TY - JOUR A1 - Fuhr, Harald A1 - Hickmann, Thomas A1 - Kern, Kristine T1 - The role of cities in multi-level climate governance BT - local climate policies and the 1.5 degrees C target JF - Current opinion in environmental sustainability N2 - The past two decades have witnessed widespread scholarly interest in the role of cities in climate policy-making. This research has considerably improved our understanding of the local level in the global response to climate change. The present article synthesizes the literature on local climate policies with respect to the 1.5 degrees C target. While most studies have focused on pioneering cities and networks, we contend that the broader impacts of local climate actions and their relationship to regional, national, and international policy frameworks have not been studied in enough detail. Against this backdrop, we introduce the concept of upscaling and contend that local climate initiatives must go hand in hand with higher-level policies and be better integrated into the multi-level governance system. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2017.10.006 SN - 1877-3435 SN - 1877-3443 VL - 30 SP - 1 EP - 6 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schulze-Gabrechten, Lena T1 - An organizational approach to public governance BT - understanding and design JF - Public administration N2 - In this volume, Egeberg and Trondal put forward an ‘organizational approach to public governance’ (p. 1) that, in their view, complements existing explanations for organizational change and behaviour in governance processes (‘Understanding’) and produces relevant advice for practitioners, specifically anyone involved in reorganizing public administration (‘Design’). Following the authors’ introduction of the theoretical reasoning behind their approach (chapter 1), they present supporting findings that are based on new material (chapters 2 and 9), but mainly draw on six previously published research articles (chapters 3–8). Egeberg and Trondal conclude with possible ‘design implications’ of said findings (chapter 9). Their ‘organizational approach’ focuses on the impact of selected organizational characteristics on decision‐making in and on behalf of government organizations in policy‐making generally (‘public governance’) and administrative politics more specifically (‘meta‐governance’). The authors concentrate on three sets of ‘classical’ organizational characteristics: structure (mainly vertical and horizontal specialization), demography (personnel composition), and locus (geographical location). The conceptual part of the volume convincingly summarizes ‘formal organization matters’—arguments from the literature for each of the individual organizational factors. Their main, already well‐established argument is that the way an organization is formally set up makes some (reform) decisions more likely than others—a line of reasoning that the authors present as neglected in governance literature. In the following five empirical chapters, the authors show that aspects of horizontal and vertical specialization—mainly operationalized by Gulicks’ principles of horizontal specialization and the idea of primary versus secondary affiliation of staff—affect organizational behaviour. Readers learn that whether government levels are organized according to a territorial or non‐territorial principle impacts the power relationship between levels: non‐territorial organization at the supranational level tends to empower the centre against lower levels of government. There are two chapters on the decision‐making behaviour of commissioners and officials in the European Commission, both showing that organizational affiliation trumps demographic background factors such as nationality, even with temporary staff. Chapter 5 addresses coordination dynamics in the European multi‐level system and finds that coordination at the territorially organized national level thwarts non‐territorially organized coordination at the supranational level, resulting in the phenomenon of ‘direct’ national administration bypassing their national executives. Further, the authors show that vertical specialization—while controlling for other factors such as issue salience—has an effect on officials’ behaviour at the national level: agency officials in Norway report significantly less sensitivity towards political signals from the political executive than their colleagues in ministries. Chapter 7 discusses the relevance of geographical location for the relationship between subordinated organizations and their political executive. The authors find that the site of Norwegian agencies does not significantly affect their autonomy, influence, or inter‐institutional coordination with the superior ministry. The last empirical chapter focuses on the effect of formal organization on meta‐governance, that is, administrative politics. Based on a qualitative case study of a reorganization process in Norway in 2003 involving the synchronized relocation of several agencies after many failed attempts, the authors conclude that administrative reforms can be politically steered and controlled through the organization of the reform process. They argue that amongst other factors the strategic exclusion of opposing actors from the reform process as well as the deliberate increase in situations demanding quick decisions (‘action rationality’, p. 119) by political leaders helps explain the reform's unexpected success. The last chapter is dedicated to the synthesis of the results and to design implications. Supported by new data from a 2016 survey among Norwegian public officials, the authors conclude that organizational position is the most important influencer of decision‐making behaviour, with educational background and previous job experience also playing a large role (p. 135). Consequently, their suggestions for practitioners involved in meta‐governance processes concentrate on aspects of the deliberate crafting of organizational specialization to shape organizational positions, and spend less time discussing location and employee demographics. The authors illustrate and contextualize their recommendations with the help of three empirical examples: organizing good governance by balancing political control and independence in the case of agencification, organizing for coping with boundary‐spanning challenges such as climate change through inter‐organizational structural arrangements, and designing permanent organizational structures for innovative reforms in the public sector (pp. 137 ff.). This volume is an excellent compilation of theoretically informed applications of the all too often undefined ‘organization matters’ argument. It juxtaposes—particularly in the theory chapter and in the last chapter on design implications—organizational arguments against other explanations of organizational change like historical institutionalism or the garbage can model of decision‐making. However, two major aspects of the book's approach are less convincing. First, supplementary explanations such as the garbage can model that are discussed in the reflections on meta‐governance are neither argumentatively nor empirically applied to public governance; why should, for example, the ‘solutions in search of a problem’ idea only be applicable to decisions on reform policy, but not to decisions in all other policy areas? Similarly, it would have been nice to read more on the authors’ idea on the interaction between organizational factors and between them and other explanations in the empirical cases on public governance—this would have allowed the reader to get a better idea about how much formal organization matters. The view on bureaucrats’ demographic background is slightly confusing: it is presented as a competing approach (p. 7), but also as one of the main organizational factors (p. 12). Second, as the authors themselves state, the concept of governance is about ‘steering through collective action’ (p. 3) and focuses on interactive processes, and explicitly includes non‐governmental actors in the policy‐making equation. Against this background it seems unfortunate that most of the work presented in the book takes an exclusively governmental perspective and the justification for it remains rather superficial. It would be preferable and even necessary to see the organizational arguments—at least theoretically or through discussing appropriate literature—applied to interactive governance processes involving other actors and/or to non‐bureaucratic organizations. Regarding its methodology, the specifics of the proposed approach deserve to be addressed more systematically and critically in the book. Except for chapters 2, 3 and 5 (literature‐based studies) as well as chapter 8 (single case study), the empirical studies follow a quantitative logic and are informed by data on self‐reported behaviour through large‐N panel surveys with public officials. In terms of analysis, descriptive statistics or basic inferential statistics (linear regression) are employed. Certainly, the authors are aware of the limitations of their data sources, such as the results being possibly affected by social desirability, and they discuss and justify them in the chapters individually (e.g., on pp. 47, 89). Still, their approach could be strengthened with a more cautious account on the extent to which their choice of data and methods is able to uncover the ‘causal impact of organizational factors in public governance processes’ (p. 131, emphasis added) and with some suggestions for widening their methodological toolbox in the future. On this note, the survey method presented as new on p. 135 is not a particularly convincing choice. The authors do not lay out a research agenda; a surprising omission. This is, however, somewhat made up for by the concluding chapter's stimulating discussion of the possible real‐world implications of their findings and perspective, skilfully using organization theory as a ‘craft’ (p. 29). Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12590 SN - 0033-3298 SN - 1467-9299 VL - 97 IS - 2 SP - 483 EP - 485 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Botsch, Gideon T1 - Frei, Norbert, Franka Maubach, Christina Morina, und Maik Tändler (2019): Zur rechten Zeit. Wider die Rückkehr des Nationalismus. Berlin: Ullstein. 253 Seiten. 20,00 € JF - Politische Vierteljahresschrift N2 - „Zur rechten Zeit“ ist ein flüssig geschriebenes, gut lesbares und an ein breites Publikum gerichtetes Sachbuch. Es will die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik „unter dem Eindruck der gegenwärtigen rechten Konjunktur anders denn als gängige Erfolgsgeschichte“ (S. 10) erzählen. Die Autorinnen und Autoren sind nicht bestrebt, das Erfolgsnarrativ radikal zu dekonstruieren und damit den Forschungsertrag der Zeitgeschichtsschreibung zu ignorieren, wohl aber rekonstruieren sie Abschattungen und Brüche, die zeigen, dass der Prozess weniger geradlinig war als häufig angenommen – und dass seine Ergebnisse nicht irreversibel sind. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-020-00221-x SN - 0032-3470 SN - 1862-2860 VL - 61 IS - 1 SP - 199 EP - 201 PB - Springer VS CY - Wiesbaden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Knobloch, Jörn T1 - Rezension zu: Manow, Philip: (Ent‑)Demokratisierung der Demokratie. - Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2020. - 215 S. - ISBN: 978-3-518-76552-4 JF - Politische Vierteljahresschrift : PVS : German political science quarterly / hrsg. vom Vorstand der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft T2 - (De-)democratization of democracy Y1 - 2021 SN - 978-3-518-12753-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-020-00292-w SN - 0032-3470 SN - 1862-2860 VL - 62 IS - 1 SP - 171 EP - 173 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Juchler, Ingo T1 - Rezension zu: Pelluchon, Corine: Manifest für die Tiere. - München: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2020. - 125 S. - ISBN: 978-3-406-75709-9 JF - Forum Politikunterricht Y1 - 2021 UR - https://www.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/projects/politische-bildung/Dokumente_sonstiges/Rezension_pelluchon_juchler.pdf SN - 0941-5874 IS - 1-2 PB - Deutsche Vereinigung für Politische Bildung, Landesverband Bayern CY - München ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Liese, Andrea T1 - Rezension zu: The power of global performance indicators / Hrsg.: Judith G. Kelley ; Beth A. Simmons. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. - 450 p. JF - Perspectives on politics / American Political Science Association Y1 - 2022 SN - 978-1-108-48720-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721003716 SN - 1537-5927 SN - 1541-0986 VL - 20 IS - 1 SP - 380 EP - 382 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Juchler, Ingo T1 - Rezension zu: Massing, Peter: Politische Bildung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland : Grundlagen - Kontroversen - Perspektiven. - Frankfurt am Main : Wochenschau Verlag, 2021. - 141 S. - ISBN: 978-3-8252-5720-0 JF - Zeitschrift für Didaktik der Gesellschaftswissenschaften Y1 - 2022 SN - 2191-0766 SN - 2749-487X VL - 13 IS - 2 SP - 146 EP - 148 PB - Wochenschau Verlag CY - Frankfurt am Main ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Newman, Abraham A1 - Debre, Maria Josepha A1 - Naylor, Tristen A1 - Regilme, Salvador Santino Fulo Regilme Jr. A1 - Viola, Lora Anne ED - Labrosse, Diane ED - Szarejko, Andrew ED - Fujii, George T1 - Lora Anne Viola. The closure of the international system: how institutions create political equalities and hierarchies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781108482257 (hardback, $99.99). JF - H-Diplo roundtable Y1 - 2022 UR - https://hdiplo.org/to/RT23-49 VL - XXIII IS - 49 PB - H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online CY - East Lansing, MI ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Juchler, Ingo T1 - Rezension zu: May, Michael ; Partetzke, Marc: Einführung in die Politikdidaktik. Band 1: Geschichte, Essentials, Forschungs- und Entwicklungsfelder. - Frankfurt am Main: Wochenschau Verlag, 2023. - 223 S. - (utb; 6045). - ISBN: 978-3-8385-6045-8 JF - Polis N2 - Gelungene Orientierung für die fachliche Ausbildung. Man ist gespannt auf den zweiten Band. Y1 - 2023 UR - https://dvpb.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/POLIS_23_3_web-1.pdf U6 - https://doi.org/10.46499/2243.2834 SN - 1611-373X SN - 2749-4861 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 32 EP - 32 PB - Wochenschau Verlag CY - Frankfurt am Main ER -