Institutional design is often argued to be an expression and an instrument of the will of powerful interests. In this dissertation, I examine the impact of diversification and changes in the economy on institutional ...

In election campaigns, parties often use value-laden words such as freedom and competitiveness, to reach out to voters with their election pledges and policy proposals. While it is well known that the presence of such words ...

Many theorists argue that there can be a duty to intervene militarily in order to halt massive violations of basic human rights in other countries. But less is known about how this duty should be assigned to particular ...

Political leaders can indirectly control policy implementation by strategically manipulating administrative institutions. In this dissertation, Mikael Holmgren argues that, precisely because administrative institutions are ...

The question of what creates government quality, or good institutions, is one of the central puzzles in modern political science. This dissertation investigates a hitherto underexplored cause: taxation. Historical research ...

Research on governance of common-pool resources (CPRs) has discussed the design of regulations that govern the usage of CPRs and the need to enforce such rules. However, the focus on self-management in this literature may ...

Corruption is a global problem, impacting on both economic and human development. The last few decades, social science research has paid increasing attention to the problem, but rit emains limited in many aspects, not least ...

The argument developed in this thesis is that negotiations in the Council of the European Union cannot be understood in isolation from the domestic politics of the member states. Building on the logic of Robert Putnam’s ...

With different environmental policy instruments (EPIs) that target individual citizens, the state can change activities or behaviors that have negative environmental consequences. However, EPIs are not likely to be implemented ...

In most studies of political behavior in Western countries, it is found that individuals with higher education participate to a greater extent in political activities than individuals with lower levels of education. ...