Suchergebnisse

It is well-established that oil wealth in weakly institutionalised states tends to undermine development instead of catalysing it. Cross-country regressions, however, struggle to explain why comparably oil-wealthy countries such as Nigeria and Angola experience different political and economic outcomes over time. This thesis explains these differing outcomes through a theoretical lens derived from the New Institutional Economics and Political Settlements literature. Methodologically, it employs analytic narrative - the application of a game theoretic model to a historical puzzle to produce a thin explanation - and treats economic transactions as the key unit of analysis for understanding why particular outcomes obtain and not others. As a comparable site of analysis, I select the oil-for-infrastructure deals that were negotiated in Angola and Nigeria with Asian National Oil Companies between 2004 and 2007. Contrary to expectation, the deals were struck in Angola but failed in Nigeria. I hypothesise that the differential outcome reflects the varying quality of the institutional arrangements in each country for engaging foreign investors. This differential institutional quality resulted in differing commitment credibility over time, which partly accounts for deal failure in Nigeria. Divergent political economy trajectories and political settlements account for these differences. I use a game theory model that explains heterogeneity within authoritarian regimes to test these hypotheses. Application of the model to Angola and Nigeria respectively shows that Angolan dictator, José Eduardo dos Santos, was able to consolidate power within six years of becoming the head of state by successfully eliminating potential threats to his dictatorial ambitions. Under this closed, stable regime, foreign investors perceived greater levels of commitment credibility and struck deals. Nigeria's uneven institutional evolution towards greater openness was punctuated by multiple successful coups and occasional civilian rule between long periods of military autocracy. The resultant instability undermined the perception of credibility, explaining why the deals failed. The thesis closes with a description of how Nigeria and Angola's political economies have evolved since the oil-price crash of 2014, including how dos Santos unexpectedly lost power, and poses questions for future research.

Chapter 1. 'Caught in Between Policies': The Intertwined Challenges of Access to Land and Housing in Gaborone, Botswana -- Chapter 2. Understanding minority land rights in Africa: The complexities of Mbororo land rights and its implementation contradictions in the northwest region of Cameroon -- Chapter 3. -State actors and land governance in the DR Congo: The trap of the human rights-led approach towards land tenure -- Chapter 4. Land Governance in Ethiopia: Challenges Facing Small Landholders -- Chapter 5. Developing hybrid institutions for land governance: explaining divergent trajectories in Ghana -- Chapter 6. Land reform legacies and contemporary struggles for land in Morocco -- Chapter 7. High levels of tenure security in Namibia's informal settlements, yet residents challenged to upgrade living conditions -- Chapter 8. Land Governance in Zambia: Confronting the Challenges of an Unsettled Dynamic Equilibrium in Land Administration -- Chapter 9. State-Based Tenure in Zimbabwe: Is it Retrogressive or a Panacea for Agrarian Underdevelopment -- Chapter 10. Challenges of Land Tenure Reform in the Land Grabs Era: The case of Zimbabwe -- Chapter 11. Land reform in Zimbabwe: implications for land restitution -- Chapter 12. The complexity of Litigating Ancestral Land Rights in Namibia -- Chapter 13. South African Land Expropriation without Compensation; A Threat to Botswana Food Security -- Chapter 14. tenure and airports building in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal -- Chapter 15. Security of land tenure informing land reforms in Africa from a historical to current trajectory of land reform: Comparative analysis of Ethiopia and Zambia -- Chapter 16. Land Governance as a Restitutive Mechanism for Asserting Ownership and Tenure Rights in a Postcolonial Context: Insights from Namibia and Ghana -- Chapter 17. Land Governance and Tenure Reform in Southern Africa -- Chapter 18. Access to land to foreigners in West Africa: analysis in the context of land acquisition and new land policy era -- Chapter 19. Comparative Discussion of Land Tenure: South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya and Ghana -- Chapter 20. Evaluating the legitimisation of land wars as a form of organised crime: a review through secondary document analysis.

The first total synthesis of the ramonanin family of lignan natural products is described. The short synthesis involves a 2,5-diaryl-3,4-dimethylene tetrahydrofuran intermediate, which participates in an unexpectedly facile Diels-Alder dimerization, generating all four natural products. Insights into the reactivity and stereoselectivity of the key dimerization are provided through computational studies employing B3LYP/6-31G(d) and M06-2X/6-31G(d) model chemistries. ; This work was supported by the Australian Research Council and a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant. M.N.P.-R. acknowledges that this research was undertaken with the assistance of resources provided at the NCI National Facility through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme supported by the Australian Government.