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As presidents approach the end of their constitutionally defined term in office, they face a number of difficulties, most importantly the deprivation of sources of power, personal enrichment, and protection from prosecution. This leads many of them to attempt to circumvent their term limits. Recent studies explain both the reasons for the extension or full abolition of term limits, and failed attempts to do so. Key explanations include electoral competition and the post-term fate of previous post holders. What we do not know yet is how compliance with term limits may be tied to the current president's expectations for their post-term fate. In particular, we do not know whether leaders who attempt to remove term limits and fail to do so jeopardize their post-term career as a result, and conversely, whether leaders who comply will have better outcomes in terms of security, prestige, and economic gain. Hence, we ask how the decision of a leader to comply or not comply with term limits is conditioned by the expectation of their post-term fate. To address this question, this article introduces new data on the career trajectories of term-limited presidents and its systematic effect on term limit compliance.
The reorganization of governments is crucial for parties to express their policy preferences once they reach office. Yet these activities are not confined to the direct aftermath of general elections or to wide-ranging structural reforms. Instead, governments reorganize and adjust their machinery of government all the time. This paper aims to assess these structural choices with a particular focus at the core of the state, comparing four Western European democracies (Germany, France, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom) from 1980 to 2013. Our empirical analysis shows that stronger shifts in cabinets' ideological profiles in the short- and long-term as well as the units' proximity to political executives yield significant effects. In contrast, Conservative governments, commonly regarded as key promoters of reorganizing governments, are not significant for the likelihood of structural change. We discuss the effects of this politics of government reorganization for different research debates assessing the inner workings of governments.
In this article, we examine the effects of political change on name changes of units within central government ministries. We expect that changes regarding the policy position of a government will cause changes in the names of ministerial units. To this end we formulate hypotheses combining the politics of structural choice and theories of portfolio allocation to examine the effects of political changes at the cabinet level on the names of intra-ministerial units. We constructed a dataset containing more than 17,000 observations on name changes of ministerial units between 1980 and 2013 from the central governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and France. We regress a series of generalized estimating equations (GEE) with population averaging models for binary outcomes. Finding variations across the three political-bureaucratic systems, we overall report positive effects of governmental change and ideological positions on name changes within ministries.
Global Legitimacy Crises
(2022)
Global Legitimacy Crises addresses the consequences of legitimacy in global governance, in particular asking: when and how do legitimacy crises affect international organizations and their capacity to rule. The book starts with a new conceptualization of legitimacy crisis that looks at public challenges from a variety of actors. Based on this conceptualization, it applies a mixed-methods approach to identify and examine legitimacy crises, starting with a quantitative analysis of mass media data on challenges of a sample of 32 IOs. It shows that some, but not all organizations have experienced legitimacy crises, spread over several decades from 1985 to 2020. Following this, the book presents a qualitative study to further examine legitimacy crises of two selected case studies: the WTO and the UNFCCC. Whereas earlier research assumed that legitimacy crises have negative consequences, the book introduces a theoretical framework that privileges the activation inherent in a legitimacy crisis. It holds that this activation may not only harm an IO, but could also strengthen it, in terms of its material, institutional, and decision-making capacity. The following statistical analysis shows that whether a crisis has predominantly negative or positive effects depends on a variety of factors. These include the specific audience whose challenges define a certain crisis, and several institutional properties of the targeted organization. The ensuing in-depth analysis of the WTO and the UNFCCC further reveals how legitimacy crises and both positive and negative consequences are interlinked, and that effects of crises are sometimes even visible beyond the organizational borders.
Mit narrativen Medien lernen
(2022)
Serene Khader ist eine der wenigen feministischen Philosoph:innen in der anglosächsischen Philosophie, die sich gezielt mit globaler Ungerechtigkeit und Imperialismus aus Sicht jener Frauen beschäftigen, die von kolonialer und kultureller Herrschaft betroffen sind. Hierbei entlarvt sie eindrucksvoll die oftmals westliche Prägung von Feminismus, Gleichstellungspolitik und Philosophie und verfolgt so das Ziel, die Autonomie und Entscheidungskraft aller Frauen anzuerkennen. So zielt Khader in Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic auf eine Neuausrichtung der feministischen Perspektive, welche es schafft, dekolonial und anti-imperialistisch zu sein, ohne gleichzeitig dem Universalismus komplett abzuschwören. Die folgende Buchdiskussion begibt sich in eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Khaders interessanter wie wichtiger Theorie. Einleitend werden wir einen Überblick über Khaders Grundgedanken geben. Es schließen sich kritische Kommentare von Tamara Jugov, Mirjam Müller, Kerstin Reibold sowie Hilkje C. Hänel und Fabian Schuppert an, auf die Serene Khader abschließend antwortet.
The demand for learning Design Thinking (DT) as a path towards acquiring 21st-century skills has increased globally in the last decade. Because DT education originated in the Silicon Valley context of the d.school at Stanford, it is important to evaluate how the teaching of the methodology adapts to different cultural contexts.The thesis explores the impact of the socio-cultural context on DT education.
DT institutes in Cape Town, South Africa and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were visited to observe their programs and conduct 22 semistructured interviews with local educators regarding their adaption strategies. Grounded theory methodology was used to develop a model of Socio-Cultural Adaptation of Design Thinking Education that maps these strategies onto five dimensions: Planning, Process, People, Place, and Presentation. Based on this model, a list of recommendations is provided to help DT educators and practitioners in designing and delivering culturally inclusive DT education.
In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir den Zusammenhang zwischen staatlicher Regulierung im Umweltschutz und der Umweltperformanz. Ausgehend von drei theoretischen Perspektiven, welche die Beziehung von Staat und Markt beim Umweltschutz unterschiedlich konzeptualisieren, identifizieren wir fünf Pfade, wie staatlicher Eingriff und Umweltperformanz miteinander verknüpft sein könnten. Wir untersuchen dann die empirische Relevanz dieser Pfade mit einer quantitativen Analyse, die 29 umweltpolitische Maßnahmen in für 37 Länder und den Zeitraum von 1970 bis 2010 umfasst. Dabei finden wir zumindest für einige Politikbereiche und einige Länder Hinweise, die auf eine Effektivität nationalstaatlicher Regulierung hinweisen. Zukünftige Forschung kann auf unserem Rahmen aufbauen, um weitere Hypothesen zum Policy-Outcome-Nexus zu generieren und zu testen.
This study examines how public policies affect parents' preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers' and fathers' work-family preferences: the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare; the right to return to a full-time job after having reduced hours to part-time and an increase in the number of 'partner months' in parental leave schemes. Analysing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany from 2015 (N = 1756), we find that fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Full-time working parents, moreover, are found to prefer fewer hours independent of the policy setting, while non-employed parents would like to work at least some hours. Last but not least, our analyses show that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers' preferences for longer and mothers' preferences for shorter leave. Increasing the number of partner months in parental schemes hence has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.
“Broadcast your gender.”
(2022)
Social media platforms provide a large array of behavioral data relevant to social scientific research. However, key information such as sociodemographic characteristics of agents are often missing. This paper aims to compare four methods of classifying social attributes from text. Specifically, we are interested in estimating the gender of German social media creators. By using the example of a random sample of 200 YouTube channels, we compare several classification methods, namely (1) a survey among university staff, (2) a name dictionary method with the World Gender Name Dictionary as a reference list, (3) an algorithmic approach using the website gender-api.com, and (4) a Multinomial Naïve Bayes (MNB) machine learning technique. These different methods identify gender attributes based on YouTube channel names and descriptions in German but are adaptable to other languages. Our contribution will evaluate the share of identifiable channels, accuracy and meaningfulness of classification, as well as limits and benefits of each approach. We aim to address methodological challenges connected to classifying gender attributes for YouTube channels as well as related to reinforcing stereotypes and ethical implications.
“Broadcast your gender.”
(2022)
Social media platforms provide a large array of behavioral data relevant to social scientific research. However, key information such as sociodemographic characteristics of agents are often missing. This paper aims to compare four methods of classifying social attributes from text. Specifically, we are interested in estimating the gender of German social media creators. By using the example of a random sample of 200 YouTube channels, we compare several classification methods, namely (1) a survey among university staff, (2) a name dictionary method with the World Gender Name Dictionary as a reference list, (3) an algorithmic approach using the website gender-api.com, and (4) a Multinomial Naïve Bayes (MNB) machine learning technique. These different methods identify gender attributes based on YouTube channel names and descriptions in German but are adaptable to other languages. Our contribution will evaluate the share of identifiable channels, accuracy and meaningfulness of classification, as well as limits and benefits of each approach. We aim to address methodological challenges connected to classifying gender attributes for YouTube channels as well as related to reinforcing stereotypes and ethical implications.
Is There a Rural Penalty in Language Acquisition? Evidence From Germany's Refugee Allocation Policy
(2022)
Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the “null effect” is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers.
Is There a Rural Penalty in Language Acquisition? Evidence From Germany's Refugee Allocation Policy
(2022)
Emerging evidence has highlighted the important role of local contexts for integration trajectories of asylum seekers and refugees. Germany's policy of randomly allocating asylum seekers across Germany may advantage some and disadvantage others in terms of opportunities for equal participation in society. This study explores the question whether asylum seekers that have been allocated to rural areas experience disadvantages in terms of language acquisition compared to those allocated to urban areas. We derive testable assumptions using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) which are then tested using large-N survey data (IAB-BAMF-SOEP refugee survey). We find that living in a rural area has no negative total effect on language skills. Further the findings suggest that the “null effect” is the result of two processes which offset each other: while asylum seekers in rural areas have slightly lower access for formal, federally organized language courses, they have more regular exposure to German speakers.
In this paper, we show how socialist planning can be based on input-output data. We argue that the information required for this can be obtained by a central planning agency and thus dismiss Hayek’s information argument against socialism. We further show how economic planning can be made responsive to consumer demand through a feedback control mechanism. Output targets of products would be adjusted in response to observed consumer demand or based on predictions about future demand. Planners can use machine learning to make more accurate forecasts. The valuation of goods plays an important role in the feedback control mechanism. The values of goods can either be measured by the labour time necessary for their production (labour values) or through shadow prices based on linear programming.
Reply and Counter-Reply
(2023)
This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform.
Review symposium
(2023)
Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: Democratic Design and the Separation of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2021) posits that “in a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be desirable, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being is not” (Ganghof, 2021). To consider, examine and theorise about this, Ganghof urges engagement with semi-parliamentarism. As explained by Ganghof, legislative power is shared between two democratically legitimate sections of parliament in a semi-parliamentary system, but only one of those sections selects the government and can remove it in a no-confidence vote. Consequently, power is dispersed and not concentrated in the hands of any one person, which, Ganghof argues, can lead to an enhanced form of parliamentary democracy. In this book review symposium, George Tsebelis, Michael Thies, José Antonio Cheibub, Rosalind Dixon and Daniel Bogéa review Steffen Ganghof’s book and engage with the author about aspects of research design, case selection and theoretical argument. This symposium arose from an engaging and constructive discussion of the book at a seminar hosted by Texas A&M University in 2022. We thank Prof José Cheibub (Texas A&M) for organising that seminar and Dr Anna Fruhstorfer (University of Potsdam) for initiating this book review symposium.
Der Beitrag widmet sich zwei überaus fruchtbaren theoretischen Ansätzen in der Policy-Forschung und darüber hinaus: der Vetospielertheorie und Vetopunkt-Ansätzen. Neben den Grundzügen beider Ansätze stellen wir grundlegende Entwicklungslinien und Probleme dieser Literaturen anhand beispielhafter Studien dar. Es zeigt sich, dass beide Ansätze teils kontroverse Annahmen treffen, zu denen es plausible Alternativen gibt. Zum Beispiel kann das Verhalten von Koalitionsparteien im Policy-Prozess anders als von der Vetospielertheorie angenommen modelliert werden. Die kausalen Effekte bestimmter Institutionen oder Vetopunkte können zudem je nach Kontext variieren. Diesem Kontext sollte größere Beachtung geschenkt werden.
In recent years, governments have increased their efforts to strengthen the citizen-orientation in policy design. They have established temporary arenas as well as permanent units inside the machinery of government to integrate citizens into policy formulation, leading to a “laboratorization” of central government organizations. We argue that the evolution and role of these units herald new dynamics in the importance of organizational reputation for executive politics. These actors deviate from the classic palette of organizational units inside the machinery of government and thus require their own reputation vis-à-vis various audiences within and outside their parent organization. Based on a comparative case study of two of these units inside the German federal bureaucracy, we show how ambiguous expectations of their audiences challenge their organizational reputation. Both units resolve these tensions by balancing their weaker professional and procedural reputation with a stronger performative and moral reputation. We conclude that government units aiming to improve citizen orientation in policy design may benefit from engaging with citizens as their external audience to compensate for a weaker reputation in the eyes of their audiences inside the government organization. Points for practitioners: many governments have introduced novel means to strengthen citizen-centered policy design, which has led to an emergence of novel units inside central government that differ from traditional bureaucratic structures and procedures ; this study analyzes how these new units may build their organizational reputation vis-à-vis internal and external actors in government policymaking. ; we show that such units assert themselves primarily based on their performative and moral reputation.