionnel qui en généralisant les institutions formelles de l'économie de marché et de la démocratie à l'échelle planétaire, a ignoré le rôle du facteur humain local. Cela explique la différence des performances économiques des pays qui ont adopté les mêmes cadres organisationnels. En revanche, la prise en considération du facteur humain dans l'analyse économique permet de développer la vision plus optimiste de la mondialisation. En facilitant le contact direct entre les représentants des structures institutionnelles différentes, elle est capable de stimuler l'évolution des normes de comportement improductif vers les valeurs sociales incitant les actions productives. En appliquant ce constat à l'analyse de la structure institutionnelle russe qui a vu diverger ses institutions formelles et informelles en résultat des réformes de la transition des années 1990, il est possible de conclure que l'ouverture économique de ce pays dans les conditions actuelles favorisera le changement de son facteur humain. Compte tenu de l'incohérence entre le cadre formel et les institutions informelles russes, l'évolution de ces dernières contribuera à l'instauration de l'ordre social formel et impersonnel. / This PhD dissertation analyzes the economic development from the concept of human factor which appears in the Institutional Economics trough the informal institutions. These institutions are responsible for the specific character of each national institutional structure which forms the incentive system of an economy. An institutional framework as a composite of formal rules and informal institutions is an evolutionary set. The wider objective of this thesis is to understand the evolution and change of institutional structures by studying in particular the international impact on this process. The specific objective of this research work is to apply the developed approach to the Russian case in order to better understand the actual Russian institutional structure, its effectiveness for the economic development of the country and the impact of the economic openness on the institutional change, in particular on the Russian human factor. This impact is a highly topical question for Russia because of its greater economic openness due to its accession to the World Trade Organization completed in 2012. Within the theoretical framework formed by Institutional Economics, Development Economics and International Economics, this research leads us to present the globalization as an institutional process which generalized formal institutions of the market economy and the democracy on the global scale but which ignored the role of the local human factor. It explains the differences of the economic performance in the countries who adopted the same formal framework. In contrast, taking into account the role of the human factor in the economic development allows to develop more optimistic views of globalization. By facilitating the direct contact between the representatives of the different institutional structures, the globalization can stimulate the evolution of social norms of unproductive behavior to the social values inciting productive actions. Applying this to the Russian framework which formal and informal institutions became strongly divergent in result of the transition reforms of 1990s, it is possible to conclude that the economic openness of this country in the actual situation will favor the change of its human factor. Considering the incoherence between Russian actual formal framework and Russian informal institutions, the evolution of the last will contribute to establish former and impersonal social order.

La présente thèse explore la dynamique des institutions informelles dans la gouvernance nationale et mondiale et l'ajustement de l'ordre politico-économique, dans un pays en transition et à l'échelle mondiale dans un contexte de crise financière internationale, en utilisant l'approche institutionnelle comparative. Elle adopte le point de vue de la nouvelle économie institutionnelle (New Institutional Economics - NIE) afin d'étudier comment différentes formes de gouvernance, notamment les mécanismes de gouvernance informels, émergent et fonctionnent dans diverses circonstances. Le chapitre deux fournit la preuve de la prédominance des relations accommodante et concurrente entre les systèmes de fourniture de services publics et d'ordre public, qui sont formellement et informellement décentralisés dans soixante-quatre provinces vietnamiennes. Notre analyse de l’«informalité» dans le chapitre trois soutient l'argument selon lequel les mécanismes formels ne sont pas suffisants pour inciter les acteurs publics à assumer leur pleine responsabilité, mais doivent être accompagnés de ceux informels pour combler les déficits de responsabilité du système formel. L'analyse empirique de quarante-cinq pays développés et en développement dans le chapitre quatre découvre que la non-congruence institutionnelle, en général, a un effet complémentaire sur la taille de l'économie informelle, mais agit comme un substitut dans les pays qui ont un faible niveau de non-congruence, une bonne gouvernance de la corruption, ou une grande pro-activité dans la prise d'initiatives visant à réduire l'écart de perception de la légitimité des activités économiques informelles. / This dissertation explores the dynamics of informal institutions in national and global governance and the adjustment of the economic political order in a transition country as well as on the global scale after two recent global financial crises, using the comparative institutional approach. It adopts the perspective of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) to study how alternative forms of governance, particularly, informal mechanisms of governance, emerge and work in various circumstances. Chapter two provides evidence to the prevalence of the accommodating and competing relationships between the formally and informally decentralized systems of providing public services and public order in 64 provinces in Vietnam. Our “informality” analysis in chapter three has supported the argument that formal mechanisms alone are not sufficient to create incentives for public actors to make private efforts to full accountability, but needs accompanying with other informal ones to fill in accountability deficits of the formal system. The empirical analysis of 45 developed and developing countries in chapter four finds that institutional incongruence, in general, has a complementary effect on the size of the informal economy, but acts as a substitute in those countries that have a low level of incongruence, good governance of corruption, or high proactivity in taking initiatives to minimize the perception gap about the legitimacy of informal economic activities.

This study aims to explore women’s perceived barriers to enter politics investigated through a Colombian case study. The Colombian case highlights a paradox common in Latin America where representation levels of women in legislatures are low, but representation in other professions is high. Research on gender and candidate selection has so far mainly focused on applying a macro, top-down perspective and describing objectively defined barriers to women’s political representation. This study changes the perspective and focuses on applying a bottom-up approach, focusing on individual women and their subjective views on barriers to enter politics. The material was collected during an 8-week field study in various locations in Colombia between July and August 2016. The findings suggest that the intersection between socioeconomic factors and gender play a large role in defining barriers to enter politics. Personal as well as systemic factors interoperate to lower both the “supply” and “demand” of candidates. The results also suggest that some professional groups are more likely to reject institutional participation, focusing political efforts on activism, and that families and political parties both serve as “gatekeepers” enabling or disabling political representation.   Key words: Gendered barriers to enter politics, political participation and representation, candidate selection, Colombia, clientelism, formal and informal institutions.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de découvrir si l’environnement institutionnel affecte la performance agricole dans le cas du Cambodge et comment le premier influe sur la dernière. Pour répondre à cet objectif, trois hypothèses sont formulées : (1) l’environnement institutionnel joue un rôle important dans la protection des droits de propriété foncière ; (2) les droits de propriété foncière sécurisés augmentent la productivité agricole par la stimulation des incitations d’investissement des agriculteurs ; (3) les droits de propriété foncière sécurisés accroissent la productivité agricole par la facilitation de l’accès au crédit formel. Méthodologiquement, la recherche est basée sur les différentes théories de la Nouvelle Economie Institutionnelle, qui expliquent que les institutions déterminent la structure des incitations des acteurs économiques dans une société. Spécifiquement, les institutions politiques déterminent les institutions économiques, c’est-à-dire les droits de propriété, qui à leur tour affectent la performance économique en général et la performance agricole en particulier. La recherche est également basée sur les données venant de diverses sources, telles que des agences gouvernementales, des instituts de recherche locaux, des organisations non-gouvernementales et des organisations internationales, qui sont susceptibles de servir de base pour des analyses empiriques. En outre, le cas de l’Afrique subsaharienne est également étudié à titre de comparaison. Le résultat de la thèse confirme fortement les deux premières hypothèses, mais peu la dernière. Le résultat indique que l’impact de l’environnement institutionnel sur la productivité agricole via la protection des droits de propriété foncière est lié au contexte particulier parce qu’il devrait être complété par un environnement économique favorable, tel que l’infrastructure physique et la technologie agricole améliorées et les institutions du marché développées. De plus, on apprend que les résultats désirés ne sont pas obtenus si les institutions formelles (c’est-à-dire, l’enregistrement formel des terres) sont imposées via l’approche top-down dans les régions où les institutions informelles existantes sont fortement encastrées. / The purpose of this dissertation is to find out if the institutional environment affects agricultural performance in the case of Cambodia and how the former exerts an influence on the latter. To respond to this purpose, three hypotheses are formulated: (1) the institutional environment plays an important role in protecting property rights in land; (2) secure property rights in land increase agricultural productivity through the stimulation of farmers’ investment incentives; (3) secure property rights in land raise agricultural productivity through the facilitation of access to formal credit. Methodologically, the research is based on different theories of New Institutional Economics, which explain that institutions determine the incentive structure of economic actors in society. Specifically, political institutions shape economic institutions, i.e. property rights, which in turn affect economic performance in general and agricultural performance in particular. The research is also based on the data from various sources, such as government agencies, local research institutes, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations, which can serve as a basis for empirical analyses. In addition, the case of Sub-Saharan Africa is also studied for comparison. The result of the dissertation confirms strongly the first two hypotheses but slightly the last one. The result indicates that the impact of institutional environment on agricultural productivity through the protection of property rights in land is context-specific because it should be complemented by a favorable economic environment, such as improved physical infrastructure and agricultural technology and developed market institutions. Furthermore, it is learned that, in developing countries, the desired outcomes will not be obtained if formal institutions (i.e., formal land registration) are imposed through a top-down approach in areas where the existing informal institutions are strongly embedded.

The topic of my work was The Repatriation of Czechs and Slovaks into Czechoslovakia after the First World War. I describe the years 1918 - 1923 in Central Europe, specifically in Czechoslovakia and in other new succession states after Austria-Hungary. My work is divided into 4 different chapters, introduction and conclusion. The first chapter describes the First World War and its consequences for Central European region. It also describes economic problems in succession states, the changes of territory, situation in Czechoslovakia after 1918 and it characterizes population in key countries (Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria and Poland) for my topic. The second chapter is focused on Czechoslovakia. It shortly explains reasons of emigration and immigration of Czechs and Slovaks before and also after the First World War. It describes factors which have big influence on repatriation in Czechoslovakia (for example land reform). The third and fourth chapters analyze materials from archives. They present a lot of very concrete examples of repatriation process (lack of housing, problems with citizenship, unemployment). It points at importance of state executive institutions for repatriation process. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry Social Security and...

Dans les dernières années, la corruption municipale a constitué un enjeu d’importance au Québec, posant des questions majeures sur la qualité de la gouvernance municipale. Ce mémoire vise à comprendre comment fonctionnait le système de corruption découvert au niveau des municipalités. En premier lieu, l’aspect historique de la corruption municipale sera examiné pour identifier l’héritage ayant influencé les pratiques actuelles. Surtout, ce phénomène sera abordé pour décrire la structure de gouvernance informelle qui s’est développée au sein des institutions municipales, plus spécifiquement dans les cas de Laval et Montréal. Le modèle théorique de Della Porta et Vannucci (2012) permettra d’illustrer la façon dont les acteurs internalisent les normes de la corruption, comment ils développent des relations de confiance entre eux et, enfin, comment l’action de régulateurs vient cimenter l’institutionnalisation de réseaux de corruption. Enfin, le mémoire vise à déceler quels aspects inhérents aux institutions municipales québécoises les ont rendues vulnérables à la corruption. La faiblesse et la capacité limitée des institutions formelles à structurer avec succès les incitatifs sera mise de l’avant. On examinera les limites des institutions visant à établir une surveillance externe des municipalités, pour ensuite se pencher sur les institutions internes pouvant prévenir la corruption, soit la bureaucratie et la démocratie municipale. En bref, le mémoire vise à identifier les structures de gouvernance des réseaux de corruption à Laval et Montréal, puis à en expliquer la provenance par la faiblesse d’institutions qui auraient pu l’endiguer. / In the last few years, municipal corruption made its way through the headlines and became a significant issue in Québec, raising major questions about the quality of municipal governance. This research aims to understand how the corruption system operated at the municipal level. First, an examination of the municipal corruption’s legacy will show its recurrent aspect. Then, the corruption phenomena will be studied through a description of the informal governance structure that grew inside municipal institutions. More specifically, Laval’s and Montréal’s cases will be used to portray this governance structure. Della Porta and Vannucci’s model (2012) will be used to elucidate the way agents internalize norms of corruption, how they develop second-party bonds of trust, and, finally, how an enforcer can act to cement and institutionalize networks of corruption. Finally, the research aims to identify and understand which aspects of Quebec’s municipal institutions made then vulnerable to corruption. The limits of formal institutions’ capacity to successfully structure incentives will be addressed through the exposure of some significant weaknesses. We will examine the limits of the institutions aiming to establish external surveillance, to then turn our focus toward internal institutions that could have deterred corruption, which are bureaucracy and democracy.

This study reviews Rational Choice theory and Informal Institutions theory and uses new data to explain the persistence and scale of Argentina's informal domestic work sector. The domestic work sector in Argentina represents a typical case in Latin America: almost entirely dominated by women and high informality levels. The sector has had legal recognition for over a decade, but most of the sector's workers work under precarious conditions without access to those stipulated rights. In line with the adoption of new feminist policies during the last decade in Argentina, recent governments have brought more attention to women working in the domestic sector. This study investigates the implementation of a current financial incentive called Registradas which aims to increase registration levels in the domestic work sector. The material was collected during 29 weeks in Buenos Aires through interviews, surveys with employers, and observational studies from a Facebook group with domestic workers. The findings suggest that the two theories complement each other. Employers and employees in the domestic work sector act rationally from self-interest. However, unwritten rules, expectations of others' behavior, and perceptions of domestic work as an occupation also influence both groups' perceptions of choice and cost evaluation. These unwritten rules restrict and disadvantage employees due to power imbalances, gender norms, lack of information about their labor rights, and poverty. Finally, the study found that the program Registradas has had little effect on the sector's informality rates. The RCT suggests that the low impact could be due to formal employment not being a costly beneficial choice for the employers and neither the employees. This conclusion, however, needs to be understood in a context where labor laws and social security are not systematically and effectively enforced. Weak formal institutions thus enable a competing informal institution of informal employment and, ultimately, costs and benefits of the available choices for employers and employees. / Este estudio revisa la teoría de la Elección Racional y la teoría de las InstitucionesInformales, y utiliza nuevos datos para explicar la persistencia y la escala del sector informaldel trabajo doméstico en Argentina. El sector del trabajo doméstico en Argentina representaun caso típico en América Latina: está dominado casi en su totalidad por mujeres y presentaaltos niveles de informalidad. Aunque el sector cuenta con reconocimiento legal desde hacemás de una década, la mayoría de las trabajadoras del sector laboran en condicionesprecarias, sin acceso a los derechos estipulados. En línea con la adopción de nuevaspolíticas feministas durante la última década en Argentina, los últimos gobiernos hanprestado más atención a las mujeres que trabajan en el sector doméstico. Este estudioinvestiga la implementación del incentivo económico actual llamado Programa Registradas,el cual tiene como objetivo aumentar la formalidad del sector doméstico. El material serecopiló durante 29 semanas en Buenos Aires, mediante entrevistas, encuestas aempleadores y estudios observacionales de un grupo de Facebook con trabajadorasdomésticas. Los resultados sugieren que las dos teorías se complementan. Tanto losempleadores como los empleados del sector doméstico actúan racionalmente en función desus propios intereses. Sin embargo, las reglas no escritas, las expectativas sobre elcomportamiento de los demás y la percepción del trabajo doméstico como una ocupacióntambién influyen en la percepción de la elección y la evaluación de costos de ambos grupos.Estas reglas no escritas restringen y perjudican a las empleadas debido a los desequilibriosde poder, las normas de género, la falta de información sobre sus derechos laborales y lapobreza. Finalmente, el estudio encontró que, hasta la fecha, el Programa Registradas noha tenido ningún efecto significativo en la reducción de la tasa de informalidad del sector. Lateoría de la Elección Racional sugiere que el bajo impacto podría deberse a que el empleoformal no es una opción costosa ni beneficiosa ni para los empleadores ni para losempleados. Sin embargo, esta conclusión debe entenderse en un contexto en el que lalegislación laboral y la obra social no se aplican de forma sistemática y eficaz. La debilidadde las instituciones formales permite, por tanto, una institución informal competidora delempleo informal y, en última instancia, influye en los costos y beneficios de las opcionesdisponibles para empresarios y trabajadores.