Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2013 im Fachbereich Politik - Sonstige Themen, Universität zu Köln, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Nowadays during election campaigns the word populist is very common. The idea of politicians making empty promises is nothing special, but are there empty reforms, reforms where nothing is actual reformed? What are crucial assumptions for these?Or starting from a more general point: How do agents decide whether to act and about the point in time of this possible action? In which way does the decision maker tradeoff between a positive impact in the long run and a potential worsening of the short term situation? Are there actions without a real effect, some kind of placebo actions?