@phdthesis{Biewald2008, author = {Biewald, Anne}, title = {A dynamic life cycle model for Germany with unemployment uncertainty}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-33111}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2008}, abstract = {This work analyzes the saving and consumption behavior of agents faced with the possibility of unemployment in a dynamic and stochastic life cycle model. The intertemporal optimization is based on Dynamic Programming with a backward recursion algorithm. The implemented uncertainty is not based on income shocks as it is done in traditional life cycle models but uses Markov probabilities where the probability for the next employment status of the agent depends on the current status. The utility function used is a CRRA function (constant relative risk aversion), combined with a CES function (constant elasticity of substitution) and has several consumption goods, a subsistence level, money and a bequest function.}, language = {en} } @misc{Campbell2004, author = {Campbell, Edwina S.}, title = {Berlin : look to the world!}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-46591}, year = {2004}, abstract = {In the spring 2004 issue of WeltTrends, Professor Gunther Hellmann made a „plea for offensive idealism" and „against the power political resocialization of German foreign policy". To a long-time outside observer of that foreign policy, this plea is unsurprising, but depressing. In keeping with Professor Hellmann's own willingness, „notwendige Differenzierungen [zu] vernachl{\"a}ssigen zugunsten einer bewussten Zuspitzung" I will comment on the aspects of his argument that strike an American colleague as particularly disturbing.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Danken2017, author = {Danken, Thomas}, title = {Coordination of wicked problems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-396766}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {VI, 237}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The thesis focuses on the inter-departmental coordination of adaptation and mitigation of demographic change in East Germany. All Eastern German States (L{\"a}nder) have set up inter-departmental committees (IDCs) that are expected to deliver joint strategies to tackle demographic change. IDCs provide an organizational setting for potential positive coordination, i.e. a joint approach to problem solving that pools and utilizes the expertise of many departments in a constructive manner from the very beginning. Whether they actually achieve positive coordination is contested within the academic debate. This motivates the first research question of this thesis: Do IDCs achieve positive coordination? Interdepartmental committees and their role in horizontal coordination within the core executive triggered interest among scholars already more than fifty years ago. However, we don't know much about their actual importance for the inter-departmental preparation of cross-cutting policies. Until now, few studies can be found that analyzes inter-departmental committees in a comparative way trying to identify whether they achieve positive coordination and what factors shape the coordination process and output of IDCs. Each IDC has a chair organization that is responsible for managing the interactions within the IDCs. The chair organization is important, because it organizes and structures the overall process of coordination in the IDC. Consequently, the chair of an IDC serves as the main boundary-spanner and therefore has remarkable influence by arranging meetings and the work schedule or by distributing internal roles. Interestingly, in the German context we find two organizational approaches: while some states decided to put a line department (e.g. Department of Infrastructure) in charge of managing the IDC, others rely on the State Chancelleries, i.e. the center of government. This situation allows for comparative research design that can address the role of the State Chancellery in inter-departmental coordination of cross-cutting policies. This is relevant, because the role of the center is crucial when studying coordination within central government. The academic debate on the center of government in the German politico-administrative system is essentially divided into two camps. One camp claims that the center can improve horizontal coordination and steer cross-cutting policy-making more effectively, while the other camp points to limits to central coordination due to departmental autonomy. This debate motivates the second research question of this thesis: Does the State Chancellery as chair organization achieve positive coordination in IDCs? The center of government and its role in the German politic-administrative system has attracted academic attention already in the 1960s and 1970s. There is a research desiderate regarding the center's role during the inter-departmental coordination process. There are only few studies that explicitly analyze centers of government and their role in coordination of cross-cutting policies, although some single case studies have been published. This gap in the academic debate will be addressed by the answer to the second research question. The dependent variable of this study is the chair organization of IDCs. The value of this variable is dichotomous: either an IDC is chaired by a Line department or by a State Chancellery. We are interested whether this variable has an effect on two dependent variables. First, we will analyze the coordination process, i.e. interaction among bureaucrats within the IDC. Second, the focus of this thesis will be on the coordination result, i.e. the demography strategies that are produced by the respective IDCs. In terms of the methodological approach, this thesis applies a comparative case study design based on a most-similar-systems logic. The German Federalism is quite suitable for such designs. Since the institutional framework largely is the same across all states, individual variables and their effect can be isolated and plausibly analyzed. To further control for potential intervening variables, we will limit our case selection to states located in East Germany, because the demographic situation is most problematic in the Eastern part of Germany, i.e. there is a equal problem pressure. Consequently, we will analyze five cases: Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt (line department) and Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony (State Chancellery). There is no grand coordination theory that is ready to be applied to our case studies. Therefore, we need to tailor our own approach. Our assumption is that the individual chair organization has an effect on the coordination process and output of IDCs, although all cases are embedded in the same institutional setting, i.e. the German politico-administrative system. Therefore, we need an analytical approach than incorporates institutionalist and agency-based arguments. Therefore, this thesis will utilize Actor-Centered Institutionalism (ACI). Broadly speaking, ACI conceptualizes actors' behavior as influenced - but not fully determined - by institutions. Since ACI is rather abstract we need to adapt it for the purpose of this thesis. Line Departments and State Chancelleries will be modeled as distinct actors with different action orientations and capabilities to steer the coordination process. However, their action is embedded within the institutional context of governments, which we will conceptualize as being comprised of regulative (formal rules) and normative (social norms) elements.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Eckert2022, author = {Eckert, Silvia}, title = {Trait variation in changing environments: Assessing the role of DNA methylation in non-native plant species}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-56884}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-568844}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {VIII, 134, CXXX}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The increasing introduction of non-native plant species may pose a threat to local biodiversity. However, the basis of successful plant invasion is not conclusively understood, especially since these plant species can adapt to the new range within a short period of time despite impoverished genetic diversity of the starting populations. In this context, DNA methylation is considered promising to explain successful adaptation mechanisms in the new habitat. DNA methylation is a heritable variation in gene expression without changing the underlying genetic information. Thus, DNA methylation is considered a so-called epigenetic mechanism, but has been studied in mainly clonally reproducing plant species or genetic model plants. An understanding of this epigenetic mechanism in the context of non-native, predominantly sexually reproducing plant species might help to expand knowledge in biodiversity research on the interaction between plants and their habitats and, based on this, may enable more precise measures in conservation biology. For my studies, I combined chemical DNA demethylation of field-collected seed material from predominantly sexually reproducing species and rearing offsping under common climatic conditions to examine DNA methylation in an ecological-evolutionary context. The contrast of chemically treated (demethylated) plants, whose variation in DNA methylation was artificially reduced, and untreated control plants of the same species allowed me to study the impact of this mechanism on adaptive trait differentiation and local adaptation. With this experimental background, I conducted three studies examining the effect of DNA methylation in non-native species along a climatic gradient and also between climatically divergent regions. The first study focused on adaptive trait differentiation in two invasive perennial goldenrod species, Solidago canadensis sensu latu and S. gigantea AITON, along a climate gradient of more than 1000 km in length in Central Europe. I found population differences in flowering timing, plant height, and biomass in the temporally longer-established S. canadensis, but only in the number of regrowing shoots for S. gigantea. While S. canadensis did not show any population structure, I was able to identify three genetic groups along this climatic gradient in S. gigantea. Surprisingly, demethylated plants of both species showed no change in the majority of traits studied. In the subsequent second study, I focused on the longer-established goldenrod species S. canadensis and used molecular analyses to infer spatial epigenetic and genetic population differences in the same specimens from the previous study. I found weak genetic but no epigenetic spatial variation between populations. Additionally, I was able to identify one genetic marker and one epigenetic marker putatively susceptible to selection. However, the results of this study reconfirmed that the epigenetic mechanism of DNA methylation appears to be hardly involved in adaptive processes within the new range in S. canadensis. Finally, I conducted a third study in which I reciprocally transplanted short-lived plant species between two climatically divergent regions in Germany to investigate local adaptation at the plant family level. For this purpose, I used four plant families (Amaranthaceae, Asteraceae, Plantaginaceae, Solanaceae) and here I additionally compared between non-native and native plant species. Seeds were transplanted to regions with a distance of more than 600 kilometers and had either a temperate-oceanic or a temperate-continental climate. In this study, some species were found to be maladapted to their own local conditions, both in non-native and native plant species alike. In demethylated individuals of the plant species studied, DNA methylation had inconsistent but species-specific effects on survival and biomass production. The results of this study highlight that DNA methylation did not make a substantial contribution to local adaptation in the non-native as well as native species studied. In summary, my work showed that DNA methylation plays a negligible role in both adaptive trait variation along climatic gradients and local adaptation in non-native plant species that either exhibit a high degree of genetic variation or rely mainly on sexual reproduction with low clonal propagation. I was able to show that the adaptive success of these non-native plant species can hardly be explained by DNA methylation, but could be a possible consequence of multiple introductions, dispersal corridors and meta-population dynamics. Similarly, my results illustrate that the use of plant species that do not predominantly reproduce clonally and are not model plants is essential to characterize the effect size of epigenetic mechanisms in an ecological-evolutionary context.}, language = {en} } @article{Karolewski2010, author = {Karolewski, Ireneusz Pawel}, title = {Challenges to the external identity making in the European Union}, series = {WeltTrends-Papiere}, journal = {WeltTrends-Papiere}, number = {15}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, issn = {1864-0656}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-62953}, pages = {43 -- 61}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Inhalt: Introduction: The problem at hand Approaches to EU's external identity making Mechanisms of external identity making Theoretical approaches to the EU's external identity making The EU's external identity promotion The ENP policy instruments Conclusions References}, language = {en} } @misc{Kim2020, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Kim, Taeyeong}, title = {The involvement of the two German states in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-48731}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-487315}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {100}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This master thesis will analyze the background of the involvement of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War. In both Korean states, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as well as the Republic of Korea (ROK), the so-called humanitarian aid that was provided to them in the form of medical and economic assistance to help surmount the hardship of the postwar period is remembered with great appreciation to this day. However, critical views on the German engagement in Korea are still relatively hard to find. In this paper, two exemplary cases will be studied: the GDR's city reconstruction project in the North Korean cities of Hamheung and Heungnam and the FRG's medical assistance to the ROK by means of the West German Red Cross Hospital in Busan. By looking at primary sources like governmental documents, this thesis will examine the geopolitical conditions and particular national interests that stood behind the German development and humanitarian aid for the Korean states at that time, thus shedding light on the political goals the two German states pursued, and the benefit they expected to derive from their engagement in Korea. Sources consulted include primary archival materials, secondary sources like monographs, journal articles, contemporary newspaper articles, and interviews with contemporary witnesses.}, language = {en} } @misc{Kim2020, type = {Master Thesis}, author = {Kim, Taeyeong}, title = {The involvement of the two German states in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-52603}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-526039}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {100}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This master thesis will analyze the background of the involvement of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in Korea during the 1950s in the context of the Cold War. In both Korean states, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as well as the Republic of Korea (ROK), the so-called humanitarian aid that was provided to them in the form of medical and economic assistance to help surmount the hardship of the postwar period is remembered with great appreciation to this day. However, critical views on the German engagement in Korea are still relatively hard to find. In this paper, two exemplary cases will be studied: the GDR's city reconstruction project in the North Korean cities of Hamheung and Heungnam and the FRG's medical assistance to the ROK by means of the West German Red Cross Hospital in Busan. By looking at primary sources like governmental documents, this thesis will examine the geopolitical conditions and particular national interests that stood behind the German development and humanitarian aid for the Korean states at that time, thus shedding light on the political goals the two German states pursued, and the benefit they expected to derive from their engagement in Korea. Sources consulted include primary archival materials, secondary sources like monographs, journal articles, contemporary newspaper articles, and interviews with contemporary witnesses.}, language = {en} } @incollection{Kuhlmann2016, author = {Kuhlmann, Sabine}, title = {Local Government in Germany}, series = {Comparative Studies on Vertical Administration Reforms in China and Germany (Speyerer Forschungsberichte ; 285)}, booktitle = {Comparative Studies on Vertical Administration Reforms in China and Germany (Speyerer Forschungsberichte ; 285)}, editor = {Wang, Yukai and F{\"a}rber, Gisela}, publisher = {Deutsches Forschungsinstitut f{\"u}r {\"o}ffentliche Verwaltung}, address = {Speyer}, organization = {Deutsches Forschungsinstitut f{\"u}r {\"o}ffentliche Verwaltung Speyer}, isbn = {978-3-941738-23-2}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {51 -- 67}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @article{OttoKernHauptetal.2021, author = {Otto, Antje and Kern, Kristine and Haupt, Wolfgang and Eckersley, Peter and Thieken, Annegret}, title = {Ranking local climate policy}, series = {Climatic change : an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change}, volume = {167}, journal = {Climatic change : an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the description, causes and implications of climatic change}, number = {1-2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Dordrecht}, issn = {0165-0009}, doi = {10.1007/s10584-021-03142-9}, pages = {23}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Climate mitigation and climate adaptation are crucial tasks for urban areas and can involve synergies as well as trade-offs. However, few studies have examined how mitigation and adaptation efforts relate to each other in a large number of differently sized cities, and therefore we know little about whether forerunners in mitigation are also leading in adaptation or if cities tend to focus on just one policy field. This article develops an internationally applicable approach to rank cities on climate policy that incorporates multiple indicators related to (1) local commitments on mitigation and adaptation, (2) urban mitigation and adaptation plans and (3) climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions. We apply this method to rank 104 differently sized German cities and identify six clusters: climate policy leaders, climate adaptation leaders, climate mitigation leaders, climate policy followers, climate policy latecomers and climate policy laggards. The article seeks explanations for particular cities' positions and shows that coping with climate change in a balanced way on a high level depends on structural factors, in particular city size, the pathways of local climate policies since the 1990s and funding programmes for both climate mitigation and adaptation.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Petrow2009, author = {Petrow, Theresia}, title = {Floods in Germany : analyses of trends, seasonality and circulation patterns}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-37392}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2009}, abstract = {Flood hazard estimations are conducted with a variety of methods. These include flood frequency analysis (FFA), hydrologic and hydraulic modelling, probable maximum discharges as well as climate scenarios. However, most of these methods assume stationarity of the used time series, i.e., the series must not exhibit trends. Against the background of climate change and proven significant trends in atmospheric circulation patterns, it is questionable whether these changes are also reflected in the discharge data. The aim of this PhD thesis is therefore to clarify, in a spatially-explicit manner, whether the available discharge data derived from selected German catchments exhibit trends. Concerning the flood hazard, the suitability of the currently used stationary FFA approaches is evaluated for the discharge data. Moreover, dynamics in atmospheric circulation patterns are studied and the link between trends in these patterns and discharges is investigated. To tackle this research topic, a number of different analyses are conducted. The first part of the PhD thesis comprises the study and trend test of 145 discharge series from catchments, which cover most of Germany for the period 1951-2002. The seasonality and trend pattern of eight flood indicators, such as maximum series and peak-over-threshold series, are analyzed in a spatially-explicit manner. Analyses are performed on different spatial scales: at the local scale, through gauge-specific analyses, and on the catchment-wide and basin scales. Besides the analysis of discharge series, data on atmospheric circulation patterns (CP) are an important source of information, upon which conclusions about the flood hazard can be drawn. The analyses of these circulation patterns (after Hess und Brezowsky) and the study of the link to peak discharges form the second part of the thesis. For this, daily data on the dominant CP across Europe are studied; these are represented by different indicators, which are tested for trend. Moreover, analyses are performed to extract flood triggering circulation patterns and to estimate the flood potential of CPs. Correlations between discharge series and CP indicators are calculated to assess a possible link between them. For this research topic, data from 122 meso-scale catchments in the period 1951-2002 are used. In a third part, the Mulde catchment, a mesoscale sub-catchment of the Elbe basin, is studied in more detail. Fifteen discharge series of different lengths in the period 1910-2002 are available for the seasonally differentiated analysis of the flood potential of CPs and flood influencing landscape parameters. For trend tests of discharge and CP data, different methods are used. The Mann-Kendall test is applied with a significance level of 10\%, ensuring statistically sound results. Besides the test of the entire series for trend, multiple time-varying trend tests are performed with the help of a resampling approach in order to better differentiate short-term fluctuations from long-lasting trends. Calculations of the field significance complement the flood hazard assessment for the studied regions. The present thesis shows that the flood hazard is indeed significantly increasing for selected regions in Germany during the winter season. Especially affected are the middle mountain ranges in Central Germany. This increase of the flood hazard is attributed to a longer persistence of selected CPs during winter. Increasing trends in summer floods are found in the Rhine and Danube catchments, decreasing trends in the Elbe and Weser catchments. Finally, a significant trend towards a reduced diversity of CPs is found causing fewer patterns with longer persistence to dominate the weather over Europe. The detailed study of the Mulde catchment reveals a flood regime with frequent low winter floods and fewer summer floods, which bear, however, the potential of becoming extreme. Based on the results, the use of instationary approaches for flood hazard estimation is recommended in order to account for the detected trends in many of the series. Through this methodology it is possible to directly consider temporal changes in flood series, which in turn reduces the possibility of large under- or overestimations of the extreme discharges, respectively.}, language = {en} }