Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (150)
- Part of a Book (26)
- Doctoral Thesis (16)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (14)
- Other (10)
- Postprint (6)
- Review (4)
- Working Paper (4)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
Language
- English (231) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (231) (remove)
Keywords
- World Bank (7)
- Germany (6)
- governance (6)
- Security Council (5)
- decision-making (5)
- climate change (4)
- crisis (4)
- energy policy (4)
- international organisations (4)
- terrorism (4)
Institute
- Fachgruppe Politik- & Verwaltungswissenschaft (231) (remove)
The digitalization of public administration is increasingly moving forward. This systematic literature review analyzes empirical studies that explore the impacts of digitalization projects (n=93) in the public sector. Bibliometrically, only a few authors have published several times on this topic so far. Most studies focusing on impact come from the US or China, and are related to Computer Science. In terms of content, the majority of examined articles studies services to citizens, and therefore consider them when measuring impact. A classification of the investigated effects by dimensions of public value shows that the analysis of utilitarian-instrumental values, such as efficiency or performance, is prevalent. More interdisciplinary cooperation is needed to research the impact of digitalization in the public sector. The different dimensions of impact should be linked more closely. In addition, research should focus more on the effects of digitalization within administration.
Potentially disabled?
(2022)
Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare illness called Myasthenia Gravis. Myasthenia Gravis is a long-term neuromuscular autoimmune disease where antibodies block or destroy specific receptors at the junction between nerve and muscle; hence, nerve impulses fail to trigger muscle contractions. The disease leads to varying degrees of muscle weakness. Currently, I have only minor symptoms, I am not seriously impaired, and I do not suffer from any social disadvantage because of my illness. Yet, my life and my body since my diagnosis feel different than before. In this paper I aim to make this feeling intelligible and propose that it is a state of what I call ‘latent impairment’. Latent impairment is a state of being ‘in between’, different from being actually impaired and also different from being abled-bodied. The theory takes its cues both from social constructionist theories of disability as well as theories of (chronic) illness and their focus on the importance of subjectivity. Furthermore, I suggest that a phenomenological understanding of latent impairment can show possible ways of becoming an ally to the DRM.
The legitimacy and effectiveness of international organizations are often linked directly to issues of representation—not only on their high-level governing boards and in top leadership but also within their staff. This article explores two key questions of bureaucratic representation in the critical cases of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. First, we seek to unpack three essential dimensions of staff representation—nationality, education, and gender—to explain how representation may matter for international organizations. Second, we aim to describe the multiple dimensions of representation in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank over the past twenty years by deploying a novel dataset on staff demographics, focusing on ranks with decision-making authority within the institutions. Our descriptive analysis reveals that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have made considerable efforts to diversify their bureaucracies. Nonetheless, representation remains uneven; for example, nationals from middle- and low-income countries, women, and staff without economics degrees from prominent US- or UK-based universities are less present in key leadership positions. These results may be well explained by the particular needs of the institutions’ technical mandates and limits in the supply of qualified staff and, as such, need not be seen as suboptimal. Nonetheless, perceived imbalances in representation may continue to pose external legitimation and operational challenges to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in a complex political environment where such multidimensional representation is important to sustaining the buy-in of donor and borrower countries alike. To this end, we recommend that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank enhance their diversity and inclusion efforts by increasing transparency via reporting disaggregated data on workforce composition and introducing annual requirements to publish progress reports with management feedback to strengthen internal and external accountability.
Divided loyalties?
(2022)
Many operational International Organizations (IOs) rely on national staff when implementing projects in member states. However, fears persist that the loyalties of national IO staff may be divided when working in their home countries. The article studies differences in more than 50,000 procurement decisions taken in 1729 projects overseen by World Bank staff working as expatriates or in their home countries. The empirical results show that when staff work in their home countries, national suppliers' probability of winning procurement contracts increases. However, these increases are not driven by restricted procurement processes—that exclude competition—which are often seen as red flags for corruption. Instead, restricted procurement processes seem to be less likely when staff work in their home countries. These findings imply that national IO staff use their country-specific knowledge to increase the development effectiveness of procurement in line with the mandate of the World Bank.
Donors of development assistance for health typically provide funding for a range of disease focus areas, such as maternal health and child health, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other infectious diseases. But funding for each disease category does not match closely its contribution to the disability and loss of life it causes and the cost-effectiveness of interventions. We argue that peer influences in the social construction of global health priorities contribute to explaining this misalignment. Aid policy-makers are embedded in a social environment encompassing other donors, health experts, advocacy groups, and international officials. This social environment influences the conceptual and normative frameworks of decision-makers, which in turn affect their funding priorities. Aid policy-makers are especially likely to emulate decisions on funding priorities taken by peers with whom they are most closely involved in the context of expert and advocacy networks. We draw on novel data on donor connectivity through health IGOs and health INGOs and assess the argument by applying spatial regression models to health aid disbursed globally between 1990 and 2017. The analysis provides strong empirical support for our argument that the involvement in overlapping expert and advocacy networks shapes funding priorities regarding disease categories and recipient countries in health aid.
Harmful side effects
(2022)
Governments have increasingly adopted laws restricting the activities of international non-governmental organizations INGOs within their borders. Such laws are often intended to curb the ability of critical INGOs to discover and communicate government failures and abuses to domestic and international audiences. They can also have the unintended effect of reducing the presence and activities of INGOs working on health issues, and depriving local health workers and organizations of access to resources, knowledge and other forms of support. This study assesses whether legislative restrictions on INGOs are associated with fewer health INGOs in a wide range of countries and with the ability of those countries to mitigate disability-adjusted life years lost because of twenty-one disease categories between 1993 and 2017. The findings indicate that restrictive legislation hampered efforts by civil society to lighten the global burden of disease and had adverse side effects on the health of citizens worldwide.
This study evaluates the challenges, institutional impacts and responses of German local authorities to the COVID-19 pandemic from a political science point of view. The main research question is how they have contributed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and to what extent the strengths and weaknesses of the German model of municipal autonomy have influenced their policy. It analyses the adaptation strategies of German local authorities and assesses the effectiveness of their actions up to now. Their implementation is then evaluated in five selected issues, e.g. adjustment organization and staff, challenges for local finances, local politics and citizen’s participation. This analysis is reflecting the scientific debate in Germany since the beginning of 2020, based on the available analyses of political science, law, economics, sociology and geography until end of March 2021.
Weathering the storm?
(2023)
Democratization scholars are currently debating if we are indeed witnessing a third wave of autocratization. While this has led to an extensive debate about the future of the liberal international order, we still know relatively little about the consequences of autocratization for international organizations (IOs). In this article, we explore to what extent autocratization has led to changes in the composition of IO membership. We propose three different ways of conceptualizing autocratization of IO membership. We argue that we should move away from a dichotomous understanding of regime type and regime change, but rather focus on composition of subregime types to understand current developments. We build on updated membership data for 73 IOs through 2020 to map membership configurations based on the V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index. Contrary to current debates on the crisis of the liberal order, we find that many IOs are not (yet) affected by broad autocratization of their membership that would endanger democratic majorities or overall democratic densities. However, we also observe the disappearance of formerly homogenous democratic clubs due to democratic backsliding in a number of European and Latin American IO member states, as well as a return of autocratic clubs in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa. These findings have important implications for the broader research agenda on international democracy promotion and human right protection as well as the study of legitimacy and the effectiveness of international organizations.
International institutions are an essential driving force of contemporary policies to combat gender-based violence but remain toothless if political actors do not implement them in domestic policies. How can scholars conceptualise the transposition of international gender-based violence norms into domestic policies? I argue that discourse network analysis provides a powerful conceptual and methodological extension of critical frame analysis to understand how frames shape the meaning of gender-based violence norms in multi-level institutional contexts. Frames’ normative and cognitive network structure invites combining discourse network and frame analysis techniques that locate frames’ power in their ability to connect different institutional spheres temporally and spatially. I outline a multi-level research agenda that traces the framing processes of international norms and their domestic implementation through gender-based violence policies in the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention. This agenda includes avenues to study how complex transnational policy frameworks like the Istanbul Convention play out in domestic policy implementation.
After some seventy years of intensive debates, there is an increasingly strong consensus within the academic and practitioner communities that development is both an objective and a process towards improving the quality of people's lives in various societal dimensions – economic, social, environmental, cultural and political – and about how subjectively satisfied they are with it. Since 2015, the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) reflect such consensus. The sections behind this argument are based on a review of (i) three key theoretical contributions to development and different phases of development thinking; (ii) global and regional governance arrangements and institutions for development cooperation; (iii) upcoming challenges to development policy and practice stemming from a series of new global challenges; and, (iv) development policy as a long and steady, increasingly global and participatory learning process.
Confronted with a new wave of criticism on the in effectiveness of its development programs, the World Bank embarked on a revitalization process, turning to private investors to finance International Development Association projects and widening its mandate. To explain these adaptation strategies of the World Bank to regain relevance, this piece draws on organizational ecology and orchestration scholarship. We contend that international organizations rely on two adaptation mechanisms, orchestration and scope expansion, when they lose their role as focal actors in an issue area. We find that the World Bank has indeed lost market share and has relied on these two mechanisms to revitalize itself. We show that the World Bank responded to changes in the environment by orchestrating a private sector-oriented capital increase, prioritizing private funding for development through a “cascade approach,” and expanding the scope of its mandate into adjacent domains of transnational governance, including climate change and global health.
Greening global governance
(2022)
The last decades have seen a remarkable expansion in the number of International Organizations (IOs) that have mainstreamed environmental issues into their policy scope—in many cases due to the pressure of civil society. We hypothesize that International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), whose headquarters are in proximity to the headquarters of IOs, are more likely to affect IOs' expansion into the environmental domain. We test this explanation by utilizing a novel dataset on the strength of environmental global civil society in proximity to the headquarters of 76 IOs between 1950 and 2017. Three findings stand out. First, the more environmental INGOs have their secretariat in proximity to the headquarter of an IO, the more likely the IO mainstreams environmental policy. Second, proximate INGOs’ contribution increases when they can rely on domestically focused NGOs in member states. Third, a pathway case reveals that proximate INGOs played an essential role in inside lobbying, outside lobbying and information provision during the campaign to mainstream environmental issues at the World Bank. However, their efforts relied to a substantial extent on the work of local NGOs on the ground.
Sanctions are critical to the Security Council's efforts to fight terrorism. What is striking is that the Council's sanctions regimes are subject to detailed sets of rules and decision criteria. The scholarship on human rights in counterterrorism assumes that rights advocacy and court litigation have prompted this development. The article complements this literature by highlighting an unexplored internal driver of legal-regulatory decision-making and explores how mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members have affected the extent of committee regulations and the content of decisions taken by sanctions committees. Based on internal documents and diplomatic cables, a comparative analysis of the Iraq sanctions regime and the counterterrorism sanctions regime demonstrates that mixed-motive interest constellations among Security Council members provide incentives to elaborate rules to guide decision-making resulting in legal-regulatory sanctions governance, even if the human rights of targeted individuals are not at stake. For comparative leverage and to assess the limits of the proposed mechanism, the analysis is briefly extended to other sanctions regimes targeting individuals (Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan). The findings have implications for this essential tool of the Security Council to react to threats to peace as diverse as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and internal armed conflict.
The article explores whether and to what extent expert recommendations affect decision-making within the Security Council and its North Korea and Iran sanctions regimes. The article first develops a rationalist theoretical argument to show why making many second-stage decisions, such as determining lists of items under export restrictions, subjects Security Council members to repeating coordination situations. Expert recommendations may provide focal point solutions to coordination problems, even when interests diverge and preferences remain stable. Empirically, the article first explores whether expert recommendations affected decision-making on commodity sanctions imposed on North Korea. Council members heavily relied on recommended export trigger lists as focal points, solving a divisive conflict among great powers. Second, the article explores whether expert recommendations affected the designation of sanctions violators in the Iran sanctions regime. Council members designated individuals and entities following expert recommendations as focal points, despite conflicting interests among great powers. The article concludes that expert recommendations are an additional means of influence in Security Council decision-making and seem relevant for second-stage decision-making among great powers in other international organisations.
Do all roads lead to Rome?
(2020)
Content website providers have two main goals: They seek to attract consumers and to keep them on their websites as long as possible. To reach potential consumers, they can utilize several online channels, such as paid search results or advertisements on social media, all of which usually require a substantial marketing budget. However, with rising user numbers of online communication tools, website providers increasingly integrate social sharing buttons on their websites to encourage existing consumers to facilitate referrals to their social networks. While little is known about this social form of guiding consumers to a content website, the study proposes that the way in which consumers reach a website is related to their stickiness to the website and their propensity to refer content to others. By using a unique clickstream data set of a video-on-demand website, the study compares consumers referred by their social network to those consumers arriving at the website via organic search or social media advertisements in terms of stickiness to the website (e.g., visit length, number of page views, video starts) and referral likelihood. The results show that consumers referred through social referrals spend more time on the website, view more pages, and start more videos than consumers who respond to social media advertisements, but less than those coming through organic search. Concerning referral propensity, the results indicate that consumers attracted to a website through social referrals are more likely to refer content to others than those who came through organic search or social media advertisements. The study offers direct insights to managers and recommends an increase in their efforts to promote social referrals on their websites.
Do all roads lead to Rome?
(2020)
Content website providers have two main goals: They seek to attract consumers and to keep them on their websites as long as possible. To reach potential consumers, they can utilize several online channels, such as paid search results or advertisements on social media, all of which usually require a substantial marketing budget. However, with rising user numbers of online communication tools, website providers increasingly integrate social sharing buttons on their websites to encourage existing consumers to facilitate referrals to their social networks. While little is known about this social form of guiding consumers to a content website, the study proposes that the way in which consumers reach a website is related to their stickiness to the website and their propensity to refer content to others. By using a unique clickstream data set of a video-on-demand website, the study compares consumers referred by their social network to those consumers arriving at the website via organic search or social media advertisements in terms of stickiness to the website (e.g., visit length, number of page views, video starts) and referral likelihood. The results show that consumers referred through social referrals spend more time on the website, view more pages, and start more videos than consumers who respond to social media advertisements, but less than those coming through organic search. Concerning referral propensity, the results indicate that consumers attracted to a website through social referrals are more likely to refer content to others than those who came through organic search or social media advertisements. The study offers direct insights to managers and recommends an increase in their efforts to promote social referrals on their websites.
This article explores the structural diversity of intraministerial organization over time. Based on organization theory, it proposes a generic typology for intraministerial units applicable to any hierarchically structured government organization. We empirically investigate the critical case of the German federal bureaucracy. By classifying its subunits, we analyze the longitudinal development of structural differentiation and its correspondence to denominational variety. The data stem from a novel international dataset, covering all ministries between 1980 and 2015. We find that intraministerial structure differentiates over time, across and within ministries. A stable core of traditional Weberian structure is complemented by structurally innovative intraministerial units. We conclude that the German federal bureaucracy is more diverse than suggested in previous literature. Our findings indicate that less Weberian bureaucracies are at least as structurally diverse and that more reform-driven bureaucracies will have experienced at least as many changes in structural diversity.
While school supervision structures in the German Länder were extensively reformed during the last decades, systematic analyses of these reforms are missing. This chapter contributes to this research gap by providing an overview of the implemented reforms of school supervision structures in the German Länder. The effects of these reforms are analysed in order to answer the question of whether a convergence of school supervision systems is a result of these reforms. In a first step, a distinction is made to identify system-changing reforms. Although a decrease of the number or a concentration on one school supervision system is not a result of the analysis, it is argued that there is a convergence of school supervision structures, as a clear trend against school supervision systems with lower school supervisory boards can be observed.
Immune to COVID?
(2021)
Clubs of autocrats
(2021)
While scholars have argued that membership in Regional Organizations (ROs) can increase the likelihood of democratization, we see many autocratic regimes surviving in power albeit being members of several ROs. This article argues that this is the case because these regimes are often members in "Clubs of Autocrats" that supply material and ideational resources to strengthen domestic survival politics and shield members from external interference during moments of political turmoil. The argument is supported by survival analysis testing the effect of membership in autocratic ROs on regime survival between 1946 to 2010. It finds that membership in ROs composed of more autocratic member states does in fact raise the likelihood of regime survival by protecting incumbents against democratic challenges such as civil unrest or political dissent. However, autocratic RO membership does not help to prevent regime breakdown due to autocratic challenges like military coups, potentially because these types of threats are less likely to diffuse to other member states. The article thereby adds to our understanding of the limits of democratization and potential reverse effects of international cooperation, and contributes to the literature addressing interdependences of international and domestic politics in autocratic regimes.
Major international organizations (IOs) are heavily contested, but they are rarely dissolved. Scholars have focused on their longevity, making institutional arguments about replacement costs and institutional assets as well as IO agency to adapt and resist challenges. This article analyzes the limits of institutional stickiness by focusing on outlier cases. While major IOs are dissolved at considerably lower rates than minor IOs, the article nevertheless identifies twenty-one cases where major IOs have died since 1815. These are tough cases as they do not conform to our institutionalist expectations. To better understand these rare but important events, the article provides case illustrations from the League of Nations and International Refugee Organization, which were dissolved due to their perceived underperformance and a disappearing demand for cooperation. These cases show the limits of the institutional theories of IO stickiness: sometimes member states find high replacement costs justified or consider assets as sunk costs, and IOs may lack agency to strategically respond. This article refines theories of institutional stickiness and contributes to the institutional theory of the life and death of IOs.
Les principales organisations internationales (OI) sont fortement contestées, mais rarement dissoutes. Pour expliquer leur longévité, les chercheurs ont avancé des arguments institutionnels concernant les coûts de remplacement et les actifs de l'institution, mais aussi la capacité des OI à s'adapter et à résister aux défis. Cet article analyse les limites de la persistance des institutions en se concentrant sur des cas particuliers. Tandis que les principales OI sont dissoutes bien moins fréquemment que des OI moins importantes, cet article identifie néanmoins 21 cas de disparition d'OI principales depuis 1815. Ces derniers sont particulièrement difficiles, car ils ne correspondent pas à nos attentes en termes d'institutions. Afin de mieux comprendre ces événements rares, mais non moins importants, l'article propose comme illustrations de cas la Société des Nations et l'Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, qui ont été dissoutes à cause de leur manque apparent de résultats et de la disparition de la demande de coopération. Ces cas mettent en évidence les limites des théories institutionnelles de persistance des OI : parfois, les États membres considèrent les coûts de remplacement élevés justifiés ou les actifs comme des coûts irrécupérables, et les OI n'ont peut-être pas la capacité de leur répondre de manière stratégique. Le présent article affine les théories de persistance institutionnelle et contribue à la théorie institutionnelle de vie et de mort des OI.
Las organizaciones internacionales (OI) más importantes son muy cuestionadas, pero rara vez se disuelven. Los investigadores se han centrado en la longevidad de las IO, formulando argumentos institucionales sobre los costes de sustitución y los activos institucionales, así como sobre la capacidad de adaptación y resistencia de las organizaciones internacionales. Este artículo analiza los límites de la rigidez institucional centrándose en casos atípicos. Aunque las OI más importantes se disuelven en proporciones considerablemente menores que las OI de menor importancia, el artículo identifica 21 casos en los que OI más importantes desaparecieron desde 1815. Se trata de casos difíciles, ya que no se ajustan a nuestras expectativas institucionalistas. Para comprender mejor estos raros pero importantes acontecimientos, el artículo ofrece ejemplos de casos de la Sociedad de Naciones y de la, Organización Internacional para los Refugiados que se disolvieron debido a su bajo desempeño percibido y a la desaparición de la demanda de cooperación. Estos casos muestran los límites de las teorías institucionales sobre la rigidez de las OI: En ocasiones, los Estados miembros consideran justificados los elevados costes de sustitución o consideran que los activos son costes irrecuperables, y las OI pueden no disponer de capacidad de respuesta estratégica. Este artículo profundiza en las teorías de la rigidez institucional y contribuye a la teoría institucional de la vida y la muerte de las organizaciones internacionales.
Birds of a feather?
(2020)
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ascribe to impartiality in their mandates. At the same time, scholarship indicates that their decisions are disproportionately influenced by powerful member states. Impartiality is seen as crucial in determining International Organizations' (IOs) effectiveness and legitimacy in the literature. However, we know little about whether key interlocutors in national governments perceive the International Financial Institutions as biased actors who do the bidding for powerful member states or as impartial executors of policy. In order to better understand these perceptions, we surveyed high-level civil servants who are chiefly responsible for four policy areas from more than 100 countries. We found substantial variations in impartiality perceptions. What explains these variations? By developing an argument of selective awareness, we extend rationalist and ideational perspectives on IO impartiality to explain domestic perceptions. Using novel survey data, we test whether staffing underrepresentation, voting underrepresentation, alignment to the major shareholders and overlapping economic policy paradigms are associated with impartiality perceptions. We find substantial evidence that shared economic policy paradigms influence impartiality perceptions. The findings imply that by diversifying their ideational culture, IOs can increase the likelihood that domestic stakeholders view them as impartial.
The COVID-19 virus has hit Germany as unexpectedly as other European countries. For a few weeks, Germans thought that COVID-19 was an issue for Asian states and not for their country. Although Germany continues to be affected by the coronavirus, the situation is nowhere as dire as it was in Britain, Italy or Spain. The race to lift restrictions in Germany began in May, and by early June, the country may be back to normal. Germany, with its enormous financial resources and a well-equipped medical sector, appears to be better placed than other economies to weather the storm.
Many international organisations (IOs) are currently challenged, yet are they also in decline? Despite much debate on the crisis of liberal international order, con-testation, loss of legitimacy, gridlock, pathologies and exiting member states, there is little research on IO decline. This article seeks to clarify this concept and argues that decline can be considered in absolute and relative terms. Absolute decline involves a decrease in the number of IOs and their authority, member-ship and output, whereas relative decline concerns a decrease in the centrality of IOs in international relations. Reviewing a wide range of indicators, this article argues that, whereas there is limited decline in absolute terms since 1945, there may well be important decline in relative terms. Relative decline is more difficult to measure, but to probe its significance this article presents data from speeches during the United Nations General Assembly General Debate. It shows that IOs were most often mentioned in 1996 and that there has been a decline since. These findings indicate that, whereas IOs might survive as institutions, they are decreasingly central to international relations.
Germany as a leading power
(2020)
Governance abhors a vacuum
(2023)
International organisations have become increasingly contested resulting in worries about their decline and termination. While international organisation termination is indeed a regular event in international relations, this article shows that other institutions carry the legacy of terminated international organisations. We develop the novel concept of international organisation afterlife and suggest indicators to systematically assess it. Our analysis of 26 major terminated international organisations reveals legal-institutional and asset continuity in 21 cases. To further illustrate this point, the article zooms in on the afterlife of the International Institute of Agriculture in the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Refugee Organization in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Western European Union in the European Union. In these three cases, international organisation afterlife inspired and structured the design of their successor institutions. While specific international organisations might be terminated, international cooperation therefore often lives on in other institutions.
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. The book defends this thesis and explores ‘semi-parliamentary government’ as an alternative to presidential government. Semi-parliamentarism avoids power concentration in one person by shifting the separation of powers into the democratic assembly. The executive becomes fused with only one part of the assembly, even though the other part has at least equal democratic legitimacy and robust veto power on ordinary legislation. The book identifies the Australian Commonwealth and Japan, as well as the Australian states of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, as semi-parliamentary systems. Using data from 23 countries and 6 Australian states, it maps how parliamentary and semi-parliamentary systems balance competing visions of democracy; it analyzes patterns of electoral and party systems, cabinet formation, legislative coalition-building, and constitutional reforms; it systematically compares the semi-parliamentary and presidential separation of powers; and it develops new and innovative semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require two separate chambers.
Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement's temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional land carbon storage is greatest. As countries enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, confusion persists about the potential contribution of better land stewardship to meeting the Agreement's goal to hold global warming below 2 degrees C. We assess cost-effective tropical country-level potential of natural climate solutions (NCS)-protection, improved management and restoration of ecosystems-to deliver climate mitigation linked with sustainable development goals (SDGs). We identify groups of countries with distinctive NCS portfolios, and we explore factors (governance, financial capacity) influencing the feasibility of unlocking national NCS potential. Cost-effective tropical NCS offers globally significant climate mitigation in the coming decades (6.56 Pg CO(2)e yr(-1) at less than 100 US$ per Mg CO(2)e). In half of the tropical countries, cost-effective NCS could mitigate over half of national emissions. In more than a quarter of tropical countries, cost-effective NCS potential is greater than national emissions. We identify countries where, with international financing and political will, NCS can cost-effectively deliver the majority of enhanced NDCs while transforming national economies and contributing to SDGs. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.
In this article, I give an overview on nativist street protests in Germany from the early nineteenth century to the present from an historical perspective. In a preliminary re-mark, I will reflect on some recent developments in Germany, where nativist protest campaigns against immigration took place in the streets when voters were turning towards the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In the first section, I will outline an older tradition of anti-immigration protest in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany, which is closely connected to modern antisemitism. In sections two and three, I will retrace how, from the late 1960s onward, the far right in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) discovered concerns about immigra-tion in the German population, addressed them in protest campaigns and developed narratives to integrate such sentiments into a broader right-wing extremist ideology, itself deeply rooted in antisemitism. Studying nativism and the radical right from an actor-oriented perspective, I will focus on traditionalist movements, including the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) and neo-Nazi groups.
The contribution explores how an understanding of neoliberal subjectification in socio-economic education can serve to counteract the trend marketisation of democracy. Drawing on Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics and Brown’s current analysis of neoliberalism, it lays out a sociological explanation that treats the idea of homo economicus as a structuring element of our society and outlines the threat this poses to the liberal democratic order. The second part of the contribution outlines – through immanent critique – an ideology-critical analytical competence that uses key problems to illuminate socially critical perspectives on social reality. The objective is to challenge some of the foundations of social order (Salomon, D. Kritische politische Bildung. Ein Versuch. In B. Widmaier & Overwien, B. (Hrsg.), Was heißt heute kritische politische Bildung? (S. 232–239). Wochenschau, 2013) in pursuit of the ultimate objective of an educated and assertive citizenry.
Extreme-right terrorism is a threat that is often underestimated by the public at large. As this paper argues, this is partly due to a concept of terrorism utilized by policymakers, intelligence agents, and police investigators that is based on experience of international terrorism perpetrated by leftists or jihadists as opposed to domestic extreme-right violence. This was one reason why investigators failed to identify the crimes committed by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) in Germany (2000–2011) as extreme-right terrorism, for example. While scholarly debate focused on the Red Army Faction and Al Qaeda, terrorist tendencies among those perpetrating racist and extreme-right violence tended to be disregarded. Influential researchers in the field of “extremism” denied that terrorist acts were committed by right-wingers. By mapping the specifics regarding the strategic use of violence, target selection, addressing of different audiences etc., this paper proposes a more accurate definition of extreme-right terrorism. In comparing it to other forms of terrorism, extreme-right terrorism is distinguished by its specific framework of ideologies and practices, with the underlying idea of an essential inequality that is compensated for through the affirmation of violence. It can be differentiated from other forms of extreme-right violence based on its use of strategic, premeditated and planned attacks against targets of a symbolic nature.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) offers flexible and decarbonized power generation and is one of the few dispatchable renewable technologies able to generate renewable electricity on demand. Today (2018) CSP contributes only 5TWh to the European power generation, but it has the potential to become one of the key pillars for European decarbonization pathways. In this paper we investigate how factors and pivotal policy decisions leading to different futures and associated CSP deployment in Europe in the years up to 2050. In a second step we characterize the scenarios with their associated system cost and the costs of support policies. We show that the role of CSP in Europe critically depends on political developments and the success or failure of policies outside renewable power. In particular, the uptake of CSP depends on the overall decarbonization ambition, the degree of cross border trade of renewable electricity and is enabled by the presence of strong grid interconnection between Southern and Norther European Member States as well as by future electricity demand growth. The presence of other baseload technologies, prominently nuclear power in France, reduce the role and need for CSP. Assuming favorable technological development, we find a strong role for CSP in Europe in all modeled scenarios: contributing between 100TWh to 300TWh of electricity to a future European power system. This would require increasing the current European CSP fleet by a factor of 20 to 60 in the next 30 years. To achieve this financial support between € 0.4-2 billion per year into CSP would be needed, representing only a small share of overall support needs for power-system transformation. Cooperation of Member States could further help to reduce this cost.
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.
Electricity production contributes to a significant share of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe and is thus an important driver of climate change. To fulfil the Paris Agreement, the European Union (EU) needs a rapid transition to a fully decarbonised power production system. Presumably, such a system will be largely based on renewables. So far, many EU countries have supported a shift towards renewables such as solar and wind power using support schemes, but the economic and political context is changing. Renewables are now cheaper than ever before and have become cost-competitive with conventional technologies. Therefore, European policymakers are striving to better integrate renewables into a competitive market and to increase the cost-effectiveness of the expansion of renewables. The first step was to replace previous fixed-price schemes with competitive auctions. In a second step, these auctions have become more technology-open. Finally, some governments may phase out any support for renewables and fully expose them to the competitive power market.
However, such policy changes may be at odds with the need to rapidly expand renewables and meet national targets due to market characteristics and investors’ risk perception. Without support, price risks are higher, and it may be difficult to meet an investor’s income expectations. Furthermore, policy changes across different countries could have unexpected effects if power markets are interconnected and investors able to shift their investments. Finally, in multi-technology auctions, technologies may dominate, which can be a risk for long-term power system reliability. Therefore, in my thesis, I explore the effects of phasing out support policies for renewables, of coordinating these phase-outs across countries, and of using multi-technology designs. I expand the public policy literature about investment behaviour and policy design as well as policy change and coordination, and I further develop an agent-based model.
The main questions of my thesis are what the cost and deployment effects of gradually exposing renewables to market forces would be and how coordination between countries affects investors’ decisions and market prices.. In my three contributions to the academic literature, I use different methods and come to the following results. In the first contribution, I use a conjoint analysis and market simulation to evaluate the effects of phasing out support or reintroducing feed-in tariffs from the perspective of investors. I find that a phase-out leads to investment shifts, either to other still-supported technologies or to other countries that continue to offer support. I conclude that the coordination of policy changes avoids such shifts.. In the second contribution, I integrate the empirically-derived preferences from the first contribution in to an agent-based power system model of two countries to simulate the effects of ending auctions for renewables. I find that this slows the energy transition, and that cross-border effects are relevant. Consequently, continued support is necessary to meet the national renewables targets. In the third contribution, I analyse the outcome of past multi-technology auctions using descriptive statistics, regression analysis as well as case study comparisons. I find that the outcomes are skewed towards single technologies. This cannot be explained by individual design elements of the auctions, but rather results from context-specific and country-specific characteristics. Based on this, I discuss potential implications for long-term power system reliability.
The main conclusions of my thesis are that a complete phase-out of renewables support would slow down the energy transition and thus jeopardize climate targets, and that multi-technology auctions may pose a risk for some countries, especially those that cannot regulate an unbalanced power plant portfolio in the long term. If policymakers decide to continue supporting renewables, they may consider adopting technology-specific auctions to better steer their portfolio. In contrast, if policymakers still want to phase out support, they should coordinate these policy changes with other countries. Otherwise, overall transition costs can be higher, because investment decisions shift to still-supported but more expensive technologies.
Scholars have recently devoted increasing attention to the role and function of international bureaucracies in global policymaking. Some of them contend that international public officials have gained significant political influence in various policy fields. Compared to other international bureaucracies, the political leeway of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been considered rather limited. Due to the specific problem structure of the policy domain of climate change, national governments endowed this intergovernmental treaty secretariat with a relatively narrow mandate. However, this article argues that in the past few years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat has gradually loosened its straitjacket and expanded its original spectrum of activity by engaging different sub-national and non-state actors into a policy dialogue using facilitative orchestration as a mode of governance. The present article explores the recent evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat and investigates the way in which it initiates, guides, broadens and strengthens sub-national and non-state climate actions to achieve progress in the international climate negotiations. <br /> Points for practitioners <br /> The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has lately adopted new roles and functions in global climate policymaking. While previously seen as a rather technocratic body that, first and foremost, serves national governments, the Climate Secretariat increasingly interacts with sub-national governments, civil society organizations and private companies to push the global response to climate change forward. We contend that the Climate Secretariat can contribute to global climate policymaking by coordinating and steering the initiatives of non-nation-state actors towards coherence and good practice.
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.
Gary Jacobsohn and Yaniv Roznai’s (2020) book Constitutional Revolution offers a sophisticated conceptual framework with a fascinating description of empirical occurrences of substantive revolutions in the practice and understanding of constitutionalism in Germany, India, Hungary, and Israel. While the conceptualization in the book and its empirical illustration clearly draw from regime transformations or substantive changes within democratic regimes, we know little about the extent to which substantive constitutional reforms are possible and meaningful in autocratic regimes. As their concept of constitutional revolution is ambiguous and requires a substantive engagement with an individual case at hand, we cannot sim- ply expect concept equivalence when expanding its use beyond a transitory or democratic context. Hence, in this contribution I ask, What constitutes a constitutional revolution in an autocratic regime? To shed light on this question, I rely on the expectation that we do not find important differences in the substance of autocratic constitutions compared to democratic constitutions. Autocratic elites, also, under- stand the possibilities of constitutional change and respond to them as they offer regime stability and simply more power, but that is not a revolution. Therefore, I argue that the substantive meaning of an amendment must be a departure from the inherent logic of the constitution, especially outside the standard procedures for autocratic ruling. Thus, in this paper I discuss the theoretical implications of a constitutional revolution under autocracy without a regime transition and provide empirical evidence from various constitutional amendments and de facto reforms in Russia. I show that a constitutional revolution is not always the most important or most discussed constitutional change—at least, not in an autocratic context. This discussion has important implications for understanding constitutionalism and autocratic stability and the largely overlooked relationship between substance and process in nondemocratic settings.
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.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) offers flexible and decarbonised power generation and is one of the few switchable renewable technologies that can generate renewable power on demand. Today (2018), CSP only contributes 5 TWh to European electricity generation but has the potential to become an important generation asset for decarbonising the electricity sector within Europe as well as globally. This chapter examines how factors and key political decisions lead to different futures and the associated CSP use in Europe in the years up to 2050. In a second step, we characterise the scenarios with the associated system costs and the costs of the support policy. We show that the role of CSP in Europe depends crucially on political decisions and the success or failure of policies outside of renewable energies. In particular, the introduction of CSP depends on the general ambitions for decarbonisation, the level of cross-border trade in electricity from renewable sources and is made possible by the existence of a strong grid connection between the southern and northern European Member States and by future growth in electricity demand. The presence of other baseload technologies, particularly nuclear energy in France, diminishes the role and need for CSP. Assuming a favourable technological development, we find a strong role for CSP in Europe in all modelled scenarios: Contribution of 100 TWh to 300 TWh of electricity to a future European electricity system. The current European CSP fleet would have to be increased by a factor of 20 to 60 over the next 30 years. To achieve this, stable financial support for CSP would be required. Depending on framework conditions and assumptions, the amount of support ranges at the EU level from € 0.4 to 2 billion per year, which represents only a small proportion of the total support requirement for the energy system transformation. Cooperation between the Member States could further help reduce these costs.
The rapid uptake of renewable energy technologies in recent decades has increased the demand of energy researchers, policymakers and energy planners for reliable data on the spatial distribution of their costs and potentials. For onshore wind energy this has resulted in an active research field devoted to analysing these resources for regions, countries or globally. A particular thread of this research attempts to go beyond purely technical or spatial restrictions and determine the realistic, feasible or actual potential for wind energy. Motivated by these developments, this paper reviews methods and assumptions for analysing geographical, technical, economic and, finally, feasible onshore wind potentials. We address each of these potentials in turn, including aspects related to land eligibility criteria, energy meteorology, and technical developments of wind turbine characteristics such as power density, specific rotor power and spacing aspects. Economic aspects of potential assessments are central to future deployment and are discussed on a turbine and system level covering levelized costs depending on locations, and the system integration costs which are often overlooked in such analyses. Non-technical approaches include scenicness assessments of the landscape, constraints due to regulation or public opposition, expert and stakeholder workshops, willingness to pay/accept elicitations and socioeconomic cost-benefit studies. For each of these different potential estimations, the state of the art is critically discussed, with an attempt to derive best practice recommendations and highlight avenues for future research.
Aviation and shipping currently contribute approximately 8% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions, with growth in tourism and global trade projected to increase this contribution further(1-3). Carbon-neutral transportation is feasible with electric motors powered by rechargeable batteries, but is challenging, if not impossible, for long-haul commercial travel, particularly airtravel(4). A promising solution are drop-in fuels (synthetic alternatives for petroleum-derived liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as kerosene, gasoline or diesel) made from H2O and CO2 by solar-driven processes(5-7).Among the many possible approaches, the thermochemical path using concentrated solar radiation as the source of high-temperature process heat offers potentially high production rates and efficiencies(8), and can deliver truly carbon-neutral fuels if the required CO2 is obtained directly from atmospheric air(9) . If H2O is also extracted from air(10), feedstock sourcing and fuel production can be colocated in desert regions with high solar irradiation and limited accessto water resources. While individual steps of such a scheme have been implemented, here we demonstrate the operation of the entire thermochemical solar fuel production chain, from H2O and CO2 captured directly from ambient air to the synthesis of drop-in transportation fuels (for example, methanol and kerosene), with a modular 5 kW(thermal) pilot-scale solar system operated under field conditions. We further identify the research and development efforts and discuss the economic viability and policies required to bring these solar fuels to market.
Beyond technology
(2022)
This article enriches the existing literature on the importance and role of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in renewable energy sources research by providing a novel approach to instigating the future research agenda in this field. Employing a series of in-depth interviews, deliberative focus group workshops and a systematic horizon scanning process, which utilised the expert knowledge of 85 researchers from the field with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and expertise, the paper develops a set of 100 priority questions for future research within SSH scholarship on renewable energy sources. These questions were aggregated into four main directions: (i) deep transformations and connections to the broader economic system (i.e. radical ways of (re)arranging socio-technical, political and economic relations), (ii) cultural and geographical diversity (i.e. contextual cultural, historical, political and socio-economic factors influencing citizen support for energy transitions), (iii) complexifying energy governance (i.e. understanding energy systems from a systems dynamics perspective) and (iv) shifting from instrumental acceptance to value-based objectives (i.e. public support for energy transitions as a normative notion linked to trust-building and citizen engagement). While this agenda is not intended to be—and cannot be—exhaustive or exclusive, we argue that it advances the understanding of SSH research on renewable energy sources and may have important value in the prioritisation of SSH themes needed to enrich dialogues between policymakers, funding institutions and researchers. SSH scholarship should not be treated as instrumental to other research on renewable energy but as intrinsic and of the same hierarchical importance.
Green recovery
(2023)
This chapter reviews how the European Union has fared in enabling a green recovery in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, drawing comparisons to developments after the financial crisis. The chapter focuses on the European Commission and its evolving role in promoting decarbonisation efforts in its Member States, paying particular attention to its role in financing investments in low-carbon assets. It considers both the direct effects of green stimulus policies on decarbonisation in the EU and how these actions have shaped the capacities of the Commission as an actor in the field of climate and energy policy. The analysis reveals a significant expansion of the Commission’s role compared to the period following the financial crisis. EU-level measures have provided incentives for Member States to direct large volumes of financing towards investments in climate-friendly assets. Nevertheless, the ultimate impact will largely be shaped by implementation at the national level.
The European Union’s 2030 climate and energy package introduced fundamental changes compared to its 2020 predecessor. These changes included a stronger focus on the internal market and an increased emphasis on technology-neutral decarbonization while simultaneously de-emphasizing the renewables target. This article investigates whether changes in domestic policy strategies of leading member states in European climate policy preceded the observed changes in EU policy. Disaggregating strategic change into changes in different elements (goals, objectives, instrumental logic), allows us to go beyond analyzing the relative prioritization of different goals, and to analyze how policy requirements for reaching those goals were dynamically redefined over time. To this end, we introduce a new method, which based on insights from social network analysis, enables us to systematically trace those strategic chances. We find that shifts in national strategies of the investigated member states preceded the shift in EU policy. In particular, countries reframed their understanding of supply security, and pushed for the internal electricity market also as a security measure to balance fluctuating renewables. Hence, the increasing focus on markets and market integration in the European 2030 package echoed the increasingly central role of the internal market for electricity supply security in national strategies. These findings also highlight that countries dynamically redefined their goals relative to the different phases of the energy transition.
Scaling up CSP
(2023)
Concentrating solar power (CSP) is one of the few scalable technologies capable of delivering dispatchable renewable power. Therefore, many expect it to shoulder a significant share of system balancing in a renewable electricity future powered by cheap, intermittent PV and wind power: the IEA, for example, projects 73 GW CSP by 2030 and several hundred GW by 2050 in its Net-Zero by 2050 pathway. In this paper, we assess how fast CSP can be expected to scale up and how long time it would take to get new, high-efficiency CSP technologies to market, based on observed trends and historical patterns. We find that to meaningfully contribute to net-zero pathways the CSP sector needs to reach and exceed the maximum historical annual growth rate of 30%/year last seen between 2010-2014 and maintain it for at least two decades. Any CSP deployment in the 2020s will rely mostly on mature existing technologies, namely parabolic trough and molten-salt towers, but likely with adapted business models such as hybrid CSP-PV stations, combining the advantages of higher-cost dispatchable and low-cost intermittent power. New third-generation CSP designs are unlikely to play a role in markets during the 2020s, as they are still at or before the pilot stage and, judging from past pilot-to-market cycles for CSP, they will likely not be ready for market deployment before 2030. CSP can contribute to low-cost zero-emission energy systems by 2050, but to make that happen, at the scale foreseen in current energy models, ambitious technology-specific policy support is necessary, as soon as possible and in several countries.