Sozialwissenschaften
Refine
Year of publication
- 2013 (51) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (27)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (10)
- Doctoral Thesis (9)
- Review (3)
- Other (1)
- Postprint (1)
Keywords
- accountability (2)
- political equality (2)
- Affiliationsnetzwerke (1)
- Ausschüsse (1)
- Cambodia (1)
- Collective violence (1)
- Conceptions of social orders (1)
- Conflicts of social orders (1)
- Denmark (1)
- Dezentralisierung (1)
- Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (1)
- European Union (1)
- European Union research policy (1)
- Europäische Forschungspolitik (1)
- Europäische Union (1)
- Evaluationsnutzung (1)
- Evaluationsverwendung (1)
- Frauenrechte (1)
- Gerald Gaus (1)
- Germany (1)
- India (1)
- Indien (1)
- Informationsflüsse (1)
- Institutionalisierte Evaluationsverfahren (1)
- Kambodscha (1)
- Legitimization (1)
- Minderheiten (1)
- Multiple Modernities (1)
- Netzwerkanalyse (1)
- Norway (1)
- Politikevaluation (1)
- Relational sociology (1)
- Social order (1)
- Social relations (1)
- Vietnamese (1)
- Vietnamesen (1)
- accountability dynamics (1)
- accountability mechanism (1)
- administration (1)
- affiliation networks (1)
- asylum (1)
- civil service (1)
- coercion (1)
- committee governance (1)
- data protection (1)
- decentralization (1)
- democracy (1)
- development cooperation (1)
- discourse analysis (1)
- electoral systems (1)
- evaluation use (1)
- evaluation utilization (1)
- evidence-based policy (1)
- hospitals (1)
- immigration (1)
- indigene Völker (1)
- indigenous peoples (1)
- information flow (1)
- institutional design (1)
- labour market administration (1)
- local NGOs (1)
- lokale Nichtregierungsorganisationen (1)
- majority rule (1)
- minister responsibility (1)
- minorities (1)
- multiple modernities (1)
- network analysis (1)
- policy-evaluation (1)
- privacy (1)
- privatization (1)
- public administration (1)
- public employment service (1)
- public justification (1)
- public-reason liberalism (1)
- second chambers (1)
- smart CCTV (1)
- sociology of knowledge (1)
- video surveillance (1)
- welfare markets (1)
- welfare state reform (1)
- women's rights (1)
Institute
Gegenstand dieser Arbeit sind die (Selbst-)Darstellungen von Gründer_innen von Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGOs) im Bereich Kinder- und Frauenrechte in Tamil Nadu, Südindien. Um diese (Selbst-)Darstellungen angemessen analysieren zu können, wird zuerst eine analytische Herangehensweise entworfen, die davon ausgeht, dass bestehende soziologische Konzepte, die in erster Linie in Auseinandersetzung mit einem spezifischen (west-europäischen) Kontext entstanden sind, nicht unhinterfragt auf andere Kontexte übertragen werden können. Das erschwert die Verwendung von Begrifflichkeiten wie „Zivilgesellschaft“, „Entwicklung“ oder auch der scheinbar klaren Dichotomie von Moderne und Tradition. Eisenstadt machte diese Problematik in der von ihm begonnenen Debatte um „Multiple Modernities“ deutlich. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird an diese Diskussion mit handlungstheoretischen Argumenten angeknüpft, um auch Akteursperspektiven angemessen analysieren zu können. Nachdem der theoretische Rahmen und die methodische Grundlage der Arbeit erläutert wurden, wird Kontextwissen erarbeitet, um die Analyse der Interviews einzubetten. Es werden Diskurse um Kaste und den Status von Frauen sowie Aspekte der aktuellen politischen Situation Tamil Nadus betrachtet. Die (Selbst-)Darstellungen lassen sich dann anhand der im Titel angedeuteten Dreiteilung aufschlüsseln: Die Gründer_innen setzen sich zum ersten mit der eigenen Rolle auseinander. Sie beschreiben sich als „social worker“ und greifen in den Selbstbeschreibungen zum Teil auf populistische Elemente des politischen Umfeldes zurück. Zum zweiten beschreiben sie die eigene Position gegenüber ihren „Zielgruppen“. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Beziehungen zwischen NGO und „community“ zwischen Partizipation und Paternalismus schwanken. Zum dritten formulieren sie Zielsetzungen in Abgrenzung zu anderen (lokalen) politischen Akteuren: Sie grenzen sich zum Beispiel von einem ihrem Verständnis nach „westlichen“ Begriff von Entwicklung ab und formulieren demgegenüber „eigene“ Ziele. Sie reflektieren über lokale Kooperationen, z.B. mit politischen Persönlichkeiten, Kastenassoziationen, aber auch über Abgrenzungen oder Zusammenstöße, die sich dabei ergeben. Insgesamt wird deutlich, dass die (Selbst-)Darstellungen der Gründer_innen sich spannungsgeladen und ambivalent auf unterschiedliche Diskurse, Ideen und soziale Praktiken beziehen. Sie lassen sich insbesondere nicht in eine Perspektive von „Entwicklung“ einordnen, welche auf der Dichotomie von Moderne und Tradition aufbaut.
Sansibar und der Klimawandel
(2013)
In dealing with surveillance, scholars have widely agreed to refute privacy as an analytical concept and defining theme. Nonetheless, in public debates, surveillance technologies are still confronted with issues of privacy, and privacy therefore endures as an empirical subject of research on surveillance. Drawing from our analysis of public discourse of so-called smart closed-circuit television (CCTV) in Germany, we propose to use a sociology of knowledge perspective to analyze privacy in order to understand how it is socially constructed and negotiated. Our data comprise 117 documents, covering all publicly available documents between 2006 and 2010 that we were able to obtain. We found privacy to be the only form of critique in the struggle for the legitimate definition of smart CCTV. In this paper, we discuss the implications our preliminary findings have for the relationship between privacy issues and surveillance technology and conclude with suggestions of how this relationship might be further investigated as paradoxical, yet constitutive.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit einer klassischen aber noch immer zentralen und aktuellen Frage der Evaluationsforschung, der Hinterfragung der Verwendung bzw. Wirksamkeit von Evaluationsverfahren. Vor dem Hintergrund der seit Ende der 1990er Jahre vor allem in Europa starken Zunahme von institutionalisierten Politik-Evaluationsverfahren sowie der zugleich zunehmenden Kritik dieser Verfahren in Wissenschaft und Praxis, untersucht die Arbeit diese Wirksamkeit am Fallbeispiel der Forschungspolitik der Europäischen Union. Aufbauend auf einer Aufarbeitung des Forschungsstandes zur Evaluationsverwendungsforschung und einer Vorstellung des gewählten Politikfeldes sowie der spezifischen Evaluationspraxis, erfolgt dazu eine systematische Gegenüberstellung der zentralen Evaluationsempfehlungen und der Entwicklung im Politikfeld über die vergangenen 15 Jahre. Im Ergebnis kommt die Arbeit zu der Feststellung eines (überraschend) hohen Ausmaßes an Entsprechung der Evaluationsempfehlungen mit der Politikentwicklung im untersuchten Fallbeispiel. Auf der Basis der Untersuchung des Fallbeispiels aber auch unter Heranziehung weiterer empirischer Beiträge in der Literatur ist damit der Behauptung der fehlenden Wirksamkeit der institutionalisierten Evaluation auf die Politikgestaltung klar zu widersprechen. Eine weitergehende Diskussion des Ergebnisses der Fallstudie legt darüber hinaus nahe, dass einige spezifische Faktoren und Bedingungen die Wirksamkeit der Evaluationsverfahren im untersuchten Fallbeispiel positiv zu beeinflussen scheinen. Im Einzelnen sind dies: der Charakter und die Ausprägung der Evaluationsempfehlungen, das spezifische institutionelle Umfeld der Evaluation sowie das spezifische 'politische Klima'. Aus dem Ergebnis lässt sich andererseits aber auch folgern, dass insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Akzeptanzproblematik eine Verstärkung der Bemühungen zur Wahrnehmung der Evaluations-wirksamkeit auf Seiten aller Beteiligten geboten scheint. Die Arbeit stellt hierzu abschließend einige Vorschläge und Ideen zusammen, die diese Wahrnehmung verbessern können.
Open Government
(2013)
Bis heute gelingt es kaum, Begriffe rund um die Verwaltungsreform – von New Public Management bis zu den E-Modellen – schlüssig voneinander abzugrenzen. Dieses Defizit wird bei der Betrachtung des Konzepts Open Government erneut sichtbar. Der Begriff Open Government ist dabei nicht nur aus verwaltungswissenschaftlicher, sondern mit Blick auf die Instrumente der direkten Demokratie auch aus politikwissenschaftlicher Perspektive zu betrachten. Handelt es sich um einen Sammelbegriff für hauptsächlich schon Dagewesenes?
The article explores how recent changes in the governance of employment services in three European countries (Denmark, Germany and Norway) have influenced accountability relationships. The overall assumption in the growing literature about accountability is that the number of actors involved in accountability arrangements is rising, that accountability relationships are becoming more numerous and complex, and that these changes may lead to contradictory accountability relationships, and finally to multi accountability disorder'. The article tries to explore these assumptions by analysing the different actors involved and the information requested in the new governance arrangements in all three countries. It concludes that the considerable changes in organizational arrangements and more managerial information demanded and provided have led to more shared forms of accountability. Nevertheless, a clear development towards less political or administrative accountability could not be observed.
Kultursoziologie
(2013)
Juan Jose Linz : Nachruf
(2013)
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.
Indira Gandhi : ein Porträt
(2013)
The Westminster system places great power upon the Executive with minimal accountabilities. Despite the dissolution of the British Empire, so many countries maintained the Westminster system whether it was transplanted or implanted to their soil. The Westminster system provides various actors with a great potential of increasing power autonomy over others due to the high levels of flexibility and manoeuvrability. Political actors, especially following independence, were able to operate generally unencumbered by fixed and formal institutional expectations. This allowed the countries and their executive, particularly the Prime Minister, the ability to mould and establish constitutional traditions, which in turn shaped the nascent polity that surrounded the real and constitutional independence. This article examines the Westminster systems critical legacy to accountability and its impact on executive power.
Political scientists regularly justify particular democratic institutions. This article explores two desiderata for such justifications. The first is a formal equality baseline which puts the burden of justification on those who favour more unequal institutions. This baseline is seen as an implication of the rule of law. The second desideratum, the comparison requirement, builds on the first: adequate justifications of particular institutions must compare them to the best alternative, and this comparison must consider the costs for political equality. The two desiderata are applied to political science debates about the proportionality of the electoral system and bicameral systems of legislative decision-making.
The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work of Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise 'neutral' democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus's own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies.
Disintegrating Democracy at Work: Labor Unions and the Future of Good Jobs in the Service Economy
(2013)
Challenging Khmer citizenship : minorities, the state, and the international community in Cambodia
(2013)
The idea of a distinctly ‘liberal’ form of multiculturalism has emerged in the theory and practice of Western democracies and the international community has become actively engaged in its global dissemination via international norms and organizations. This thesis investigates the internationalization of minority rights, by exploring state-minority relations in Cambodia, in light of Will Kymlicka’s theory of multicultural citizenship. Based on extensive empirical research, the analysis explores the situation and aspirations of Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese, highland peoples, Muslim Cham, ethnic Chinese and Lao and the relationships between these groups and the state. All Cambodian regimes since independence have defined citizenship with reference to the ethnicity of the Khmer majority and have - often violently - enforced this conception through the assimilation of highland peoples and the Cham and the exclusion of ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese. Cambodia’s current constitution, too, defines citizenship ethnically. State-sponsored Khmerization systematically privileges members of the majority culture and marginalizes minority members politically, economically and socially. The thesis investigates various international initiatives aimed at promoting application of minority rights norms in Cambodia. It demonstrates that these initiatives have largely failed to accomplish a greater degree of compliance with international norms in practice. This failure can be explained by a number of factors, among them Cambodia’s neo-patrimonial political system, the geo-political fears of a ‘minoritized’ Khmer majority, the absence of effective regional security institutions, the lack of minority access to political decision-making, the significant differences between international and Cambodian conceptions of modern statehood and citizenship and the emergence of China as Cambodia’s most important bilateral donor and investor. Based on this analysis, the dissertation develops recommendations for a sequenced approach to minority rights promotion, with pragmatic, less ambitious shorter-term measures that work progressively towards achievement of international norms in the longer-term.
Benefit duration, unemployment duration and job match quality aregression-discontinuity approach
(2013)
We use a sharp discontinuity in the maximum duration of benefit entitlement to identify the effect of extended benefit duration on unemployment duration and post-unemployment outcomes (employment stability and re-employment wages). We address dynamic selection, which may arise even under an initially random assignment to treatment, estimating a bivariate discrete-time hazard model jointly with a wage equation and correlated unobservables. Owing to the non-stationarity of job search behavior, we find heterogeneous effects of extended benefit duration on the re-employment hazard and on job match quality. Our results suggest that the unemployed who find a job close to and after benefit exhaustion experience less stable employment patterns and receive lower re-employment wages compared to their counterparts who receive extended benefits and exit unemployment in the same period. These results are found to be significant for men but not for women.
Accountability can be conceptualized as institutionalized mechanisms obliging actors to explain their conduct to different forums, which can pose questions and impose sanctions. This article analyses different crises' in immigration policies in Norway, Denmark and Germany along a descriptive framework of five different accountability types: political, administrative, legal, professional and social accountability. The exchanges of information, debate and their consequences between an actor and a forum are crucial to understanding how political-administrative action is carried out in critical situations. First, accountability dynamics emphasize conventional norms and values regarding policy change and, second, formal political responsibility does not necessarily lead to political consequences such as minister resignations in cases of misbehaviour. Consequences strongly depend on how accountability dynamics take place.
One of the most striking features of recent public sector reform in Europe is privatization. This development raises questions of accountability: By whom and for what are managers of private for-profit organizations delivering public goods held accountable? Analyzing accountability mechanisms through the lens of an institutional organizational approach and on the empirical basis of hospital privatization in Germany, the article contributes to the empirical and theoretical understanding of public accountability of private actors. The analysis suggests that accountability is not declining but rather multiplying. The shifts in the locus and content of accountability cause organizational stress for private hospitals.