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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.
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.
Introduction
(2020)
The processes of neo-liberalisation, coined as ‘actually existing neo-liberalism’ are by their very nature variegated and context-specific and can appear in multi-faceted and contradictory forms. Consequentially, sociological reflection has tried to conceptualise ongoing processes of transforming the city under the concept of urban neo-liberalism which is generally understood as the contextually specific and path-dependent realisation of neo-liberal restructuration projects, embedded in varying social, political, economic, and cultural ‘regulatory landscapes’. As much as neo-liberalism as ideology and political programme aims at erasing any democratic participation in society, its proponents have taken sides pushing ahead the re-conceptualisation of the city as a market with the right of the stronger ‘to do down the weaker’. The city has become a focal point for neo-liberalism’s war against democracy and citizens. Turning social relations into market transactions in order to restructure cities is not a new idea from the neo-liberals but one of the non-negotiable dogmas of their religion called science.
Permanent liminality?
(2020)
After more than eight years of multifaceted crisis and extreme austerity policies, the programmes of financial assistance to Greece ended in August 2018, only to be replaced by a strict surveillance plan which leaves little room for manoeuvre towards more socially sensitive policies. In this context, the paper focuses on three major issues of argument between the creditors and the Greek government: property ownership and taxation, reduction of pensions, and continued austerity. Based on research in Athens and starting from the premise that behind figures and statistics lie embodied subjects, the paper discusses these issues drawing from particular people’s experiences.
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.
Introduction
(2022)
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.
In recent time, phytoliths (silicon deposition between plant cells) have been recognized as an important nutrient source for crops. The work presented here aims at highlighting the potential of phytolith-occluded K pool in ferns. Dicranopteris linearis (D.linearis) is a common fern in the humid subtropical and tropical regions. Burning of the fern D.linearis is, in slash-and-burn regions, a common practice to prepare the soil before planting. We characterised the phytolith-rich ash derived from the fern D.linearis and phytolith-associated potassium (K) (phytK), using X-ray tomographic microscopy in combination with kinetic batch experiments. D.linearis contains up to 3.9g K/kgd.wt, including K subcompartmented in phytoliths. X-ray tomographic microscopy visualized an interembedding structure between organic matter and silica, particularly in leaves. Corelease of K and Si observed in the batch experiments confirmed that the dissolution of ash phytoliths is one of major factors controlling K release. Under heat treatment, a part of the K is made available, while the remainder entrapped into phytoliths (ca. 2.0-3.3%) is unavailable until the phytoliths are dissolved. By enhanced removal of organic phases, or forming more stable silica phases, heat treatment changes dissolution properties of the phytoliths, affecting K release for crops and soils. The maximum releases of soluble K and Si were observed for the phytoliths treated at 500-800 degrees C. For quantitative approaches for the K provision of plants from the soil phytK pool in soils, factors regulating phytolith dissolution rate have to be considered.
Institutional entrepreneurship comprises the activities of agents who disrupt existing social institutions or create new ones, often to enable diffusion, especially of radical innovations, in a market. The increased interest in institutional entrepreneurship has produced a large number of scholarly publications, especially in the last five years. As a consequence, the literature landscape is somewhat complex and scattered. We aim to compile a quantitative overview of the field within business and management research by conducting bibliometric performance analyses and science mappings. We identified the most productive and influential journals, authors, and articles with the highest impact. We found that institutional entrepreneurship has stronger ties to organization studies than to entrepreneurship research. Additionally, a large body of literature at the intersection of institutions and entrepreneurship does not refer to institutional entrepreneurship theory. The science mappings revealed a distinction between theoretical and conceptual research on one hand and applied and empirical research on the other hand. Research clusters reflect the structure–agency problem by focusing on the change agent’s goals and interests, strategies, and specific implementation mechanisms, as well as the relevance of public agents for existing institutions, and a more abstract process rather than agency view.
Thermal energy from concentrating solar thermal technologies (CST) may contribute to decarbonizing applications from heating and cooling, desalination, and power generation to commodities such as aluminium, hydrogen, ammonia or sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). So far, successful commercial-scale CST projects are restricted to solar industrial process heat (SIPH) and concentrating solar power (CSP) generation and, at least for the latter, depend on support from public policies that have been stagnating for years. As they are technologically similar, spillovers between SIPH or CSP and other emerging CST could accelerate commercialization across use cases while maximizing the impact of scarce support. Here, we review the technical potential for cross-fertilization between different CST applications and the ability of the current policy regime to enable this potential. Using working temperature as the key variable, we identify different clusters of current and emerging CST technologies. Low-temperature CST (<400℃) applications for heating, cooling and desalination already profit from the significant progress made in line-focussing CSP over the last 15 years. A newly emerging cluster of high temperature CST (>600℃) for solar chemistry and high-grade process heat has significant leverage for spillovers with point-focussing solar tower third-generation CSP currently under development. For these spillovers to happen, however, CSP policy designs would need to prioritize innovation for high working temperature and encourage modular plant design, by adequately remunerating hybridized plants with heat and power in and outputs that include energy sources beyond CST solar fields. This would enable synergies across applications and scales by incentivizing compatibility of modular CST components in multiple sectors and use cases.
Chinese CSP for the world?
(2022)
For three consecutive five-year plans since 2006, China has worked on building up an internationally competitive CSP industry and value chain. One big milestone in commercializing proprietary Chinese CSP technology was the 2016 demonstration program of 20 commercial-scale projects. China sought to increase and demonstrate capacities for domestic CSP technology development and deployment. At the end of the 13th five-year period, we take stock of the demonstrated progress of the Chinese CSP industry towards delivering internationally competitive CSP projects. We find that in January 2021, eight commercial-scale projects, in total 500 MW, have been completed and three others were under construction in China. In addition, Chinese EPC’s have participated in three international CSP projects, although proprietary Chinese CSP designs have not been applied outside China. The largest progress has been made in molten-salt tower technology, with several projects by different companies completed and operating successfully: here, the aims were met, and Chinese companies are now at the global forefront of this segment. Further efforts for large-scale demonstration are needed, however, for other CSP technologies, including parabolic trough - with additional demonstration hindered by a lack of further deployment policies. In the near future, Chinese companies seek to employ the demonstrated capabilities in the tower segment abroad and are developing projects using Chinese technology, financing, and components in several overseas markets. If successful, this will likely lead to increasing competition and further cost reductions for the global CSP sector.
We investigate whether political ideology has an observable effect on decarbonization ambition, renewable power aims, and preferences for power system balancing technologies in four European countries. Based on the Energy Logics framework, we identify ideologically different transition strategies (state-centered, market-centered, grassroots-centered) contained in government policies and opposition party programs valid in 2019. We compare these policies and programs with citizen poll data. We find that ideology has a small effect: governments and political parties across the spectrum have similar, and relatively ambitious, decarbonization and renewables targets. This mirrors citizens' strong support for ambitious action regardless of their ideological self-description. However, whereas political positions on phasing out fossil fuel power are clear across the policy space, positions on phasing in new flexibility options to balance intermittent renewables are vague or non-existent. As parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power aims, the policy ambition is likely to remain high, even if governments change.
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.
Campaigns against authoritarian rule trigger the problems of authoritarian control and power-sharing. Hence, autocrats cannot ignore campaigns, but can they repress them? This chapter hypothesizes that restrictions and violence do just that—if those forms of political repression complement each other. Each variant of political repression has drawbacks: Restrictions dampen, but they do not eliminate interdependent behavior; violence imposes high individual costs on dissent, but it frequently backfires against its originators. Complementarity asserts that those drawbacks matter less when both variants of repression work in tandem. Statistical analysis of 50 campaigns distributed across 112 authoritarian regimes between 1977 and 2001 yields mixed support for the argument. Based on a binary probit model with sample selection correction, the analysis adds a preemptive and a reactive aspect to political repression. The results imply that complementarity matters as long as repression preempts campaigns, but not when it reacts to them. Moreover, once citizens knock at the palace gates, restrictions turn futile. Finally, violence reduces the outlook for successful resistance against authoritarian rule, but it also backfires at all times—preemptive and reactive. By implication, political repression thwarts successful resistance today, but it breeds more resistance tomorrow.
Does complementarity between restrictions and violence stabilize authoritarian power-sharing in the face of popular rebellion? Scholars widely concur that the central political conflict in authoritarian regimes plays out between people on the inside of the regime. This chapter adds to the debate and studies coup attempts in light of two interconnected hypotheses. First, violence against campaigns destabilizes power-sharing because it exposes a weak leadership. Second, this adverse effect of violence declines as the routine level of restrictions increases, because restrictions act as a sorting mechanism for uncompromising political opposition. Both hypotheses are tested using Bayesian multilevel statistical analysis on a data set of 253 coup attempts in 198 authoritarian regimes between 1949 and 2007. This study design allows separation of repression’s time-dependent effects from its context effects, and it demonstrates the value of Bayesian methods for studying rare political phenomena such as coups d’état. The chapter’s conclusion, however, is straightforward: Once citizens form campaigns, repression can only deteriorate the situation because it opens a frontline right at the center of authoritarian rule.
Energy models are used to inform and support decisions within the transition to climate neutrality. In recent years, such models have been criticised for being overly techno-centred and ignoring environmental and social factors of the energy transition. Here, we explore and illustrate the impact of ignoring such factors by comparing model results to model user needs and real-world observations. We firstly identify concrete user needs for better representation of environmental and social factors in energy modelling via interviews, a survey and a workshop. Secondly, we explore and illustrate the effects of omitting non-techno-economic factors in modelling by contrasting policy-targeted scenarios with reality in four EU case study examples. We show that by neglecting environmental and social factors, models risk generating overly optimistic and potentially misleading results, for example by suggesting transition speeds far exceeding any speeds observed, or pathways facing hard-to-overcome resource constraints. As such, modelled energy transition pathways that ignore such factors may be neither desirable nor feasible from an environmental and social perspective, and scenarios may be irrelevant in practice. Finally, we discuss a sample of recent energy modelling innovations and call for continued and increased efforts for improved approaches that better represent environmental and social factors in energy modelling and increase the relevance of energy models for informing policymaking.
Energy system models are advancing rapidly. However, it is not clear whether models are becoming better, in the sense that they address the questions that decision-makers need to be answered to make well-informed decisions. Therefore, we investigate the gap between model improvements relevant from the perspective of modellers compared to what users of model results think models should address. Thus, we ask: What are the differences between energy model improvements as perceived by modellers, and the actual needs of users of model results? To answer this question, we conducted a literature review, 32 interviews, and an online survey. Our results show that user needs and ongoing improvements of energy system models align to a large degree so that future models are indeed likely to be better than current models. We also find mismatches between the needs of modellers and users, especially in the modelling of social, behavioural and political aspects, the trade-off between model complexity and understandability, and the ways that model results should be communicated. Our findings suggest that a better understanding of user needs and closer cooperation between modellers and users is imperative to truly improve models and unlock their full potential to support the transition towards climate neutrality in Europe.
Who owns REDD+?
(2020)
The question of who is entitled to benefit from transactions under the United Nations framework to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) remains one of the most controversial issues surrounding cooperative efforts to reduce deforestation in developing countries. REDD+ has been conceived as an international framework to encourage voluntary efforts in developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance carbon removals from forest activities. It was designed as an international framework under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to enable the generation of emission reductions and removals (ERRs) at the national-and, provisionally, the subnational-level and is, thus, primarily a creature of international law. However, in defining forest carbon ERRs, the international framework competes with national emission trading systems and domestic REDD+ legislation as well as private standards that define units traded on the voluntary carbon market. As results-based and carbon market systems emerge, the question remains: Who can claim participation in REDD+ and voluntary carbon market projects? The existence of different international, national and private standards that value ERRs poses a challenge to countries that participate in REDD+ as well as to communities and private actors participating in voluntary carbon market projects. This paper seeks to clarify the nature and limitation of rights pertaining to REDD+ market transactions. It also links the notion of carbon rights to both carbon markets and government's decision on benefit sharing. Applying a legal lens, this paper helps to understand the various claims and underlying rights to participate in REDD+ transactions and addresses ambiguities that can lead to conflict around REDD+ implementation. The definition of carbon rights and the legal nature of carbon credits depend on local law and differ between countries. However, by categorizing carbon rights, the paper summarizes several legal considerations that are relevant for regulating REDD+ and sharing the financial benefits of transacting ERRs.
REDD+ and leakage
(2021)
A corporate appetite for greenhouse gas reduction from nature-based solutions, in general, and REDD+, in particular, is driving a rapidly growing voluntary carbon market. The interest to invest in solutions that avoid or reduce deforestation holds the potential to significantly support national efforts to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals. However, controversy over leakage coupled with confusion and insufficient understanding of spill-over and displacement effects risk holding back necessary investments. This article seeks to shed light on different concepts surrounding leakage, including underlying dynamics and possible solutions on how to address them. In doing so, it makes the case for integrating avoided deforestation projects into national REDD+ strategies and highlights the need for a multi-level and multi-actor approach towards REDD+. Leakage occurs at all levels of implementation of REDD+ activities, at the project, programme and policy level, and both within and beyond national boundaries. Local leakage can largely be controlled through project design that analyses and addresses the proximate causes of leakage and underlying drivers, however, leakage is more difficult to avoid at the programme or policy level. Market leakage is particularly complex and harder to manage, but can – to a certain extent – be modelled and accounted for. Successful REDD+ efforts will combine demand-side measures with national or jurisdictional programmes that support governance reforms and integrate local investments in nature-based solutions and avoided deforestation projects.
Key policy insights
Emissions leakage is a ubiquitous phenomenon in climate mitigation that occurs at all levels of implementation. However, it is of particular concern in the case of REDD+, where reduced deforestation in one geographical area can lead to an increase in forest loss in another area.
Leakage has to be managed and monitored at different scales: locally through avoided deforestation projects that address local drivers of deforestation; nationally through well-designed REDD+ policies; and internationally, among others, through demand-side standards in countries importing forest-risk commodities.
Larger-scale programmes that link government interventions with efforts to eliminate deforestation from commodity supply chains, conservation efforts and avoided deforestation projects can limit leakage while helping to integrate various conservation and financing strategies.
‘Nesting’ of avoided deforestation projects into larger REDD+ programmes, at sub-national or national scale, allows for the integration of greenhouse gas accounting across different scales of implementation.