To get a full understanding of the phenomenon of compliance costs, we need a sound theory about origin and functionality of regulations. Only if we understand where businesses regulation is coming ...from, what we want to achieve and by which means, we can combat unnecessary compliance costs of businesses.
A theoretical model about business regulation can be very helpful to understand and answer these questions about origin and functionality. From this model, it appears that different actors are playing an active role in this process of law making, each from their own perspective.
Autor u tekstu propituje i ističe elemente za prosudbu života i djela najvećeg hrvatskog ekonomiste našega doba. Tekst je napisan u četiri dijela. U prvom se opisuje životni put Branka Horvata, u ...drugom se opširnije analizira znanstveni opus i doprinos Branka Horvata ekonomskoj znanosti, s osobitim osvrtom na njegove rezultate u istraživanjima fenomena suvremene ekonomske teorije, ekonomske politike te razvitka ekonomske i političke demokracije i društvene pravde. Napokon, autor analizira i pedagošku djelatnost Branka Horvata, kao dugogodišnjeg sveučilišnog profesora. Tekst završava zaključnim tezama.
Résumé. - Pendant de longues années après le début de la pérestroïka, Moscou apparaissait comme figée sous le poids accumulé des «glaciations» de l'ère soviétique. Toutes ces rigidités sont ...bouleversées par l'irruption subite du changement urbain. Les années 1992-1994 apparaissent tournantes. Derrière l'accélération des rythmes de la capitale et l'incertitude sur ses nouvelles stratifications sociales, se cachent en fait des remaniements beaucoup plus profonds encore dans les jeux d'acteurs urbains. La situation semble relativement simple dans la ville soviétique. Tout émane des structures centralisées de l'Etat et du Parti qui concentrent les principes idéologiques, les organes de décision et les moyens financiers de l'investissement. La chaîne descendante des pouvoirs urbains était aussi la preuve de la vraie schizophrénie de la société soviétique, écartelée entre son modèle théorique et son fonctionnement réel. Dans une certaine mesure, le triangle actuel - pouvoir politique municipal, pouvoir économique des investisseurs privés, pouvoir social des habitants - renvoie à un fonctionnement plus habituel. L'apprentissage du libéralisme économique et des articulations dans une société mixte entre privé et public, débouche sur l'accouchement difficile de la démocratie politique. Moscou est un bon laboratoire de ces interrogations des métropoles d'aujourd'hui.
Abstract. - For many years after the start of the perestroika, Moscow seemed frozen under the accumulated weight of the "glaciation" produced by the Soviet era. This inflexibility was overthrown by the sudden eruption of urban change. The years 1992-1994 stand out as turning points. Hidden behind the capital's accelerated rhythm and the uncertainty over its new social stratifications, there are in fact even deeper changes in the strategies of urban players. The situation seems relatively simple in the Soviet town. Everything emanates from the centralized structures of the State and the Party which concentrate the ideological principles, the decision-making bodies and financial means for investment. The descending chain of urban power was also the proof of the true schizophrenia of Soviet society, torn between its theoretical model and its actual operation. To a certain extent, the current triangle - municipal political power, economic power of private investors, social power of the inhabitants - reflects a more usual pattern. The apprenticeship of economic liberalism and articulations in a society split between private and public, leads to the difficult birth of political democracy. Moscow is a good laboratory to analyze the questions of today's metropolises.
Introduction
Comparative Politics,
04/2011
Book Chapter
This chapter contains sections titled:
Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method
The Evolution of Comparative Politics
The Plan of this Book
References
This paper examines the extent to which social networks among indigenous peoples have a significant effect on a variety of human capital investment and economic activities, such as school attendance ...and work among teenage boys and girls, and migration, welfare participation, employment status, occupation and sector of employment among adult males and females. The analysis uses data from the 10 percent population sample of the 2000 Population and Housing Census of Mexico and an empirical strategy that allows taking into account the role of municipality and language group fixed effects. The authors confirm empirically that social network effects play an important role in the economic decisions of indigenous people, especially in rural areas. The analysis also provides evidence that better access to basic services, such as water and electricity, increases the size and strength of network effects in rural areas.
Institutions are a major field of interest in the study of development processes. The authors contribute to this discussion concentrating our research on political institutions and their effect on ...the non-income dimensions of human development. First, they elaborate a theoretical argument why and under what conditions democracies compared to autocratic political systems might perform better with regards to the provision of public goods. Due to higher redistributive concerns matched to the needs of the population democracies should show a higher level of human development. In the following they analyze whether our theoretical expectations are supported by empirical facts. The authors perform a static panel analysis over the period of 1970 to 2003. The model confirms that living in a democratic system positively affects human development measured by life expectancy and literacy rates even controlling for GDP. By analyzing interaction effects they find that the performance of democracy is rather independent of the circumstances. However, democracy leads to more redistribution in favor of health provision in more unequal societies.
Democracies rarely if ever fight one another, but they participate in wars as frequently as autocracies. They tend to win the wars in which they participate. Democracies frequently build large ...alliances in wartime, but not only with other democracies. From time to time democracies intervene militarily in ongoing conflicts. The democratic peace may contribute to a normative justification for such interventions, for the purpose of promoting democracy and eventually for the promotion of peace. This is reinforced by an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention. Democracies may have a motivation to intervene in non-democracies, even in the absence of ongoing conflict, for the purpose of regime change. The recent Iraq War may be interpreted in this perspective. A strong version of this type of foreign policy may be interpreted as a democratic crusade. The paper examines the normative and theoretical foundations of democratic interventionism. An empirical investigation of interventions in the period 1960-96 indicates that democracies intervene quite frequently, but rarely against other democracies. In the short term, democratic intervention appears to be successfully promoting democratization, but the target states tend to end up among the unstable semi-democracies. The most widely publicized recent interventions are targeted on poor or resource-dependent countries in non-democratic neighborhoods. Previous research has found these characteristics to reduce the prospects for stable democracy. Thus, forced democratization is unpredictable with regard to achieving long-term democracy and potentially harmful with regard to securing peace. But short-term military successes may stimulate more interventions until the negative consequences become more visible.
The theoretical debate on democracy for a longer period is one of the most dynamic debates within the political sciences, associated with plenty of controversies and paradoxes in terms of lack of ...consistent principles of functions of contemporary democracies. Various authors continue to disagree regarding the exact foundations of democratic systems, their ideal principles and optimal outcomes for these systems as a result of functioning and failures of the democracy. The situation then is not a source of paradoxes, but rather it brings in visible the paradoxes of functioning of the contemporary political democracies often associated with camouflages under the flag of democracy and abuses under the umbrella of democratic rhetoric in many political processes around the world. The paradoxes of the frontier line what is allowed and what not in a democracy often serves as a starting point for justification of the abuses and misinterpretation of democratic values by the authorities?! The paper is interested in exploring how closely these various conceptualizations of democracy are related to our intuitive sense of what democracy means, or should mean?! In the second part of the paper, using the methods of case study and functional analyses the paradoxes are considered on the practices of the contemporary democracies for the countries in transition of the Balkans, especially discussing the manifestations of the illiberal democratic tendencies.
