D73 - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; CorruptionNávrat zpět

Voters' ability to act upon the fulfilment of election pledges matters profoundly for democratic accountability. Existing literature provides evidence of retrospective voting on pledge fulfilment at the party level. This paper investigates retrospective voting on pledges at the level of individual politicians. It estimates the effect of breaking a pledge to support anti-corruption legislation on Czech deputies' preferential votes. Since the pledge was identical for all the participating de- puties and not all deputies pledged, the data permit estimation of the effect of pledge breakage independently of the effect of voting against anti-corruption bills. Results show that retrospective voting on pledges occurs even at the level of individual politicians when information about pledge fulfilment is easily accessible. Voters "punish" pledge breakage alone, i.e., they do not punish voting against anti-corruption bills if the politician has not pledged to act otherwise.

The aim of the article is to explore how the results of the U. S. subprime mortgage crisis influenced economic policy of governments in highly developed countries. It analyses consequences of a state intervention especially for government budgets and a rise of government debts. Then the article discusses the point of view of the Austrian school. Austrian economists argue a state is not an economic subject and its fiscal policy is very dangerous for effective allocation of the available resources of production's factors. They advocate a society with a small government and liberal economic policy. The author believes that Austrian approach to economic problems is more realistic and more pertinent than the approach of those, who demand more government intervention.

This article examines for the first time the relationship between transparency of ownership structure and (i) profits of firms winning public procurement contracts and (ii) competition for the contracts and savings of the public authority. These characteristics are compared for two groups of public procurement contract winners that differ by their ownership structure. The detailed data from the Czech Republic are used and the firms with bearer shares in paper form serve as the less transparent firms. The results show that less transparent firms have significantly higher profit margins in terms of tens of percentage points and participate in less competitive public procurement contracts and result into lower savings for the public authority. This could be an indirect indicator of conflict of interests or corruption. The article concludes with policy recommendations.

The paper deals with lobbying in the EU and CR. The starting point is the selected definitions of lobbying and lobbying efforts to integrate into the broader context of promoting economic interests in society. The text therefore considers the criteria for defining lobbying, the defining of the environment for lobbying and the role of interest groups and tries to map the relevant literature on the topic. When you defi ne the issues of lobbying in the EU, the emphasis is on structural differences between the EU in terms of influence and being influenced and the bureaucratic apparatus throughout the countries. For various interest groups operating in the European political market is important to know the position of the EU institutions to lobbying and their willingness to create binding standards of behaviour and conduct (codes), as well as the need to define the line between lobbying and corruption. The text also deals with the assessment and measurement capabilities of different forms and methods of lobbing; it compares the direct and indirect data of the EU-15, the CR and the new EU Member States which regulate lobbying (unlike the CR).