My thesis focusses on political thought experiments and how they can be used legitimately. In this thesis I will clarify what political thought experiments are, then I will give a taxonomy of various kinds of political thought experiments. The taxonomy will be four kinds of political thought experiments, which will be called moral intuition pump (thought experiments with the purpose of provoking moral intuitions about political structures); state of nature (hypothetical stories about human beings without a state); empirical conditional (thought experiments that make predictions about the consequences of possible political structures); and conceptual clarification (thought experiments that clarify our understanding of political concepts). I will then provide criteria for how each of these kinds of political thought experiments can be called legitimate. Once all criteria have been provided, I will use examples of political thought experiments and test their legitimacy.

My thesis will make three main contributions to the field. The first contribution will be that it will fill specific gaps in the literature regarding the legitimate use of political thought experiments. There exists in the literature the following gaps: Not providing examples of political thought experiments or not clarifying how political thought experiments are being used legitimately. My thesis will do both things. The second contribution will be that it will expand our understanding of what counts as a thought experiment. An example of this is whether some literary fictions ought to considered political thought experiments. My third contribution will be that what distinguishes political thought experiments from other fields is the focus on practical application of political ideas, which is something not discussed in the current literature regarding political thought experiments.

A vast empirical literature has investigated economies of scale in municipal operations, especially in water and wastewater provision as well as domestic waste management. By contrast, comparatively few studies have been conducted on the extent of scale economies in local government administration. Given the stress placed on scale economies in Australian state and territory government policies aimed at the structural reform of local government through municipal mergers, including in South Australian (SA) local government, the absence of empirical research into administrative scale economies is unfortunate. To address this gap in the empirical literature, in this paper, we consider administrative scale economies in the SA local government system using four-year panel data from 2015–2016 to 2018–2019. We find limited evidence for a relationship between administrative intensity and municipal by population size and for a difference between the administrative intensity of urban and rural councils.

Since the undertaking of the reform policy, Vietnamese private higher education has made remarkable contributions to a nation's socio-economic development via providing high qualified human resources to the labour market. In integration of the world's higher education, the 2005 Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) has proposed an increase in private enrolments to 40% of total tertiary enrolments by 2020. Whether this target could be achievable as planned is still questionable. This paper aims to measure a productivity growth of private universities using the Malmquist productivity index and examine if they can obtain the target of the 2005 HERA. The findings indicate that private universities have regression in productivity at 8%. The main source of this regression results from a decline of technological innovation at 14%. Private universities could potentially fail to obtain the target of the 2005 HERA. Policy implications are suggested for enhancing efficiency and productivity of private universities.

A voluminous literature has empirically examined scale economies in local government functions, particularly in local urban transportation, water and wastewater provision. Conversely, little work has focused on the empirical investigation of economies of scale in municipal administration, including in Australian local government. In order to address this gap in the empirical literature, in this paper we examine administrative scale economies and task density in the Victorian (VIC) local government system for the period 2014/15 to 2018/19 using a data panel. Our findings reveal no administrative scale economies in VIC local government. By contrast, task density is a key determinant of administrative intensity. We conclude by canvassing some public policy implications of our findings.