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Friends or foes?
(2020)
Energy efficiency measures and the deployment of renewable energy are commonly presented as two sides of the same coin-as necessary and synergistic measures to decarbonize energy systems and reach the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Here, we quantitatively investigate the policies and performances of the EU Member States to see whether renewables and energy efficiency policies are politically synergistic or if they rather compete for political attention and resources. We find that Member States, especially the ones perceived as climate leaders, tend to prioritize renewables over energy efficiency in target setting. Further, almost every country performs well in either renewable energy or energy efficiency, but rarely performs well in both. We find no support for the assertion that the policies are synergistic, but some evidence that they compete. However, multi-linear regression models for performance show that performance, especially in energy efficiency, is also strongly associated with general economic growth cycles, and not only efficiency policy as such. We conclude that renewable energy and energy efficiency are not synergistic policies, and that there is some competition between them.
This paper examines and discusses the biases and pitfalls of retrospective survey questions that are currently being used in many medical, epidemiological, and sociological studies on the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing the consistency of answers to retrospective questions provided by respondents who participated in the first two waves of a survey on the social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, we illustrate the insights generated by a large body of survey research on the use of retrospective questions and recall accuracy.
Women's rights are a core part of a global consensus on human rights. However, we are currently experiencing an increasing popularity of anti-feminist and misogynist politics threatening to override feminist gains. In order to help explain this current revival and appeal, in this article I analyse how anti-feminist communities construct their collective identities at the intersection of local and global trends and affiliations. Through an in-depth analysis of representations in the collective identities of six popular online anti-feminist communities based in India, Russia and the United States, I shed light on how anti-feminists discursively construct their anti-feminist 'self' and the feminist 'other' between narratives of localized resistance to change and backlash against the results of broader societal developments associated with globalization. The results expose a complex set of global-local dynamics, which provide a nuanced understanding of the differences and commonalities of anti-feminist collective identity-building and mobilization processes across contexts. By explicitly focusing on the role of discursively produced locations for anti-feminist identity-building and providing new evidence on anti-feminist communities across three different continents, the article contributes to current discussions on transnational anti-feminist mobilizations in both social movement studies and feminist International Relations.
Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic affects all European countries, the ways in which these countries are prepared for the health and subsequent economic crisis varies considerably. Financial solidarity within the European Union (EU) could mitigate some of these inequalities but depends upon the support of the citizens of individual member states for such policies. This paper studies attitudes of the Austrian population - a net-contributor to the European budget - towards financial solidarity using two waves of the Austrian Corona Panel Project collected in May and June 2020. We find that individuals (i) who are less likely to consider the Covid-19 pandemic as a national economic threat, (ii) who believe that Austria benefits from supporting other countries, and (iii) who prefer the crisis to be organized more centrally at EU-level show higher support for European financial solidarity. Using fixed effects models, we further show that perceiving economic threats and preferring central crisis management also explain attitude dynamics within individuals over time. We conclude that cost-benefit perceptions are important determinants for individual support of European financial solidarity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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.
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.
Die Transformation der öffentlichen Verantwortung im Bereich der sozialen Wohlfahrt führte in den letzten Jahren zu einem gestiegenen Forschungsinteresse an Mitarbeiten-den, die sich an der Schnittstelle zwischen öffentlicher Verwaltung und direktem Kontakt zu Klient*innen befinden. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht am Beispiel der Schulsozialarbeit an Potsdamer Grundschulen der Frage nach, inwieweit Vertrauen in Klient*innen die Nutzung von Ermessensspielräumen durch Schulsozialarbeiter*innen beeinflusst. Das Street-Level Bureaucracy Framework nach Michael Lipsky spannt dabei den theoretischen Rahmen, während qualitative Interviews mit Schulsozialarbei-ter*innen die Basis für die Beantwortung der Forschungsfrage darstellen. Die Ergebnis-se zeigen, dass ein geringeres Maß an Vertrauen in Klient*innen dafür sorgt, dass Schulsozialarbeiter*innen durch Bewältigungsstrategien wie der Rationierung von Res-sourcen und dem gedanklichen Rückzug von Klient*innen versuchen, ihre Arbeitslast zu verringern. Ein höheres Maß an Vertrauen in Klient*innen sorgt hingegen dafür, dass sie ihre Ermessensspielräume zu Gunsten dieser Klient*innen nutzen, zum Beispiel durch das Umgehen von Datenschutzregeln zur effektiveren Fallbearbeitung.
Keeping up with the Patels
(2020)
End-users base their consumption decisions not only on available budget and direct use value, but also on their social environment. The underlying social dynamics are particularly important in the case of consumer goods that implicate high future energy demand and are, hence, also key for climate mitigation. This paper investigates the impact of social factors, with a focus on 'status perceptions', on car and appliance ownerships by urban India households. Using two rounds of the household-level data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS, 2005 and 2012), we test for the impact of social factors in addition to economic, demographic, locational, and housing on ownership levels. Starting with factor analysis to categorise appliances by their latent characteristics, we then apply the bivariate ordered probit model to identify drivers of consumption among the urban households. We find that while income and household demographics are predominant drivers of car and appliance uptake, the household's perception of status, instrumented by a variable measuring expenditure on conspicuous consumption, emerges as a key social dimension influencing the uptake. The results indicate how households identify themselves in society influences their corresponding car and appliance consumption. A deeper understanding of status-based consumption is, therefore, essential to designing better demand-side solutions to low carbon consumption.
Moving Forces
(2017)
Throughout a large part of the twentieth century, the body was interpreted as a field of signs, the meaning of which pointed to an unconscious dimension. At the height of the popularity of structuralism, Jacques Lacan deemed the unconscious to be “structured like a language.” Starting in the early 1990s, however, a deep shift occurred in the way the body was interpreted. A new movement cast tremendous doubt on the hegemony of language and instead advocated a performative, pictorial, and affective approach — the so-called material turn — which encompassed all of these. In the words of Karen Barad, this turn inquired as to why meaning, history, and truth are assigned to language only, whereas the movements of materiality are given less prominence: “How did language come to be more trustworthy than matter? Why are language and culture granted their own agency and historicity while matter is figured as passive and immutable?” With this shift toward the material, bodies began to be seen in a different light and their materiality understood as something that follows its own laws and movements, which cannot be understood exclusively in terms of social-cultural codes. Instead, these laws and movements call into question the very dichotomies of nature/culture and body/spirit.
The design of embedded systems is becoming continuously more complex such that efficient system-level design methods are becoming crucial. Recently, combined Answer Set Programming (ASP) and Quantifier Free Integer Difference Logic (QF-IDL) solving has been shown to be a promising approach in system synthesis. However, this approach still has several restrictions limiting its applicability. In the paper at hand, we propose a novel ASP modulo Theories (ASPmT) system synthesis approach, which (i) supports more sophisticated system models, (ii) tightly integrates the QF-IDL solving into the ASP solving, and (iii) makes use of partial assignment checking. As a result, more realistic systems are considered and an early exclusion of infeasible solutions improves the entire system synthesis.
Becoming a Student of Reform
(2017)
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.
“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.
Zunehmend komplexe Herausforderungen und Aufgaben lassen sich nicht mehr mit den bisherigen Strukturen, Methoden und Prozessen der klassischen Verwaltung bewältigen. Vielmehr gewinnen Ansätze und Methoden des New Work im öffentlichen Sektor angesichts der sich stetig ändernden und dynamischen Arbeitswelt eine immer größere Bedeutung. Umso mehr besteht die Notwendigkeit, sich in der Verwaltung agil aufzustellen. Unter Agilität wird hierbei die Fähigkeit einer Organisation verstanden, sich schnell verändernden Rahmenbedingungen flexibel und dynamisch anzupassen.
Im Fokus dieser Arbeit steht der Einfluss von Agilität auf die Führungskräfte-Mitarbeiter-Beziehung. Mittels einer halbstandardisierten Online-Befragung im Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten und im Bezirksamt Neukölln von Berlin wird zunächst der vorliegende Agilitätsgrad mit dem Fokus auf agile Organisationsstrukturen, agile Organisationskultur und agile Führung ermittelt und sodann anhand der Qualität der dyadischen Arbeitsbeziehung von Führungskraft und Mitarbeiter (LMX-Qualität) überprüft, inwiefern die agile Arbeitsweise im Vergleich zu einer nicht-agilen Arbeitsumgebung die Beziehung beeinflusst.
Im Ergebnis der Untersuchung zeigt sich, dass ein positiver Zusammenhang zwischen Agilität und der Führungskräfte-Mitarbeiter-Beziehung besteht. Es stellt sich in beiden Ämtern ein mäßig bis starker Agilitätsgrad heraus, wobei besonders agile Führungseigenschaften zu den wesentlichen Faktoren zählen, die eine hochqualitative Beziehung begünstigen. Während im Bezirksamt ein Zusammenhang zwischen Agilität und hoher LMX-Qualität ermittelt wurde, konnte dieser nicht für die untersuchte Stichprobe des Landesamts festgestellt werden. Dennoch ließ sich in beiden Behörden ein positiver Einfluss von Agilität auf zumindest die Entwicklung einer erfolgreichen Führungskräfte-Mitarbeiter-Beziehung erfassen.
Research on multi-level implementation of EU legislation has almost exclusively focused on the national level, while little is known about the role of subnational authorities. Nevertheless, it is a prerequisite for the functioning of the European Union that all member states and their subnational authorities apply and enforce EU legislation in due time. I address this research gap and take a closer look at the legal transposition process in the German regional states. Using a novel data set comprising detailed information on about 700 subnational measures, I show that state-level variables, such as political preferences and ministerial resources, account for variation in the timing of legal transposition and repeatedly lead to subnational delay. To conclude, the paper addresses the role of subnational authorities in the EU multi-level system and points to their interest in shaping legal transposition in order to counterbalance their loss of competences to the national level.