Nosso objetivo principal, nesta tese, é fornecer um esboço de reconstrução programática do livro Os Limites da Liberdade, escrito por James Buchanan, aplicando os recursos da Metodologia da Teoria da Ciência e do Programa de Pesquisa, visando, especificamente, definir a nossa estrutura conceitual, que pretende reconstruir o problema e o modo de organizar a concepção de Estado ou da ordem constitucional, na perspectiva do autor James Buchanan. O núcleo da concepção deste autor é baseada na tese ontológica que considera o indivíduo uma entidade livre, auto-interessada e racional, dentro de uma perspectiva analógica, ligada com a noção econômica do mercado. O processo de reconstrução, deste trabalho, acompanha a idéia de emergência da cooperação, traduzida na ordem política pela noção do meio-termo entre a Anarquia e o Leviatã. Isto é feito buscando-se as regras metodológicas e as teses programáticas que controlam o equilíbrio ou balanço democrático da ordem política, em relação a esses dois extremos ou limites institucionais. A imagem deste equilíbrio, que é modelada pela analogia com a idéia econômica de mercado, está definida, apropriadamente, na expressão anarquia ordenada. A regra fundamental deste sistema institucional propõe otimizar a delegação de autoridade para o cidadão controlar poderes políticos, resgatando as premissas fundamentais da democracia, no sentido de evitar qualquer possibilidade da anarquia e do controle excessivo do Leviatã. A idéia básica da anarquia ordenada consiste em valorizar a racionalidade e a capacidade de negociação dos indivíduos, que são conhecedores de seus próprios interesses e limitados pelo interesse dos outros participantes. A operacionalização da anarquia ordenada é fundamentada no desenvolvimento de um projeto institucional que disponibiliza tecnologias, regras, sistemas e critérios de decisão que, supostamente, podem resolver problemas relacionados ao conflito dos interesses públicos e privados, através da interação democrática dos indivíduos. Nesta perspectiva, são elementos relevantes no contexto público do desenho institucional da anarquia ordenada, os sistemas político e judiciário, onde as tecnologias legais e as inovações legislativas podem desempenhar significativo papel na implementação da visão democrática da anarquia ordenada. / Our first aim at this thesis is to provide an outline of a rational reconstruction of the book The Limits of Liberty by James Buchanan with the methodological resources of the Methodology of Theory of Science and the Research Program with the purpose of defining our conceptual framework out of which we pretend to build up the problem and the specific way of organizing the conception of state or institutional order in Buchanan\'s view. The core of this conception is based upon the ontological thesis according to which the only entity existing is the individual, free, self interested and rational and also the guideline of pursuing the analogy with the notion of market in economics.This process of reconstruction follows, therefore, the idea of a emergency of cooperation that it is translated into the notion of political order as a middle way between anarchy and Leviathan. This is done pursuing the methodological rules and theses that controls its balance or skewness at the political order towards one of the boundaries.The image of this balance, that is moulded by this analogy with the idea of market, is properly defined as ordered anarchy. The main rule coordinating the other rules, a radical one, is that one should optimize the delegation of authority for citizen to control the political powers in order to work out the basic postulates of democracy in order to avoiding, on the one hand, any possibility of anarchy and in the other hand, Leviathan\'s excessive control. It follows the basic idea of valuing the rationality and capacity of negotiation of the individual who knows best its own interest but it is also limited by the interest of the others. The operationalization of this rule is based upon the development of a institutional design with resources of technologies, rules and systems and criteria of decision that are suposed to solve the problems related to the conflict of public and private interests coming from the interactions among the individuals in the ordered anarchy. In this perspective, a relevant element of this institutional design is that one of the electoral and judiciary system inside of which the technologies and its innovations will play a very meaningfull role for implementing this view of ordered anarchy.

Dans la littérature, les débats autour du fédéralisme environnemental sont persistants et non-Concluants. La Chine a poursuivi la tendance globale de la décentralisation et adopté un de facto fédéralisme environnemental. Dans ce pays vaste et diversifié, connaissances et compétences locales sont nécessaires pour développer des solutions appropriées pour de nombreux problèmes environnementaux souvent avec une nature locale ou régionale. Cependant, malgré le de facto fédéralisme environnemental adopté, crises environnementales dramatiques et échecs de la politique sont répandus en Chine. En particulier, plus récemment, ce pays a vu apparaître de nombreux problèmes prédits par les opposants à la décentralisation. Il semble que, contrairement à la décentralisation fiscale qui a été un «coup de main» dans la mobilisation des ressources et la croissance économique au niveau sous-National, la décentralisation de l’application de la politique environnementale a plutôt été une «main saisissant» dans la gestion environnementale. Dans le but de fournir une compréhension meilleure et détaillée du de facto fédéralisme environnemental en Chine, cette thèse suit les différents critiques dans la littérature et teste empiriquement pour chacun d'eux dans le contexte spécifique chinois. En résumé, les résultats empiriques trouvés dans cette thèse soutiennent l'existence de problèmes liés à l'externalité environnementale, à l'interaction stratégique et aux incitations politiques qui conduisent au compromis de l’environnement. Par ailleurs, la décentralisation budgétaire en cours est susceptible de renforcer les interactions interprovinciales conduites par la concurrence pour capitaux; le déséquilibre fiscal est plus préjudiciable à l'environnement dans les provinces pauvres. Ces résultats appellent à un «nouveau fédéralisme environnemental» et une réforme des incitations, afin de transformer le de facto fédéralisme environnemental chinois d’une «main saisissant» à un «coup de main» pour une meilleure gouvernance environnementale. / In the literature, debate around environmental federalism is lasting and inconclusive. China has followed the global tendency of decentralization and has adopted a de facto environmental federalism. In this broad and diverse country, local knowledge and expertise is necessary to develop proper solutions for many environmental problems with local and regional nature. However, despite the adopted de facto environmental federalism, dramatic environmental crises and policy failures widespread in China. In particular, more recently, this country has seen arise many problems predicted by the opponents of decentralization. It appears that, contrary to the fiscal decentralization which has been a “helping hand” in resource mobilization and economic growth at the sub-National level, the decentralization of environmental policy implementation has rather been a “grabbing hand” in environmental management. With the purpose of providing a better and detailed understanding of the de facto environmental federalism in China, this thesis follows the different critics in the literature and test empirically for each of them in the Chinese-Specific context. In summary, empirical results found in this thesis support the existence of problems related to environmental externality, strategic interaction and politically incentivized environment-Sacrificing behaviors. Moreover, the current fiscal decentralization is likely to strengthen the capital-Competition driven inter-Provincial interaction; fiscal imbalance is more environmentally detrimental in poor provinces. These findings call for a “new environmental federalism” and a reform of incentives, in order to transform the Chinese de facto environmental federalism from a “grabbing hand” to a “helping hand” for better environmental governance.

The aim of the study emanates from the research question: Is the incorporation of the integrated water resource management (IWRM) approach in South Africa’s water policy, from a political point of view, appropriate? The IWRM approach, as applied to developing countries, originated in developed countries with predominantly homogeneous societies where there is a broad commitment to democratic principles, the free market system and individualism. Societies in developing countries do not necessarily share the same characteristics associated with those in developed countries. South Africa, classified as a developing country, has a multicultural society that reflects an income disparity and two major cultures, namely a modernised Western and a traditional African culture. As a result two subsidiary research questions follow: Can the commitment and impartiality of all the stakeholders that partake in the decision-making processes of water institutions at all levels be ensured? Is it possible to establish small, efficient and financially viable bureaucratic structures (water institutions) at the level of water management areas (WMA)? The study uses the public choice theory to assess the IWRM approach in selected developed and developing countries. The applicability of public choice concepts with reference to the differences between Western and African cultures are briefly alluded to. It also defines the IWRM approach and certain IWRM elements that have political implications for society at large. The study describes specific elements of the IWRM approach in France and Australia and the relative successes thereof in terms of the public choice theory. The implementation of the IWRM approach in Indochina and selective developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are described to highlight certain institutional problems, inadequate financial resources, the lack of capacity and various cultural aspects that inhibit the efficiency and effectiveness of the IWRM approach. In the analysis of South Africa’s water policy, the study found that the multicultural nature of society, the unequal levels of economic development and the limited level of technological and scientific knowledge, will make it extremely difficult to implement the IWRM approach without contextualising it. According to the public choice theory, the net benefits of a policy for a society must outweigh the costs. If not, the policy needs to be either adjusted or abandoned. Since none of the proposed catchment management agencies (CMA) were established between 1998 and 2001, it is not possible to come to a verifiable conclusion. However, the study indicates that the opportunity costs of the IWRM approach are likely to outweigh the benefits for society. Other aspects that necessitate a re-evaluation of South Africa’s water policy are the holistic element of the IWRM approach and the demarcation of WMAs. The study identifies three options: The first option is to revert back to the riparian principle. The second option is to either revisit the concept of public participation, or to re-delineate the WMAs. The third and most favourable option is to abandon the concept of public participation. It would not only negate the need for CMAs (and indirectly WMAs), but would also greatly simplify the management of water resources. / Dissertation (M (Political and Policy Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Political Sciences / unrestricted

This text aims to identify the main features of development of sickness insurance in the Czech lands. In the second half of the 19th century new mutual benefit societies started to emerge -- similarly like in Great Britain and the United States, and in the same time in 1888 the compulsory workers sick insurance was introduced. In the first part, this work offers analytical framework for analysis of this development, especially the approach of the public choice school, the concept of cognitive hazard and of social capital. In second part, the author gives historical overview of the era, brief overview of the development of so-called Friendly societies in Great Britain and the United States and an analysis of compulsory workers sick insurance and voluntary societies in Bohemia. The analysis shows the role of interest groups (workers movement, employers, physicians etc.) that shaped the compulsory insurance in similar way as captured in the Anglo-Saxon experience. The push-through of the compulsory insurance strengthens their positions. The application of social capital and cognitive hazard concept reveals that the compulsory insurance could bring unintended cost in the long run by lowering a voluntary cooperation.

Public projects are still subject of heated discussions, especially with the respect to their efficiency that is usually not sufficient enough. In spite of existence of many ways how to increase their efficiency, it is readily possible to identify one fundamental criterion which is high-quality information for decision-making. It is important to deliver high-quality information to those who make decision in order to reduce wastage of the public funds on not efficient public projects. All substantial information about effects incurred by project's realization can be offered by the Cost-Benefit analysis. The Cost Benefit analysis should be prepared for each significant public project to prevent from realization of ineffective ones. It is essential to process each Cost-Benefit analysis in required qualitative level for making right decision. Purpose of this thesis is appraisal of usefulness of the Cost-Benefit analysis for specific purposes of the public sector and assessment of indexes used in the Analysis. In the thesis will be introduced public projects, related public sector and evaluation of public projects. Subsequently, the Cost-Benefit analysis itself will be presented as well as steps for processing high-quality Cost-Benefit analysis. The emphasis will be focused at discount rate and its determination, since I consider it as the critical issue of the Cost-Benefit analysis. A practical example of the Cost-Benefit analysis will be presented at the end of this thesis.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’introduire de manière explicite les caractéristiques personnelles des décideurs publics dans l’analyse de processus politiques français. Trois cas sont successivement analysés, soulevant chacun une problématique distincte. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse à l’échelon municipal, et se base sur un jeu de données original comportant des informations sur l’ensemble des maires des municipalités de plus de 10000 habitants entre 2000 et 2012. L’objectif est de décrire comment l’influence idiosyncratique d’un maire sur la politique d’investissement municipal impacte sa probabilité de réélection. Les résultats indiquent que plus la taille de la municipalité augmente, moins les électeurs se basent sur ce type d’information. Le second chapitre a pour objet la production législative française, et s’appuie également sur une base de données originale. Un double cycle de production législative émerge, généré par les élections présidentielles et législatives. Il apparaît également que les caractéristiques personnelles des ministres influencent la stratégie du gouvernement, notamment l’âge et l’expérience. Enfin, le troisième chapitre se focalise sur l’impact de la compétition électorale sur le processus de recrutement politique. Un important travail de collecte de données concernant la production parlementaire de chaque député de la Ve République permet d’étudier cette relation ainsi que son évolution au cours de la période 1959-2012. Il en ressort que les députés élus dans des circonscriptions compétitives ont une activité parlementaire plus importante, toutes choses égales par ailleurs. Cependant, ce lien entre activité et compétition est en constante diminution depuis les années 1980. / The aim of this thesis is to explicitly introduce the decision-maker into the empirical analysis of different political processes in the French context. Three cases are successively analyzed,each raising a specific problematic. The first chapter focuses on French municipalities. A new original dataset, covering mayors of municipalities of more than 10,000 inhabitants over the period 2000-2012, underpins the study. The objective is to investigate to what extentthe mayor’s personal influence on the investment policy affects his/her reelection probability. Results show that this information plays a significant role only in small municipalities. Chapter twostudies the French legislative production, exploiting another original dataset. A dual cycle of the production of laws emerges, connected to both the presidential and the legislative elections. A link between government members’ personal characteristics and legislative output is established. Finally, chapter three investigates the relationship between electoral competition and political selection. A third important dataset providing data about the individual parliamentary work of the deputies over the period 1958-2012 allows such an analysis. Resultsindicate that deputies elected in contested districts have a higher overall productivity. The intensity of the relationship reached its peak in the 1980’s, but is continuously decreasing since then.

In this thesis I look at economic statecraft and try to examine why sanctions continue when they are failing, and why countries continue to use them despite debatable claims for success. For example, Hufbauer et. al.'s 2009 analysis shows sanctions only work 34% of the time, Pape (1997) estimates only 5%. Despite this economic statecraft is having a resurgence under the name "geoeconomics". This thesis builds off Kaempfer and Lowenberg's 1988 "Public Choice" theory of international economic sanctions. It hypothesises that in certain cases the domestic interests will be the primary goal of sanctions and therefore should be the primary focus of judging the success or failure of sanctions. Russia's 2014 food import ban is analysed to show that, despite failure to achieve any international goals, it is being successful at achieving the domestic goal of supporting Russian agriculture. The implications being that all current quantitative analysis of economic sanctions have potentially incorrectly measured sanctions as failures by not measuring them against the actual goals of the policies. Further research into this area to establish just how often sanctions are used primarily for domestic reasons, but even sanctions where domestic goals are only of secondary importance, their existence still needs to be...

<div>This thesis consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I investigate the effects of complexity in various voting systems on individual behavior in small group electoral competitions. Using a laboratory experiment, I observe individual behavior within one of three voting systems -- plurality, instant runoff voting (IRV), and score then automatic runoff (STAR). I then estimate subjects' behavior in three different models of bounded rationality. The estimated models are a model of Level-K thinking (Nagel, 1995), the Cognitive Hierarchy (CH) model (Camerer, et al. 2004), and a Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE) (McKelvey and Palfrey 1995). I consistently find that more complex voting systems induce lower levels of strategic thinking. This implies that policy makers desiring more sincere voting behavior could potentially achieve this through voting systems with more complex strategy sets. Of the tested behavioral models, Level-K consistently fits observed data the best, implying subjects make decisions that combine of steps of thinking with random, utility maximizing, errors.</div><div><br></div><div>In the second chapter, I investigate the relationship between the mechanisms used to select leaders and both measures of group performance and leaders' ethical behavior. Using a laboratory experiment, we measure group performance in a group minimum effort task with a leader selected using one of three mechanisms: random, a competition task, and voting. After the group task, leaders must complete a task that asks them to behave honestly or dishonestly in questions related to the groups performance. We find that leaders have a large impact on group performance when compared to those groups without leaders. Evidence for which selection mechanism performs best in terms of group performance seems mixed. On measures of honesty, the strongest evidence seems to indicate that honesty is most positively impacted through a voting selection mechanism, which differences in ethical behavior between the random and competition selection treatments are negligible.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>In the third chapter, I provide an investigation into the factors and conditions that drive "free riding" behavior in dynamic innovation contests. Starting from a dynamic innovation contest model from Halac, et al. (2017), I construct a two period dynamic innovation contest game. From there, I provide a theoretical background and derivation of mixed strategies that can be interpreted as an agent's degree to which they engage in free riding behavior, namely through allowing their opponent to exert effort in order to uncover information about an uncertain state of the world. I show certain conditions must be fulfilled in order to induce free riding in equilibrium, and also analytically show the impact of changing contest prize structures on the degree of free riding. I end this paper with an experimental design to test these various theoretical conclusions in a laboratory setting while also considering the behavioral observations recorded in studies investigating similar contest models and provide a plan to analyze the data collected by this laboratory experiment.</div><div><br></div><div>All data collected for this study consists of individual human subject data collected from laboratory experiments. Project procedures have been conducted in accordance with Purdue's internal review board approval and known consent from all participants was obtained.</div>

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Swedish debate about integrity represented by the GDPR regulation. The study focuses on and compares the debate within the parliament and the debate within the media. Critical discourse analysis has been the method used to discover how the debate about GDPR in Sweden has developed and shaped. To interpret the result of the study the political science theories public choice and normative institutionalism have been used. The three most dominant discourses in the debate were the relationship between GDPR and Swedish law, how GDPR affects innovation and economic growth and also insight in how actors collect and handles personal data. It can also be concluded that the debate within the parliament is rather absent due to lack of disagreement. The debate that occurred within the media contains a higher level of conflict and appears to be more dynamic. Both theories used to interpret the result can be, to some extent, useful when trying to understand why the debate turned out the way it did. To gain more understanding about political conflicts concerning integrity within the information society more studies need to be accomplished.

Local governments do not operate in a vacuum. Instead, they are part of a complex “polycentric” system of governments where politically autonomous and self-ruled cities compete with one another over taxable wealth. Missing from the scholarship on metropolitan governance is an understanding of the factors driving competition among local governments. The purpose of this dissertation is to fill this gap by examining how interjurisdictional competition over economic development impacts a city’s choice of strategies for attracting business and residential investment and how those strategies affect revenue collection. First, this dissertation examines whether cities, knowing the economic development strategies of their neighboring cities, pursue similar types of businesses? Or do cities strategically target different types of businesses as a way to avoid the negative consequences of competition? Second, this dissertation explores what impact the decision to pursue similar or dissimilar businesses has on the revenue collection of local governments. Using spatial data analysis to analyze a sample of 2,299 cities, this dissertation finds general support for both theoretical frameworks presented. Overall, the findings from both analyses provide unique insights into metropolitan governance and interjurisdictional competition.