The Master's thesis 'The liberalization of the European railways market' explains the process of infrastructure and management separation. The main goal of this thesis is to analyze the liberalization process of the rail freight market in Europe. This is achieved by causal and relational analysis, which provides profound insights into the current and historical liberalization of the rail freight market. The secondary aim of this thesis is to apply the analysis of the rail freight market in Slovakia so as to explore the implementation of liberalization rules. The thesis concludes with a brief analysis of the competitiveness of the Slovakian rail freight market today.

This thesis focuses on the comparison of tax reform in four selected OECD countries. For the purposes of this study were chosen following countries: Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America. The aim is to make mutual comparison of tax reforms. In all these countries, especially in the last ten years many changes and each country is dealt with differently. While the Czech Republic and Slovakia seek to adapt to EU legislation, tax system and then fairer taxation, in Germany, the main objective was to reduce the tax cost of labor and in the USA modernization, simplification and computerization of taxation. The first part of this thesis explains the tax reform and its historical development up to the present economic crisis. The second part describes the tax systems and reforms in each country. In the last chapter there is a mutual comparison of these reforms from different perspectives and at the end are a few suggestions for future reforms.

This diploma thesis deals with the tax reform 2008 in the Czech Republice and its results. The aim is to assess how satisfied fiscal and socio-economic objectives of tax reform in 2008 in the Czech republic. The first chapter focuses on tax reform and tax theory. The second chapter presents a tax reform proposal to set targets. The third chapter focuses on the evaluation of the objectives set.

Le gouvernement égyptien a lancé en 1997, sous la pression des bailleurs de fonds, dans un contexte dediffusion du New Public Management une réforme visant à améliorer la qualité dans les hôpitaux publics.Cette réforme a été globalement un échec, à tel point qu’une nouvelle réforme a été mise en œuvre en 2007.L’échec de ces deux réformes a été largement documenté dans la presse.Nous montrons que les approches qualité retenues par ces réformes sont essentiellement d’inspiration nord-américaine.Leur transplantation dans un contexte culturel différent, celui de l’Egypte, pose un problème demanagement interculturel, mais aussi, plus globalement, de prise en compte du contexte économique etsocial. Les méthodes de travail, le style de communication, les conceptions du temps ou de l’autorité sontdifférentes et engendrent des malentendus. Nos enquêtes de terrain ont montré à quel point il existe undécalage entre les textes sur la qualité, conçus dans un contexte nord-américain, et leur application enEgypte.Cependant, malgré la différence entre des normes conçues dans un contexte qui est essentiellement celui del’Amérique du Nord et le contexte culturel égyptien, le succès a occasionnellement été au rendez-vous. Cecinous a amenée à analyser la manière dont la transposition des outils de management de la qualité s’étaitopérée dans les rares cas de succès. Nous mettons en évidence le rôle des acteurs.Nous mobilisons donc dans notre recherche la théorie néo-institutionnelle et la théorie de la structuration, eten particulier le concept d’interaction action/structure. / In 1997, the Egyptian government launched a reform aimed at improving quality in public hospitals. Thisreform has largely been a failure, to the point that a new reform was implemented in 2007. The failure ofthese two reforms has been widely documented. Our masters’ degree research shows what gap there isbetween texts on quality, probably imported without thinking, from other countries, and their application.Working methods, styles of communication, conceptions of time and authority are different and causemisunderstandings. It appears difficult to make systems and people with different cultures and norms ofbehaviors work together.Our research focuses on the confrontation between two cultures through the implementation of qualityprocedures in public hospitals in Egypt. We show that these approaches are essentially of North Americaninspiration. However, despite the difference between standards developed in a context different from theEgyptian one, success has occasionally been achieved. This leads us to formulate the following question:How is, in a case of success, the transposition of management tools performed from the North Americancontext to an Egyptian context?In order to answer this question we are using the concept of interaction between action / structure, borrowedfrom the neo-institutional theory and from structuration theory.

Cette thèse s’articule en trois essais qui contribuent à la littérature en économie politique des pays en voie de développement. Le premier chapitre étudie l’impact des distorsions dans la representation législative des provinces au sein du Congrès argentin dans la distribution des revenus fédéraux. Le chapitre 1 est coécrit avec Sebastián Galiani (University of Maryland) et Gustavo Torrens (University of Indiana). En utilisant trois types de variations exogènes dans la representation legislative des provinces on montre que des changements dans le nombre de sièges n’a aucun effet sur le montant de révenus fédéraux que chaque province reçoit. Le deuxième chapitre (co-écrit avec S. Galiani et G. Torrens) analyse la dynamique des réformes structurelles dans les pays en voie de développement, en présence d’organisations internationales pourvoyeuses de fonds. Nous développons un modèle dynamique où on montre que ces organisations modifient l’équilibre politique et peuvent induire des pays à sur-reformer et les exposer à un cycle de réformes et contre-réformes. Le troisième chapitre de cette thèse étudie l’impact des nouvelles technologies d’information sur le comportement politique des jeunes en Argentine. J’analyse l’impact d’un programme de distribution d’ordinateurs portables ciblé aux étudiants des écoles secondaires, qui ont voté pour la première fois après une baisse de l’age du droit de vote à 16 ans. Je trouve que l’accès au programme a un effet négatif dans leur taux de participation aux élections; des données complementaires montrent que l’utilisation qu’ils donnent aux ordinateurs est plutôt de divertissement, un fait qui conduit au désintérêt en politique. / This thesis consists of three essays on the political economy of developing countries. Chapter 1 « Fiscal Federalism and Legislative Malapportionment: Causal Evidence from Independent but Related Natural Experiments » (cowritten with S. Galiani and G. Torrens) investigates the impact of distortions in districts' representation in the Argentine Congress on the distribution of federal tax resources. Exploiting exogenous variations in the provinces' legislative representation, we show that changes in the share of seats do not result in changes in the share of federal tax resources each district gets. Chapter 2, entitled « International Organizations and Structural Reforms » (co-written with S. Galiani and G. Torrens), we analyze the dynamics of structural reforms in developing countries in the presence of international organizations that fund reforms. We develop a dynamic model in which we show that these organizations alter the local political equilibrium and may incentivize countries to over-reform. This, in turns, leaves countries prone to suffer violent cycles of reform and counter-reform. In chapter 3, « Computers and Youth Political Participation », I study the impact of new information technologies on the political behavior of young people in Argentina. I analyze the effect of a laptop distribution program aimed at high school students who voted for the first time after voting age was lowered to 16. My analysis show that exposure to the program is associated with a decrease in turnout rates of teenagers, and I present evidence that suggests that this may be due to increased entertainment use of computers, which eventually leads to apathy in politics.

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the perceptions of health professionals on the changes brought about by health system reforms in Zimbabwe. Qualitative, explorative and descriptive research was conducted to identify concerns of health care provision, as described by health professionals in Zimbabwe, and to provide awareness for future reforms. Data collection was done using semi-structured interviews. Ten health professionals from two study sites participated in the research. The findings revealed that health professionals have an understanding of health system reforms and how these have changed the way health services have been delivered over the years. There is a general outcry among health professionals regarding the deteriorating provision of quality health care amidst the challenges that the health system is facing under a collapsing economic situation. The study recommends inclusion of health professionals in policy making as well as timely dissemination of any information regarding changes in policy. The study also recommends further research on the same topic with a larger diverse group of participants. / Health Studies / M. P. H.

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The objective of this diploma thesis is to characterize the image of Luxembourgs in the Czech history textbooks in the 19th and 20th century. The work is based on the assumption that the history education takes a significant part in making a young person's identity. The thesis describes the development of this image and the way in which the educational literature reflected the atmosphere of the day and its transformation in the context of historical development. The dynamic development of the image of the Czech history of 14th and 15th centuries is the central theme of the work. It will be mainly focused on the historical figures of Bohemian Luxembourg kings: John of Luxembourg, Charles IV, Wenceslaus IV and Sigismund of Luxembourg.

The increased complexity in the public administration has shed light on cross sectoral governance and its challenges. The aim of this study is to investigate how governments organize cross sectoral policy areas. Through a comparison between the Integration Agency and the Gender Equality Agency in Sweden, I investigate how the government has organized the integration policy and the gender equality policy, as well as how the government has argued for the agencies existence. The results show how the policy areas were organized, and the conclusions of the study are that cross sectoral agencies have a difficult mission to work for a policy’s breakthrough in the society, through collaborations with non-defined agencies, municipalities, and organizations. Other agencies tend to not prioritize the cross sectoral policies. Another conclusion is that cross sectoral agencies risk termination when there is a change of government, especially if the creation of the agency lacks a wide support from the parliament. A last conclusion is that the government might react to “problems” in the policy field by both creating a new agency and terminating an existing one. This sheds light on government’s tendency to reform policy as a way of rationalizing and legitimize the policy area.

In 2000, the EU, under the influence of its current progress in the integration process, established a list of fairly ambitious goals in the economic, social and environmental issues, which it had wanted to achieve by 2010. The reform program has been named the Lisbon Strategy and has often been paraphrased as "catch up and overtake the U. S." Shortly after its launch, however, it began to be clear that such radical reform was not realistically possible, especially because of its complexity, a lack of willingness of Member States to implement these reforms and a poor set of implementation tools. The Lisbon Strategy has been followed by a new EU global reform document for 2020, Europe 2020, mainly due to the fact that the problems plaguing European countries remain the same and they haven't been adequately resolved by the Lisbon Strategy. The aim of this paper is to analyze the implementation of the Lisbon strategy in the Czech Republic, identify in which areas the CR has been successful, and in which it has lagged behind the performance of other EU members as well as where it could achieve a more significant progress. At the same time, the work examines the reasons why the Lisbon Strategy, though a very interesting concept of reform, has remained out of public interest, and its achievements haven't...