320 Politikwissenschaft
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Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) offers flexible and decarbonised power generation and is one of the few switchable renewable technologies that can generate renewable power on demand. Today (2018), CSP only contributes 5 TWh to European electricity generation but has the potential to become an important generation asset for decarbonising the electricity sector within Europe as well as globally. This chapter examines how factors and key political decisions lead to different futures and the associated CSP use in Europe in the years up to 2050. In a second step, we characterise the scenarios with the associated system costs and the costs of the support policy. We show that the role of CSP in Europe depends crucially on political decisions and the success or failure of policies outside of renewable energies. In particular, the introduction of CSP depends on the general ambitions for decarbonisation, the level of cross-border trade in electricity from renewable sources and is made possible by the existence of a strong grid connection between the southern and northern European Member States and by future growth in electricity demand. The presence of other baseload technologies, particularly nuclear energy in France, diminishes the role and need for CSP. Assuming a favourable technological development, we find a strong role for CSP in Europe in all modelled scenarios: Contribution of 100 TWh to 300 TWh of electricity to a future European electricity system. The current European CSP fleet would have to be increased by a factor of 20 to 60 over the next 30 years. To achieve this, stable financial support for CSP would be required. Depending on framework conditions and assumptions, the amount of support ranges at the EU level from € 0.4 to 2 billion per year, which represents only a small proportion of the total support requirement for the energy system transformation. Cooperation between the Member States could further help reduce these costs.
Green recovery
(2023)
This chapter reviews how the European Union has fared in enabling a green recovery in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, drawing comparisons to developments after the financial crisis. The chapter focuses on the European Commission and its evolving role in promoting decarbonisation efforts in its Member States, paying particular attention to its role in financing investments in low-carbon assets. It considers both the direct effects of green stimulus policies on decarbonisation in the EU and how these actions have shaped the capacities of the Commission as an actor in the field of climate and energy policy. The analysis reveals a significant expansion of the Commission’s role compared to the period following the financial crisis. EU-level measures have provided incentives for Member States to direct large volumes of financing towards investments in climate-friendly assets. Nevertheless, the ultimate impact will largely be shaped by implementation at the national level.
Reputation and influence
(2022)
International public administrations (IPAs) are collective bodies within international organizations (IOs) made up of international civil servants that support the intergovernmental bodies and member states. Over the last decade, research on these bodies has “gained substantial momentum”. Comparative assessments of IPAs reputation among stakeholders are rare. The literature on the sociological legitimacy of IOs is most advanced in this respect. A comparative agenda on IPAs reputation for expertise or neutrality is still in its infancy. Research has shown that different stakeholders view the same IPA quite differently. Reputation is a crucial concept in political science and IR research and has been widely used to predict states’ future behavior, notably regarding cooperation and conflict. IPAs seem to vary substantially in their reputation for expertise among critical interlocutors. In financial policy, several prominent IPAs are seen as experts, including the European Central Bank and the IMF.
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.
Introduction
(2023)
Can a metamorphosis of international law be identified while it is still underway? In Chapter 1, the Introduction, Krieger and Liese set the stage for the interdisciplinary assessment of the effects of the current crisis of the international legal order. They offer fundamental common values as a reference point and yardstick to systematically evaluate and analyse normative changes in international law. After explaining the benefits of interdisciplinary exchange and clarifying the basic concepts from the respective disciplinary perspectives, they develop the book’s conceptual framework for assessing and explaining value change in the international legal order. The Introduction also elaborates on the book’s research design and case selection and summarizes the aims and key contributions of each conceptual and empirical chapter.
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.
Over the past decades, the traditional profile of the German administrative system has significantly been reshaped and remoulded through reforms and transformations. Manifold modernization efforts have been undertaken to adjust administrative structures and procedures to increasing challenges and pressures. In this chapter, the attempt is made to outline major institutional reform paths in Germany from Weberian bureaucracy to most recent reforms towards a digital transformation of public administration. We will show to what extent the German administrative system has moved away from the classical Weberian bureaucracy to a hybrid system where elements of the ‘old’ model and new reform paradigms such as the NPM and digital government are hybridized, labelled the Neo Weberian State. The question will be addressed as to what extent this shift has taken shape and which hurdles and path-dependencies can be identified to explain partial persistence and continuity over time.
This chapter analyses managerial reforms at the subnational level of government from a comparative perspective and outlines possible routes for future comparative research. It examines reforms of the external relationships between local governments and private service providers, which were aimed at transforming the organizational macro-setting of local service provision, the task portfolio and functional profile of local governments. The chapter then moves to scrutinizing internal managerial reforms concerned with the modernization of organization and processes and the improvement of management capacities inside local administrations meant to strengthen performance, output- and consumer-orientation in local service delivery. The country sample includes the United Kingdom (England), Sweden, and Germany that represent three distinct types of administrative culture and local government in Europe.
This chapter outlines the organization and allocation of functions at the meso-level of government in Germany (states/Länder administrations). Furthermore, we shed light on the carriers and qualification profiles of the top bureaucrats in meso-level administrations. These high-rank territorial administrators/executives—state appointed heads of administrative districts (Regierungspräsidenten) on the one hand, elected heads of county administrations (Landräte) on the other hand—can be regarded as the German ‘equivalents’ of the prefects in countries with a Napoleonic administrative tradition. Finally, we analyse major reforms that have led to (at times, profound) transformations in territorial administrations, raising the question of to what extent alternative models of territorial bundling and coordination functions are sound and sustainable.
Administrative reforms refer to conscious decisions about institution building and institutional change that are taken at the end of political processes and can be conceived as the attempt by politico-administrative actors to change the institutional order (polity) within which they make and implement decisions. In this paper we proceed from the assumption that the role of politics, the constellation of political actors and arenas vary according to the scope and objectives of administrative reforms. Depending on whether they refer to changes between organizational units/levels/sectors ('external institutional policy') or to an internal reorganization ('internal institutional policy'), different actor strategies, patterns of conflict and power constellations can be expected. As external administrative reforms are aimed at changing functional and/or territorial jurisdictions and thus always involve external actors, larger resistance, heavier political conflicts and generally more politicization are likely to occur than in the case of internal administrative reforms. Yet, for internal reforms, too, actor coalitions which support or block institutional changes, promotors, leaders, and moderators have revealed to shape processes and outcomes. Against this background, this chapter examines the influence of politics on various types of administrative reforms making a distinction between external and internal institutional policies. We analyse the role of politico-administrative actors, their strategies and influence on the formulation, trajectories and outcomes of administrative reforms. Our major focus will be on reforms in the multi-level system on the one hand and on (Post-) NPM reforms on the other as two major international trends. Drawing on reform experiences in different European countries, the chapter will reveal to what extent actors' interests and influences have triggered and shaped administrative reforms and which difference these have made for the reform outcome.