TY - JOUR A1 - Seyfried, Markus A1 - Reith, Florian T1 - The seven deadly sins of quality management: trade-offs and implications for further research JF - Quality in higher education N2 - Quality management in higher education is generally discussed with reference to commendable outcomes such as success, best practice, improvement or control. This paper, though, focuses on the problems of organising quality management. It follows the narrative of the seven deadly sins, with each ‘sin’ illustrating an inherent trade-off or paradox in the implementation of internal quality management in teaching and learning in higher education institutions. Identifying the trade-offs behind these sins is essential for a better understanding of quality management as an organisational problem. KW - Quality management KW - higher education KW - governance KW - trade-offs KW - teaching KW - research Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2019.1683943 SN - 1353-8322 SN - 1470-1081 VL - 25 IS - 3 SP - 289 EP - 303 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schulze-Gabrechten, Lena T1 - An organizational approach to public governance BT - understanding and design JF - Public administration N2 - In this volume, Egeberg and Trondal put forward an ‘organizational approach to public governance’ (p. 1) that, in their view, complements existing explanations for organizational change and behaviour in governance processes (‘Understanding’) and produces relevant advice for practitioners, specifically anyone involved in reorganizing public administration (‘Design’). Following the authors’ introduction of the theoretical reasoning behind their approach (chapter 1), they present supporting findings that are based on new material (chapters 2 and 9), but mainly draw on six previously published research articles (chapters 3–8). Egeberg and Trondal conclude with possible ‘design implications’ of said findings (chapter 9). Their ‘organizational approach’ focuses on the impact of selected organizational characteristics on decision‐making in and on behalf of government organizations in policy‐making generally (‘public governance’) and administrative politics more specifically (‘meta‐governance’). The authors concentrate on three sets of ‘classical’ organizational characteristics: structure (mainly vertical and horizontal specialization), demography (personnel composition), and locus (geographical location). The conceptual part of the volume convincingly summarizes ‘formal organization matters’—arguments from the literature for each of the individual organizational factors. Their main, already well‐established argument is that the way an organization is formally set up makes some (reform) decisions more likely than others—a line of reasoning that the authors present as neglected in governance literature. In the following five empirical chapters, the authors show that aspects of horizontal and vertical specialization—mainly operationalized by Gulicks’ principles of horizontal specialization and the idea of primary versus secondary affiliation of staff—affect organizational behaviour. Readers learn that whether government levels are organized according to a territorial or non‐territorial principle impacts the power relationship between levels: non‐territorial organization at the supranational level tends to empower the centre against lower levels of government. There are two chapters on the decision‐making behaviour of commissioners and officials in the European Commission, both showing that organizational affiliation trumps demographic background factors such as nationality, even with temporary staff. Chapter 5 addresses coordination dynamics in the European multi‐level system and finds that coordination at the territorially organized national level thwarts non‐territorially organized coordination at the supranational level, resulting in the phenomenon of ‘direct’ national administration bypassing their national executives. Further, the authors show that vertical specialization—while controlling for other factors such as issue salience—has an effect on officials’ behaviour at the national level: agency officials in Norway report significantly less sensitivity towards political signals from the political executive than their colleagues in ministries. Chapter 7 discusses the relevance of geographical location for the relationship between subordinated organizations and their political executive. The authors find that the site of Norwegian agencies does not significantly affect their autonomy, influence, or inter‐institutional coordination with the superior ministry. The last empirical chapter focuses on the effect of formal organization on meta‐governance, that is, administrative politics. Based on a qualitative case study of a reorganization process in Norway in 2003 involving the synchronized relocation of several agencies after many failed attempts, the authors conclude that administrative reforms can be politically steered and controlled through the organization of the reform process. They argue that amongst other factors the strategic exclusion of opposing actors from the reform process as well as the deliberate increase in situations demanding quick decisions (‘action rationality’, p. 119) by political leaders helps explain the reform's unexpected success. The last chapter is dedicated to the synthesis of the results and to design implications. Supported by new data from a 2016 survey among Norwegian public officials, the authors conclude that organizational position is the most important influencer of decision‐making behaviour, with educational background and previous job experience also playing a large role (p. 135). Consequently, their suggestions for practitioners involved in meta‐governance processes concentrate on aspects of the deliberate crafting of organizational specialization to shape organizational positions, and spend less time discussing location and employee demographics. The authors illustrate and contextualize their recommendations with the help of three empirical examples: organizing good governance by balancing political control and independence in the case of agencification, organizing for coping with boundary‐spanning challenges such as climate change through inter‐organizational structural arrangements, and designing permanent organizational structures for innovative reforms in the public sector (pp. 137 ff.). This volume is an excellent compilation of theoretically informed applications of the all too often undefined ‘organization matters’ argument. It juxtaposes—particularly in the theory chapter and in the last chapter on design implications—organizational arguments against other explanations of organizational change like historical institutionalism or the garbage can model of decision‐making. However, two major aspects of the book's approach are less convincing. First, supplementary explanations such as the garbage can model that are discussed in the reflections on meta‐governance are neither argumentatively nor empirically applied to public governance; why should, for example, the ‘solutions in search of a problem’ idea only be applicable to decisions on reform policy, but not to decisions in all other policy areas? Similarly, it would have been nice to read more on the authors’ idea on the interaction between organizational factors and between them and other explanations in the empirical cases on public governance—this would have allowed the reader to get a better idea about how much formal organization matters. The view on bureaucrats’ demographic background is slightly confusing: it is presented as a competing approach (p. 7), but also as one of the main organizational factors (p. 12). Second, as the authors themselves state, the concept of governance is about ‘steering through collective action’ (p. 3) and focuses on interactive processes, and explicitly includes non‐governmental actors in the policy‐making equation. Against this background it seems unfortunate that most of the work presented in the book takes an exclusively governmental perspective and the justification for it remains rather superficial. It would be preferable and even necessary to see the organizational arguments—at least theoretically or through discussing appropriate literature—applied to interactive governance processes involving other actors and/or to non‐bureaucratic organizations. Regarding its methodology, the specifics of the proposed approach deserve to be addressed more systematically and critically in the book. Except for chapters 2, 3 and 5 (literature‐based studies) as well as chapter 8 (single case study), the empirical studies follow a quantitative logic and are informed by data on self‐reported behaviour through large‐N panel surveys with public officials. In terms of analysis, descriptive statistics or basic inferential statistics (linear regression) are employed. Certainly, the authors are aware of the limitations of their data sources, such as the results being possibly affected by social desirability, and they discuss and justify them in the chapters individually (e.g., on pp. 47, 89). Still, their approach could be strengthened with a more cautious account on the extent to which their choice of data and methods is able to uncover the ‘causal impact of organizational factors in public governance processes’ (p. 131, emphasis added) and with some suggestions for widening their methodological toolbox in the future. On this note, the survey method presented as new on p. 135 is not a particularly convincing choice. The authors do not lay out a research agenda; a surprising omission. This is, however, somewhat made up for by the concluding chapter's stimulating discussion of the possible real‐world implications of their findings and perspective, skilfully using organization theory as a ‘craft’ (p. 29). Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12590 SN - 0033-3298 SN - 1467-9299 VL - 97 IS - 2 SP - 483 EP - 485 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mielke, Jahel T1 - Signals for 2 degrees C BT - the influence of policies, market factors and civil society actions on investment decisions for green infrastructure JF - Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment N2 - The targets of the Paris Agreement make it necessary to redirect finance flows towards sustainable, low-carbon infrastructures and technologies. Currently, the potential of institutional investors to help finance this transition is widely discussed. Thus, this paper takes a closer look at influence factors for green investment decisions of large European insurance companies. With a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the importance of policy, market and civil society signals is evaluated. In summary, respondents favor measures that promote green investment, such as feed-in tariffs or adjustments of capital charges for green assets, over ones that make carbon-intensive investments less attractive, such as the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies or a carbon price. While investors currently see a low impact of the carbon price, they rank a substantial reform as an important signal for the future. Respondents also emphasize that policy signals have to be coherent and credible to coordinate expectations. KW - Green infrastructure investment KW - policy signals KW - green finance KW - climate change KW - institutional investors Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/20430795.2018.1528809 SN - 2043-0795 SN - 2043-0809 VL - 9 IS - 2 SP - 87 EP - 115 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon 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 - JOUR A1 - Leib, Julia T1 - The security and justice approach in liberia’s peace process BT - mechanistic evidence and local perception JF - Peace economics, peace science, and public policy N2 - From the international perspective, the peace process in Liberia has generally been described as a successful model for international peacebuilding interventions. But how do Liberians perceive the peace process in their country? The aim of this paper is to complement an institutionalist approach looking at the security and justice mechanism in Liberia with some insights into local perceptions in order to answer the following question: how do Liberians perceive the peace process in their country and which institutions have been supportive for the establishment of sustaining peace? After briefly introducing the background of the Liberian conflict and the data collection, I present first results, analyzing the mechanism linking two peacebuilding institutions (peacekeeping and transitional justice) with the establishment of sustaining peace in Liberia. KW - Liberia KW - peace process KW - peacekeeping KW - process tracing KW - survey KW - transitional justice Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/peps-2019-0033 SN - 1554-8597 VL - 25 IS - 4 PB - de Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - THES A1 - Ihle, Sebastian T1 - Inwiefern wird der Beutelsbacher Konsens in einem ausgewählten Schulbuch für den Politikunterricht in der Sekundarstufe I in Brandenburg berücksichtigt? T1 - To what extent the Beutelsbach consensus is considered in a selected school book for political education in Brandenburg? N2 - Die vorliegende Arbeit geht der Fragestellung nach, inwiefern der Beutelsbacher Konsens in einem ausgewählten Schulbuch für den Politikunterricht in der Sekundarstufe I in Brandenburg berücksichtigt wird. Um sich dieser Frage anzunähern, werden zunächst die drei Grundsätze des Konsenses wiedergegeben: das Überwältigungsverbot, das Kontroversitätsgebot und die Schülerorientierung. Da der Konsens, auch wenn er von einem Großteil der Fachdidaktikerinnen und Fachdidaktiker geteilt wird, immer wieder Gegenstand von Diskussionen ist, werden in einem ersten Schritt Ansätze zur Aktualisierung bzw. Erweiterung dargestellt und anschließend aktuelle Streitpunkte aufgezeigt. In einem kurzen Zwischenfazit wird dann ein für die Schulbuchanalyse unabdingliches, eindeutiges Verständnis des Konsenses entwickelt. Im folgenden Schritt wird die Rolle von Schulbüchern als Lehr- und Lernmedien diskutiert. Dabei steht insbesondere die Frage im Zentrum, weshalb sich gerade Schulbücher für eine Analyse im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit eignen. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird das Konzept der Schulbuchanalyse vorgestellt. In diesem Rahmen werden der Untersuchungsschwerpunkt (Kontroversitätsgebot) und der Untersuchungsgegenstand (Kontroverse um Migration und Integration) eingegrenzt. In der Folge wird das Schulbuch Politik und Co. 1 mithilfe des erarbeiteten Untersuchungsinstruments (Kodierleitfaden) analysiert. Zudem werden die Ergebnisse pointiert und die gewählte Vorgehensweise reflektiert. N2 - This thesis investigates the extent to which the Beutelsbach consensus is considered in a selected school book for political education in Brandenburg. To answer this question, the three principles of the consensus are first reproduced: the prohibition of overwhelming the students, the requirement for controversy and the principle of giving weight to the personal interests of students. Since the consensus, even if it is shared by the majority of subject didactics, is always the subject of discussions, approaches to updating or expanding are presented in a first step and then current points of contention are shown. In a short interim conclusion, a clear understanding of the consensus, which is indispensable for the school book analysis, is then developed. In the next step, the role of school books as teaching and learning tool is discussed. The main question here is why school books are particularly suitable for an analysis in the context of the present thesis. Thereafter the concept of school book analysis is presented. Within this framework, the focus of the investigation (principle of controversy) and the object of investigation (controversy about migration and integration) are defined. In the following, the textbook „Politik & Co. 1" will be analyzed with the help of the developed analysis tool (coding guidelines). In addition, the results are pointed out and the chosen procedure is reflected. KW - Schulbuchanalyse KW - Beutelsbacher Konsens KW - Kontroversität KW - Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse KW - Politikunterricht KW - Kontroversitätsgebot KW - Beutelsbach consensus KW - principle of controversy KW - political education KW - qualitative content analysis KW - school book analysis Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-596884 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Heucher, Angela T1 - Reconsidering overlap in global food security governance T2 - Food security : the science, sociology and economics of food production and access to food Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019-00916-z SN - 1876-4517 SN - 1876-4525 VL - 11 IS - 3 SP - 555 EP - 558 PB - Springer Netherlands CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gehring, Thomas A1 - Dörfler, Thomas T1 - Constitutive mechanisms of UN Security Council practices BT - precedent pressure, ratchet effect, and council action regarding intrastate conflicts JF - Review of International Studies N2 - Based upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P). KW - Security Council KW - International Practices KW - Constitutive Mechanism KW - Responsibility to Protect KW - Precedent KW - Ratchet Effect Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210518000268 SN - 0260-2105 SN - 1469-9044 VL - 45 IS - 1 SP - 120 EP - 140 PB - Univ. CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gehring, Thomas A1 - Dorsch, Christian A1 - Dörfler, Thomas T1 - Precedent and doctrine in organisational decision-making BT - the power of informal institutional rules in the United Nations Security Council’s activities on terrorism JF - Journal of international relations and development N2 - We examine how and under what conditions informal institutional constraints, such as precedent and doctrine, are likely to affect collective choice within international organisations even in the absence of powerful bureaucratic agents. With a particular focus on the United Nations Security Council, we first develop a theoretical account of why such informal constraints might affect collective decisions even of powerful and strategically behaving actors. We show that precedents provide focal points that allow adopting collective decisions in coordination situations despite diverging preferences. Reliance on previous cases creates tacitly evolving doctrine that may develop incrementally. Council decision-making is also likely to be facilitated by an institutional logic of escalation driven by institutional constraints following from the typically staged response to crisis situations. We explore the usefulness of our theoretical argument with evidence from the Council doctrine on terrorism that has evolved since 1985. The key decisions studied include the 1992 sanctions resolution against Libya and the 2001 Council response to the 9/11 attacks. We conclude that, even within intergovernmentally structured international organisations, member states do not operate on a clean slate, but in a highly institutionalised environment that shapes their opportunities for action. KW - decision-making KW - doctrine KW - international organisations KW - precedent KW - Security Council KW - terrorism Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-017-0101-5 SN - 1581-1980 SN - 1408-6980 VL - 22 IS - 1 SP - 107 EP - 135 PB - Palgrave Macmillan CY - Basingstoke ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen A1 - Eppner, Sebastian T1 - Faire Repräsentation versus klare Richtungsentscheide? Zur Reform des Wahl- und Regierungssystems Fair representation versus clear decisions On the reform of the electoral system and form of government T1 - Fair representation versus clear decisions On the reform of the electoral system and form of government JF - Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft N2 - The increased fragmentation of European party systems and the resulting difficulties of government formation have led to renewed debates about electoral systems. Some authors characterize certain electoral systems as optimal compromises between "proportional" and "majoritarian" conceptions of democracy. We argue that these optimality arguments are biased towards the majoritarian conception. Ambitious proportional conceptions embrace the goals of mechanical proportionality, multidimensional representation and flexible, issue-specific legislative coalitions. However, in parliamentary systems of government these goals cannot be reconciled with majoritarian goals. This is because in parliamentarism the same electoral threshold applies to parliamentary representation and to participation in the vote of non-confidence procedure. The first threshold is crucial for the proportional, the latter for the majoritarian conception of democracy. If we are willing to decouple the two thresholds - and hence change the form of government - new avenues for reform open up. We illustrate our arguments using data for 29 democratic systems between 1995 and 2015. N2 - Die Fragmentierung europäischer Parteiensysteme und damit verbundene Schwierigkeiten bei der Koalitionsbildung haben zu einer Neuauflage altbekannter Debatten über unterschiedliche Wahlsysteme geführt. Einige Autoren sehen dabei bestimmte Wahlsysteme als optimalen Kompromiss zwischen den Prinzipien der Mehrheits- und der Verhältniswahl an. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Optimalitätsargumente eine konzeptionelle Schlagseite zugunsten „majoritärer“ Demokratiekonzeptionen haben. Eine anspruchsvolle „proportionale“ Demokratiekonzeption umfasst die Ziele mechanischer Proportionalität, multidimensionaler Repräsentation und wechselnder Gesetzgebungsmehrheiten. Diese Ziele lassen sich allerdings im parlamentarischen Regierungssystem nicht mit den Zielen der Mehrheitswahl vereinbaren. Der Grund ist, dass die relevanten Hürden des Wahlsystems gleichzeitig für die parlamentarische Repräsentation und die Teilnahme am Misstrauensvotum gelten. Erstere ist entscheidend für die proportionale, letztere für die majoritäre Konzeption der Demokratie. Sind wir bereit diese beiden Hürden zu entkoppeln – und somit das Regierungssystem zu verändern – ergibt sich eine Vielfalt neuer Reformoptionen. Wir illustrieren diese Punkte mit Daten für 29 demokratische Systeme im Zeitraum von 1995 bis 2015. KW - Forms of government KW - Types of democracy KW - Electoral systems Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-019-00431-7 SN - 1865-2646 SN - 1865-2654 VL - 13 IS - 3 SP - 375 EP - 397 PB - Springer CY - Wiesbaden 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 -