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The process of modelling political phenomena, subject to the methodological principles of science, creates problems at various levels of reconstructing reality. The problems result from the application of these principles in isolation from the basic goal, which is the adequacy of the model in relation to real phenomena. This adequacy is considered primarily from the point of view of the possibility of explaining the observed phenomena. The presented analysis concerns the problem of assumptions made in relation to players in game theory and their relation to the social world, but first of all, from the point of view of the relationship between subjectivity, identity and the ability to make decisions by political players based on the semantic interpretation of the world of politics.

Economists have recently underscored that the failure of market reforms in producing sustained growth in emerging markets is the result of poor advice from the International Monetary Fund, as well as of erroneous macroeconomic policies of domestic decision makers. This article proposes a complementary hypothesis. If market reforms are enacted in a political system with weak accountability institutions, then one should expect the executive to manipulate such reforms in pursuit of such old-fashioned practices as collusion between government and business, political patronage, and corruption. This, in turn, ends up depriving a given economy of potential advantages that could have accrued had the reforms promoted true competition rather than i reallocating monopolistic rents and squandering a large amount of resources.

Resumen del trabajo presentado en el 25th EAA Annual Meeting: Beyond paradigms, celebrado en Bern (Suiza), del 4 al 7 de septiembre de 2019 ; Agricultural planning is not limited to works of terracing, land allotment and hydraulic engineering. As a collective social practice, agriculture also requires the formalization of a corporate coordination system, based on devices such as calendars and ceremonies, which relate the collective of farmers with the space-time of agricultural practice in a given socio-economic and political context. We present an unusual architectural structure located in the Altos de Arica (south-central Andes), whose circular shape and combination of windows and niches echo the characteristics of a special Inca building of Cuzco¿s main square: the sunturhuasi. By means of a 3D multiscale modelling-based simulation, we demonstrate the landscape and astronomical potential of this architecture. The results are consistent with ethno-historical information about the Inca agricultural calendar and related astronomical observation practices. Taking into account the local archaeological context, we suggest that this special architecture constituted a central stage of an imperial built environment related to the political economy of maize production.

This paper uses household panel data from rural Vietnam to explore the effects of having a relative in a position of political or bureaucratic power on farmers' agricultural investment decisions. Our main result is that households significantly increase their investment in land improvement as a result of relatives moving into public office. Connections to office holders appear to be important for investment because they strengthen de facto land property rights and improve access to off-farm employment and to informal loans. The findings underline the importance of informal networks for economic behaviour in environments with developing institutions and markets. They also suggest the presence of an untapped potential for economic development: if households without connections could obtain equally strong property rights and access to credit and insurance as the well-connected households, investment levels would rise substantially.

Political risk has become a common topic in recent years. Political risk, which is considered as the main parameter of country risk by international rating agencies, affects CDS credit scores and foreign investor decisions, which are very important in international trade. This study aimed to investigate the factors that make up Turkey as an example of political risk. Accordingly, the situations involving the political risk and the effects of the country in the period after the 2001 financial crisis were analyzed. Examples of political content and measure the risk scoring system used in the PRS Group research company, including risks related to the methods and principles taken from the 2001-2019 year, Turkey was subjected to analysis with this data. Besides scores of different international rating agencies it is made by comparing a general assessment about Turkey. It was determined that the political risk damaged the country's economy, growth, investment and future. In order to reduce the perceived political risk in the international system of Turkey, emphasized the necessity of the factors affecting ratings are given.

AbstractPolitical choice is central to citizens' participation in elections. Nonetheless, little is known about the individual‐level mechanisms that link political choice and turnout. It is argued in this article that turnout decisions are shaped not only by the differences between the parties (party polarisation), but also by the closeness of parties to citizens' own ideological position (congruence), and that congruence matters more in polarised systems where more is at stake. Analysing cross‐national survey data from 80 elections, it is found that both polarisation and congruence have a mobilising effect, but that polarisation moderates the effect of congruence on turnout. To further explore the causal effect of political choice, the arrival of a new radical right‐wing party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is leveraged and the findings show that the presence of the AfD had a mobilising effect, especially for citizens with congruent views.

AbstractThis paper aims to systematically analyze and synthesize the existing research published on mental accounting and purchase decision processes by conducting a systematic literature review. Specifically, the paper aims to answer the question: "What are the effects of mental accounting on purchase decision processes?" Therefore, it identified 110 papers which contribute to achieving the research objective and which were selected using the same data collection, data analysis, and quality standards. After reviewing the identified publications, the paper finds that the existing literature can be structured along four main themes impacting purchase decision‐making processes: (1) source of funds, (2) intended use of funds, (3) pricing, and (4) payments. The paper shows that for each of the four themes there are multiple mental accounting effects with an impact on for example willingness to pay, the experienced pain of paying or the ultimate purchase decision. Further, the paper identifies potential directions for future research in mental accounting, including the influence of product categories on mental accounting, flexibility in budget setting and its impact on mental accounting behavior, long‐term effects of mental budgeting on financial wealth, integration–segregation behavior in the context of pricing, the role of consumer characteristics on mental accounting behavior, and the impact of increased financial transparency through technology on mental accounting.

Although the end of 2019 will be remembered by many as a time of failure, the last few years have also been a time of hope. This article draws lessons from the internationalist municipalist movement, and frames these experiences through the concepts of autogestion and the Right to the
City. Municipalist political strategies can provide a radical re-articulation of this hope: to argue for a municipalist politics is to argue for place-based strategies that transform our relationship to our territories, with a focus on making new forms of power emerge. It is not an alternative
to national and international perspectives, but rather the development of new ways of acting on these perspectives. Establishing the difference between progressive local government policy and a municipalist agenda, the article concludes by offering five propositions for the development of
a municipalist coordination in one British city - Manchester.

This article explores the experiences of recent returnees from Thailand to Southeast Myanmar and the complicated landscape of their future-making. In looking at the arduous journeys of Burmese migrants both in Myanmar and Thailand, I discuss how economic and political developments in reform-era Myanmar have informed Burmese migrants' idea of return migration. Seeking a better life through coming home, they have encountered factors of friction and traction that either support or impede their plans. Accordingly, I argue that the return of these Burmese workers has become frictional mobility rather than a straightforward return. Ethnic politics and land boom in the region have intensified social inequality and conflicts that eventually make the organization of return more complex. The situation allows migrants to settle in their home country, postpone the return, and continue shuttling at the border while using the pattern of movement as a livelihood. (ASEAS/GIGA)

Discipline and cohesiveness of political parties are essential for legislatures to engage in policy-making. Parties in Brazil have historically been considered ideologically weak and uninvolved in policy issues of national importance. Analyses of roll-call votes, however, have shown that parties can be disciplined government supporters. This paper tests the claim that Brazilian parties have also become programmatic actors in their own right. The paper uses statutory delegation content to test whether voting discipline translates into greater influence on the substance of legislation. The data analysis shows that party unity among parties of the government coalition does not affect statutory content. Opposition parties, by contrast, are more likely to reduce the executive's discretion when they are more unified. Overall, the support for the hypothesis of programmatic parties is weak, given that executive authorship is the strongest determinant of statutory content.

Conducting quantitative research (e.g., surveys, a large number of interviews, experiments) with the participation of political elites is typically challenging. Given that a population of political elites is typically small by definition, a particular challenge is obtaining a sufficiently high number of observations and, thus, a certain response rate. This paper focuses on two questions related to this challenge: (1) What are best practices for designing the study? And (2) what are best practices for soliciting the participation of political elites? To arrive at these best practices, we (a) examine which factors explain the variation in response rates across surveys within and between large-scale, multi-wave survey projects by statistically analyzing a newly compiled dataset of 342 political elite surveys from eight projects, spanning 30 years and 58 countries, (b) integrate the typically scattered findings from the existing literature and (c) discuss results from an original expert survey among researchers with experience with such research (n = 23). By compiling a comprehensive list of best practices, systematically testing some widely held believes about response rates and by providing benchmarks for response rates depending on country, survey mode and elite type, we aim to facilitate future studies where participation of political elites is required. This will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of political elites' opinions, information processing and decision making and thereby of the functioning of representative democracies.

Power sharing is increasingly recognized as an important tool forcreating sustainable peace in war-torn societies. However, we have limitedknowledge concerning why political, territorial, and military power-sharingpacts are reached and implemented. This article addresses this gap by providinga global study examining the signing and implementation of powersharing pactsin intrastate armed conflicts. We focus on how the type of political regime caninfluence these choices and theorize about the strategic incentives for warringparties in different types of regimes to sign and implement different pacts.Our large-N analysis is based on data on power-sharing provisions in eighty-threepeace accords in forty intrastate armed conflicts between 1989 and 2004. Inline with our theoretical expectations, we find that political and militarypacts are more likely to be signed in autocracies, whereas territorial pactsare more common in democracies. Somewhat surprisingly, we find no difference inthe implementation patterns across regimes.

From a normative perspective, it is striking that the degree of central bank independence (CBI) varies considerably across countries. Taking a political economy perspective, this paper demonstrates how different degrees of CBI may be the result of strategic policy-making. While an independent central bank reduces the incumbent politician's chances to influence current monetary policy it also raises the costs of future policy changes for political successors. Hence, when deciding on the degree of CBI, incumbent politicians face a trade-off: current influence on monetary policy versus policy durability. This paper shows how various factors change this trade-off and hence the institutional choice. The model predicts that the level of CBI incumbent politicians choose will increase in politicians' ability to screen central bankers' preferences, in the degree of political polarization, and in the weight politicians place on future policy outcomes. In contrast, the likelihood for the implementation of an independent central bank decreases in the re-election prospects of incumbents and in the utility central bankers receive from holding office.