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This article discusses one of the most important institutions in the modern world, namely public bureaucracies, from a comparative perspective. Bureaucratic organizations can be seen as a result of handling dilemmas along two critical dimensions. The first dimension concerns whether bureaucrats should be autonomous or, on the contrary, directly accountable to their political masters. The second dimension is about whether bureaucrats should always be guided by the letter of the law, strictly following established rules, or, on the contrary, guided by the principle of management, searching for the most efficient solution. We review the extensive recent research on the effects of different ways of organizing public bureaucracies along these two dimensions. Specifically, we look at three fundamental outcomes: economic development, corruption, and the quality of public services. We conclude by discussing the pros and cons of the four types of bureaucracies—legalistic (accountability and law), populistic (accountability and management), Weberian (autonomy and law), and liberal (autonomy and management)—and how they relate to, but do not overlap with, the concept of administrative traditions.

This paper approaches the topic of conceptual metaphor and political communication from a textual-linguistic, semantic, cognitive-linguistic and argumentative perspective. The manner of implementation of conceptual metaphors in the analysed sample is in direct relationship to the text form of Borčić, N., Kanižaj, I., Kršul, S.: Conceptual Metaphor in Political interview. The basic language, or textual function of a political interview is the informative-persuasive function. Political communication presents a form of interaction, i.e. public communication which develops through available linguistic knowledge in the area of political activity. The persuasive effect of political interviews builds on the original feature of rhetoric as the power of persuasion in truthfulness and correctness of what is being said. Issuers, i.e. politicians want to challenge the recipients' own interpretation through the offered conceptual statements. Scientists who deal with language policy and conceptual metaphors in a language find the subtle expression of emotions through the use of metaphor one of the essential characteristics of a successful persuasive political communication. Conceptual metaphors in that way shape the themes of a certain society and also affect social reality by emphasizing certain parts of the theme or approach to the theme. Use of conceptual metaphors makes it possible to point out that part of the target domain to which one wants to direct the attention of the recipient. Leading politicians should know how the nation "breathes" and the language should match the powers that they have and their positions.

AbstractWe study loss aversion in elections by investigating a median voter model (full convergence in a two‐candidate election) and a model of partial divergence of policy proposals. First, we show a status quo bias, an endowment effect, and a moderating effect of policies. Second, we show the occurrence of "long‐term cycles" in policies with self‐supporting movements to the right or the left. Finally, we prove that younger societies should be more prone to change and less affected by the status quo bias than older ones.