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Inside the EU Commission
(2017)
This article studies the perception of the EU Commission's Secretariat General in policy-making. Recently, research on EU institutions devotes increasing attention to analyzing structures and procedures of decision-making in EU institutions, most notably the EU Commission. Conventionally, the EU Commission is portrayed as a fragmented organization, divided along the lines of staff nationality, sectoral responsibilities and cabinets and General Directorates (DGs). The Secretariat General has long been viewed a weak actor that is hardly able or motivated to steer internal decision-making. However, recent research indicates a changing role of the Secretariat General as a pro-active broker and last arbiter. This article studies how the Secretariat General is perceived by the DGs in policy coordination and argues that this perception depends on the pattern of political authority, bureaucratic roles and the relevance and the alternatives prevailing in the policy field. The article is based on data from a survey among Commission officials.
The past two decades have witnessed widespread scholarly interest in the role of cities in climate policy-making. This research has considerably improved our understanding of the local level in the global response to climate change. The present article synthesizes the literature on local climate policies with respect to the 1.5 degrees C target. While most studies have focused on pioneering cities and networks, we contend that the broader impacts of local climate actions and their relationship to regional, national, and international policy frameworks have not been studied in enough detail. Against this backdrop, we introduce the concept of upscaling and contend that local climate initiatives must go hand in hand with higher-level policies and be better integrated into the multi-level governance system.
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.
This paper is concerned with the normative underpinnings of popular sustainability indicators and country rankings. Attempts to quantify national sustainability in the form of composite indicators and rankings have increased rapidly over past decades. However, questions regarding validity and interpretability remain. This article combines theoretical and statistical tools to explore how input variables in five popular sustainability indicators can be related to different theoretical paradigms: weak and strong sustainability. It is shown that differences in theoretical interpretations affect input variable selection, which in turn affects indicator output. This points towards the risk of indicators becoming a sort of ‘circular argumentation construct’. The article argues that sustainability indicators and country rankings must be treated as theoretical just as much as statistical instruments. It is proposed that making underlying normative assumptions explicit, and making input variable selection more clear in a theoretical sense, can enhance indicator validity and usability for policy makers and researchers alike.
Arend Lijphart uses an average of five standardized variables – the executive-parties dimension (EPD) – to describe patterns of democracy and explain differences in democracies’ performance. The article suggests ways to improve the descriptive part of the project. It argues that the EPD maps different approaches to achieving accountability and representation, rather than differences in consensus. This re-conceptualization leads to a more coherent and valid measurement. It is also argued that more systematic adjustments are needed for differences in constitutional structures (presidentialism and bicameralism). The article presents data on a revised EPD and its components for 36 democracies in the period from 1981 to 2010. As to the explanatory part of the project, we contend that the EPD often hinders adequate causal analysis rather than facilitating it. We show this by re-analysing democracies’ performance with respect to turnout and capital punishment.
In recent decades, a wave of administrative reforms has changed local governance in many European countries. However, our knowledge about differences as well as similarities between the countries, driving forces, impacts, perceptions, and evaluation of these reforms is still limited. In the chapter, the authors give an overview about mayors’ perceptions and evaluations of two major reform trajectories: (a) re-organisation of local service delivery and (b) internal administrative/managerial reforms. Furthermore, differences between (groups of) countries as well as similarities among them are shown in these two fields of administrative reform. Finally, the authors tried to identify explanatory factors for specific perceptions of administrative reforms at the local level.
A growing number of expert organizations aim to provide knowledge for global environmental policy-making. Recently, there have also been explicit calls for stakeholder engagement at the global level to make scientific knowledge relevant and usable on the ground. The newly established Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is one of the first international expert organizations to have systematically developed a strategy for stakeholder engagement in its own right. In this article, we analyze the emergence of this strategy. Employing the concept politics of legitimation, we examine how and for what reasons stakeholder engagement was introduced, justified, and finally endorsed, as well as its effects. The article explores the process of institutionalizing stakeholder engagement, as well as reconstructing the contestation of the operative norms (membership, tasks, and accountability) regulating the rules for this engagement. We conclude by discussing the broader importance of the findings for IPBES, as well as for international expert organizations in general.
Editorial
(2017)
Sanktionen sind ein wichtiges Instrument des UN-Sicherheitsrats zur Erhaltung des Weltfriedens. Viele zentrale Entscheidungen, wie etwa die Listung und Entlistung terrorverdächtiger Personen, werden fernab der Öffentlichkeit in Sanktionsausschüssen getroffen. Die Einsetzung dieser Ausschüsse hat die Entscheidungsdynamiken im Rat erheblich verändert.
The Gezi uprising can be considered a crucial turning in Turkish politics. As a response to countrywide democratic protests, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government revived the security state, escalated authoritarian tendencies, and started to organize a nationalist, Islamist, and conservative backlash. This essay argues that the Gezi Park protests revealed both the fragility of the AKP's hegemony and the limits of the dominant political group habitus, which were promoted by the party to consolidate political polarization in favor of the party's hegemony. Moreover, it is argued that the Gezi uprising transformed the culture of political protests in the country and paved the way for the emergence of affirmative resistance, radical imagination, and a new politics of desire and dignity against authoritarian and neoliberal policies.
This article examines the reorganization of formal coordination structures in the Directorate-General for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs of the European Commission. While rational approaches in organization theory emphasize functional efficiency as an explanation for organizational design and coordination structures, the findings of this study indicate that the reorganization was not driven primarily for reasons of efficiency and to increase the coordination capacity of the organization. The study demonstrates that, even in a highly technical policy area such as fisheries management in the European Union, the (re-)design of formal organizational structures does not follow primarily a technical-instrumental rationale. Instead, the formal coordination structures have also been adapted to live up to changing expectations in the institutional environment, to modern management concepts in marine governance, and to ensure the legitimacy of the organization. However, although the empirical findings of this study substantiate the theoretical assumptions of an institutional perspective, institutional explanations alone are insufficient to comprehensively understand why organizational structures are reorganized and changed.
Conservation nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are often involved in the design and implementation of global forest management initiatives such as the REDD+, which currently is being rolled out by the UNFCCC, the UN-REDD Programme and the World Bank as part of efforts to mitigate climate change. Nigeria joined the UN-REDD in 2010 and submitted its REDD+ readiness proposal in 2011. The proposal has a national component and subnational forestry activities in the Cross River State (CRS) as the pilot site. This chapter examines the involvement of local NGOs in the CRS consultative participatory meetings to validate the Nigeria-REDD proposal. It shows that political representation of local communities in the validation exercise was through customary authorities and NGOs who claim to speak for and are recognised as advocates for the communities. Local government authorities, the substantive political representatives of local communities were left out of the process. The chapter also shows how the CRS Forestry Commission, which organised the validation exercise, used NGOs as pawns to legitimise it, and how these NGOs were powerless to challenge the Forestry Commission. In contrast, local governments, the third tier of government and political authority routinely disrespected by state-level administrators, regularly challenge such higher level government actors in the courts and the national legislature. Thus, local NGOs may speak and work for local social development but compared to the substantive political representatives at the local level (e.g., local government authorities), local NGOs have limited resources to challenge the political shenanigans of the state.
South Africa’s energy sector finds itself in a gridlock situation. The sector is controlled by the state-owned utility Eskom holding the monopoly on the generation and transmission of electricity, which is almost exclusively produced from domestically extracted coal. At the same time, the constitutional mandate enables municipalities to distribute and sell electricity generated by Eskom to local consumers, which constitutes a large part of the cities’ municipal income. This is a strong disincentive for city governments to promote reductions in energy consumption and substantially limits the scope for urban action on energy efficiency and renewable energies. In the present case study, we portray the current development in South Africa’s energy policy and trace how deadlocked legal, financial, and institutional barriers block the transition from a coal-based energy system toward a greener and more sustainable energy economy. We furthermore point to the efforts of major South African cities to introduce low-carbon strategies in their jurisdictions and highlight key challenges for the future development of the country’s energy sector. By engaging with this case study, readers will become familiar with a prime example of the wider phenomenon of national political–economic obstacles to the progress in sustainable urban development.
Germany has a long tradition of federalism extending far back in history (Ziblatt 2004; Broschek 2011). This tradition has always been characterized by a discrepancy between the attitudes of the public to its federalism and the reform ideas of the (political) elites. While the public has a strong desire for an equality of living conditions, solidarity, social cohesion, and cooperation between the orders of government, academic discourse is shaped by calls for wide-ranging federalism reforms, which are oriented toward the American model of "dual federalism." Against this background, this chapter contrasts public attitudes on key aspects of the federal system with long-lasting academic recommendations for reform. Light will be shed on the general perception of the federal system as a whole, the division of powers, and in particular the issue of joint decision-making (Politikverflechtung) between the orders of government-all issues that have been repeatedly interrogated in various surveys. A further aspect of these polls is the question of the extent to which solidarity or competition shall be realized between the federal and Land governments-a question that is highly controversial in politics and academia (especially in the fiscal equalization debate), though public perceptions are quite different.
Since the 1980s, central governments have decentralized forestry to local governments in many countries of the Global South. More recently, REDD+ has started to impact forest policy-making in these countries by providing incentives to ensure a national-level approach to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Höhne et al. analyze to what extent central governments have rebuilt capacity at the national level, imposed regulations from above, and interfered in forest management by local governments for advancing REDD+. Using the examples of Brazil and Indonesia, the chapter illustrates that while REDD+ has not initiated a large-scale recentralization in the forestry sector, it has supported the reinforcement and pooling of REDD+ related competences at the central government level.
In recent time, phytoliths (silicon deposition between plant cells) have been recognized as an important nutrient source for crops. The work presented here aims at highlighting the potential of phytolith-occluded K pool in ferns. Dicranopteris linearis (D.linearis) is a common fern in the humid subtropical and tropical regions. Burning of the fern D.linearis is, in slash-and-burn regions, a common practice to prepare the soil before planting. We characterised the phytolith-rich ash derived from the fern D.linearis and phytolith-associated potassium (K) (phytK), using X-ray tomographic microscopy in combination with kinetic batch experiments. D.linearis contains up to 3.9g K/kgd.wt, including K subcompartmented in phytoliths. X-ray tomographic microscopy visualized an interembedding structure between organic matter and silica, particularly in leaves. Corelease of K and Si observed in the batch experiments confirmed that the dissolution of ash phytoliths is one of major factors controlling K release. Under heat treatment, a part of the K is made available, while the remainder entrapped into phytoliths (ca. 2.0-3.3%) is unavailable until the phytoliths are dissolved. By enhanced removal of organic phases, or forming more stable silica phases, heat treatment changes dissolution properties of the phytoliths, affecting K release for crops and soils. The maximum releases of soluble K and Si were observed for the phytoliths treated at 500-800 degrees C. For quantitative approaches for the K provision of plants from the soil phytK pool in soils, factors regulating phytolith dissolution rate have to be considered.
The collaboration during the modeling process is uncomfortable and characterized by various limitations. Faced with the successful transfer of first process modeling languages to the augmented world, non-transparent processes can be visualized in a more comprehensive way. With the aim to rise comfortability, speed, accuracy and manifoldness of real world process augmentations, a framework for the bidirectional interplay of the common process modeling world and the augmented world has been designed as morphologic box. Its demonstration proves the working of drawn AR integrations. Identified dimensions were derived from (1) a designed knowledge construction axiom, (2) a designed meta-model, (3) designed use cases and (4) designed directional interplay modes. Through a workshop-based survey, the so far best AR modeling configuration is identified, which can serve for benchmarks and implementations.