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This chapter investigates the trajectory of establishing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in the early 1990s as the first private transnational certification organization with an antagonistic stakeholder body. Its main contribution is a micro-analysis of the founding assembly in 1993. By investigating the role of brokers within the negotiation as one institutional scope condition for ‘arguing’ having occurred, the chapter adopts a dramaturgical approach. It contends that the authority of brokers is not necessarily institutionally given, but needs to be gained: brokers have to prove situationally that their knowledge is relevant and that they are speaking impartially in the interest of progress rather than their own. The chapter stresses the importance of procedural knowledge which brokers provide in contrast to policy knowledge.
Participation has become an orthodoxy in the field of development, an essential element of projects and programmes. This book analyses participation in development interventions as an institutionalised expectation – a rationalized myth – and examines how organisations on different levels of government process it. At least two different objectives of participation are appropriate and legitimate for international organisations in the field: the empowerment of local beneficiaries and the achievement of programme goals. Both integrate participatory forums into the organisational logic of development interventions. Local administrations react to the institutionalised expectation with means-ends decoupling, where participatory forums are implemented superficially but de facto remain marginalised in local administrative processes and activities. The book furthermore provides a thick description of the organisationality of participation in development interventions. Participatory forums are shown to be a form of partial organisation. They establish an order in the relationship between administrations and citizens through the introduction of rules and the creation of a defined membership. At the same time, this order is found to be fragile and subject to criticism and negotiation.
The past three decades of policy process studies have seen the emergence of a clear intellectual lineage with regard to complexity. Implicitly or explicitly, scholars have employed complexity theory to examine the intricate dynamics of collective action in political contexts. However, the methodological counterparts to complexity theory, such as computational methods, are rarely used and, even if they are, they are often detached from established policy process theory. Building on a critical review of the application of complexity theory to policy process studies, we present and implement a baseline model of policy processes using the logic of coevolving networks. Our model suggests that an actor's influence depends on their environment and on exogenous events facilitating dialogue and consensus-building. Our results validate previous opinion dynamics models and generate novel patterns. Our discussion provides ground for further research and outlines the path for the field to achieve a computational turn.
The paper aims to lay out a framework for evaluating value shifts in the international legal order for the purposes of a forthcoming book. In view of current contestations it asks whether we are observing yet another period of norm change (Wandel) or even a more fundamental transformation of international law – a metamorphosis (Verwandlung). For this purpose it suggests to look into the mechanisms of how norms change from the perspective of legal and political science and also to approximate a reference point where change turns into metamorphosis. It submits that such a point may be reached where specific legally protected values are indeed changing (change of legal values) or where the very idea of protecting certain values through law is renounced (delegalizing of values). The paper discusses the benefits of such an interdisciplinary exchange and tries to identify differences and commonalities among both disciplinary perspectives.
A room full of ‘views’
(2023)
Quantitative research into the effectiveness of the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) in eliciting remedial responses from states is impeded by a lack of usable data on how states respond to their decisions. The new Treaty Body Views Dataset (TBVD) aims to fill this gap. It comprises details on all published decisions in individual complaints cases issued by the UNTBs between 1979 and 2019 and matches these with information on their state of compliance. The TBVD can be used for research on the activities of the treaty bodies, the nature of the decisions themselves, or state behavior following a decision. An empirical application illustrates how the TBVD can advance knowledge about the factors that correlate with compliance with adverse UNTB decisions. Results show that the likelihood of implementation hinges critically on decision-level characteristics, and reveal differences and similarities between compliance with UNTB decisions and regional human rights court judgments.
Activating norm collisions
(2020)
This article puts forward a constructivist-interpretivist approach to interface conflicts that emphasises how international actors articulate and problematise norm collisions in discursive and social interactions. Our approach is decidedly agency-oriented and follows the Special Issue’s interest in how interface conflicts play out at the micro-level. The article advances several theoretical and methodological propositions on how to identify norm collisions and the conditions under which they become the subject of international debate. Our argument on norm collisions, understood as situations in which actors perceive two norms as incompatible with each other, is threefold. First, we claim that agency matters to the analysis of the emergence, dynamics, management, and effects of norm collisions in international politics. Second, we propose to differentiate between dormant (subjectively perceived) and open norm collisions (intersubjectively shared). Third, we contend that the transition from dormant to open – which we term activation – depends on the existence of certain scope conditions concerning norm quality as well as changes in power structures and actor constellations. Empirically, we study norm collisions in the area of international drug control, presenting the field as one that contains several cases of dormant and open norm collisions, including those that constitute interface conflicts. For our in-depth analysis we have chosen the international discourse on coca leaf chewing. With this case, we not only seek to demonstrate the usefulness of our constructivist-interpretivist approach but also aim to explain under which conditions dormant norm collisions evolve into open collisions and even into interface conflicts.
To date, there has been little research on how advocacy coalitions influence the dynamic relationships between norms. Addressing norm collisions as a particular type of norm dynamics, we ask if and how advocacy coalitions and the constellations between them bring such norm collisions to the fore. Norm collisions surface in situations in which actors claim that two or more norms are incompatible with each other, promoting different, even opposing, behavioural choices. We examine the effect of advocacy coalition constellations (ACC) on the activation and varying evolution of norm collisions in three issue areas: international drug control, human trafficking, and child labour. These areas have a legally codified prohibitive regime in common. At the same time, they differ with regard to the specific ACC present. Exploiting this variation, we generate insights into how power asymmetries and other characteristics of ACC affect norm collisions across our three issue areas.
The present dissertation conducts empirical research on the relationship between urban life and its economic costs, especially for the environment. On the one hand, existing gaps in research on the influence of population density on air quality are closed and, on the other hand, innovative policy measures in the transport sector are examined that are intended to make metropolitan areas more sustainable. The focus is on air pollution, congestion and traffic accidents, which are important for general welfare issues and represent significant cost factors for urban life. They affect a significant proportion of the world's population. While 55% of the world's people already lived in cities in 2018, this share is expected to reach approximately 68% by 2050.
The four self-contained chapters of this thesis can be divided into two sections: Chapters 2 and 3 provide new causal insights into the complex interplay between urban structures and air pollution. Chapters 4 and 5 then examine policy measures to promote non-motorised transport and their influence on air quality as well as congestion and traffic accidents.
There are three different interpretations of Adam Smith's trade theory in modern literature: first, the neoclassical theory of absolute advantage; second, an interpretation based on increasing returns; third, an interpretation of uneven development. These interpretations come to widely different conclusions, especially considering the development of the pattern of trade in Smith's theory. I discuss how these three interpretations emerged. They do not stem from a more detailed analysis of Smith's works itself but reflect changes within international trade theory. They all result from the fact that economists have imposed nineteenth- and twentieth-century modes of thoughts on Smith's theory, forcing his writings into later-developed theoretical frameworks. In contrast to classical economists in the nineteenth century, these subsequent interpretations misrepresent Smith's trade theory in order to portray him as a forerunner of later theories. The differing interpretations can thus be explained only against the backdrop of the development of international trade theory.
In this volume, Egeberg and Trondal put forward an ‘organizational approach to public governance’ (p. 1) that, in their view, complements existing explanations for organizational change and behaviour in governance processes (‘Understanding’) and produces relevant advice for practitioners, specifically anyone involved in reorganizing public administration (‘Design’). Following the authors’ introduction of the theoretical reasoning behind their approach (chapter 1), they present supporting findings that are based on new material (chapters 2 and 9), but mainly draw on six previously published research articles (chapters 3–8). Egeberg and Trondal conclude with possible ‘design implications’ of said findings (chapter 9). Their ‘organizational approach’ focuses on the impact of selected organizational characteristics on decision‐making in and on behalf of government organizations in policy‐making generally (‘public governance’) and administrative politics more specifically (‘meta‐governance’). The authors concentrate on three sets of ‘classical’ organizational characteristics: structure (mainly vertical and horizontal specialization), demography (personnel composition), and locus (geographical location). The conceptual part of the volume convincingly summarizes ‘formal organization matters’—arguments from the literature for each of the individual organizational factors. Their main, already well‐established argument is that the way an organization is formally set up makes some (reform) decisions more likely than others—a line of reasoning that the authors present as neglected in governance literature.
In the following five empirical chapters, the authors show that aspects of horizontal and vertical specialization—mainly operationalized by Gulicks’ principles of horizontal specialization and the idea of primary versus secondary affiliation of staff—affect organizational behaviour. Readers learn that whether government levels are organized according to a territorial or non‐territorial principle impacts the power relationship between levels: non‐territorial organization at the supranational level tends to empower the centre against lower levels of government. There are two chapters on the decision‐making behaviour of commissioners and officials in the European Commission, both showing that organizational affiliation trumps demographic background factors such as nationality, even with temporary staff.
Chapter 5 addresses coordination dynamics in the European multi‐level system and finds that coordination at the territorially organized national level thwarts non‐territorially organized coordination at the supranational level, resulting in the phenomenon of ‘direct’ national administration bypassing their national executives. Further, the authors show that vertical specialization—while controlling for other factors such as issue salience—has an effect on officials’ behaviour at the national level: agency officials in Norway report significantly less sensitivity towards political signals from the political executive than their colleagues in ministries. Chapter 7 discusses the relevance of geographical location for the relationship between subordinated organizations and their political executive. The authors find that the site of Norwegian agencies does not significantly affect their autonomy, influence, or inter‐institutional coordination with the superior ministry.
The last empirical chapter focuses on the effect of formal organization on meta‐governance, that is, administrative politics. Based on a qualitative case study of a reorganization process in Norway in 2003 involving the synchronized relocation of several agencies after many failed attempts, the authors conclude that administrative reforms can be politically steered and controlled through the organization of the reform process. They argue that amongst other factors the strategic exclusion of opposing actors from the reform process as well as the deliberate increase in situations demanding quick decisions (‘action rationality’, p. 119) by political leaders helps explain the reform's unexpected success. The last chapter is dedicated to the synthesis of the results and to design implications. Supported by new data from a 2016 survey among Norwegian public officials, the authors conclude that organizational position is the most important influencer of decision‐making behaviour, with educational background and previous job experience also playing a large role (p. 135). Consequently, their suggestions for practitioners involved in meta‐governance processes concentrate on aspects of the deliberate crafting of organizational specialization to shape organizational positions, and spend less time discussing location and employee demographics. The authors illustrate and contextualize their recommendations with the help of three empirical examples: organizing good governance by balancing political control and independence in the case of agencification, organizing for coping with boundary‐spanning challenges such as climate change through inter‐organizational structural arrangements, and designing permanent organizational structures for innovative reforms in the public sector (pp. 137 ff.).
This volume is an excellent compilation of theoretically informed applications of the all too often undefined ‘organization matters’ argument. It juxtaposes—particularly in the theory chapter and in the last chapter on design implications—organizational arguments against other explanations of organizational change like historical institutionalism or the garbage can model of decision‐making. However, two major aspects of the book's approach are less convincing. First, supplementary explanations such as the garbage can model that are discussed in the reflections on meta‐governance are neither argumentatively nor empirically applied to public governance; why should, for example, the ‘solutions in search of a problem’ idea only be applicable to decisions on reform policy, but not to decisions in all other policy areas? Similarly, it would have been nice to read more on the authors’ idea on the interaction between organizational factors and between them and other explanations in the empirical cases on public governance—this would have allowed the reader to get a better idea about how much formal organization matters. The view on bureaucrats’ demographic background is slightly confusing: it is presented as a competing approach (p. 7), but also as one of the main organizational factors (p. 12).
Second, as the authors themselves state, the concept of governance is about ‘steering through collective action’ (p. 3) and focuses on interactive processes, and explicitly includes non‐governmental actors in the policy‐making equation. Against this background it seems unfortunate that most of the work presented in the book takes an exclusively governmental perspective and the justification for it remains rather superficial. It would be preferable and even necessary to see the organizational arguments—at least theoretically or through discussing appropriate literature—applied to interactive governance processes involving other actors and/or to non‐bureaucratic organizations.
Regarding its methodology, the specifics of the proposed approach deserve to be addressed more systematically and critically in the book. Except for chapters 2, 3 and 5 (literature‐based studies) as well as chapter 8 (single case study), the empirical studies follow a quantitative logic and are informed by data on self‐reported behaviour through large‐N panel surveys with public officials. In terms of analysis, descriptive statistics or basic inferential statistics (linear regression) are employed. Certainly, the authors are aware of the limitations of their data sources, such as the results being possibly affected by social desirability, and they discuss and justify them in the chapters individually (e.g., on pp. 47, 89). Still, their approach could be strengthened with a more cautious account on the extent to which their choice of data and methods is able to uncover the ‘causal impact of organizational factors in public governance processes’ (p. 131, emphasis added) and with some suggestions for widening their methodological toolbox in the future. On this note, the survey method presented as new on p. 135 is not a particularly convincing choice. The authors do not lay out a research agenda; a surprising omission. This is, however, somewhat made up for by the concluding chapter's stimulating discussion of the possible real‐world implications of their findings and perspective, skilfully using organization theory as a ‘craft’ (p. 29).
Public sector organizations at all levels of government increasingly rely on Big Data Algorithmic Systems (BDAS) to support decision-making along the entire policy cycle. But while our knowledge on the use of big data continues to grow for government agencies implementing and delivering public services, empirical research on applications for anticipatory policy design is still in its infancy. Based on the concept of policy analytical capacity (PAC), this case study examines the application of BDAS for early crisis detection within the German Federal Government—that is, the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO) and the Federal Ministry of Defence (FMoD). It uses the nested model of PAC to reflect on systemic, organizational, and individual capacity-building from a neoinstitutional perspective and allow for the consideration of embedded institutional contexts. Results from semi-structured interviews indicate that governments seeking to exploit BDAS in policymaking depend on their institutional environment (e.g., through research and data governance infrastructure). However, specific capacity-building strategies may differ according to the departments' institutional framework, with the FMoD relying heavily on subordinate agencies and the FFO creating network-like structures with external researchers. Government capacity-building at the individual and organizational level is similarly affected by long-established institutional structures, roles, and practices within the organization and beyond, making it important to analyze these three levels simultaneously instead of separately.
Analogy-based collective decision-making and incremental change in international organizations
(2021)
We examine how analogy-based collective decision-making of member states contributes to the endogenous emergence of informal rules and the incremental change of international organizations (IOs). Decision-making by analogy is an important characteristic of day-to-day decision-making in IOs. Relating current decisions to previous ones through analogies drives incremental change and simultaneously reinforces organizational resilience. Whereas the foreign policy analysis literature shows that analogies can be used as cognitive shortcuts in fuzzy and complex foreign policy situations, we focus on their use to overcome social ambiguity (indeterminacy) of coordination situations in IOs. Drawing on psychological conceptions, we develop two micro-level mechanisms that elucidate the effects of analogy-based collective decision-making in member-driven IOs. Analogy-based collective decisions emphasizing similarity between a current situation and previous ones follow an established problem schema and produce expansive and increasingly well-established informal rules. Collective decisions that are analogy-based but emphasize a crucial difference follow different problem schemas and trigger the emergence of additional informal rules that apply to new classes of cases. The result is an increasingly fine-grained web of distinct organizational solutions for a growing number of problems. Accordingly, an IO can increasingly facilitate collective decision-making and gains resilience. Empirically, we probe these propositions with a documentary analysis of decision-making in the Yugoslavia sanctions committee, established by the United Nations Security Council to deal with a stream of requests for exempting certain goods or services from the comprehensive economic embargo imposed on Yugoslavia in response to the War in the Balkans.
Analyzing social wrongs
(2023)
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.
Despite geopolitics play a pivotal role in the energy sector, geopolitical aspects are often not considered in the quantitative assessment models aimed at supporting the energy investment decision-making process. To address this issue, this work proposes an Extended Multi-regional Input-Output model (EMRIO) that incorporates import dependence and governance along the value chain. As case study, two alternative energy investments in Mexico – a Natural Gas Power plant (NG) and a Concentrated Solar Power plant (CSP) – are assessed. The method quantifies the geographical diversification of suppliers and the quality of governance. The assessment of the case study shows that the supply chain of the CSP plant includes more countries and with better governance levels than the supply chain of the NG power plant. That means, a priori, that the supply risks of investing in CSP power plants will be lower, as will suppliers' endogenous geopolitical risk. However, a sensitivity analysis considering different providers of the solar plant components reveals that CSP plant value chain could also entail similar or even higher governance risks levels as the NG plant. The scenario where China provides some of the components entails a much higher governance risks, even higher than the NG base case. In consequence, we have proved that the method proposed allows the identification of hidden geopolitical risks that would otherwise go unnoticed. This paper enlarges the existing knowledge on assessment methodologies for energy policy decision-support by measuring diversification and imports dependence from countries with different levels of governance along the whole value chain.
This research investigated the relationship between frequent engagement in industrial action (also known as ‘employee strikes’) and the internal attractiveness of government employment. It focused on a special group of public employees: public university lecturers and public-school teachers in Uganda who frequently engaged in industrial action. At the very basic level, the research explored whether public employees frequently engaged in industrial action because they considered public service employment to be unattractive or whether frequent engagement in industrial action was in fact part of the attractiveness of government employment. Beyond exploring these relationships, it also explained why (or why not) such relationships existed.
Methodologically, the research was conducted using an exploratory sequential design – a mixed methods study design that starts with a qualitative followed by a quantitative phase. It is the results of the initial qualitative phase that determined the direction of the subsequent quantitative phase. The qualitative phase started with an exploration of the relationship between industrial action and internal public service attractiveness, resulting into two specific research questions:
1) Why do public employees engage in industrial action and what role does frequent engagement in industrial action play in their perception of public service attractiveness?
2) Why and how is organizational justice related to public employees’ perception of public service attractiveness?
The above questions were answered both qualitatively and quantitatively. The theoretical postulations of the Social Movements Theories, Social Exchange Theory, and the Signaling Theory were used to structure the research assumptions and hypotheses.
The results showed that public employees engaged in industrial action mostly because of relative, rather than absolute deprivation. An established culture of workplace militancy was also found to be key in actualizing industrial action as was the (perceived) absence of alternatives to achieve workplace justice. Importantly, there was a clear dichotomy between absolute working conditions and frequent engagement in industrial action. Frequent engagement in industrial action was itself found to have both positive and negative effects on internal public service attractiveness. It was also found that public service attractiveness from the perspective of current public employees might be different from what it is from the perspective of prospective employees. This is because current public employees do not assume what it feels like to work for government, but mostly use their day-to-day lived experiences to judge the attractiveness of their employer. The existing literature is particularly deficient on analyzing public service attractiveness from an internal perspective, which is surprising given the public sector’s high reliance on internal recruitment.
The research results underlined key implications for theory, practice, and research. At theory level, the results suggested that public employee ratings of internal public service attractiveness were heavily affected by halo effects and should therefore not be taken at face value. The complex workplace social exchanges which are deeply rooted in organizational justice and the ‘personification metaphor’ were also emphasized. From an empirical perspective, the results underlined the need to prioritize internal public service attractiveness as recent research has confirmed the value of family socialization and internal recommendations in making public sector employment attractive, even to external applicants. This research argues that the centrality of organizational justice in public sector employee relations requires public sector organizations to be intentional in their bid to create fair, just, and attractive workplaces. Beyond assessing the fairness of personnel policies, procedures, and interactional relationships, it is also important to prepare and equip public managers with the right skills to promote and practice justice in their day-to-day interactions with public employees, and to encourage, improve, and facilitate alternative public employee feedback mechanisms.
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.
Beyond Charter and Index
(2021)
The Chapter examines the concept of local autonomy in modern European states by analysing theoretical approaches. The classical, deductive approach defines local autonomy mostly through legal, economic and financial conditions, especially by formal structures. This proves to be too weak to define the internal strength of local authorities and their real political-administrative power. A more multidimensional definition of autonomy, including indicators as importance, capacity, as well as discretion and democracy at local level is needed. The authors utilise the indicators, used by the Local Autonomy Index (LAI) developed by Ladner et al. and the European Charter of Local Self-Government to find out what is still missing. The contribution redounds to stimulate the scientific debate on local autonomy in Europe. Until the concept of local autonomy will fit for all European states with extremely differentiated local authorities, the research in this field remains a conceptual and heuristic endeavour. Especially, because local government and democracy are until now territory-based, whereas the reality is one of multilevel and cross-border governance.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This article draws lessons from experiences of developing the photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind power sectors in China for the development of Chinese Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) into an internationally competitive industry. We analyze the sectoral development with a framework that expands on the concept of lead markets, identifying factors that determine whether domestic industrial development paths may or may not generate export success. We find that the Chinese CSP sector has good potential for becoming internationally competitive because of a strong Chinese knowledge base, a clear eye for product quality, standard-setting, and a focus on the high-efficiency and large-storage technological routes most likely to see growing demand in future international markets. Chinese solar towers are already cheaper than international competitors and so far, appear reliable. However, continued and stable deployment support for CSP, designed to reward dispatchable solar power generation, enabling continued domestic learning-by-doing and -interacting is likely required to realize this export potential. To date, Chinese CSP policy has done many things right and, if the domestic market is maintained through renewed support, has put the Chinese industry well on the path to international competitiveness.
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.
Challenges, triggers and initiators of climate policies and implications for policy formulation
(2020)
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.
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.
Comparatice methods B
(2020)
Comparative methods B
(2020)
This chapter outlines the relevance and value of comparative approaches and methods in studying Public Administration (PA). It discusses the roots and current developments of comparative research in PA and discusses various methodological venues for cross-country comparisons, such as most similar/dissimilar systems designs, the method of concomitant variation and the difference-in-difference method. Besides the description of these approaches, we highlight their conceptual value for theory-driven empirical comparative research. Drawing on selected pieces of comparative research, the chapter furthermore provides examples for the application of comparative methods in practice presenting empirical findings and highlighting strengths and weaknesses. The chapter finally emphasizes that the methodological development in comparative PA research has by far not yet reached its end, and that some future challenges need to be addressed, such as the issues of causality, generalizability, and mixed-methods approaches.
Comparative vote switching
(2024)
Large literatures focus on voter reactions to parties’ policy strategies, agency, or legislative performance. While many inquiries make explicit assumptions about the direction and magnitude of voter flows between parties, comparative empirical analyses of vote switching remain rare. In this article, we overcome three challenges that have previously impeded the comparative study of dynamic party competition based on voter flows: we present a novel conceptual framework for studying voter retention, defection, and attraction in multiparty systems, showcase a newly compiled data infrastructure that marries comparative vote switching data with information on party behavior and party systems in over 250 electoral contexts, and introduce a statistical model that renders our conceptual framework operable. These innovations enable first-time inquiries into the polyadic vote switching patterns underlying multiparty competition and unlock major research potentials on party competition and party system change.
The study of subnational and local government systems and reforms has become an increasingly salient topic in comparative public administration. In many European countries, policy implementation, the execution of public tasks and the delivery of services to citizens are largely carried out by local governments, which, at the same time, have been subjected to multiple reforms and sometimes comprehensive institutional re-organizations. This chapter discusses analytical key concepts and outcomes of the comparative study of local governments and local government reforms. It outlines frameworks and analytical tools to capture the variety of institutional settings and developments at the local level of government. It provides an introduction into crucial comparative dimensions, such as functional, territorial and political profiles of local governments, and analyses current reform approaches and outcomes based on recent empirical findings. Finally, the chapter addresses salient issues to be taken up in future comparative studies about local government.
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.
Conclusion
(2016)
This chapter revisits the role of the new modes of governance in areas of limited statehood. First, it states that there is no linear relationship between degrees of statehood and the overall effectiveness of new modes of sustainability governance. Second, the chapter states that, in most of the cases, national governments are hesitant or even actively hamper the development of new modes of governance. Third, it shows that the absence of the shadow of hierarchy can indeed lead to ineffective new modes of governance. However, the shadow of hierarchy does not necessarily need to be cast by states. Finally, the author reviews the complexities involved in participatory practices, stressing the importance of institutional structures and knowledgeable brokers. The chapter concludes by outlining fields for future research.
Conclusion
(2023)
Based on the previous findings in this book, Chapter 18 by Heike Krieger and Andrea Liese discusses the general dynamics of change or metamorphosis in the international legal order. They discern a mixed picture of an international order between metamorphosis—that is, a more fundamental transformation—of international law, norm change, turbulences, and robustness. They explain drivers of change and highlight factors such as national interests during the war on terror, changing long-term foreign policy beliefs, and the rise in populism and autocracy, before discussing the most common strategies the actors involved use. Other relevant factors include changes in the political environment, such as shocks and power shifts or the ambiguous role of fragmentation. Moreover, they identify factors that make legal norms robust, including the vital role of norm defenders and legal and institutional structures as stabilizing elements. Krieger and Liese conclude by cautioning that if the attacks on the international order continue at the current frequency and magnitude, a metamorphosis of international law will likely be unstoppable.
As expected, the traditions of national-state migration policies continue to play a very important role, path-dependence in this policy field remains high. The distribution of competences in migration policy and the integration of migrants in the nation states continues to be very different. When implementing integration strategies at grassroots level, the respective policies should be tailored to the profile of both the local migrant community and the native population. Besides better migration management in local administration and the interaction of top-down and bottom-up efforts to integrate migrants is of importance.
Despite high institutional hurdles for constitutional change, one observes surprisingly many EU treaty revisions. This article takes up the questions of what determines whether a treaty provision is successfully changed and why provisions are renegotiated at subsequent Intergovernmental Conferences. The article presents an institutionalist theory explaining success and renegotiation and tests the theory using all core institutional provisions by means of Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The causal analysis shows that low conflict potential of an issue is sufficient for successfully changing the treaties. Furthermore, high conflict potential of an issue and its fundamental change are sufficient for it to be renegotiated.
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.
Based upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P).
Contesting citizenship
(2022)
Democracy and citizenship are conceptually and empirically contested. Against the backdrop of recent and current profound transformations in and of democratic societies, this volume presents and discusses acute contestations, within and beyond national borders and boundaries. Democracy’s crucial relationships, between state and citizenry as well as amongst citizens, are rearranged and re-ordered in various spheres and arenas, impacting on core democratic principles such as accountability, legitimacy, participation and trust. This volume addresses these refigurations by bringing together empirical analyses and conceptual considerations regarding the access to and exclusion from citizenship rights in the face of migration regulation and institutional transformation, and the role of violence in maintaining or undermining social order. With its critical reflection on the consequences and repercussions of such processes for citizens’ everyday lives and for the meaning of citizenship altogether, this book transgresses disciplinary boundaries and puts into dialogue the perspectives of political theory and sociology.
This thesis is analyzing multiple coordination challenges which arise with the digital transformation of public administration in federal systems, illustrated by four case studies in Germany. I make various observations within a multi-level system and provide an in-depth analysis. Theoretical explanations from both federalism research and neo-institutionalism are utilized to explain the findings of the empirical driven work. The four articles evince a holistic picture of the German case and elucidate its role as a digital government laggard. Their foci range from macro, over meso to micro level of public administration, differentiating between the governance and the tool dimension of digital government.
The first article shows how multi-level negotiations lead to expensive but eventually satisfying solutions for the involved actors, creating a subtle balance between centralization and decentralization. The second article identifies legal, technical, and organizational barriers for cross-organizational service provision, highlighting the importance of inter-organizational and inter-disciplinary exchange and both a common language and trust. Institutional change and its effects on the micro level, on citizens and the employees in local one-stop shops, mark the focus of the third article, bridging the gap between reforms and the administrative reality on the local level. The fourth article looks at the citizens’ perspective on digital government reforms, their expectations, use and satisfaction. In this vein, this thesis provides a detailed account of the importance of understanding the digital divide and therefore the necessity of reaching out to different recipients of digital government reforms. I draw conclusions from the factors identified as causes for Germany’s shortcomings for other federal systems where feasible and derive reform potential therefrom. This allows to gain a new perspective on digital government and its coordination challenges in federal contexts.
Coping, taming or solving
(2017)
One of the truisms of policy analysis is that policy problems are rarely solved. As an ever-increasing number of policy issues are identified as an inherently ill-structured and intractable type of wicked problem, the question of what policy analysis sets out to accomplish has emerged as more central than ever. If solving wicked problems is beyond reach, research on wicked problems needs to provide a clearer understanding of the alternatives. The article identifies and explicates three distinguishable strategies of problem governance: coping, taming and solving. It shows that their intellectual premises and practical implications clearly contrast in core respects. The article argues that none of the identified strategies of problem governance is invariably more suitable for dealing with wicked problems. Rather than advocate for some universally applicable approach to the governance of wicked problems, the article asks under what conditions different ways of governing wicked problems are analytically reasonable and normatively justified. It concludes that a more systematic assessment of alternative approaches of problem governance requires a reorientation of the debate away from the conception of wicked problems as a singular type toward the more focused analysis of different dimensions of problem wickedness.
The liberal international order is being challenged and international organizations (IOs) are a main target of contestation. COVID-19 seems to exacerbate the situation with many states pursuing domestic strategies at the expense of multilateral cooperation. At the same time, IOs have traditionally benefited from cross-border crises. This article analyzes the policy responses of IOs to the exogenous COVID-19 shock by asking why some IOs use this crisis as an opportunity to expand their scope and policy instruments? It provides a cross-sectional analysis using original data on the responses of 75 IOs to COVID-19 during the first wave between March and June 2020. It finds that the bureaucratic capacity of IOs is significant when it comes to using the crisis as an opportunity. It also finds some evidence that the number of COVID-19 cases among the member states affects policy responses and that general purpose IOs have benefited more.
Creativity is a crucial part of policy capacity in governments. Existing studies on creative behavior in the public sector assess employees' openness to new ideas and creative solutions, and they confirm the relevance of organizational and individual determinants for pro-creativity attitudes. Yet we lack systemic evidence on the explicit level of work-related creativity among policy officials in government organizations. At the same time, novel technologies and particularly social networking services change the working environment of policy officials radically, alter organizational features, and may also yield crucial individual effects. Our study analyses “policy creativity” of policy officials in three European governments. We demonstrate the importance of organizational and individual features, including the stress triggered by using social networking services. Our study captures officials' creativity explicitly and adds to debates on creativity and innovation in the public sector as well as the micro-level foundations of the digital transformation in the public sector.
International organizations (IOs) experience significant variation in their decision-making performance, or the extent to which they produce policy output. While some IOs are efficient decision-making machineries, others are plagued by deadlock. How can such variation be explained? Examining this question, the article makes three central contributions. First, we approach performance by looking at IO decision-making in terms of policy output and introduce an original measure of decision-making performance that captures annual growth rates in IO output. Second, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for decision-making performance. This account highlights the role of institutional design, pointing to how majoritarian decision rules, delegation of authority to supranational institutions, and access for transnational actors (TNAs) interact to affect decision-making. Third, we offer the first comparative assessment of the decision-making performance of IOs. While previous literature addresses single IOs, we explore decision-making across a broad spectrum of 30 IOs from 1980 to 2011. Our analysis indicates that IO decision-making performance varies across and within IOs. We find broad support for our theoretical account, showing the combined effect of institutional design features in shaping decision-making performance. Notably, TNA access has a positive effect on decision-making performance when pooling is greater, and delegation has a positive effect when TNA access is higher. We also find that pooling has an independent, positive effect on decision-making performance. All-in-all, these findings suggest that the institutional design of IOs matters for their decision-making performance, primarily in more complex ways than expected in earlier research.
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.