320 Politikwissenschaft
Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (33) (remove)
Year of publication
- 2020 (33) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (17)
- Part of a Book (13)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (1)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
- Other (1)
Language
- English (33) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (33) (remove)
Keywords
- discourse (2)
- 2 degrees C target (1)
- Active learning (1)
- Argentina (1)
- Buenos Aires (1)
- Changing nature of armed conflict (1)
- Counterterrorism (1)
- Education (1)
- Germany (1)
- Global order (1)
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.
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.
Challenges, triggers and initiators of climate policies and implications for policy formulation
(2020)
Comparatice methods B
(2020)
Conclusion
(2020)
Does political repression work for authoritarian rule? On the one hand, repression is a hallmark of authoritarian governance. It denotes any action governments take to increase the costs of collective action. Autocrats consciously apply repression to curb popular opposition within their territorial jurisdiction. They repress in order to protect their policies, personnel, or other interests against challenges from below. Repression is, thus, a means to the end of political survival in non-democratic contexts. A useful means lives up to its promises. Does repression do that? This project started on the suspicion that we do not yet know the answer. This concluding chapter recalls the key theoretical ideas developed along the way, highlights the main findings of the book, and concludes with opportunities for future research.
Does complementarity between restrictions and violence stabilize authoritarian power-sharing in the face of popular rebellion? Scholars widely concur that the central political conflict in authoritarian regimes plays out between people on the inside of the regime. This chapter adds to the debate and studies coup attempts in light of two interconnected hypotheses. First, violence against campaigns destabilizes power-sharing because it exposes a weak leadership. Second, this adverse effect of violence declines as the routine level of restrictions increases, because restrictions act as a sorting mechanism for uncompromising political opposition. Both hypotheses are tested using Bayesian multilevel statistical analysis on a data set of 253 coup attempts in 198 authoritarian regimes between 1949 and 2007. This study design allows separation of repression’s time-dependent effects from its context effects, and it demonstrates the value of Bayesian methods for studying rare political phenomena such as coups d’état. The chapter’s conclusion, however, is straightforward: Once citizens form campaigns, repression can only deteriorate the situation because it opens a frontline right at the center of authoritarian rule.
Campaigns against authoritarian rule trigger the problems of authoritarian control and power-sharing. Hence, autocrats cannot ignore campaigns, but can they repress them? This chapter hypothesizes that restrictions and violence do just that—if those forms of political repression complement each other. Each variant of political repression has drawbacks: Restrictions dampen, but they do not eliminate interdependent behavior; violence imposes high individual costs on dissent, but it frequently backfires against its originators. Complementarity asserts that those drawbacks matter less when both variants of repression work in tandem. Statistical analysis of 50 campaigns distributed across 112 authoritarian regimes between 1977 and 2001 yields mixed support for the argument. Based on a binary probit model with sample selection correction, the analysis adds a preemptive and a reactive aspect to political repression. The results imply that complementarity matters as long as repression preempts campaigns, but not when it reacts to them. Moreover, once citizens knock at the palace gates, restrictions turn futile. Finally, violence reduces the outlook for successful resistance against authoritarian rule, but it also backfires at all times—preemptive and reactive. By implication, political repression thwarts successful resistance today, but it breeds more resistance tomorrow.
Geleitwort
(2020)
The United Nations (UN) policy agenda on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) promotes a “holistic” approach to counterterrorism, which includes elements traditionally found in security and development programs. Advocates of the agenda increasingly emphasize the importance of gender mainstreaming for counterterrorism goals. In this article, I scrutinize the merging of the goals of gender equality, security, and development into a global agenda for counterterrorism. A critical feminist discourse-analytical reading of gender representations in P/CVE shows how problematic imageries of women as victims, economic entrepreneurs, and peacemakers from both the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Women, Peace and Security agenda are reproduced in core UN documents advocating for a “holistic” P/CVE approach. By highlighting the tensions that are produced by efforts to merge the different gender discourses across the UN’s security and development institutions, the article underlines the relevance of considering the particular position of P/CVE at the security–development nexus for further gender-sensitive analysis and policies of counterterrorism.