320 Politikwissenschaft
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Yiddish culture developed in Argentina within the context of a self-perception that figured Buenos Aires as a marginal and peripheral locale on the global Yiddish map. Against this backdrop, Argentine Yiddish culturalists argued for the strengthening of local Yiddish culture with a goal of elevating Buenos Aires's status within the international hierarchies of Yiddish culture. Buenos Aires indeed emerged in the 1920s as a producer of Yiddish cultural contents, maintained networks of international cultural contacts with other Yiddish centers, financially supported Eastern European Yiddish establishments, and hoped that these contacts would allow for solving Buenos Aires reputation problems. The pre-World War II preoccupation with the status of Buenos Aires as a center of Yiddish culture provided a basis upon which post-Holocaust discourse of Argentine Jewish responsibility for the maintenance of Yiddish culture was constructed.
Who makes the world?
(2020)
In this essay, we consider the role of academics as change-makers. There is a long line of reflection about academics' sociopolitical role(s) in international relations (IR). Yet, our attempt differs from available considerations in two regards. First, we emphasize that academics are not a homogenous group. While some keep their distance from policymakers, others frequently provide policy advice. Hence, positions and possibilities of influence differ. Second, our argument is not oriented towards the past but the future. That is, we develop our reflections on academics as change-makers by outlining the vision of a 'FutureLab', an innovative, future forum that brings together different world-makers who are united in their attempt to improve 'the world'. Our vision accounts for current, perhaps alarming trends in academia, such as debates about the (in)ability to confront post-truth politics. Still, it is a (critically) optimistic one and can be read as an invitation for experimentation. Finally, we sympathize with voices demanding the democratization of academia and find that further cross-disciplinary dialogues within academia and dialogues between different academics, civil society activists and policymakers may help in finding creditable solutions to problems such as climate change and populism.
In recent years the framings of global health security have shifted while the structures governing global health have largely remained the same. One feature of the emerging re-ordering is the unresolved allocation of accountability between state and non-state actors. This brings to critical challenges to global health security to the fore. The first is that the consensus on the seeming shift from state to human security framing with regard to the global human right to health (security) risks losing its salience. Second, this conceptual challenge is mirrored on the operational level: if states and non-state actors do not assume responsibility for health security, who or what can guarantee health security? In order to address global health security against the backdrop of these twenty-first Century challenges, this article proceeds in three parts. First, it analyses the shortcomings of the current state-based World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health security. Second, taking into account the rising pressures posed to global health security and the inadequacy both of state-based and of ad hoc non-state responses, it proposes a new framing. Third, the article offers initial insights into the operational application of beyond state responses to (health) security challenges.
To ensure political survival, autocrats must prevent popular rebellion, and political repression is a means to that end. However, autocrats face threats from both the inside and the outside of the center of power. They must avoid popular rebellion and at the same time share power with strategic actors who enjoy incentive to challenge established power-sharing arrangements whenever repression is ordered. Can autocrats turn repression in a way that allows trading one threat off against the other? This chapter first argues that prior research offers scant insight on that question because it relies on umbrella concepts and questionable measurements of repression. Next, the chapter disaggregates repression into restrictions and violence and reflects on their drawbacks. Citizens adapt to the restriction of political civil liberties, and violence backfires against its originators. Hence, restrictions require enforcement, and violence requires moderation. When interpreted as complements, it becomes clear that restrictions and violence have the potential to compensate for their respective weaknesses. The complementarity between violence and restrictions turns political repression into a valuable addition to the authoritarian toolkit. The chapter concludes with an application of these ideas to the twin problems of authoritarian control and power-sharing.
The chapter explores how the Security Council has reacted to the changing global order in terms of institutional reform and its working methods. First, we look at how the Security Council’s setup looks increasingly anachronistic against the tremendous shifts in global power. Yet, established and rising powers are not disengaging. In contrast, they are turning to the Council to address growing challenges posed by the changing nature of armed conflict, the surge of terrorism and foreign fighters, nuclear proliferation and persistent intra-state conflicts. Then, we explore institutional and political hurdles for Council reform. While various reform models have been suggested, none of them gained the necessary global support. Instead, we demonstrate how the Council has increased the representation of emerging powers in informal ways. Potential candidates for permanent seats and their regional counterparts are committed as elected members, peacekeeping contributors or within the Peacebuilding Commission. Finally, we analyze how innovatively the Council has reacted to global security challenges. This includes working methods reform, expansion of sanctions regimes and involvement of non-state actors. We conclude that even though the Council’s membership has not yet been altered, it has reacted to the changing global order in ways previously unaccounted for.
‘The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialisms’ sets into relation U.S. imperial and Indigenous conceptions of territoriality as articulated in U.S. legal texts and Indigenous life writing in the 19th century. It analyzes the ways in which U.S. legal texts as “legal fictions” narratively press to affirm the United States’ territorial sovereignty and coherence in spite of its reliance on a variety of imperial practices that flexibly disconnect and (re)connect U.S. sovereignty, jurisdiction and territory.
At the same time, the book acknowledges Indigenous life writing as legal texts in their own right and with full juridical force, which aim to highlight the heterogeneity of U.S. national territory both from their individual perspectives and in conversation with these legal fictions. Through this, the book’s analysis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the coloniality of U.S. legal fictions, while highlighting territoriality as a key concept in the fashioning of the narrative of U.S. imperialism.
How do active learning environments—by means of simulations—enhance political science students’ learning outcomes regarding different levels of knowledge? This paper examines different UN simulations in political science courses to demonstrate their pedagogical value and provide empirical evidence for their effectiveness regarding three levels of knowledge (factual, procedural and soft skills). Despite comprehensive theoretical claims about the positive effects of active learning environments on learning outcomes, substantial empirical evidence is limited. Here, we focus on simulations to systematically test previous claims and demonstrate their pedagogical value. Model United Nations (MUNs) have been a popular teaching device in political science. To gain comprehensive data about the active learning effects of MUNs, we collect data and evaluate three simulations covering the whole range of simulation characteristics: a short in-class simulation of the UN Security Council, a regional MUN with different committees being simulated, and two delegations to the National Model United Nations, for which the students prepare for 1 year. Comparative results prove that simulations need to address certain characteristics in order to produce extensive learning outcomes. Only comprehensive simulations are able to achieve all envisioned learning outcomes regarding factual and procedural knowledge about the UN and soft skills.
Conventional wisdom holds that large sums of money poured into election campaigns are the gateway to corruption. Allegations of the corrupting influence of money in politics and policy are widespread on the national level. Yet, little empirical evidence has advanced the understanding of such a link on the local level, coupled with blurred corruption measures. This master’s thesis tests the effect of campaign finance on public procurement corruption risks in Colombian municipalities, focusing on donations, small donations, and financial disclosure. To that end, I seized publicly disclosed contribution-level data from the 2015 municipal elections and a novel index of institutionalized public procurement corruption risks based upon contract-level data from the near population of local governments. The analysis shows that donations are negatively associated with overall corruption risk, yet they affect specific corruption risks differently. By contrast, small donations seem to correlate positively with direct awarding for a sub-sample of medium-sized municipalities, whereas in their large-sized counterparts the effect of the former on institutionalized corruption is adverse. Finally, financial misreporting is positively linked with market competition restrictions and direct awarding. In the conclusion, I discuss the implications of these findings for future research and outline a series of policy recommendations.
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.
Reconstructing democracy
(2020)
Across the world, democracies are suffering from a disconnect between the people and political elites. In communities where jobs and industry are scarce, many feel the government is incapable of understanding their needs or addressing their problems. The resulting frustration has fueled the success of destabilizing demagogues. To reverse this pattern and restore responsible government, we need to reinvigorate democracy at the local level. But what does that mean? Drawing on examples of successful community building in cities large and small, from a shrinking village in rural Austria to a neglected section of San Diego, Reconstructing Democracy makes a powerful case for re-engaging citizens. It highlights innovative grassroots projects and shows how local activists can form alliances and discover their own power to solve problems.
The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international bureaucracies with civil society organizations, non-profit entities, and the private sector. Authors concerned with global environmental politics have made considerable progress in capturing this phenomenon. Nevertheless, we still lack in-depth empirical knowledge on the precise nature of such institutional interlinkages across governance levels and scales. Building upon the concept oforchestration, this article focuses on the relationship between specific types of international bureaucracies and actors other than the nation-state. In particular, we investigate how the secretariats of the three Rio Conventions reach out to non-state actors in order to exert influence on the outcome of international environmental negotiations. Our analysis demonstrates that the three intergovernmental treaty secretariats utilize various styles of orchestration in their relation to non-state actors and seek to push the global responses to the respective transboundary environmental problems forward. This article points to a recent trend towards a direct collaboration between these secretariats and non-state actors which gives rise to the idea that new alliances between these actors are emerging in global environmental governance.
Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement's temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional land carbon storage is greatest. As countries enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, confusion persists about the potential contribution of better land stewardship to meeting the Agreement's goal to hold global warming below 2 degrees C. We assess cost-effective tropical country-level potential of natural climate solutions (NCS)-protection, improved management and restoration of ecosystems-to deliver climate mitigation linked with sustainable development goals (SDGs). We identify groups of countries with distinctive NCS portfolios, and we explore factors (governance, financial capacity) influencing the feasibility of unlocking national NCS potential. Cost-effective tropical NCS offers globally significant climate mitigation in the coming decades (6.56 Pg CO(2)e yr(-1) at less than 100 US$ per Mg CO(2)e). In half of the tropical countries, cost-effective NCS could mitigate over half of national emissions. In more than a quarter of tropical countries, cost-effective NCS potential is greater than national emissions. We identify countries where, with international financing and political will, NCS can cost-effectively deliver the majority of enhanced NDCs while transforming national economies and contributing to SDGs. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.
Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement's temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional land carbon storage is greatest. As countries enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, confusion persists about the potential contribution of better land stewardship to meeting the Agreement's goal to hold global warming below 2 degrees C. We assess cost-effective tropical country-level potential of natural climate solutions (NCS)-protection, improved management and restoration of ecosystems-to deliver climate mitigation linked with sustainable development goals (SDGs). We identify groups of countries with distinctive NCS portfolios, and we explore factors (governance, financial capacity) influencing the feasibility of unlocking national NCS potential. Cost-effective tropical NCS offers globally significant climate mitigation in the coming decades (6.56 Pg CO(2)e yr(-1) at less than 100 US$ per Mg CO(2)e). In half of the tropical countries, cost-effective NCS could mitigate over half of national emissions. In more than a quarter of tropical countries, cost-effective NCS potential is greater than national emissions. We identify countries where, with international financing and political will, NCS can cost-effectively deliver the majority of enhanced NDCs while transforming national economies and contributing to SDGs. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.
Focusing on forest policy and urban climate politics in Brazil and Indonesia, the primary objective of this chapter is to identify domestic pioneers and leaders who, compared to other sectors, governmental levels or jurisdictions within the same nation-state, move ‘ahead of the troops’ (Liefferink and Wurzel, 2017: 2-3). The chapter focuses especially on the role of multilevel governance in bringing about pioneership and leadership and on the different types of that have emerged. It also explores whether and, if so, to what extent domestic pioneers and leaders attract followers and whether there are signs of sustained domestic leadership. The chapter identifies the actors that constitute pioneers and leaders and assesses the processes which lead to their emergence. The chapter authors take up Wurzel et al.’s (2019) call to open up the black box of the nation-state. But instead of stressing the role of non-state actors, the chapter authors focus on vertical interactions among different governmental levels within nation states. The main argument put forward is that international and transnational processes, incentives, and ideas often trigger the development of domestic pioneership and leadership. Such processes, however, cannot be understood properly if domestic politics and dynamics across governmental levels within the nation-state are not taken into account.
Mind the gap?
(2020)
Many authors have argued that International Public Administration can influence policy-making through their expert authority. The article compares de jure and de facto expert authority of IPAs to evaluate their conformity. It comparatively assesses the two kinds of authority for five important IPAs (BIS, FAO, IMF, OECD and World Bank) active in agriculture or financial policy. It shows that, on average, de jure and de facto authority seem to conform. At the same time, it demonstrates that gaps between de jure and de facto authority exist at the level of the IPAs, the policy areas and the IPAs’ addressees
The chapter explores aspects of ‘memory games’ in postcommunist Poland vis-à-vis the country’s authoritarian communist past. In particular, it is interested in the populist moments of lustration and de-communization, and also after October 2015 when the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) won the parliamentary and presidential elections in Poland. The main argument is that even though legitimate considerations of lustration and de-communization play a role, a number of policies dealing with transitional justice are related to populist mobilization by the PiS. Against this background, the chapter discusses how far the transitional justice has been accompanied by the process of reframing the political memory about the guilt, suffering, and righteousness during communism. Populist legitimation aims at reconfiguring the public discourse on the transitional justice in a way that it is used to justify controversial public policies in tune with the interest of the groups currently in power, which present themselves as the true voice of the people. The core of the article deals with three main aspects of Polish memory games: (1) the meandering of lustration (mainly with regard to the position of the PiS/Law and Justice and PO/Civic Platform – the largest Polish political parties since 2005), (2) the lustration as the function of power, and (3) the role of the Institute of National Remembrance as a case of institutionalized memory games.
Introduction
(2020)
Does political repression work and if so, under what conditions? Many contributions to the empirical study of non-democratic rule assume it does. As a consequence, strong convictions on political repression abound, but empirical investigations into the matter remain rare. This introduction sets the agenda for the chapters to come and outlines the answers given to the three motivating questions of this volume. First, what variants of political repression are there, and how do they interact? Second, what impact does the interaction of different forms of political repression have on the problem of authoritarian control? Finally, what difference does the complementary use of violence and restrictions make for the problem of authoritarian power-sharing?
Using a novel agent-based model, we study how US withdrawal might influence the political process established by the Paris Agreement, and hence the prospects for reaching the collective goal to limit warming below 2 degrees C. Our model enables us to analyze to what extent reaching this goal despite US withdrawal would place more stringent requirements on other core elements of the Paris cooperation process. We find, first, that the effect of a US withdrawal depends critically on the extent to which member countries reciprocate others' promises and contributions. Second, while the 2 degrees C goal will likely be reached only under a very small set of conditions in any event, even temporary US withdrawal will further narrow this set significantly. Reaching this goal will then require other countries to step up their ambition at the first opportunity and to comply nearly 100% with their pledges, while maintaining high confidence in the Paris Agreements institutions. Third, although a US withdrawal will first primarily affect the United States' own emissions, it will eventually prove even more detrimental to other countries' emissions.