This thesis studies the poor development performance of resource-rich developing economies, known as the resource curse. In the first chapter we provide a comprehensive literature review of the topic and the channels through which resource abundance can result in the resource curse. Issues of corruption and governance have been emphasised to be the main driver of the resource curse. This has been illustrated by a negative relationship between resource abundance and corruption control in the literature. However, there is a gap in how natural resources facilitate corruption. In the second chapter, using empirical analysis, we study the role of taxation in the relationship between natural resources and corruption. Taxation is usually seen as a social contract between citizens and government -- people pay taxes and in return they hold their government accountable for efficient allocation of their taxes. Resource abundance shifts the reliance of government from tax incomes to resource rents. People therefore, have no sustainable mechanism to hold their government responsible for corruption and wrongdoings inside public institutions. Using different econometric methods, Pooled OLS, Fixed Effects and 3SLS, our results show that natural resource revenues crowd out incomes from tax revenues. Meanwhile, taxation has a positive and significant impact on the control of corruption throughout our analysis. The results suggest that resource-rich developing countries should invest in building their tax systems to increase their non-resource tax revenues. This will increase state capacity and demand for accountability in the public sector among citizens and hence decreases corruption. Related to our second chapter, in the third chapter we study a cash transfer programme, known as oil-to-cash, which has gained support as a tool to re-establish taxation and fight corruption. Under such a plan, resource revenues are distributed directly among the public and then each citizen is taxed optimally. Through this, government relies directly and fully on its citizens for its income. Hence, taxation is reinstated and the social contract is revived. Within a general equilibrium model we show how this happens and what the implications are of the oil-to-cash programme for economic growth. Our results clearly show how corruption results in a resource curse. Furthermore, the model explains the variation that is seen in the degree of the resource curse across countries. The study also analyses the practical barriers of the oil-to-cash plan. The study suggests that parallel to (or even prior to) such a plan countries need to invest in building their tax system and increasing their administrative capacities.

Nunca antes na história os seres humanos conviveram com tantos robôs. Nesse contexto, a intensificação do processo de robotização militar está intimamente relacionada à emergência da Era Digital e à digitalização das forças armadas – entendida como a utilização acelerada de TIC para o desempenho de funções militares tradicionais. Apenas nos Estados Unidos, mais de trinta sistemas estão em desenvolvimento e/ou em operação neste momento. Estima-se que o país detenha mais de vinte mil robôs capazes de operar em terra, no mar e no ar. Este trabalho dedica-se ao estudo amplo do processo de robotização das forças armadas. Mais especificamente, o trabalho busca cumprir dois objetivos principais. O primeiro está relacionado à necessidade de compreender a relação entre guerra e tecnologia na Era Digital. O segundo objetivo da tese é verificar de que forma as forças armadas lidam com a incorporação desses sistemas na atualidade. Para tanto, o trabalho utiliza um modelo desenvolvido para auxiliar no planejamento e na análise de capacidades militares conhecido como “desenho de força”. A pesquisa foi baseada, mas não está restrita, ao estudo de caso dos Estados Unidos, a partir do qual busca-se oferecer ao leitor lições derivadas da experiência estadunidense. / Humans have never lived with so many robots. In this context, the intensification of military robotization is closely related to the emergence of the Digital Age and to the digitization of the armed forces – understood as the accelerated use of ICT to perform traditional military functions. In the United States, more than thirty systems are currently under development and/or operating. It is estimated that the country has more than twenty thousand robots capable of operating on land, at sea and in the air. This work is therefore dedicated to the broad study of military robotization. More specifically, it seeks to fulfill two main objectives. The first one is related to the need to understand the relationship between war and technology in the Digital Age. The second objective of the thesis is to verify how the military has been dealing with the incorporation of such systems. In order to do so, the dissertation uses a model developed to aid in the planning and analysis of military capabilities known as “force design”. It draws from, but is not limited to, studying the case of the United States, from which the dissertation intends to derive broader lessons applicable to other contexts.

Nunca antes na história os seres humanos conviveram com tantos robôs. Nesse contexto, a intensificação do processo de robotização militar está intimamente relacionada à emergência da Era Digital e à digitalização das forças armadas – entendida como a utilização acelerada de TIC para o desempenho de funções militares tradicionais. Apenas nos Estados Unidos, mais de trinta sistemas estão em desenvolvimento e/ou em operação neste momento. Estima-se que o país detenha mais de vinte mil robôs capazes de operar em terra, no mar e no ar. Este trabalho dedica-se ao estudo amplo do processo de robotização das forças armadas. Mais especificamente, o trabalho busca cumprir dois objetivos principais. O primeiro está relacionado à necessidade de compreender a relação entre guerra e tecnologia na Era Digital. O segundo objetivo da tese é verificar de que forma as forças armadas lidam com a incorporação desses sistemas na atualidade. Para tanto, o trabalho utiliza um modelo desenvolvido para auxiliar no planejamento e na análise de capacidades militares conhecido como “desenho de força”. A pesquisa foi baseada, mas não está restrita, ao estudo de caso dos Estados Unidos, a partir do qual busca-se oferecer ao leitor lições derivadas da experiência estadunidense. / Humans have never lived with so many robots. In this context, the intensification of military robotization is closely related to the emergence of the Digital Age and to the digitization of the armed forces – understood as the accelerated use of ICT to perform traditional military functions. In the United States, more than thirty systems are currently under development and/or operating. It is estimated that the country has more than twenty thousand robots capable of operating on land, at sea and in the air. This work is therefore dedicated to the broad study of military robotization. More specifically, it seeks to fulfill two main objectives. The first one is related to the need to understand the relationship between war and technology in the Digital Age. The second objective of the thesis is to verify how the military has been dealing with the incorporation of such systems. In order to do so, the dissertation uses a model developed to aid in the planning and analysis of military capabilities known as “force design”. It draws from, but is not limited to, studying the case of the United States, from which the dissertation intends to derive broader lessons applicable to other contexts.

El Programa Nacional de Alimentación Escolar Qali Warma fue creado como una mejor alternativa al anterior programa, cerrado en medio del escándalo y la deslegitimación. Sin embargo, desde su implementación, Qali Warma ha sido fuente de escándalos mediáticos constantes, así como de propuestas de mejora y cambio. Esta investigación se acerca a su implementación desde los espacios de monitoreo de las escuelas, para comprender las lógicas políticas y tecnocráticas dentro del programa y analizar las tensiones producidas por ellas durante las actividades de monitoreo. También analizamos las posibilidades de acción de los monitores a través de la comparación de su trabajo en dos regiones muy diferentes de Perú: Lambayeque y Junín. Finalmente, proponemos un nuevo enfoque para pensar la implementación de programas sociales y el monitoreo en estos.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans since the adoption of the governance mandate on overall government capability. The study will explore whether the presence of IMF loans in developing countries enhances state capacity. Administrative capacity is of particular importance because it is a requisite for the integration of state and society in the national political arena and encourages joint involvement of government and citizenry in overall representation of societal interests. The model designed to test the two primary hypotheses is comprised of a simultaneous system of equations. Despite criticisms of IMF conditionality arrangements, it appears that these programs are largely effective at increasing administrative capacity, an important factor in achieving economic growth and national ownership of IMF development programs.

Children’s rights are human rights, regardless their vulnerability and dependence on adults. However, the situation of children’s rights in Haiti has always been delicate and it became even more fragile in the aftermath of the 2010 Earthquake and the 2016 Hurricane Matthew. Within this paper, the sociology of disaster theory together with case study and legal analysis as methods aim at analysing the effects of the two natural disasters on Haitian children’s rights. The paper also seeks to understand whether any differences could be noticed between the outcomes of the two catastrophes as well as to analyse the international and national institutional response to the aforementioned disasters. It is concluded that the two natural disasters had an enormous impact on the most important rights of Haitian children. Not many differences could be noticed, between the two events, and regardless the aid provided by the international community, Haitian children’s rights are still neglected, as we speak.

Scholars generally assume that states are shamed for their own behavior, but they can also be shamed for the lack of investigation for violence perpetrated by domestic non-state actors. I engage this previously-unstudied phenomenon and develop a theory to explain how states will respond to being shamed for failing to control domestic violence. I examine two types of outcomes: the governments' change in behavior, and the accountability efforts against state agents that have abused human rights. For the government's reaction to being shamed for violence from non-state organizations, I develop a theory to examine changes in coercive state capacity – including military and police personnel – since this reaction may largely exacerbate human rights violations. I hypothesize that states shamed due to abuses by violent non-state organizations (VNSO) will increase military personnel to halt criminal violence and respond to the international spotlight. I then examine the relationship between naming and shaming states over physical integrity abuses by different types of perpetrators and human rights prosecutions. Using newly coded data on the types of perpetrators shamed in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) country reports, I find that shaming over abuses that include VNSO as perpetrators decreases the likelihood of expanding their police force when the state has the military patrolling the streets and is likely to increase the predicted number of police prosecutions, particularly if the shaming is over killings from VNSOs. Lastly, I examine how changes in coercive capacity affect human rights violations and the number of violent episodes from VNSOs.

Elections are a core democratic procedure intended to peacefully transfer power between political parties. However, in many parts of the world, elections are associated with the strategic use of violence to affect results and future power dynamics. This study tests a current theory on how the state apparatus affects challengers’ and incumbents’ perpetration of electoral violence. It hypothesizes that incumbents are the main perpetrator of electoral violence because they have a comparative advantage through the coercive state apparatus. This makes resorting to election violence more rational for incumbents. The hypothesis is empirically tested by conducting a logistic regression on global data from the DECO and QoG datasets. The results are inconclusive due to statistical insignificance and low confidence in the accuracy of the expected relationship. Moreover, the inconclusive result is assumably affected by scarce and incompatible data. While the result is inconclusive, the paper contributes to research by providing descriptive statistics on the main perpetrator of electoral violence. Furthermore, the research design can also be a reference for future research on how state capacity affects electoral violence.

This thesis aims to generate a model to answer why there is a notable gap in legislative action with regards to expanding and modernizing LGBTQIA+ rights between Sweden and Denmark and the other Nordic countries, groups described by Jens Rydström as the Progressive Core and Conservative Periphery respectively. In order to do so, there is an analysis of the applicability of Rydström’s model to legislative history. This legal review is then applied to the shared colonial experiences of Norway, Iceland, Finland, and the Faroe Islands to generate the beginnings of an explanatory model. The model is then complexified by using the shared colonialist past as an exemplar of lost state capacity before and after independence. This model of lost state capacity is then applied not only to the above gap, but also to the even larger legislative gap between action in the above groups and in a new category consisting of Finland and the Faroe Islands. The last step is an in-depth application of this model to the Finnish case in comparison to the Progressive Core and the Conservative Periphery. This is accomplished in two ways: first through a content analysis of party platforms from five separate eras of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian politics, and, secondly, through a qualitative analysis of the legislative action data.

[pt] Projetos de infraestrutura pública, como estradas e escolas, são considerados propulsores do desenvolvimento. No entanto, democracias em desenvolvimento falham sistematicamente em fornecer esses investimentos, e projetos semi-acabados são um problema comum. Usando um novo banco de dados com mais de 75.000 pequenos projetos de desenvolvimento no Brasil, estimamos que mais de 40 por cento dos projetos iniciados nunca são concluídos. Empregando um design de regressão em descontinuidade em eleições acirradas de prefeituras brasileiras, descobrimos que a alternância partidária afeta negativamente a entrega de projetos herdados em uma fase de construção, enquanto causa respostas positivas na entrega de projetos mais recentes. Argumentamos que nossos resultados são consistentes com uma teoria que vincula a não conclusão de projetos a incentivos eleitorais, em que as ineficiências na entrega de projetos são motivadas por uma dinâmica de reivindicação de crédito que desestimula a conclusão de obras herdadas da oposição. Nossas resultados destacam a importância de isolar políticas públicas do processo eleitoral na política local. / [en] Public infrastructure projects like roads and schools have been regarded as drivers of development, yet developing democracies systematically fail to deliver such investments, and half-finished projects are a common issue. Using a novel database of over 75,000 small development projects in Brazil, we estimate that more than 40 per cent of projects that start are never completed. Employing a close races regression discontinuity design on Brazilian mayoral elections, we find that turnover negatively impacts the delivery of projects inherited in a construction stage, while causes positive responses on the delivery of more recent projects. We argue that our results are consistent with a theory linking project non-conclusion to electoral incentives, where inefficiencies on project procurement are driven by a credit-claim dynamics that disincentives the conclusion of works inherited from the opposition. Our findings highlight the importance of insulating policies from the electoral process in local politics.