TY - JOUR
A1 - Dörfler, Thomas
A1 - Gehring, Thomas
T1 - Analogy-based collective decision-making and incremental change in international organizations
JF - European journal of international relations
N2 - We examine how analogy-based collective decision-making of member states contributes to the endogenous emergence of informal rules and the incremental change of international organizations (IOs). Decision-making by analogy is an important characteristic of day-to-day decision-making in IOs. Relating current decisions to previous ones through analogies drives incremental change and simultaneously reinforces organizational resilience. Whereas the foreign policy analysis literature shows that analogies can be used as cognitive shortcuts in fuzzy and complex foreign policy situations, we focus on their use to overcome social ambiguity (indeterminacy) of coordination situations in IOs. Drawing on psychological conceptions, we develop two micro-level mechanisms that elucidate the effects of analogy-based collective decision-making in member-driven IOs. Analogy-based collective decisions emphasizing similarity between a current situation and previous ones follow an established problem schema and produce expansive and increasingly well-established informal rules. Collective decisions that are analogy-based but emphasize a crucial difference follow different problem schemas and trigger the emergence of additional informal rules that apply to new classes of cases. The result is an increasingly fine-grained web of distinct organizational solutions for a growing number of problems. Accordingly, an IO can increasingly facilitate collective decision-making and gains resilience. Empirically, we probe these propositions with a documentary analysis of decision-making in the Yugoslavia sanctions committee, established by the United Nations Security Council to deal with a stream of requests for exempting certain goods or services from the comprehensive economic embargo imposed on Yugoslavia in response to the War in the Balkans.
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120987889
SN - 1354-0661
SN - 1460-3713
VL - 27
IS - 3
SP - 753
EP - 778
PB - Sage
CY - London
ER -
TY - CHAP
A1 - Dörfler, Thomas
A1 - Hosli, Madeleine O.
T1 - Reforming the United Nations Security Council
BT - proposals, strategies and preferences
T2 - Routledge Handbook of International Organization
Y1 - 2013
SN - 978-0-415-50143-9
U6 - https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203405345.ch28
SP - 377
EP - 390
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -
TY - BOOK
A1 - Dörfler, Thomas
T1 - Security council sanctions governance
BT - the power and limits of rules
T3 - Routledge research on the United Nations ; 6
N2 - Little is known about how far-reaching decisions in UN Security Council sanctions committees are made. Developing a novel committee governance concept and using examples drawn from sanctions imposed on Iraq, Al-Qaida, Congo, Sudan and Iran, this book shows that Council members tend to follow the will of the powerful, whereas sanctions committee members often decide according to the rules. This is surprising since both Council and committees are staffed by the same member states.
Offering a fascinating account of Security Council micro-politics and decision-making processes on sanctions, this rigorous comparative and theory-driven analysis treats the Council and its sanctions committees as distinguishable entities that may differ in decision practice despite having the same members. Drawing extensively on primary documents, diplomatic cables, well-informed press coverage, reports by close observers and extensive interviews with committee members, Council diplomats and sanctions experts, it contrasts with the conventional wisdom on decision-making within these bodies, which suggests that the powerful permanent members would not accept rule-based decisions against their interests.
This book will be of interest to policy practitioners and scholars working in the broad field of international organizations and international relations theory as well as those specializing in sanctions, international law, the Security Council and counter-terrorism.
Y1 - 2019
SN - 978-0-42944-232-2
SN - 978-1-138-33749-7
SN - 978-0-4298-0874-6
SN - 978-0-4298-0873-9
U6 - https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429442322
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Rothermel, Ann-Kathrin
T1 - Gender in the United Nations’ agenda on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism
JF - International feminist journal of politics
N2 - The United Nations (UN) policy agenda on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) promotes a “holistic” approach to counterterrorism, which includes elements traditionally found in security and development programs. Advocates of the agenda increasingly emphasize the importance of gender mainstreaming for counterterrorism goals. In this article, I scrutinize the merging of the goals of gender equality, security, and development into a global agenda for counterterrorism. A critical feminist discourse-analytical reading of gender representations in P/CVE shows how problematic imageries of women as victims, economic entrepreneurs, and peacemakers from both the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Women, Peace and Security agenda are reproduced in core UN documents advocating for a “holistic” P/CVE approach. By highlighting the tensions that are produced by efforts to merge the different gender discourses across the UN’s security and development institutions, the article underlines the relevance of considering the particular position of P/CVE at the security–development nexus for further gender-sensitive analysis and policies of counterterrorism.
KW - Counterterrorism
KW - gender mainstreaming
KW - security–development nexus
KW - discourse
KW - United Nations
KW - feminism
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2020.1827967
SN - 1461-6742
SN - 1468-4470
VL - 22
IS - 5
SP - 720
EP - 741
PB - Taylor & Francis
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Reiners, Nina
T1 - Despite or Because of Contestation?
BT - how water became a human right
JF - Human Rights Quarterly
N2 - Almost twenty years after its recognition in international human rights law, the human right to water continues to spark discussions about its scope and meaning. This article revisits the evolution and contestation of the right's first international legal framework, General Comment No. 15 from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The analysis highlights the contestation of economic and social rights as a universal phenomenon at multiple levels, but argues that these meaning-making practices can support their validation and recognition.
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2021.0021
SN - 1085-794X
SN - 0275-0392
VL - 43
IS - 2
SP - 329
EP - 343
PB - Johns Hopkins Univ.
CY - New York
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Liese, Andrea Margit
A1 - Reiners, Nina
T1 - The Eye of the Beholder?
BT - The Contestation of Values and International Law ; Comment on Tiyanjana Maluwa
JF - The International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?
Y1 - 2019
SN - 0191879398
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198843603.003.0021
SP - 335
EP - 343
PB - Oxford University Press
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Reiners, Nina
T1 - Transnational lawmaking coalitions for human rights
Y1 - 2017
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Seyfried, Markus
A1 - Ansmann, Moritz
T1 - Unfreezing higher education institutions?
BT - understanding the introduction of quality management in teaching and learning in Germany
JF - Higher Education
N2 - Quality management (QM) in teaching and learning has strongly “infected” the higher education sector and spread around the world. It has almost everywhere become an integral part of higher education reforms. While existing research on QM mainly focuses on the national level from a macro-perspective, its introduction at the institutional level is only rarely analyzed. The present article addresses this research gap. Coming from the perspective of organization studies, it examines the factors that were crucial for the introduction of QM at higher education institutions in Germany. As the introduction of QM can be considered to be a process of organizational change, the article refers to Kurt Lewin’s seminal concept of “unfreezing” organizations as a theoretical starting point. Methodologically, a mixed methods approach is applied by combining qualitative data derived from interviews with institutional quality managers and quantitative data gathered from a nationwide survey. The results show that the introduction of QM is initiated by either internal or external processes. Furthermore, some institutions follow a rather voluntary approach of unfreezing, while others show modes of forced unfreezing. Consequently, the way how QM was introduced has important implications for its implementation.
KW - Quality management
KW - Organizational change
KW - Higher education
KW - Mixed methods
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0185-2
SN - 0018-1560
SN - 1573-174X
VL - 75
IS - 6
SP - 1061
EP - 1076
PB - Springer
CY - Dordrecht
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Fuhr, Harald
T1 - The rise of the Global South and the rise in carbon emissions
JF - Third world quarterly
N2 - Jointly with the Global North, the rise of the Global South has come at a high cost to the environment. Driven by its high energy intensity and the use of fossil fuels, the South has contributed a significant portion of global emissions during the last 30 years, and is now contributing some 63% of today's total GHG emissions (including land-use change and forestry). Similar to the Global North, the Global South's emissions are heavily concentrated: India and China alone account for some 60% and the top 10 countries for some 78% of the group's emissions, while some 120 countries account for only 22%. Without highlighting such differences, it makes little sense to use the term 'Global South'. Its members are affected differently, and contribute differently to global climate change. They neither share a common view, nor do they pursue joint interests when it comes to international climate negotiations. Instead, they are organised into more than a dozen subgroups of the global climate regime. There is no single climate strategy for the Global South, and climate action will differ enormously from country to country. Furthermore, just and equitable transitions may be particularly challenging for some countries.
KW - Climate change
KW - international development
KW - energy
KW - environmental policy
KW - Global South
KW - transition policy
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2021.1954901
SN - 0143-6597
SN - 1360-2241
VL - 42
IS - 11
SP - 2724
EP - 2746
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kalczewiak, Mariusz
T1 - Yiddish Buenos Aires and the struggle to leave the margins
JF - East European Jewish affairs
N2 - Yiddish culture developed in Argentina within the context of a self-perception that figured Buenos Aires as a marginal and peripheral locale on the global Yiddish map. Against this backdrop, Argentine Yiddish culturalists argued for the strengthening of local Yiddish culture with a goal of elevating Buenos Aires's status within the international hierarchies of Yiddish culture. Buenos Aires indeed emerged in the 1920s as a producer of Yiddish cultural contents, maintained networks of international cultural contacts with other Yiddish centers, financially supported Eastern European Yiddish establishments, and hoped that these contacts would allow for solving Buenos Aires reputation problems. The pre-World War II preoccupation with the status of Buenos Aires as a center of Yiddish culture provided a basis upon which post-Holocaust discourse of Argentine Jewish responsibility for the maintenance of Yiddish culture was constructed.
KW - Argentina
KW - Buenos Aires
KW - marginality
KW - peripherality
KW - Yiddish culturalism
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501674.2020.1774275
SN - 1350-1674
SN - 1743-971X
VL - 50
IS - 1-2
SP - 115
EP - 133
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Busch, Per-Olof
A1 - Feil, Hauke
A1 - Heinzel, Mirko Noa
A1 - Herold, Jana
A1 - Kempken, Mathies
A1 - Liese, Andrea
T1 - Policy recommendations of international bureaucracies
BT - the importance of country-specificity
JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration
N2 - Many international bureaucracies give policy advice to national administrative units. Why is the advice given by some international bureaucracies more influential than the recommendations of others? We argue that targeting advice to member states through national embeddedness and country-tailored research increases the influence of policy advice. Subsequently, we test how these characteristics shape the relative influence of 15 international bureaucracies' advice in four financial policy areas through a global survey of national administrations from more than 80 countries. Our findings support arguments that global blueprints need to be adapted and translated to become meaningful for country-level work.
Points for practitioners
National administrations are advised by an increasing number of international bureaucracies, and they cannot listen to all of this advice. Whereas some international bureaucracies give 'one-size-fits-all' recommendations to rather diverse countries, others cater their recommendations to the national audience. Investigating financial policy recommendations, we find that national embeddedness and country-tailored advice render international bureaucracies more influential.
KW - financial policy
KW - international administration
KW - international
KW - organizations
KW - multi-level government
KW - regime complexity
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211013385
SN - 0020-8523
SN - 1461-7226
VL - 87
IS - 4
SP - 775
EP - 793
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - Los Angeles, Calif.
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Fleischer, Julia
A1 - Reiners, Nina
T1 - Connecting international relations and public administration
BT - toward a joint research agenda for the study of international bureaucracy
JF - International studies review
N2 - The recent debate on administrative bodies in international organizations has brought forward multiple theoretical perspectives, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches. Despite these efforts to advance knowledge on these actors, the research program on international public administrations (IPAs) has missed out on two important opportunities: reflection on scholarship in international relations (IR) and public administration and synergies between these disciplinary perspectives. Against this backdrop, the essay is a discussion of the literature on IPAs in IR and public administration. We found influence, authority, and autonomy of international bureaucracies have been widely addressed and helped to better understand the agency of such non-state actors in global policy-making. Less attention has been given to the crucial macro-level context of politics for administrative bodies, despite the importance in IR and public administration scholarship. We propose a focus on agency and politics as future avenues for a comprehensive, joint research agenda for international bureaucracies.
N2 - El reciente debate sobre los organismos administrativos en las organizaciones internacionales ha generado diversas perspectivas teóricas, marcos analíticos y enfoques metodológicos. A pesar de estos esfuerzos por mejorar el conocimiento sobre estos actores, el programa de investigación sobre las administraciones públicas internacionales (International Public Administration, IPA) ha perdido dos oportunidades importantes: la reflexión sobre la erudición en las relaciones internacionales y la administración pública y las sinergias entre estas perspectivas disciplinarias. Con este trasfondo, en el ensayo se analiza la literatura sobre las administraciones públicas internacionales en las relaciones internacionales y la administración pública. Descubrimos que la influencia, la autoridad y la autonomía de las burocracias internacionales se han abordado ampliamente y ayudaron a comprender mejor la función de dichos agentes no estatales en la formulación de políticas a nivel mundial. Se ha prestado menos atención al contexto clave a nivel macro de la política de los organismos administrativos, a pesar de su importancia en las relaciones internacionales y la erudición en la administración pública. Proponemos enfocarnos en la agencia y la política como futuras vías para implementar un programa de investigación conjunta y exhaustiva para las burocracias internacionales.
N2 - Le récent débat sur les organes administratifs des organisations internationales a mis en avant plusieurs perspectives théoriques, cadres analytiques et approches méthodologiques. Malgré ces efforts pour faire progresser la connaissance de ces acteurs, le Programme de recherche sur les administrations publiques internationales a manqué deux opportunités majeures : une réflexion sur les recherches en relations internationales et administration publique ainsi que sur les synergies entre ces perspectives des disciplines. Cet essai s'appuie sur cette toile de fond pour établir une discussion au sujet de la littérature abordant les administrations publiques internationales dans les domaines des relations internationales et de l'administration publique. Nous avons constaté que l'influence, l'autorité et l'autonomie des bureaucraties internationales avaient été largement abordées, ce qui permettait de mieux comprendre le pouvoir de tels acteurs non-étatiques dans l’établissement des politiques internationales. Toutefois, malgré son importance dans les recherches en relations internationales et administration publique, une moins grande attention a été accordée au contexte macro des politiques des organes administratifs alors qu'il est crucial. Nous proposons de mettre l'accent sur le pouvoir et les politiques comme pistes futures pour un programme de recherche conjoint complet sur les bureaucraties internationales.
KW - international bureaucracies
KW - international organizations
KW - public
KW - administration
KW - nonstate actors
KW - palabras clave
KW - burocracias internacionales
KW - organizaciones internacionales
KW - administración pública
KW - agentes no estatales
KW - mots clés
KW - bureaucraties internationales
KW - organisations internationales
KW - administration publique
KW - acteurs non-étatiques
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa097
SN - 1521-9488
SN - 1468-2486
VL - 23
IS - 4
SP - 1230
EP - 1247
PB - Oxford Univ. Press
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - CHAP
A1 - Hosli, Madeleine O.
A1 - Dörfler, Thomas
ED - Lesage, Dries
ED - Van de Graaf, Thijs
T1 - The United Nations Security Council
BT - the Challenge of Reform
T2 - Rising powers and multilateral institutions (International Political Economy Series)
N2 - The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the most important multilateral institutions having the ambition to shape global governance and the only organ of the global community that can adopt legally binding resolutions for the maintenance of international peace and security and, if necessary, authorize the use of force. Created in the aftermath of World War II by its victors, the UNSC’s constellation looks increasingly anachronistic, however, in light of the changing global distribution of power. Adapting the institutional structure and decision-making procedures of the UNSC has proven to be one of the most difficult challenges of the last decades, while it is the institution that has probably been faced with the most vociferous calls for reform. Although there have been changes to the informal ways in which outside actors are drawn into the UNSC’s work and activities, many of the major players in the current international system seem to be deprived from equal treatment in its core patterns of decision-making. Countries such as Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, alongside emerging African nations such as Nigeria and South Africa, are among the states eager to secure permanent representation on the Council. By comparison, selected BRICS countries, China and Russia - in contrast to their role in other multilateral institutions - are permanent members of the UNSC and with this, have been “insiders” for a long time. This renders the situation of the UNSC different from global institutions, in which traditionally, Western powers have dominated the agenda.
KW - Security Council
KW - Winning Coalition
KW - Veto Player
KW - Social Choice Theory
KW - Decision Probability
Y1 - 2015
SN - 978-1-349-48504-8
SN - 978-1-137-39760-7
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137397607_8
SP - 135
EP - 152
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Dörfler, Thomas
A1 - Holzinger, Katharina
A1 - Biesenbender, Jan
T1 - Constitutional Dynamics in the European Union
BT - Success, Failure, and Stability of Institutional Treaty Revisions
JF - International Journal of Public Administration
N2 - Despite high institutional hurdles for constitutional change, one observes surprisingly many EU treaty revisions. This article takes up the questions of what determines whether a treaty provision is successfully changed and why provisions are renegotiated at subsequent Intergovernmental Conferences. The article presents an institutionalist theory explaining success and renegotiation and tests the theory using all core institutional provisions by means of Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The causal analysis shows that low conflict potential of an issue is sufficient for successfully changing the treaties. Furthermore, high conflict potential of an issue and its fundamental change are sufficient for it to be renegotiated.
Y1 - 2017
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2017.1295267
SN - 0190-0692
SN - 1532-4265
VL - 40
IS - 14
SP - 1237
EP - 1249
PB - Taylor & Francis
CY - Philadelphia
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Schmidt, Peter
T1 - Market failure vs. system failure as a rationale for economic policy?
BT - A critique from an evolutionary perspective
JF - Journal of Evolutionary Economics
N2 - This paper reconsiders the explanation of economic policy from an evolutionary economics perspective. It contrasts the neoclassical equilibrium notions of market and government failure with the dominant evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian and Austrian-Hayekian perceptions. Based on this comparison, the paper criticizes the fact that neoclassical reasoning still prevails in non-equilibrium evolutionary economics when economic policy issues are examined. This is more than surprising, since proponents of evolutionary economics usually view their approach as incompatible with its neoclassical counterpart. In addition, it is shown that this "fallacy of failure thinking" even finds its continuation in the alternative concept of "system failure" with which some evolutionary economists try to explain and legitimate policy interventions in local, regional or national innovation systems. The paper argues that in order to prevent the otherwise fruitful and more realistic evolutionary approach from undermining its own criticism of neoclassical economics and to create a consistent as well as objective evolutionary policy framework, it is necessary to eliminate the equilibrium spirit. Finally, the paper delivers an alternative evolutionary explanation of economic policy which is able to overcome the theory-immanent contradiction of the hitherto evolutionary view on this subject.
KW - Market failure
KW - System failure
KW - Economic policy
KW - Policy advice
KW - Evolutionary economics
KW - Non-equilibrium economics
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-018-0564-6
SN - 0936-9937
SN - 1432-1386
VL - 28
IS - 4
SP - 785
EP - 803
PB - Springer
CY - New York
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Gasser, Lucy
T1 - East and South
BT - mapping other Europes
T2 - Transdisciplinary souths
N2 - "What is 'Europe' in academic discourse? While Europe tends to be used as shorthand, often interchangeable with the 'West', neither the 'West' nor 'Europe' are homogeneous spaces. Though postcolonial studies have long been debunking Eurocentrism in its multiple guises, there is still work to do in fully comprehending how its imaginations and discursive legacies conceive the figure of Europe, as not all who live on European soil are understood as equally 'European'. This volume explores this immediate need to rethink the axis of postcolonial cultural productions, to disarticulate Eurocentrism, to recognise Europe as a more diverse, plural and fluid space, to draw forward cultural exchanges and dialogues within the Global South. Through analyses of literary texts from East-Central Europe and beyond, this volume sheds light on alternative literary cartographies - the multiplicity of Europes and being European which exist both as they are viewed from the different geographies of the global South, and within the continent itself. Covering a wide spatial and temporal terrain in postcolonial and European cultural productions, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature and literary criticism, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, Global South studies and European studies"
Y1 - 2022
SN - 978-0-367-72225-8
SN - 978-0-367-77271-0
SN - 978-1-00-041097-6
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Yilmaz, Zafer
T1 - Revising the culture of political protest after the gezi uprising in Turkey
BT - radical imagination, affirmative resistance, and the new politics of desire and dignity
JF - Mediterranean Quarterly
N2 - The Gezi uprising can be considered a crucial turning in Turkish politics. As a response to countrywide democratic protests, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government revived the security state, escalated authoritarian tendencies, and started to organize a nationalist, Islamist, and conservative backlash. This essay argues that the Gezi Park protests revealed both the fragility of the AKP's hegemony and the limits of the dominant political group habitus, which were promoted by the party to consolidate political polarization in favor of the party's hegemony. Moreover, it is argued that the Gezi uprising transformed the culture of political protests in the country and paved the way for the emergence of affirmative resistance, radical imagination, and a new politics of desire and dignity against authoritarian and neoliberal policies.
KW - Erdogan
KW - Turkish politics
KW - democracy
KW - authoritarianism
KW - AKP
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1215/10474552-7003168
SN - 1047-4552
SN - 1527-1935
VL - 29
IS - 3
SP - 55
EP - 77
PB - Duke Univ. Press
CY - Durham
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wenzel, Bertolt
T1 - Rational instrument or symbolic signal?
BT - Explaining coordination structures in the Directorate-General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs of the European Commission
JF - Public Policy and Administration
N2 - This article examines the reorganization of formal coordination structures in the Directorate-General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs of the European Commission. While rational approaches in organization theory emphasize functional efficiency as an explanation for organizational design and coordination structures, the findings of this study indicate that the reorganization was not driven primarily for reasons of efficiency and to increase the coordination capacity of the organization. The study demonstrates that, even in a highly technical policy area such as fisheries management in the European Union, the (re-)design of formal organizational structures does not follow primarily a technical-instrumental rationale. Instead, the formal coordination structures have also been adapted to live up to changing expectations in the institutional environment, to modern management concepts in marine governance, and to ensure the legitimacy of the organization. However, although the empirical findings of this study substantiate the theoretical assumptions of an institutional perspective, institutional explanations alone are insufficient to comprehensively understand why organizational structures are reorganized and changed.
KW - Coordination structures
KW - European Commission
KW - fisheries policy
KW - marine governance
KW - organizational reform
KW - organization theory
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0952076716683764
SN - 0952-0767
SN - 1749-4192
VL - 33
IS - 2
SP - 149
EP - 169
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - London
ER -
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 - Burkert, Rebecca
T1 - Moving mountains?
BT - Palestinian clain making from
JF - The condition of democracy. - Volume 3 : Postcolonial and settler colonial contexts
Y1 - 2022
SN - 978-0-367-74538-7
SN - 978-1-003-15838-7
SP - 110
EP - 127
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Davydchyk, Maria
A1 - Mehlhausen, Thomas
A1 - Priesmeyer-Tkocz, Weronika
T1 - The price of success, the benefit of setbacks
BT - alternative futures of EU-Ukraine relations
JF - Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies
N2 - This article explores the various futures of relations between the European Union (EU) and Ukraine. After distilling two major drivers we construct a future compass in order to conceive of four futures of relations between the EU and Ukraine. Our scenarios aim to challenge deep-rooted assumptions on the EU’s neighbourhood with Ukraine: How will the politico-economic challenges in the European countries influence the EU’s approach towards the East? Will more EU engagement in Ukraine contribute to enduring peace? Does peace always come with stability? Which prospects does the idea of Intermarium have? Are the pivotal transformation players in Ukraine indeed oligarchs or rather small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs? After presenting our scenarios, we propose indicators to know in the years to come, along which path future relations do develop. By unearthing surprising developments we hope to provoke innovative thoughts on Eastern Europe in times of post truth societies, confrontation between states and hybrid warfare.
KW - European Union
KW - Ukraine
KW - Russia
KW - European Neighbourhood Policy
KW - Eastern Europe
KW - Eurasian Economic Union
Y1 - 2017
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2017.06.004
SN - 0016-3287
SN - 1873-6378
VL - 97
SP - 35
EP - 46
PB - Elsevier
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Pittel, Harald
T1 - Fin du globe
BT - Oscar Wilde’s romance with decadence and the idea of world literature
JF - Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology
N2 - This essay argues that Oscar Wilde noticeably contributed to the emerging discourse about world literature, even though his views in this regard have to be unearthed from the margins of his works, from his early and unpublished American lectures and 'between the lines' of his major critical essays. Wilde's implicit ideas around world literature can be understood as being closely related to his broader endeavour of redirecting and revaluing the pejorative discourse around 'decadence' in art and literature. More specifically, the arch-aesthete preferred to use the word 'romance' rather than 'decadence' (a term he hardly used at all in his writings), signalling a sensitivity attuned to what he called the 'love of things impossible'. This reconceptualization of the decadent outlook was to inspire a critical ideal of literature which relied on creatively activating the other as Other, culminating in a vision of intersubjective, transcultural and unlimited literary communication. Wilde's thought can be more specifically understood as anticipating central tenets of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's evocations of the planetary, thus preparing the way for an alterity-oriented understanding of literary cosmopolitanism.
KW - debt
KW - decadence
KW - planetarity
KW - romance
KW - world literature
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621994702
SN - 0725-5136
SN - 1461-7455
VL - 162
IS - 1
SP - 121
EP - 136
PB - Sage
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Tanneberg, Dag
T1 - Introduction
JF - The Politics of Repression Under Authoritarian Rule : How Steadfast is the Iron Throne?
N2 - Does political repression work and if so, under what conditions? Many contributions to the empirical study of non-democratic rule assume it does. As a consequence, strong convictions on political repression abound, but empirical investigations into the matter remain rare. This introduction sets the agenda for the chapters to come and outlines the answers given to the three motivating questions of this volume. First, what variants of political repression are there, and how do they interact? Second, what impact does the interaction of different forms of political repression have on the problem of authoritarian control? Finally, what difference does the complementary use of violence and restrictions make for the problem of authoritarian power-sharing?
Y1 - 2020
SN - 978-3-030-35477-0
SN - 978-3-030-35476-3
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_1
SN - 2198-7289
SP - 1
EP - 7
PB - Springer
CY - Cham
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Caliendo, Marco
A1 - Hogenacker, Jens
T1 - The German labor market after the Great Recession
BT - successful reforms and future challenges
T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - The reaction of the German labor market to the Great Recession 2008/09 was relatively mild – especially compared to other countries. The reason lies not only in the specific type of the recession – which was favorable for the German economy structure – but also in a series of labor market reforms initiated between 2002 and 2005 altering, inter alia, labor supply incentives. However, irrespective of the mild response to the Great Recession, there are a number of substantial future challenges the German labor market will soon have to face. Female labor supply still lies well below that of other countries and a massive demographic change over the next 50 years will have substantial effects on labor supply as well as the pension system. In addition, due to a skill-biased technological change over the next decades, firms will face problems of finding employees with adequate skills. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, we outline why the German labor market reacted in such a mild fashion, describe current economic trends of the labor market in light of general trends in the European Union, and reveal some of the main associated challenges. Thereafter, the paper analyzes recent reforms of the main institutional settings of the labor market which influence labor supply. Finally, based on the status quo of these institutional settings, the paper gives a brief overview of strategies to combat adequately the challenges in terms of labor supply and to ensure economic growth in the future.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 129
KW - unemployment
KW - labor force participation
KW - Labor supply
KW - benefit systems
KW - public policy
Y1 - 2020
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-435195
SN - 1867-5808
IS - 129
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Arni, Patrick
A1 - Caliendo, Marco
A1 - Künn, Steffen
A1 - Zimmermann, Klaus F.
T1 - The IZA evaluation dataset survey
BT - a scientific use file
T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - This reference paper describes the sampling and contents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset Survey and outlines its vast potential for research in labor economics. The data have been part of a unique IZA project to connect administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency with innovative survey data to study the out-mobility of individuals to work. This study makes the survey available to the research community as a Scientific Use File by explaining the development, structure, and access to the data. Furthermore, it also summarizes previous findings with the survey data.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 122
KW - survey data
KW - scientific use file
KW - labor market policies
KW - evaluation
KW - migration
KW - ethnicity
KW - attitudes
KW - behavior
KW - skills
Y1 - 2020
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-435204
SN - 1867-5808
IS - 122
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Daviter, Falk
T1 - The political use of knowledge in the policy process
T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - The role of knowledge in the policy process remains a central theoretical puzzle in policy analysis and political science. This article argues that an important yet missing piece of this puzzle is the systematic exploration of the political use of policy knowledge. While much of the recent debate has focused on the question of how the substantive use of knowledge can improve the quality of policy choices, our understanding of the political use of knowledge and its effects in the policy process has remained deficient in key respects. A revised conceptualization of the political use of knowledge is introduced that emphasizes how conflicting knowledge can be used to contest given structures of policy authority. This allows the analysis to differentiate between knowledge creep and knowledge shifts as two distinct types of knowledge effects in the policy process. While knowledge creep is associated with incremental policy change within existing policy structures, knowledge shifts are linked to more fundamental policy change in situations when the structures of policy authority undergo some level of transformation. The article concludes by identifying characteristics of the administrative structure of policy systems or sectors that make knowledge shifts more or less likely.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 123
KW - evidence-based policy making
KW - knowledge creep
KW - knowledge utilization
KW - organizational epistemology
KW - punctuated equilibrium theory
Y1 - 2020
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-435481
SN - 1867-5808
IS - 123
SP - 491
EP - 505
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Hoffmann, Dierk
T1 - The GDR’s Westpolitik and everyday anticommunism in West Germany
T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Philosophische Reihe
N2 - West German anticommunism and the SED’s Westarbeit were to some extentinterrelated. From the beginning, each German state had attemted to stabilise itsown social system while trying to discredit its political opponent. The claim tosole representation and the refusal to acknowledge each other delineated governmentalaction on both sides. Anticommunism inWest Germany re-developed under theconditions of the Cold War, which allowed it to become virtually the reason ofstate and to serve as a tool for the exclusion of KPD supporters. In its turn, theSED branded the West German State as‘revanchist’and instrumentalised itsanticommunism to persecute and eliminate opponents within the GDR. Bothphenomena had an integrative and exclusionary element.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe - 167
Y1 - 2019
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-435184
SN - 1866-8380
IS - 167
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Esguerra, Alejandro
ED - Esguerra, Alejandro
ED - Helmerich, Nicole
ED - Risse, Thomas
T1 - Conclusion
T2 - Sustainability Politics and Limited Statehood: Contesting the New Modes of Governance
N2 - This chapter revisits the role of the new modes of governance in areas of limited statehood. First, it states that there is no linear relationship between degrees of statehood and the overall effectiveness of new modes of sustainability governance. Second, the chapter states that, in most of the cases, national governments are hesitant or even actively hamper the development of new modes of governance. Third, it shows that the absence of the shadow of hierarchy can indeed lead to ineffective new modes of governance. However, the shadow of hierarchy does not necessarily need to be cast by states. Finally, the author reviews the complexities involved in participatory practices, stressing the importance of institutional structures and knowledgeable brokers. The chapter concludes by outlining fields for future research.
Y1 - 2016
SN - 978-3-319-39871-6
SN - 978-3-319-39870-9
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39871-6_9
SP - 211
EP - 224
PB - Cham
CY - Basingstoke
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Esguerra, Alejandro
A1 - Helmerich, Nicole
A1 - Risse, Thomas
T1 - Introduction
T2 - Sustainability Politics and Limited Statehood: Contesting the New Modes of Governance
N2 - The Paris Agreement for Climate Change or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) rely on new modes of governance for implementation. Indeed, new modes of governance such as market-based instruments, public-private partnerships or multi-stakeholder initiatives have been praised for playing a pivotal role in effective and legitimate sustainability governance. Yet, do they also deliver in areas of limited statehood? States such as Malaysia or the Dominican Republic partly lack the ability to implement and enforce rules; their statehood is limited. This introduction provides the analytical framework of this volume and critically examines the performance of new modes of governance in areas of limited statehood, drawing on the book’s in-depth case studies on issues of climate change, biodiversity, and health.
Y1 - 2016
SN - 978-3-319-39871-6
SN - 978-3-319-39870-9
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39871-6_1
SP - 1
EP - 22
PB - Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
CY - Basingstoke
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Esguerra, Alejandro
T1 - "A Comment That Might Help Us to Move Along"
BT - Brokers in Negotiation Systems
T2 - Sustainability Politics and Limited Statehood : Contesting the New Modes of Governance
N2 - This chapter investigates the trajectory of establishing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in the early 1990s as the first private transnational certification organization with an antagonistic stakeholder body. Its main contribution is a micro-analysis of the founding assembly in 1993. By investigating the role of brokers within the negotiation as one institutional scope condition for ‘arguing’ having occurred, the chapter adopts a dramaturgical approach. It contends that the authority of brokers is not necessarily institutionally given, but needs to be gained: brokers have to prove situationally that their knowledge is relevant and that they are speaking impartially in the interest of progress rather than their own. The chapter stresses the importance of procedural knowledge which brokers provide in contrast to policy knowledge.
Y1 - 2016
SN - 978-3-319-39871-6
SN - 978-3-319-39870-9
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39871-6_2
SP - 25
EP - 46
PB - Cham
CY - Basingstoke
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Daviter, Falk
T1 - Coping, taming or solving
BT - alternative approaches to the governance of wicked problems
JF - Policy studies
N2 - One of the truisms of policy analysis is that policy problems are rarely solved. As an ever-increasing number of policy issues are identified as an inherently ill-structured and intractable type of wicked problem, the question of what policy analysis sets out to accomplish has emerged as more central than ever. If solving wicked problems is beyond reach, research on wicked problems needs to provide a clearer understanding of the alternatives. The article identifies and explicates three distinguishable strategies of problem governance: coping, taming and solving. It shows that their intellectual premises and practical implications clearly contrast in core respects. The article argues that none of the identified strategies of problem governance is invariably more suitable for dealing with wicked problems. Rather than advocate for some universally applicable approach to the governance of wicked problems, the article asks under what conditions different ways of governing wicked problems are analytically reasonable and normatively justified. It concludes that a more systematic assessment of alternative approaches of problem governance requires a reorientation of the debate away from the conception of wicked problems as a singular type toward the more focused analysis of different dimensions of problem wickedness.
KW - Wicked problems
KW - complex problems
KW - governance
KW - problem-solving
KW - policy analysis
Y1 - 2017
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2017.1384543
SN - 0144-2872
SN - 1470-1006
VL - 38
IS - 6
SP - 571
EP - 588
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Heucher, Angela
T1 - Evolving order?
BT - Inter-organizational relations in the organizational field of food security governance in Côte d’Ivoire
T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - Global food security governance is fraught with fragmentation, overlap and complexity. While calls for coordination and coherence abound, establishing an inter-organizational order at this level seems to remain difficult. While the emphasis in the literature has so far been on the global level, we know less about dynamics of inter-organizational relations in food security governance at the country level, and empirical studies are lacking. It is this research gap the article seeks to address by posing the following research question: In how far does inter-organizational order develop in the organizational field of food security governance at the country level? Theoretically and conceptually, the article draws on sociological institutionalism, and on work on inter-organizational relations. Empirically, the article conducts an exploratory case study of the organizational field of food security governance in Côte d’Ivoire, building on a qualitative content analysis of organizational documents covering a period from 2003 to 2016 and semi-structured interviews with staff of international organizations from 2016. The article demonstrates that not all of the developments attributed to food security governance at the global level play out in the same way at the country level. Rather, in the case of Côte d’Ivoire there are signs for a certain degree of coherence between IOs in the field of food security governance and even for an – albeit limited – division of labour. However, this only holds for specific dimensions of the inter-organizational order and appears to be subject to continuous contestation and reinterpretation under the surface.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 110
KW - inter-organizational relations
KW - international organizations
KW - organizational fields
KW - inter-organizational order
KW - food security governance
Y1 - 2019
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433086
SN - 1867-5808
IS - 110
ER -
TY - BOOK
A1 - Weiß, Norman
A1 - Verlaan, Stephanie
A1 - Vasquez Carruthers, Juan Francisco
A1 - Mair, Theresa
A1 - Conner, Sean
A1 - Maaser, Lucas
A1 - Röthlisberger, Livia
ED - Weiß, Norman
T1 - Transitional Justice
BT - Theoretical and Practical Approaches
T3 - Potsdamer Studien zu Staat, Recht und Politik
N2 - This publication deals with the topic of transitional justice. In six case studies, the authors link theoretical and practical implications in order to develop some innovative approaches. Their proposals might help to deal more effectively with the transition of societies, legal orders and political systems.
Young academics from various backgrounds provide fresh insights and demonstrate the relevance of the topic. The chapters analyse transitions and conflicts in Sierra Leone, Argentina, Nicaragua, Nepal, and South Sudan as well as Germany’s colonial genocide in Namibia. Thus, the book provides the reader with new insights and contributes to the ongoing debate about transitional justice.
N2 - Gegenstand dieser Publikation ist das Thema „Transitional Justice“. In sechs Fallstudien verknüpfen die Autoren theoretische und praktische Implikationen, um innovative Ansätze zu entwickeln. Ihre Vorschläge wollen dazu beitragen, den Übergangsprozess von Gesellschaften, Rechtsordnungen und politischen Systemen effektiver zu gestalten.
Nachwuchswissenschaftler mit unterschiedlichem fachlichem Hintergrund geben hier neue Einblicke und zeigen die fortdauernde Relevanz des Themas. Die Kapitel analysieren Übergänge und Konflikte in Sierra Leone, Argentinien, Nicaragua, Nepal und Süd-Sudan sowie den kolonialen Völkermord in Namibia. So liefert das Buch dem Leser neue Erkenntnisse und trägt zur laufenden Debatte über das Thema „Transitional Justice“ bei.
T3 - Potsdamer Studien zu Staat, Recht und Politik - 7
KW - transitional justice
KW - transformation
KW - transformative justice
KW - reconciliation
KW - political opportunism
KW - Übergangsjustiz
KW - Transformation
KW - Versöhnung
KW - Demokratisierung
Y1 - 2022
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-431711
SN - 978-3-86956-473-9
SN - 1869-2443
SN - 1867-2663
IS - 7
PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY - Potsdam
ER -
TY - CHAP
A1 - Tanneberg, Dag
T1 - Toward a theory of political repression
T2 - The politics of repression under authoritarian rule : how steadfast is the Iron Throne?
N2 - To ensure political survival, autocrats must prevent popular rebellion, and political repression is a means to that end. However, autocrats face threats from both the inside and the outside of the center of power. They must avoid popular rebellion and at the same time share power with strategic actors who enjoy incentive to challenge established power-sharing arrangements whenever repression is ordered. Can autocrats turn repression in a way that allows trading one threat off against the other? This chapter first argues that prior research offers scant insight on that question because it relies on umbrella concepts and questionable measurements of repression. Next, the chapter disaggregates repression into restrictions and violence and reflects on their drawbacks. Citizens adapt to the restriction of political civil liberties, and violence backfires against its originators. Hence, restrictions require enforcement, and violence requires moderation. When interpreted as complements, it becomes clear that restrictions and violence have the potential to compensate for their respective weaknesses. The complementarity between violence and restrictions turns political repression into a valuable addition to the authoritarian toolkit. The chapter concludes with an application of these ideas to the twin problems of authoritarian control and power-sharing.
Y1 - 2020
SN - 978-3-030-35477-0
SN - 978-3-030-35476-3
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_2
SN - 2198-7289
SP - 9
EP - 41
PB - Springer
CY - Cham
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Tanneberg, Dag
T1 - How to measure dictatorship, dissent, and political repression
JF - The politics of repression under authoritarian rule
N2 - This chapter operationalizes the three fundamental concepts of this study. It outlines what counts as authoritarian rule, it explains how to recognize dissent in non-democratic contexts, and it debates how to quantify repression in the shadow of the politicized discourse on human rights. First, the chapter opts to classify every political regime as authoritarian that fails to elect its executive or legislature in free and competitive elections. Second, the chapter proposes to see dissent through the lens of campaigns, i.e., series of connected contentious events that involve large-scale collective action and formulate far-reaching political demands. Finally, after some elaboration on the problems involved in measuring political repression reliably and validly, the chapter turns to rescaled versions of the Human Rights Protection Scores 2.04 and the V-Dem 6.2 political civil liberties index as indicators for violence and restrictions. This choice of indicators of repression is, finally, defended against three central objections: the separability of violence from restrictions, the so-called information paradox, and, finally, differences in the timing of violence and restrictions.
Y1 - 2020
SN - 978-3-030-35477-0
SN - 978-3-030-35476-3
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_3
SN - 2198-7289
SP - 43
EP - 75
PB - Springer
CY - Cham
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Adamik, Verena
T1 - Making worlds from literature
BT - W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece and Dark Princess
JF - Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology
N2 - While W.E.B. Du Bois’s first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), is set squarely in the USA, his second work of fiction, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), abandons this national framework, depicting the treatment of African Americans in the USA as embedded into an international system of economic exploitation based on racial categories. Ultimately, the political visions offered in the novels differ starkly, but both employ a Western literary canon – so-called ‘classics’ from Greek, German, English, French, and US American literature. With this, Du Bois attempts to create a new space for African Americans in the world (literature) of the 20th century. Weary of the traditions of this ‘world literature’, the novels complicate and begin to decenter the canon that they draw on. This reading traces what I interpret as subtle signs of frustration over the limits set by the literature that underlies Dark Princess, while its predecessor had been more optimistic in its appropriation of Eurocentric fiction for its propagandist aims.
KW - African American literature
KW - Eurocentrism
KW - genre
KW - intertextuality
KW - race
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621993308
SN - 0725-5136
SN - 1461-7455
VL - 162
IS - 1
SP - 105
EP - 120
PB - Sage
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Eydam, Ulrich Leonard
A1 - Gabriadze, Irakli
T1 - Institutional development in transition economies
BT - the role of institutional experience
JF - Post-Soviet affairs
N2 - To understand the divergent institutional development in transition economies, we examine the role of institutional experience from the pre-Soviet era in institution-building after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. To measure institutional experience, we construct an index that captures previous experience with independent non-Soviet institutions. A cross-sectional analysis shows that institutional experience is statistically significantly associated with the quality of political, administrative, and legal institutions in transition economies today. To provide a more comprehensive picture and to control for confounding factors, in a second step, we apply a Hausman-Taylor estimator on panel data. This analysis confirms the positive relationship between institutional experience and institutional development. Moreover, the results suggest that the association between institutional experience and political institutions is stronger than the association to the other dimensions of institutions. Overall, the analysis highlights the importance of institutional experience and provides a rationale for the persistency of institutions.
KW - institutions
KW - comparative development
KW - transition economies
KW - post-Soviet
KW - space
KW - collective memory
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2020.1848171
SN - 1060-586X
SN - 1938-2855
VL - 37
IS - 2
SP - 99
EP - 118
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Cörüt, Gözde Yazıcı
A1 - Cörüt, İlker
T1 - The neo-liberal conception of empowerment and its limits
BT - micro-credit experiences of self-employed women in the bazaars of Bishkek
JF - Central Asian survey
N2 - Through qualitative research conducted in the bazaars of Bishkek, this paper examines the posited tripartite relationship between the free market, micro-finance and women's empowerment by focusing on how loans from micro-finance institutions in Bishkek influence the lives of female loanees. The neo-liberal conception of 'individual autonomy' and 'empowerment', it is argued, may not adequately serve as indicators of actual female empowerment/disempowerment in Bishkek and lead us to fail to recognize moments of self-exploitation and forms of claim-making. The research also underlines the disempowering effects of the affectional burden, that is, the constant sense of anxiety, that the loanees have to manage in order to survive in the neo-liberal business environment, which offers high interest rate loans and exposes the loanees to over-indebtedness. These effects can be followed through the analysis of the role the desire for stability and 'ontological security' plays in the formation of the identities/world views of the loanees.
KW - Kyrgyzstan
KW - micro-credit
KW - self-employed women
KW - women's empowerment
KW - neo-liberalism
KW - debt
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2021.1969897
SN - 0263-4937
SN - 1465-3354
VL - 41
IS - 1
SP - 118
EP - 137
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Kleemann, Steven
T1 - Cyber warfare and the "humanization" of international humanitarian law
JF - International journal of cyber warfare and terrorism
N2 - Cyber warfare is a timely and relevant issue and one of the most controversial in international humanitarian law (IHL). The aim of IHL is to set rules and limits in terms of means and methods of warfare. In this context, a key question arises: Has digital warfare rules or limits, and if so, how are these applicable? Traditional principles, developed over a long period, are facing a new dimension of challenges due to the rise of cyber warfare. This paper argues that to overcome this new issue, it is critical that new humanity-oriented approaches is developed with regard to cyber warfare. The challenge is to establish a legal regime for cyber-attacks, successfully addressing human rights norms and standards. While clarifying this from a legal perspective, the authors can redesign the sensitive equilibrium between humanity and military necessity, weighing the humanitarian aims of IHL and the protection of civilians-in combination with international human rights law and other relevant legal regimes-in a different manner than before.
KW - cyber-attack
KW - cyberwar
KW - IHL
KW - IHRL
KW - international human rights
KW - international humanitarian law
KW - law and technology
KW - new technologies
Y1 - 2021
SN - 978-1-7998-6177-5
U6 - https://doi.org/10.4018/IJCWT.2021040101
SN - 1947-3435
SN - 1947-3443
VL - 11
IS - 2
SP - 1
EP - 11
PB - IGI Global
CY - Hershey
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Patz, Ronny
T1 - Information flows in the context of EU policy-making : affiliation networks and the post-2012 reform of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy
T1 - Informationsflüsse im Kontext von EU-Entscheidungsprozessen : Affiliations-Netzwerke und die Reform der Gemeinsamen Fischereipolitik der EU für die Zeit nach 2012
N2 - Information flows in EU policy-making are heavily dependent on personal networks, both within the Brussels sphere but also reaching outside the narrow limits of the Belgian capital. These networks develop for example in the course of formal and informal meetings or at the sidelines of such meetings. A plethora of committees at European, transnational and regional level provides the basis for the establishment of pan-European networks. By studying affiliation to those committees, basic network structures can be uncovered. These affiliation network structures can then be used to predict EU information flows, assuming that certain positions within the network are advantageous for tapping into streams of information while others are too remote and peripheral to provide access to information early enough. This study has tested those assumptions for the case of the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy for the time after 2012. Through the analysis of an affiliation network based on participation in 10 different fisheries policy committees over two years (2009 and 2010), network data for an EU-wide network of about 1300 fisheries interest group representatives and more than 200 events was collected. The structure of this network showed a number of interesting patterns, such as – not surprisingly – a rather central role of Brussels-based committees but also close relations of very specific interests to the Brussels-cluster and stronger relations between geographically closer maritime regions. The analysis of information flows then focused on access to draft EU Commission documents containing the upcoming proposal for a new basic regulation of the Common Fisheries Policy. It was first documented that it would have been impossible to officially obtain this document and that personal networks were thus the most likely sources for fisheries policy actors to obtain access to these “leaks” in early 2011. A survey of a sample of 65 actors from the initial network supported these findings: Only a very small group had accessed the draft directly from the Commission. Most respondents who obtained access to the draft had received it from other actors, highlighting the networked flow of informal information in EU politics. Furthermore, the testing of the hypotheses connecting network positions and the level of informedness indicated that presence in or connections to the Brussels sphere had both advantages for overall access to the draft document and with regard to timing. Methodologically, challenges of both the network analysis and the analysis of information flows but also their relevance for the study of EU politics have been documented. In summary, this study has laid the foundation for a different way to study EU policy-making by connecting topical and methodological elements – such as affiliation network analysis and EU committee governance – which so far have not been considered together, thereby contributing in various ways to political science and EU studies.
N2 - Informationsflüsse im Kontext von EU-Entscheidungsprozessen sind ohne persönliche Netzwerke kaum denkbar, sowohl solche innerhalb der Brüsseler Sphäre aber auch solche, die über die engen Grenzen der belgischen Hauptstadt hinausreichen. Solche Netzwerke entwickeln sich zum Beispiel im Laufe von offiziellen und inoffiziellen Treffen, oft auch am Rande solcher Ereignisse. Die Vielzahl von Ausschüssen auf europäischer, transnationaler und regionaler Ebene bildet daher die Grundlage für die Schaffung europäischer Netzwerkstrukturen. Indem wir die Teilnahme an solchen Ausschüssen untersuchen, ist es uns möglich, grundlegende Strukturmerkmale solcher Netzwerke aufzudecken. Solche Affiliationsnetzwerk-Strukturen können dann die Grundlage zur Vorhersage von europäischen Informationsflüssen bilden: Die Annahme ist, dass bestimmte Positionen in solchen Netzwerken vorteilhaft für den Zugang zu Informationsflüssen sind, während andere Positionen (zu) weit entfernt und zu peripher sind, um rechtzeitigen Zugriff auf relevante Informationen zu erhalten. Die vorliegende Studie testet diese Annahmen anhand der Reform der Gemeinsamen Fischereipolitik der Europäischen Union für die Zeit nach 2012 . Basierend auf Teilnahmedaten von 10 Fischereipolitik-Ausschüssen über den Zeitraum von zwei Jahren (2009 und 2010) wurde ein Affilationsnetzwerk aus mehr als 1300 Interessenvertretern und –vertreterinnen sowie über 200 Ereignissen erhoben. Die Struktur dieses Netzwerks zeigt eine Reihe von interessanten Mustern auf, zum Beispiel die zentrale Rolle von Brüssel-basierten Ausschüssen aber auch die enge Verknüpfung bestimmter Interessen mit dem Brüsseler Kern des Netzwerk sowie die enge Vernetzung geographisch benachbarter Meeresregionen. Die Analyse von EU-Informationsflüssen wurde dann Anhand des Zugangs von Akteuren aus dem erhobenen Netzwerk zu (nichtöffentlichen) Entwurfsfassungen des Kommissionsvorschlags für eine neue Gemeinsame Fischereipolitik durchgeführt. Zunächst wurde dokumentiert, dass der Zugang zu diesen Dokumenten auf offiziellen Wegen unmöglich war und dass daher Zugang durch erweiterte persönliche Netzwerke die wahrscheinlichste Erklärung für den Erhalt von „Leaks“ durch Fischereipolitik-Interessengruppen in der ersten Hälfte von 2011 war. Eine Umfrage unter 65 Akteuren aus der Gesamtpopulation des Gesamtnetzwerk unterstützte diese Vermutung: Nur eine kleine Gruppe hatte Zugang zu den nicht-öffentlichen Entwurfsdokumenten durch ihre direkten Beziehungen mit der EU-Kommission. Die meisten Teilnehmer der Umfrage hatte Zugang zu diesen Dokumenten durch Dritte erhalten, ein Nachweis, dass EU-Informationen sich tatsächlich in weiteren Netzwerkstrukturen verbreiten. Die Studie konnte auch zeigen, dass enge Affiliations-Beziehungen zur Brüsseler Sphäre ein relevanter Indikator für den (zeitnahen) Zugang zu nicht-öffentlichen EU-Dokumenten ist. Die Herausforderungen in der methodischen Erhebungen von europäischen Affiliationsnetzwerkdaten und von EU-Informationsflüssen werden dabei in der Studie ausführlich dokumentiert. Die Relevanz dieser Methoden zur Analyse von EU-Politik wird ebenfalls im Detail dargelegt. Zusammenfassend legt diese Doktorarbeit die Grundlage für eine neue Art, europäische und transnationale politische Prozesse in Europa zu untersuchen. Sie verbinden thematische und methodische Ansätze – zum Beispiel Affiliationsnetzwerkanalyse und die Untersuchung des EU-Ausschusswesens – die bislang in dieser Form noch nicht zusammengeführt wurden, und trägt dadurch auf verschiedenste Weise zur Weiterentwicklung der Politikwissenschaft und der Europastudien bei.
KW - Netzwerkanalyse
KW - Europäische Union
KW - Informationsflüsse
KW - Ausschüsse
KW - Affiliationsnetzwerke
KW - network analysis
KW - European Union
KW - information flow
KW - committee governance
KW - affiliation networks
Y1 - 2013
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70732
ER -
TY - BOOK
A1 - Terhalle, Maximilian
T1 - The transition of global order
BT - legitimacy and contestation
Y1 - 2015
SN - 978-1-137-38689-2
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
CY - Basingstoke
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Debre, Maria
T1 - Testing the limits of civil society in Jordan
T1 - Grenzen der Zivilgesellschaften in Jordanien
BT - an action-based approach to the study of civil society in authoritarian regimes in the Middle East
BT - ein handlungslogischer Ansatz für die Analyse von Zivilgesellschaft in Autoritären Regimen im Nahen Osten
N2 - Civil society is either considered as a motor of democratization or stabilizer of authoritarian rule. This dichotomy is partly due to the dominance of domains-based definitions of the concept that reduce civil society to a small range of formally organized, independent and democratically oriented NGOs. Additionally, research often treats civil society as a ‘black box’ without differentiating between potential variations in impact of different types of civil society actors on existing regime structures. In this thesis, I present an alternative conceptualization of civil society based on the interactions of societal actors to arrive at a more inclusive understanding of the term which is more suited for analysis in non-democratic settings. The operationalization of the action-based approach I develop allows for an empirical assessment of a large range of societal activities that can accordingly be categorized from little to very civil society-like depending on their specific modes of interactions within four dimensions. I employ this operationalization in a qualitative case study including different actors in the authoritarian monarchy of Jordan which suggests that Jordanian societal actors mostly exhibit tolerant and democratically oriented modes of interaction and do not reproduce authoritarian patterns. However, even democratically oriented actors do not necessarily take on an oppositional positions vis-à-vis the authoritarian regime. Thus, the Jordanian civil society might not feature a high potential to challenge existing power structures in the country.
N2 - Zivilgesellschaft wird entweder als förderlich für Demokratisierung oder als Stabilisator autoritärer Herrschaftsstrukturen gesehen. Dies ist zum Einen das Resultat der Dominanz bereichslogischer Definitionen des Konzepts, welche Zivilgesellschaft auf ein schmales Spektrum formal organisierter, unabhängiger und demokratisch orientierter NGOs von Bürgern reduziert. Zum Anderen wird Zivilgesellschaft in der Forschung meist als ‚black box‘ behandelt, ohne Differenzierung zwischen der potenziellen Wirkungsweise verschiedener Arten von gesellschaftlichen Akteuren vorzunehmen. Diese Arbeit stellt eine alternative Konzeptualisierung von Zivilgesellschaft als Interaktion gesellschaftlicher Akteure vor, um ein inklusiveres Verständnis zu ermöglichen. Die erarbeitete Operationalisierung dieses Ansatzes erlaubt die empirische Untersuchung einer großen Bandbreite an gesellschaftlichen Aktivitäten, welche je nach Interaktionsmuster innerhalb von vier Dimensionen eine sehr hohe bis sehr niedrige Eignung zum zivilgesellschaftlichen Handeln aufweisen können. Eine Fallstudie verschiedener Akteure im autoritären Regime Jordanien lässt annehmen, dass gesellschaftliche Akteure dort ein dominant tolerantes, demokratisches Interaktionsmuster aufweisen und nicht autoritäre Interaktionsmuster reproduzieren. Dennoch steht eine demokratische Gesinnung der Akteure nicht automatisch in Zusammenhang mit einer oppositionellen Position gegenüber dem autoritären Staat. Das Potenzial der Zivilgesellschaft zur politischen Herausforderung der bestehenden Herrschaftsstrukturen scheint somit gering.
KW - civil society
KW - authoritarianism
KW - democratization
KW - Jordan
KW - qualitative case study
KW - Zivilgesellschaft
KW - Autoritarismus
KW - Demokratisierung
KW - Jordanien
KW - qualitative Fallstudie
Y1 - 2014
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-72974
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Heidemann, Birte
T1 - Post-agreement belfast : labour, work and the new subalterns in daragh carville's play this other city
JF - Reworking postcolonialism : globalization, labour and rights
Y1 - 2015
SN - 978-1-137-43592-7
SP - 119
EP - 133
PB - Palgrave Macmillan
CY - New York
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Schmidt, Peter
T1 - Contributions to EU regional policy
T1 - Beiträge zur EU-Regionalpolitik
BT - reconsidering theoretical and empirical perspectives on the Structural Funds
BT - neue theoretische und empirische Perspektiven auf die Strukturfonds
N2 - This cumulative dissertation contains four self-contained articles which are related to EU regional policy and its structural funds as the overall research topic. In particular, the thesis addresses the question if EU regional policy interventions can at all be scientifically justified and legitimated on theoretical and empirical grounds from an economics point of view. The first two articles of the thesis (“The EU structural funds as a means to hamper migration” and “Internal migration and EU regional policy transfer payments: a panel data analysis for 28 EU member countries”) enter into one particular aspect of the debate regarding the justification and legitimisation of EU regional policy. They theoretically and empirically analyse as to whether regional policy or the market force of the free flow of labour (migration) in the internal European market is the better instrument to improve and harmonise the living and working conditions of EU citizens. Based on neoclassical market failure theory, the first paper argues that the structural funds of the EU are inhibiting internal migration, which is one of the key measures in achieving convergence among the nations in the single European market. It becomes clear that European regional policy aiming at economic growth and cohesion among the member states cannot be justified and legitimated if the structural funds hamper instead of promote migration. The second paper, however, shows that the empirical evidence on the migration and regional policy nexus is not unambiguous, i.e. different empirical investigations show that EU structural funds hamper and promote EU internal migration. Hence, the question of the scientific justification and legitimisation of EU regional policy cannot be readily and unambiguously answered on empirical grounds. This finding is unsatisfying but is in line with previous theoretical and empirical literature. That is why, I take a step back and reconsider the theoretical beginnings of the thesis, which took for granted neoclassical market failure theory as the starting point for the positive explanation as well as the normative justification and legitimisation of EU regional policy. The third article of the thesis (“EU regional policy: theoretical foundations and policy conclusions revisited”) deals with the theoretical explanation and legitimisation of EU regional policy as well as the policy recommendations given to EU regional policymakers deduced from neoclassical market failure theory. The article elucidates that neoclassical market failure is a normative concept, which justifies and legitimates EU regional policy based on a political and thus subjective goal or value-judgement. It can neither be used, therefore, to give a scientifically positive explanation of the structural funds nor to obtain objective and practically applicable policy instruments. Given this critique of neoclassical market failure theory, the third paper consequently calls into question the widely prevalent explanation and justification of EU regional policy given in static neoclassical equilibrium economics. It argues that an evolutionary non-equilibrium economics perspective on EU regional policy is much more appropriate to provide a realistic understanding of one of the largest policies conducted by the EU. However, this does neither mean that evolutionary economic theory can be unreservedly seen as the panacea to positively explain EU regional policy nor to derive objective policy instruments for EU regional policymakers. This issue is discussed in the fourth article of the thesis (“Market failure vs. system failure as a rationale for economic policy? A critique from an evolutionary perspective”). This article reconsiders the explanation of economic policy from an evolutionary economics perspective. It contrasts the neoclassical equilibrium notions of market and government failure with the dominant evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian and Austrian-Hayekian perceptions. Based on this comparison, the paper criticises the fact that neoclassical failure reasoning still prevails in non-equilibrium evolutionary economics when economic policy issues are examined. This is surprising, since proponents of evolutionary economics usually view their approach as incompatible with its neoclassical counterpart. The paper therefore argues that in order to prevent the otherwise fruitful and more realistic evolutionary approach from undermining its own criticism of neoclassical economics and to create a consistent as well as objective evolutionary policy framework, it is necessary to eliminate the equilibrium spirit. Taken together, the main finding of this thesis is that European regional policy and its structural funds can neither theoretically nor empirically be justified and legitimated from an economics point of view. Moreover, the thesis finds that the prevalent positive and instrumental explanation of EU regional policy given in the literature needs to be reconsidered, because these theories can neither scientifically explain the emergence and development of this policy nor are they appropriate to derive objective and scientific policy instruments for EU regional policymakers.
N2 - Diese kumulative Dissertation umfasst vier eigenständige Artikel zur EU-Regionalpolitik und ihren Strukturfonds als dem übergreifenden Forschungsthema der Dissertation. Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Fragestellung, ob sich aus ökonomischer Sicht die EU-Regionalpolitik überhaupt wissenschaftlich, sowohl empirisch als auch theoretisch, begründen lässt. Die ersten beiden Artikel der Dissertation (“The EU structural funds as a means to hamper migration” und “Internal migration and EU regional policy transfer payments: a panel data analysis for 28 EU member countries”) greifen einen bestimmten Aspekt der Debatte um die Rechtfertigung von Eingriffen der EU-Regionalpolitik in den EU-Binnenmarkt auf. Die beiden Artikel analysieren theoretisch und empirisch, ob die Regionalpolitik oder die freien Marktkräfte in Form von freier Migration im europäischen Binnenmarkt besser geeignet sind, um die Lebens- und Beschäftigungsbedingungen der EU-Bürger zu verbessern und anzugleichen. Basierend auf der neoklassischen Theorie des Marktversagens, argumentiert das erste Papier, dass die Strukturfonds der EU Migration, die einen wesentlichen Mechanismus zur Erreichung von Konvergenz der europäischen Mitgliedsstaaten darstellt, verhindern. Es wird deutlich, dass die EU-Regionalpolitik, welche auf Wachstum und Konvergenz der EU-Mitgliedsstaaten abzielt, nicht gerechtfertigt werden kann, wenn die Strukturfonds Migration in der EU behindern, anstatt sie zu fördern. Der zweite Artikel zeigt jedoch, dass die empirische Evidenz bezüglich des Zusammenhangs von EU-Regionalpolitik und Migration nicht eindeutig ist, d.h. verschiedene empirische Untersuchungen zeigen, dass die Strukturfonds Migration behindern aber auch fördern. Daher ist die Frage der wissenschaftlichen Rechtfertigung der EU-Regionalpolitik auf empirischer Grundlage nicht einfach und eindeutig. Dieses Ergebnis ist unbefriedigend, steht aber im Einklang mit der bisherigen theoretischen und empirischen Literatur. Daher geht die Arbeit an dieser Stelle einen Schritt zurück und überprüft die zu Beginn unterstellte theoretische Grundlage ihrer Analyse der Erklärung und Rechtfertigung der EU-Regionalpolitik, die in der vorherrschenden neoklassischen Marktversagenstheorie zu sehen und zu finden ist. Der dritte Artikel („EU regional policy: theoretical foundations and policy conclusions revisited“) behandelt die theoretische Erklärung und Rechtfertigung, als auch die Politikempfehlungen an EU-Regionalpolitiker, welche aus der neoklassischen Marktversagenstheorie abgleitet werden. Der Artikel führt aus, dass das neoklassische Marktversagenskonzept normativ ist und die EU-Regionalpolitik dadurch mit Hilfe eines politischen und damit subjektiven Werturteils rechtfertigt und legitimiert. Dieses Konzept kann jedoch keine wissenschaftlich positive Erklärung der EU-Strukturfonds liefern, noch können daraus objektive und praktisch anwendbare Politikinstrumente abgeleitet werden. Diese Kritik an der neoklassischen Marktversagenstheorie gegeben, stellt das dritte Papier konsequenterweise die vorherrschende Erklärung und Rechtfertigung der EU-Regionalpolitik, welche in der statisch-neoklassischen Gleichgewichtsökonomik geliefert wird, in Frage. Es wird argumentiert, dass eine evolutorische Nicht-Gleichgewichtsperspektive auf die EU-Regionalpolitik wesentlich geeigneter erscheint eine realistische Erklärung für eine der größten Politiken der EU zu geben. Allerdings heißt dies nicht, dass die evolutorische Ökonomik unvoreingenommen als Allheilmittel für eine positive Erklärung und die Ableitung objektiver Politikinstrumente herangezogen werden kann. Warum dies so ist, wird im vierten Artikel der Dissertation („Market failure vs. system failure as a rationale for economic policy? A critique from an evolutionary perspective“) diskutiert. Dieser Artikel greift die Erklärung von Wirtschaftspolitik, die aus evolutorischer Perspektive gegeben wird, neu auf. Die neoklassischen Gleichgewichtsvorstellungen des Markt- und Staatsversagens werden mit den vorherrschenden evolutorischen neo-Schumpeterschen und Österreichisch-Hayekiansichen Vorstellungen die Wirtschaftspolitik betreffend verglichen. Auf diesem Vergleich aufbauend kritisiert das Papier, dass neoklassisches Versagensdenken in der evolutorischen Nicht-Gleichgewichtsökonomik weiterhin zu finden ist, wenn wirtschaftspolitische Fragestellungen erörtert werden. Dies ist sehr überraschend, da die Vertreter der evolutorischen Ökonomik ihren Ansatz normalerweise als inkompatibel zu ihrem neoklassischen Pendant ansehen. Der letzte Artikel argumentiert deshalb, dass der Gleichgewichtsgedanke eliminiert werden muss, um die ansonsten sehr fruchtbare und wesentlich realistischere evolutorische Ökonomik vor der Unterminierung ihrer eigenen Kritik an der Neoklassik zu schützen und einen konsistenten als auch objektiven evolutorischen Analyserahmen für wirtschaftspolitische Fragestellungen zu schaffen. Fasst man das Resultat der Dissertation zusammen, bleibt festzuhalten, dass die EU-Regionalpolitik und ihre Strukturfonds aus ökonomischer Sicht weder theoretisch noch empirisch rechtfertigt und legitimiert werden können. Darüber hinaus kommt die Arbeit zu dem Schluss, dass die vorherrschende positive und instrumentelle Erklärung der EU-Regionalpolitik, die in der Literatur gegeben wird, neu gedacht werden muss, da mit Hilfe dieser Theorien weder das Aufkommen und die Entwicklung dieser Politik erklärbar sind, noch geeignete objektive und wissenschaftliche Politikinstrumente für EU-Regionalpolitiker abgeleitet werden können.
KW - EU regional policy
KW - structural funds
KW - internal migration
KW - market failures
KW - non-equilibrium economics
KW - evolutionary economics
KW - system failure
KW - economic policy
KW - European integration
KW - EU-Regionalpolitik
KW - Strukturfonds
KW - interne Migration
KW - Marktversagen
KW - Nicht-Gleichgewichtsökonomik
KW - Evolutorische Ökonomik
KW - Systemversagen
KW - Wirtschaftspolitik
KW - Europäische Integration
Y1 - 2016
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90837
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Schiller, Christof
T1 - The Politics of Welfare State Transformation in Germany
BT - Still a Semi-Sovereign State?
T2 - Routledge-EUI studies in the political economy of welfare ; 17
Y1 - 2016
SN - 978-1-315-62390-0
PB - Routledge
CY - London
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Borgnäs, Kajsa
T1 - The Policy Influence of Sustainability Indicators
BT - Examining Use and Influence of Indicators in German Sustainability Policy Making
N2 - In 2002 Germany adopted an ambitious national sustainability strategy, covering all three sustainability spheres and circling around 21 key indicators. The strategy stands out because of its relative stability over five consecutive government constellations, its high status and increasingly coercive nature. This article analyses the strategy's role in the policy process, focusing on the use and influence of indicators as a central steering tool. Contrasting rationalist and constructivist perspectives on the role of knowledge in policy, two factors, namely the level of consensus about policy goals and the institutional setting of the indicators, are found to explain differences in use and influence both across indicators and over time. Moreover, the study argues that the indicators have been part of a continuous process of ‘structuring’ in which conceptual and instrumental use together help structure the sustainability challenge in such a way that it becomes more manageable for government policy.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 76
Y1 - 2016
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-96342
SP - 1
EP - 20
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Borgnäs, Kajsa
T1 - Governing through 'governing images'
BT - Understanding the policy role of sustainability indicators
N2 - In the debate on how to govern sustainable development, a central question concerns the interaction between knowledge about sustainability and policy developments. The discourse on what constitutes sustainable development conflict on some of the most basic issues, including the proper definitions, instruments and indicators of what should be ‘developed’ or ‘sustained’. Whereas earlier research on the role of (scientific) knowledge in policy adopted a rationalist-positivist view of knowledge as the basis for ‘evidence-based policy making’, recent literature on knowledge creation and transfer processes has instead pointed towards aspects of knowledge-policy ‘co-production’ (Jasanoff 2004). It is highlighted that knowledge utilisation is not just a matter of the quality of the knowledge as such, but a question of which knowledge fits with the institutional context and dominant power structures. Just as knowledge supports and justifies certain policy, policy can produce and stabilise certain knowledge. Moreover, rather than viewing knowledge-policy interaction as a linear and uni-directional model, this conceptualization is based on an assumption of the policy process as being more anarchic and unpredictable, something Cohen, March and Olsen (1972) has famously termed the ‘garbage-can model’.
The present dissertation focuses on the interplay between knowledge and policy in sustainability governance. It takes stock with the practice of ‘Management by Objectives and Results’ (MBOR: Lundqvist 2004) whereby policy actors define sustainable development goals (based on certain knowledge) and are expected to let these definitions guide policy developments as well as evaluate whether sustainability improves or not. As such a knowledge-policy instrument, Sustainability Indicators (SI:s) help both (subjectively) construct ‘social meaning’ about sustainability and (objectively) influence policy and measure its success. The different articles in this cumulative dissertation analyse the development, implementation and policy support (personal and institutional) of Sustainability Indicators as an instrument for MBOR in a variety of settings. More specifically, the articles centre on the question of how sustainability definitions and measurement tools on the one hand (knowledge) and policy instruments and political power structures on the other, are co-produced.
A first article examines the normative foundations of popular international SI:s and country rankings. Combining theoretical (constructivist) analysis with factor analysis, it analyses how the input variable structure of SI:s are related to different sustainability paradigms, producing a different output in terms of which countries (developed versus developing) are most highly ranked. Such a theoretical input-output analysis points towards a potential problem of SI:s becoming a sort of ‘circular argumentation constructs’. The article thus, highlights on a quantitative basis what others have noted qualitatively – that different definitions and interpretations of sustainability influence indicator output to the point of contradiction. The normative aspects of SI:s does thereby not merely concern the question of which indicators to use for what purposes, but also the more fundamental question of how normative and political bias are intrinsically a part of the measurement instrument as such. The study argues that, although no indicator can be expected to tell the sustainability ‘truth-out-there’, a theoretical localization of indicators – and of the input variable structure – may help facilitate interpretation of SI output and the choice of which indicators to use for what (policy or academic) purpose.
A second article examines the co-production of knowledge and policy in German sustainability governance. It focuses on the German sustainability strategy ‘Perspektiven für Deutschland’ (2002), a strategy that stands out both in an international comparison of national sustainability strategies as well as among German government policy strategies because of its relative stability over five consecutive government constellations, its rather high status and increasingly coercive nature. The study analyses what impact the sustainability strategy has had on the policy process between 2002 and 2015, in terms of defining problems and shaping policy processes. Contrasting rationalist and constructivist perspectives on the role of knowledge in policy, two factors, namely the level of (scientific and political) consensus about policy goals and the ‘contextual fit’ of problem definitions, are found to be main factors explaining how different aspects of the strategy is used. Moreover, the study argues that SI:s are part of a continuous process of ‘structuring’ in which indicator, user and context factors together help structure the sustainability challenge in such a way that it becomes more manageable for government policy.
A third article examines how 31 European countries have built supportive institutions of MBOR between 1992 and 2012. In particular during the 1990s and early 2000s much hope was put into the institutionalisation of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) as a way to overcome sectoral thinking in sustainability policy making and integrate issues of environmental sustainability into all government policy. However, despite high political backing (FN, EU, OECD), implementation of EPI seems to differ widely among countries. The study is a quantitative longitudinal cross-country comparison of how countries’ ‘EPI architectures’ have developed over time. Moreover, it asks which ‘EPI architectures’ seem to be more effective in producing more ‘stringent’ sustainability policy.
Y1 - 2016
ER -
TY - BOOK
A1 - Franzke, Jochen
T1 - Slovak Telecom administration : transformation and regulation in a dynamic market
N2 - This study is analysing the transformation of Slovak administration in the telecommunication sector between 1989 and 2004. The dynamic telecom sector forms a good example for the transition problems of post-socialist administration with special regard to the regulation regime change. After describing briefly the role of the telecom sector within economy, the Slovak sectoral policy is analysed. The focus is layed on telecom legislation (including the regulation framework), liberalization of the telecom market and privatisation of the former state owned telecom operator. The transformation of the organizational structure of the "Slovak telecommunication administration" is analysed in particular at the level of the ministry and the regulating agency.
T3 - Forschungspapiere "Probleme der Öffentlichen Verwaltung in Mittel- und Osteuropa" - 06
KW - Verwaltung
KW - Slowakei
KW - Telekommunikation
KW - Regulierung
Y1 - 2005
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-6530
SN - 978-3-939469-00-1
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Meyer, Eike
T1 - Democracy promotion by the European Union in Morocco within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy
N2 - The intention of this master-thesis is a critical assessment of the European Union´s (EU) approach to external democracy promotion in Morocco. The study follows a comparative approach and compares the approach pursued by the EU within the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), incepted in 2004, with the approach that it had developed up until then under the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP). The comparison is done with the intention to analyse, to what degree it is justified to speak of a new impetus for democratisation through the ENP in partner countries. The analysis takes into consideration the range of possible instruments for external democracy promotion in the categories „diplomacy“, „conditionality“ and „positive instruments“. For the comparison of democracy promotion under the EMP and the ENP it is suggested to compare the implemented measures in respect to three distinct dimensions: As a first dimension, instruments of democracy promotion are analysed with respect to the focus on indirect vs. direct instruments, e.g. those which aim at establishing socio-economic preconditions favourable to successful democratisation, vs. those which immediately intervene in the processes of political reform. As a second dimension, it is asked whether there has been a shift in the democracy promotion approach on a continuum between consensual cooptation and coercive intervention. As a third dimension, finally, it is analysed whether the approach has undergone a general intensification of efforts, e.g. whether the approach to democracy promotion has become a more active one. The analysis in this master-thesis comes to the conclusion that since the inception of the ENP the EU is indeed pursuing a slightly more direct and certainly a more active approach to democracy promotion in Morocco, while no significant change can be observed in comparison to the strictly partnership-oriented and consensual approach of the EMP. It can be argued that, under the ENP, relations to Morocco have indeed become somewhat more “political”, although at the same time they are still not pro-actively oriented at a political liberalisation of the political regime. Reforms promoted by the EU in Morocco are modest and largely in line with the reform agenda of the Morrocan government itself – e.g. a still largely authoritarian monarchy. Concrete reform steps directed at an opening of the political space, which is largely reserved to the king and its administration, are neither demanded nor supported by democracy promotion instruments, also under the ENP.
N2 - Die vorliegende Diplomarbeit untersucht den Ansatz der Europäischen Union (EU) zur Demokratieförderung in Marokko. Die Arbeit folgt einem vergleichenden Ansatz und vergleicht die Strategie der EU, die unter der 2004 ins Leben gerufenen „Europäischen Nachbarschaftspolitik“ (ENP) verfolgt wird, mit der, die sich bis dahin unter der „Euro-Mediterranen Partnerschaft“ (EMP) herauskristallisiert hatte. Der Vergleich wird mit dem Ziel durchgeführt herauszuarbeiten, inwiefern es berechtigt ist, neue Triebkraft und neue Anstöße für Demokratisierung durch die ENP zu erwarten. In der Arbeit werden alle Instrumente der Demokratieförderung berücksichtigt, die in die Kategorien Diplomatie, Konditionalität und positive Unterstützungsleistungen fallen. Die durchgeführten Maßnahmen werden auf drei Ebenen verglichen: Auf der ersten Ebene wird untersucht, ob sich der Schwerpunkt verschoben hat zwischen indirekten Maßnahmen, die insbesondere darauf zielen, die sozioökonomischen Voraussetzungen für erfolgreiche Demokratisierung zu schaffen, und direkten Maßnahmen, die unmittelbar in politische Reformprozesse eingreifen. Auf einer zweiten Ebene wird gefragt, ob sich der Ansatz der Demokratieförderung auf einem Kontinuum zwischen Konsens und Zwang verschoben hat. Auf einer dritten Ebene schließlich wird untersucht, ob sich das Engagement generell intensiviert hat und der Ansatz der Demokratieförderung aktiver geworden ist. Die Analyse in dieser Arbeit führt zu dem Ergebnis, dass seit der Initiierung der ENP tatsächlich ein leicht direkterer und aktiverer Ansatz verfolgt wird, während sich an dem streng partnerschaftlichen und auf Konsens ausgerichteten Ansatz der EMP nicht signifikant etwas verändert hat. Es wird jedoch auch deutlich, dass politische Reformen von Instrumenten der Demokratieförderung zwar häufiger anvisiert werden. Die Reformen, die von der EU gefördert werden, sind jedoch ausschließlich Teil des von der marokkanischen Regierung eingeleiteten und begrenzten Reformprozesses. Reformen die eine signifikante Öffnung des politischen Raumes bewirken könnten, der für die autoritäre Monarchie reserviert ist, werden auch im Rahmen der ENP von der EU weder gefördert noch gefordert.
KW - Demokratieförderung
KW - Europäische Union
KW - Marokko
KW - Europäische Außenpolitik
KW - Europäische Nachbarschaftspolitik
KW - Democracy Promotion
KW - European Union
KW - Morocco
KW - European Foreign Policy
KW - European Neighbourhood Policy
Y1 - 2007
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19591
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Paun, Christopher
T1 - Democratization and police reform
N2 - This paper compares police reforms during democratization in Poland, Hungary, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It analyses the changes to the structure of the democratic control of the police in each reform, paying special attention to the decentralization versus centralization aspect of it. The research question of this paper is: Why are some states decentralizing the democratic control of the police, while others are centralizing it, both with the aim of democratization? The theoretical background of this study are theories about policy diffusion and policy transfer. Therefore this study can be categorized as part of two different research areas. On the one hand, it is a paper from the discipline of International Relations. On the other hand, it is a paper from the discipline of Comparative Politics. The combined attention to international and national factors influencing police reform is reflected by the structure of this paper. Chapter 3 examines police structures and police reforms in established democracies as possible role models for new democracies. Chapter 4 looks at international and transnational actors that actively try to influence police reform. After having examined these external factors, three cases of police reform in new democracies are examined in chapter 5.
KW - Demokratisierung
KW - Polizeireform
KW - Dezentralisierung
KW - Politikdiffusion
KW - Politiktransfer
KW - democratization
KW - police reform
KW - decentralization
KW - policy diffusion
KW - policy transfer
Y1 - 2007
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19487
ER -