320 Politikwissenschaft
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Monograph/Edited Volume (49)
- Article (45)
- Doctoral Thesis (31)
- Master's Thesis (18)
- Part of a Book (17)
- Postprint (16)
- Review (7)
- Other (2)
- Bachelor Thesis (1)
- Journal/Publication series (1)
Keywords
- international organizations (5)
- parliamentary government (5)
- European Union (4)
- Europäische Integration (4)
- Europäische Union (4)
- Governance (4)
- Political Science (4)
- Politikwissenschaft (4)
- Verwaltung (4)
- presidential government (4)
Institute
- Sozialwissenschaften (188) (remove)
In der Ausgabe Politisches Lernen 1-2|2019 setzte sich Kurt P. Tudyka mit dem Verhältnis von Theater und Politik auseinander. Er gelangte zu dem ernüchternden Resümee: „Der Anspruch, Theater sei die Schule der Nation, – soweit er überhaupt noch besteht –, müsste aufgegeben werden.“ (S. 32) In Tudykas Einführung hieß es bereits: „Eine politisierende Wirkung auf das Publikum wird bestritten.“ (S. 30) Vor diesem Hintergrund könnte bei Lehrerinnen und Lehrern der Politischen Bildung der Eindruck entstehen, ein Besuch im Theater mit Schülerinnen und Schülern sei didaktisch nicht sinnvoll. Dagegen wird im folgenden Beitrag die Auffassung vertreten, dass ein Theaterbesuch mit den Lernenden durchaus mit Erkenntnisgewinnen, seien sie politisch oder über das Politische hinausweisend, verbunden sein kann. Der Beitrag stellt eine gekürzte Fassung des Textes „Theater und politische Bildung“ dar, der in Markus Gloe / Tonio Oeftering (Hrsg.): Politische Bildung meets Kulturelle Bildung, Baden-Baden (Nomos) 2020, erscheinen wird.
Borders are a main characteristic of political entities. The separation from and the interactions with the outside environment are realised simultaenously. This is now heavily questioned in the European Union as „the first post-modern political entity“ (Ruggie). Within the EU we have observed a process of „de-bordering“ and growing transborder cooperation. Simultaneously, the question of the external border of the EU is raised as a political and mental issue. Deepening of the present EU leads to the fostering of the external borders - this is the lesson of the last 10 years. This can be also observed at the EU’s Eastern border - after the „first Eastern enlargement“ in the context of German reunification in 1990 - to the Oder/Neisse. The article discusses the historic developments and specific challenges of this border line and argues for cooperative external borders of the EU.
Eigentlich leben wir heute im Holozän, dem Erdzeitalter, das mit dem Ende der letzten großen Eiszeit vor etwa 12.000 Jahren seinen Ausgang nahm. Doch seit geraumer Zeit ist in Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit die Rede vom Anthropozän als der vom Menschen bestimmten gegenwärtigen Epoche. Mit der Begriffsschöpfung soll der gravierende Einfluss des Menschen auf die Umwelt zum Ausdruck gebracht werden, der sich nicht zuletzt in der Versauerung der Meere, im Artensterben und Klimawandel äußert. Doch wie spiegelt sich diese Erkenntnis in der Politischen Bildung wider?
Ghana ist ein Musterbeispiel dafür, dass ein Entwicklungsland den Weg zu Good Governance schaffen kann. In vielen Studien wird dem Land im afrikanischen Vergleich heute bescheinigt, hier ein Vorreiter zu sein. Dies ist Ausgangslage der vorliegenden Studie, die der Frage nachgeht „Welche Gründe, Muster und Bedingungen führen zur Entstehung von Good Governance?“. Im Zentrum der vorliegenden Studie steht, wie aus der erkenntnisleitenden Fragestellung hervorgeht, eine empirische Untersuchung zur Entstehung von Good Governance und damit ein Transformationsprozess. Dieser wird bewusst über einen sehr langen Zeitraum (über ein halbes Jahrhundert) untersucht, um auch langfristige Entwicklungen einbeziehen zu können. Die Studie wird mit Hilfe eines „Mixed-Methods-Ansatzes“ sowohl unter Rückgriff auf quantitative als auch auf qualitative Methoden durchgeführt, was sich im Rückblick als sehr ertragreich erwiesen hat. Zunächst wird die Qualität der Governance über den gesamten Zeitraum anhand von sechs Indikatoren gemessen. Danach werden qualitativ die Gründe für die Fort- und Rückschritte analysiert. Dabei lassen sich immer wieder Systematiken herausarbeiten, wie zum Beispiel zirkuläre Entwicklungen, die über viele Jahre den Weg hin zu Good Governance verhinderten, bis jeweils Ausbrüche aus den Kreisläufen geschafft werden konnten. Sowohl in der demokratischen und rechtsstaatlichen Entwicklung als auch bezogen auf die Versorgung der Bevölkerung mit öffentlichen Gütern und die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung. Auch wenn die verschiedenen Bereiche von Good Governance zunächst einzeln untersucht werden, so zeigen sich gleichzeitig deutlich die Wechselwirkungen der Komponenten. Zum Beispiel kristallisiert sich klar heraus, dass Rechtsstaatlichkeit sowohl auf die Stabilität politischer Systeme wirkt, als auch auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung. Ebenso beeinflussen diese wiederum die Korruption. Ähnliche Verknüpfungen lassen sich auch bei allen anderen Bereichen nachvollziehen. Die Entwicklung eines Landes kann also nur unter Berücksichtigung eines komplexen Governance-Systems verstanden und erklärt werden. Dabei können die Wechselwirkungen entweder konstruktiv oder destruktiv sein. Die Verflechtungen der einzelnen Bereiche werden in einem Negativ- und dann in einem Positiv-Szenario festgehalten. Diese Idealtypen-Bildung spitzt die Erkenntnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit zu und dient dem analytischen Verständnis der untersuchten Prozesse. Die Untersuchung zeigt, wie Good Governance über das Zusammenspiel verschiedener Faktoren entstehen kann und dass es wissenschaftlich sehr ertragreich ist, Transformationsforschung auf ein komplexes Governance-System auszuweiten. Hierbei werden die vielen empirisch erarbeiteten Ergebnisse zu den einzelnen Transformationen zu komplexen, in sich greifenden Gesamtszenarien zusammengeführt. Da es bisher keine explizite Good Governance-Transformationsforschung gab, wurde hiermit ein erster Schritt in diese Richtung getan. Es wird darüber hinaus deutlich, dass eine Transformation zu Good Governance nicht durch eine kurzfristige Veränderung der Rahmenbedingungen zu erreichen ist. Es geht um kulturelle Veränderungen, um Lernprozesse, um langfristige Entwicklungen, die in der Studie am Beispiel Ghana analysiert werden. In vielen vorangegangenen Transformationsstudien wurde diese zeitliche Komponente vernachlässigt. Ghana hat bereits viele Schritte getan, um einen Weg in die Zukunft und zu Good Governance zu finden. Die Untersuchung dieser Schritte ist Kern der vorliegenden Arbeit. Der Weg Ghanas ist jedoch noch nicht abgeschlossen.
Obwohl seit der Finanzkrise 2008 systemische Finanzrisiken das Objekt zahlreicher wissenschaftlicher Studien waren, hat die Frage, unter welchen Bedingungen und Umständen die Auferlegung eines systemischen Finanzrisikos moralisch unzulässig ist, bisher kaum Beachtung gefunden. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, eine Reihe von normativen Kriterien für die Einschätzung der moralischen Unzulässigkeit von systemischen Risiken zu entwickeln. Darüber hinaus wird argumentiert, dass staatliche und andere relevante Institutionen zwei zentrale Pflichten hinsichtlich des Umgangs mit systemischen Finanzrisiken haben: eine Schutzpflicht gegenüber allen Bürger*innen und eine Sorgfaltspflicht, um die diesen Institutionen obliegenden Kontroll- und Aufsichtsfunktionen verantwortungsvoll auszuüben.
Wissenschaftliches Schreiben
(2010)
Wie schreibe ich einen Literaturbericht? Was gehört in einen Exzerpt? Wer sich mit den Schwierigkeiten des wissenschaftlichen Schreibens herumschlägt, kann sich an den WeltTrends – Lehrtext Nr. 4 wenden. In kurzen und präzisen Kapiteln wird dem Leser der korrekte Umgang mit den verschiedenen Anforderungen wissenschaftlicher Arbeit, wozu auch Protokolle und Referate zählen, nahe gebracht. Insbesondere die klare, strukturierte Darstellung der jeweiligen Anforderungen kann eine große Hilfe für den Anfänger darstellen.
Wissenschaftliches Schreiben
(2011)
Schreiben ist harte Arbeit. Dafür sind sowohl Erfahrung als auch Orientierung nötig. Diese Schrift, die jetzt in einer vierten, erweiterten Auflage erschienen ist, gibt Ihnen Hinweise zum wissenschaftlichen Schreiben in seinen verschiedenen Varianten: vom Exzerpt und der Literaturbesprechung über die Klausur und das Essay bis hin zur Abschlussarbeit. Zudem finden Sie Anregungen zu mündlichen Prüfungen und der Disputation. Der Lehrtext ist eine konzentrierte Hilfe sowohl für Studienanfänger als auch für diejenigen, die vor dem Abschluss ihres Studiums stehen.
Wiedergelesen
(2011)
Seit 2008 ergänzt die sowohl kleine als auch feine Rubrik "Wiedergelesen" die Ausgaben des außenpolitischen Fachjournals WeltTrends. Berühmte Bücher der Politologie und schätzenswerte Raritäten werden für die Füllung dieser Rubrik aus Bücherregalen herausgefischt, abgestaubt und in aktuellem Interesse gelesen - wieder gelesen. Stets ist es das Anliegen, die Schriften sowohl aus ihrer Zeit zu verstehen als auch für unsere Zeit nutzbar zu machen - z. B. Huntingtons The Clash of Civilizations, Lipsets Political Man, Paines Die Rechte des Menschen oder An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain von Linz.
When are international organizations (IOs) responsive to the policy problems that motivated their establishment? While it is a conventional assumption that IOs exist to address transnational challenges, the question of whether and when IO policy-making is responsive to shifts in underlying problems has not been systematically explored. This study investigates the responsiveness of IOs from a large-n, comparative approach. Theoretically, we develop three alternative models of IO responsiveness, emphasizing severeness, dependence, and power differentials. Empirically, we focus on the domain of security, examining the responsiveness of eight multi-issue IOs to armed conflict between 1980 and 2015, using a novel and expansive dataset on IO policy decisions. Our findings suggest, first, that IOs are responsive to security problems and, second, that responsiveness is not primarily driven by dependence or power differentials but by problem severity. An in-depth study of the responsiveness of the UN Security Council using more granular data confirms these findings. As the first comparative study of whether and when IO policy adapts to problem severity, the article has implications for debates about IO responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy.
In the past decades, development cooperation (DC) led by conventional bi- and multilateral donors has been joined by a large number of small, private or public-private donors. This pluralism of actors raises questions as to whether or not these new donors are able to implement projects more or less effectively than their conventional counterparts. In contrast to their predecessors, the new donors have committed themselves to be more pragmatic, innovative and flexible in their development cooperation measures. However, they are also criticized for weakening the function of local civil society and have the reputation of being an intransparent and often controversial alternative to public services. With additional financial resources and their new approach to development, the new donors have been described in the literature as playing a controversial role in transforming development cooperation. This dissertation compares the effectiveness of initiatives by new and conventional donors with regard to the provision of public goods and services to the poor in the water and sanitation sector in India.
India is an emerging country but it is experiencing high poverty rates and poor water supply in predominantly rural areas. It lends itself for analyzing this research theme as it is currently being confronted by a large number of actors and approaches that aim to find solutions for these challenges .
In the theoretical framework of this dissertation, four governance configurations are derived from the interaction of varying actor types with regard to hierarchical and non-hierarchical steering of their interactions. These four governance configurations differ in decision-making responsibilities, accountability and delegation of tasks or direction of information flow. The assumption on actor relationships and steering is supplemented by possible alternative explanations in the empirical investigation, such as resource availability, the inheritance of structures and institutions from previous projects in a project context, gaining acceptance through beneficiaries (local legitimacy) as a door opener, and asymmetries of power in the project context.
Case study evidence from seven projects reveals that the actors' relationship is important for successful project delivery. Additionally, the results show that there is a systematic difference between conventional and new donors. Projects led by conventional donors were consistently more successful, due to an actor relationship that placed the responsibility in the hands of the recipient actors and benefited from the trust and reputation of a long-term cooperation. The trust and reputation of conventional donors always went along with a back-up from federal level and trickled down as reputation also at local level implementation. Furthermore, charismatic leaders, as well as the acquired structures and institutions of predecessor projects, also proved to be a positive influencing factor for successful project implementation.
Despite the mixed results of the seven case studies, central recommendations for action can be derived for the various actors involved in development cooperation. For example, new donors could fulfill a supplementary function with conventional donors by developing innovative project approaches through pilot studies and then implementing them as a supplement to the projects of conventional donors on the ground. In return, conventional donors would have to make room the new donors by integrating their approaches into already programs in order to promote donor harmonization. It is also important to identify and occupy niches for activities and to promote harmonization among donors on state and federal sides.
The empirical results demonstrate the need for a harmonization strategy of different donor types in order to prevent duplication, over-experimentation and the failure of development programs. A transformation to successful and sustainable development cooperation can only be achieved through more coordination processes and national self-responsibility.
Text des Vortrages vom 13. April 2008, gehalten im Rahmen der öffentlichen Sonntagsvorlesung "Potsdamer Köpfe" im Alten Rathaus Potsdam Inhalt: Warum Potsdam ein ,neues Toleranzedikt' braucht Tolerantes Brandenburg als Zukunftsfrage Ideengeschichtliche Impulse Potsdam erfindet sich neu Informationen zum Potsdamer Toleranzedikt
Voting for Votes
(2022)
Scholars frequently expect parties to act strategically in parliament, hoping to affect their electoral fortunes. Voters assumingly assess parties by their activity and vote accordingly. However, the retrospective voting literature looks mostly at the government's outcomes, leaving the opposition understudied. We argue that, for opposition parties, legislative voting constitutes an effective vote-seeking activity as a signaling tool of their attitude toward the government. We suggest that conflictual voting behavior affects voters through two mechanisms: as a signal of opposition valence and as means of ideological differentiation from the government. We present both aggregate- and individual-level analyses, leveraging a dataset of 169 party observations from 10 democracies and linking it to the CSES survey data of 27,371 respondents. The findings provide support for the existence of both mechanisms. Parliamentary conflict on legislative votes has a general positive effect on opposition parties' electoral performance, conditional on systemic and party-specific factors.
Der Beitrag widmet sich zwei überaus fruchtbaren theoretischen Ansätzen in der Policy-Forschung und darüber hinaus: der Vetospielertheorie und Vetopunkt-Ansätzen. Neben den Grundzügen beider Ansätze stellen wir grundlegende Entwicklungslinien und Probleme dieser Literaturen anhand beispielhafter Studien dar. Es zeigt sich, dass beide Ansätze teils kontroverse Annahmen treffen, zu denen es plausible Alternativen gibt. Zum Beispiel kann das Verhalten von Koalitionsparteien im Policy-Prozess anders als von der Vetospielertheorie angenommen modelliert werden. Die kausalen Effekte bestimmter Institutionen oder Vetopunkte können zudem je nach Kontext variieren. Diesem Kontext sollte größere Beachtung geschenkt werden.
Quality management (QM) in teaching and learning has strongly “infected” the higher education sector and spread around the world. It has almost everywhere become an integral part of higher education reforms. While existing research on QM mainly focuses on the national level from a macro-perspective, its introduction at the institutional level is only rarely analyzed. The present article addresses this research gap. Coming from the perspective of organization studies, it examines the factors that were crucial for the introduction of QM at higher education institutions in Germany. As the introduction of QM can be considered to be a process of organizational change, the article refers to Kurt Lewin’s seminal concept of “unfreezing” organizations as a theoretical starting point. Methodologically, a mixed methods approach is applied by combining qualitative data derived from interviews with institutional quality managers and quantitative data gathered from a nationwide survey. The results show that the introduction of QM is initiated by either internal or external processes. Furthermore, some institutions follow a rather voluntary approach of unfreezing, while others show modes of forced unfreezing. Consequently, the way how QM was introduced has important implications for its implementation.
In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir den Zusammenhang zwischen staatlicher Regulierung im Umweltschutz und der Umweltperformanz. Ausgehend von drei theoretischen Perspektiven, welche die Beziehung von Staat und Markt beim Umweltschutz unterschiedlich konzeptualisieren, identifizieren wir fünf Pfade, wie staatlicher Eingriff und Umweltperformanz miteinander verknüpft sein könnten. Wir untersuchen dann die empirische Relevanz dieser Pfade mit einer quantitativen Analyse, die 29 umweltpolitische Maßnahmen in für 37 Länder und den Zeitraum von 1970 bis 2010 umfasst. Dabei finden wir zumindest für einige Politikbereiche und einige Länder Hinweise, die auf eine Effektivität nationalstaatlicher Regulierung hinweisen. Zukünftige Forschung kann auf unserem Rahmen aufbauen, um weitere Hypothesen zum Policy-Outcome-Nexus zu generieren und zu testen.
Typen von Forschungsdesigns
(2022)
Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsdesigns umfassen alle wesentlichen Entscheidungen, die im Forschungsprozess getroffen werden müssen. Der Beitrag unterscheidet drei rundlegende Typen von Forschungsdesigns: x-zentriert, y-zentriert und kontrastiv. Das x-zentrierte Design versucht einen theoretisch spezifizierten kausalen Effekt zu identifizieren und dessen Größe möglichst genau und ohne Verzerrungen zu schätzen. Das y-zentrierte Design versucht mehrere komplementäre Theorien über kausale Effekte so zu kombinieren, dass bestimmte Phänomene möglichst gut erklärt werden. Das kontrastive Design vergleicht die Erklärungskraft von zwei oder mehr konkurrierenden Theorien. Die Unterscheidung der drei Typen ist für qualitative Fallstudien ebenso relevant wie für Experimente oder statistische Studien mit Beobachtungsdaten. Der Beitrag grenzt die drei Typen voneinander ab, erklärt ihre jeweiligen Annahmen und diskutiert ihre Vor- und Nachteile sowie die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen ihrer Kombination. Daneben diskutiert er den Unterschied zwischen Modellen und Theorien sowie die Bedeutung des Sparsamkeitsprinzips bei der Entwicklung und Bewertung wissenschaftlicher Theorien und Erklärungen.
Translating innovation
(2017)
This doctoral thesis studies the process of innovation adoption in public administrations, addressing the research question of how an innovation is translated to a local context. The study empirically explores Design Thinking as a new problem-solving approach introduced by a federal government organisation in Singapore. With a focus on user-centeredness, collaboration and iteration Design Thinking seems to offer a new way to engage recipients and other stakeholders of public services as well as to re-think the policy design process from a user’s point of view. Pioneered in the private sector, early adopters of the methodology include civil services in Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States as well as Singapore. Hitherto, there is not much evidence on how and for which purposes Design Thinking is used in the public sector.
For the purpose of this study, innovation adoption is framed in an institutionalist perspective addressing how concepts are translated to local contexts. The study rejects simplistic views of the innovation adoption process, in which an idea diffuses to another setting without adaptation. The translation perspective is fruitful because it captures the multidimensionality and ‘messiness’ of innovation adoption. More specifically, the overall research question addressed in this study is: How has Design Thinking been translated to the local context of the public sector organisation under investigation? And from a theoretical point of view: What can we learn from translation theory about innovation adoption processes?
Moreover, there are only few empirical studies of organisations adopting Design Thinking and most of them focus on private organisations. We know very little about how Design Thinking is embedded in public sector organisations. This study therefore provides further empirical evidence of how Design Thinking is used in a public sector organisation, especially with regards to its application to policy work which has so far been under-researched.
An exploratory single case study approach was chosen to provide an in-depth analysis of the innovation adoption process. Based on a purposive, theory-driven sampling approach, a Singaporean Ministry was selected because it represented an organisational setting in which Design Thinking had been embedded for several years, making it a relevant case with regard to the research question. Following a qualitative research design, 28 semi-structured interviews (45-100 minutes) with employees and managers were conducted. The interview data was triangulated with observations and documents, collected during a field research research stay in Singapore.
The empirical study of innovation adoption in a single organisation focused on the intra-organisational perspective, with the aim to capture the variations of translation that occur during the adoption process. In so doing, this study opened the black box often assumed in implementation studies. Second, this research advances translation studies not only by showing variance, but also by deriving explanatory factors. The main differences in the translation of Design Thinking occurred between service delivery and policy divisions, as well as between the first adopter and the rest of the organisation. For the intra-organisational translation of Design Thinking in the Singaporean Ministry the following five factors played a role: task type, mode of adoption, type of expertise, sequence of adoption, and the adoption of similar practices.
Wie ästhetische Bildung, vom Theater ausgehend, zusammen mit politischer Bildung realisiert werden kann, wird in diesem Beitrag vorgestellt. Politiklehrer_innen bekommen einen Einblick in die didaktische Bedeutung und den Gewinn für Schüler_innen durch den außerschulischen Lernort des Theaters. Am Beispiel des antiken Schauspiels wird die Bedeutung des Theaters für politische, genauer demokratische Bildung aufgezeigt, indem dargelegt wird, wie sie die Handlungskompetenz, den Perspektivwechsel sowie die Urteilsfähigkeit einzelner positiv beeinflusst. Da diese Kompetenzen heute länderübergreifend in den Curricula festgeschrieben sind, bietet es sich an, das Theater in den Unterricht miteinzubinden. Im letzten Absatz dieses Beitrags liefert der Autor ein Beispiel für den Unterricht anhand des Schauspiels „Der Volksfeind“ von Henrik Ibsen, mithilfe dessen Politiklehrer_innen das Theater in ihren Unterricht integrieren können.
The Government will create a motivated, merit-based, performance-driven, and professional civil service that is resistant to temptations of corruption and which provides efficient, effective and transparent public services that do not force customers to pay bribes.
— (GoIRA, 2006, p. 106)
We were in a black hole! We had an empty glass and had nothing from our side to fill it with! Thus, we accepted anything anybody offered; that is how our glass was filled; that is how we reformed our civil service.
— (Former Advisor to IARCSC, personal communication, August 2015)
How and under what conditions were the post-Taleban Civil Service Reforms of Afghanistan initiated? What were the main components of the reforms? What were their objectives and to which extent were they achieved? Who were the leading domestic and foreign actors involved in the process? Finally, what specific factors influenced the success and failure Afghanistan’s Civil Service Reforms since 2002? Guided by such fundamental questions, this research studies the wicked process of reforming the Afghan civil service in an environment where a variety of contextual, programmatic, and external factors affected the design and implementation of reforms that were entirely funded and technically assisted by the international community.
Focusing on the core components of reforms—recruitment, remuneration, and appraisal of civil servants—the qualitative study provides a detailed picture of the pre-reform civil service and its major human resources developments in the past. Following discussions on the content and purposes of the main reform programs, it will then analyze the extent of changes in policies and practices by examining the outputs and effects of these reforms.
Moreover, the study defines the specific factors that led the reforms toward a situation where most of the intended objectives remain unachieved. Doing so, it explores and explains how an overwhelming influence of international actors with conflicting interests, large-scale corruption, political interference, networks of patronage, institutionalized nepotism, culturally accepted cronyism and widespread ethnic favoritism created a very complex environment and prevented the reforms from transforming Afghanistan’s patrimonial civil service into a professional civil service, which is driven by performance and merit.
The limitations and possibilities of the state in solving societal problems are perennial issues in the political and policy sciences and increasingly so in studies of environmental politics. With the aim of better understanding the role of the state in addressing environmental degradation through policy making, this article investigates the nexus between the environmental policy outputs and the environmental performance. Drawing on three theoretical perspectives on the state and market nexus in the environmental dilemma, we identify five distinct pathways. We then examine the extent to which these pathways are manifested in the real world. Our empirical investigation covers up to 37 countries for the period 1970–2010. While we see no global pattern of linkages between policy outputs and performance, our exploratory analysis finds evidence of policy effects, which suggest that the state can, under certain circumstances, improve the environment through policy making.
This article explores the various futures of relations between the European Union (EU) and Ukraine. After distilling two major drivers we construct a future compass in order to conceive of four futures of relations between the EU and Ukraine. Our scenarios aim to challenge deep-rooted assumptions on the EU’s neighbourhood with Ukraine: How will the politico-economic challenges in the European countries influence the EU’s approach towards the East? Will more EU engagement in Ukraine contribute to enduring peace? Does peace always come with stability? Which prospects does the idea of Intermarium have? Are the pivotal transformation players in Ukraine indeed oligarchs or rather small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs? After presenting our scenarios, we propose indicators to know in the years to come, along which path future relations do develop. By unearthing surprising developments we hope to provoke innovative thoughts on Eastern Europe in times of post truth societies, confrontation between states and hybrid warfare.
In spring 2015, Turkey witnessed the unexpected rise of the HDP, founded by the Kurdish Liberation Movement together with the Turkish radical left, against President Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. In this article, I will employ contemporary literature on left populism to explain the HDP’s rise as an alternative left hegemonic project against the neoliberal authoritarianism that Erdoğan represents. After discussing the historical context from which the HDP emerged and grew, I will evaluate its discourse and strategies based on a conceptualization of left-wing populism. Lastly, I will discuss the challenges that the HDP confronted after the June 2015 elections and the differences between the Turkish and Western European contexts for a left-wing populist strategy.
The reorganization of governments is crucial for parties to express their policy preferences once they reach office. Yet these activities are not confined to the direct aftermath of general elections or to wide-ranging structural reforms. Instead, governments reorganize and adjust their machinery of government all the time. This paper aims to assess these structural choices with a particular focus at the core of the state, comparing four Western European democracies (Germany, France, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom) from 1980 to 2013. Our empirical analysis shows that stronger shifts in cabinets' ideological profiles in the short- and long-term as well as the units' proximity to political executives yield significant effects. In contrast, Conservative governments, commonly regarded as key promoters of reorganizing governments, are not significant for the likelihood of structural change. We discuss the effects of this politics of government reorganization for different research debates assessing the inner workings of governments.
The planetary commons
(2024)
The Anthropocene signifies the start of a no- analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new trajectory is characterized by rising risks of triggering irreversible and unmanageable shifts in Earth system functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulating functions more effectively and comprehensively. The global commons framework is the closest example of an existing approach with the aim of governing biophysical systems on Earth upon which the world collectively depends. Derived during stable Holocene conditions, the global commons framework must now evolve in the light of new Anthropocene dynamics. This requires a fundamental shift from a focus only on governing shared resources beyond national jurisdiction, to one that secures critical functions of the Earth system irrespective of national boundaries. We propose a new framework—the planetary commons—which differs from the global commons framework by including not only globally shared geographic regions but also critical biophysical systems that regulate the resilience and state, and therefore livability, on Earth. The new planetary commons should articulate and create comprehensive stewardship obligations through Earth system governance aimed at restoring and strengthening planetary resilience and justice.
In countries with long-standing agency traditions, the creation of new agencies rarely comes as a large-scale reform but rather as one structural choice of many possible, most notably a ministerial division. In order to make sense of these choices, the article discusses the role of political design-focusing on the role of political motivations, such as ideological turnover, replacement risks and ideological stands toward administrative efficiency-and organizational dynamics-focusing on the role of administrative legacies and existing organizational palettes. The article utilizes data on organizational creations in the Norwegian central state between 1947 and 2019, in order to explore how political design and organizational dynamics help us understand the creation of agencies relative to ministry divisions over time. We find that political motives matter a great deal for the structural choices made by consecutive Norwegian governments, but that structural path dependencies may also be at play.
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 PhD thesis is essentially a collection of six sequential articles on dynamics of accountability in the reformed employment and welfare administration in different countries. The first article examines how recent changes in the governance of employment services in three European countries (Denmark, Germany and Norway) have influenced accountability relationships from a very wide-ranging perspective. It starts from the overall assumption in the literature that accountability relationships are becoming more numerous and complex, and that these changes may lead to multiple accountability disorder. The article explores these assumptions by analyzing the different actors involved and the information requested in the new governance arrangements in all three countries. It concludes that the considerable changes in organizational arrangements and more managerial information demanded and provided have led to more shared forms of accountability. Nevertheless, a clear development towards less political or administrative accountability could not be observed.
The second article analyzes how the structure and development of reform processes affect accountability relationships and via what mechanisms. It is distinguished between an instrumental perspective and an institutional perspective and each of these perspectives takes a different view on the link between reforms and concrete action and results. By taking the welfare reforms in Norway and Germany as an example, it is shown that the reform outcomes in both countries are the result of a complex process of powering, puzzling and institutional constraints where different situational interpretations of problems, interests and administrative legacies had to be balanced. Accountability thus results not from a single process of environmental necessity or strategic choice, but from a dynamic interplay between different actors and institutional spheres.
The third article then covers a specific instrument of public sector reforms, i.e. the increasing use of performance management. The article discusses the challenges and ambiguities between performance management and different forms of accountability based on the cases of the reformed welfare administration in Norway and Germany. The findings are that the introduction of performance management creates new accountability structures which influence service delivery, but not necessarily in the direction expected by reform agents. Observed unintended consequences include target fixation, the displacement of political accountability and the predominance of control aspects of accountability.
The fourth article analyzes the accountability implications of the increasingly marketized models of welfare governance. It has often been argued that relocating powers and discretion to private contractors involve a trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency. However, there is limited empirical evidence of how contracting out shapes accountability or is shaped by alternative democratic or administrative forms of accountability. Along these lines the article examines employment service accountability in the era of contracting out in Germany, Denmark and Great Britain. It is found that market accountability instruments are complementary instruments, not substitutes. The findings highlight the importance of administrative and political instruments in legitimizing marketized service provision and shed light on the processes that lead to the development of a hybrid accountability model.
The fifth and sixth articles focus on the diagonal accountability relationships between public agencies, supreme audit institutions (SAI) and parental ministry or parliament.
The fifth article examines the evolving role of SAIs in Denmark, Germany and Norway focusing particularly on their contribution to public accountability and their ambivalent relationship with some aspects of public sector reform in the welfare sector. The article analyzes how SAIs assess New Public Management inspired reforms in the welfare sector in the three countries. The analysis shows that all three SAIs have taken on an evaluative role when judging New Public Management instruments. At the same time their emphasis on legality and compliance can be at odds with some of the operating principles introduced by New Public Management reforms.
The sixth article focuses on the auditing activities of the German SAI in the field of labor market administration as a single in-depth case study. The purpose is to analyze how SAIs gain impact in diagonal accountability settings. The results show that the direct relationship between auditor and auditee based on cooperation and trust is of outstanding importance for SAIs to give effect to their recommendations. However, if an SAI has to rely on actors of diagonal accountability, it is in a vulnerable position as it might lose control over the interpretation of its results.
The development of the Polish telecommunications administration in the years 1989/90 to 2003 is marked by the processes of liberalisation and privatisation the telecommunications sector underwent during that period. The gradual liberalisation of the Polish telecommunications sector started as early as 1992. In the beginning, national strategies were pursued. The most important of these was the creation of a bipolar market structure in the local area networks. In the second half of the 1990ies the approaching EU membership accelerated the process of liberalisation and consequently the development of a framework of regulations. EU standards are more directed towards setting out a legal framework for regulation than prescribing concrete details of administrative organisation. Nevertheless, the independent regulatory agencies typical for Western Europe served as a model for the introduction of a new regulatory body responsible for the telecommunications sector in Poland. The growing influence of EU legislation changed telecommunications policy as well as administrative practices. There has been a shift of responsibilities from the ministry to the regulatory agency, but the question remains, if the agency gained enough power to fulfil its regulatory function. In the following the legislative framework created by the EU in telecommunications policy will be described and the model of independent regulatory agencies, as it is typical for most EU countries, will be introduced. Some categories for the analysis of the Polish regulatory system will be deduced from the discussion on the regulations of telecommunication in the established EU-Nations (see Böllhoff 2002 and 2003, Thatcher 2002a and 2002b, Thatcher/Stone Sweet 2002). Subsequently the basic features of Polish telecommunication policies in the 1990ies and its effects on the telecommunications sector will be outlined. In the third chapter the development of organisational structures on the ministerial level and within the regulatory agency will be examined. In the forth chapter I will look at the distribution of power and the coordination of the various authorities responsible for telecommunication regulations. The focus of this chapter is on the Polish regulatory agency and its relationships with the ministry, with the anti-monopoly office and with the Broadcasting and Television Council. In a conclusion, the main findings will be summed up.
The corrosion of character
(2017)
The topic of this imaginary dialogue between Georg Simmel and Max Weber is the relation between work – in the sense of labour – and personality. Its aim is to show that the thinking of these ‘founding fathers’ of sociology can furnish valuable insight into the current issue of the corrosion of character in contemporary post-Fordist society. The concept of work still represents one of the major factors determining modern individuals’ ability (or inability) to formulate personal, stable identities that enable them to become fully socialized. Both Simmel and Weber make reference to a common theoretical background that views the human being as a creature with originally rational potential, who is faced with the task of becoming a personality by means of consciously chosen life behaviour: This is evident in the parallelism between Simmel’s interest in the concept of ‘style of life’ (Der Stil des Lebens) and Weber’s research on the ‘life conduct’ (Lebensführung) that arose in Western rationalistic culture.
Anthropocene has become an environmental buzzword. It denotes a new geological epoch that is human?dominated. As mounting scientific evidence reveals, humankind has fundamentally altered atmospheric, geological, hydrological, biospheric, and other Earth system processes to an extent that the risk of an irreversible system change emerges. Human societies must therefore change direction and navigate away from critical tipping points in the various ecosystems of our planet. This hypothesis has kicked off a debate not only on the geoscientific definition of the Anthropocene era, but increasingly also in the social sciences. However, the specific contribution of the social sciences disciplines and in particular that of political science still needs to be fully established.
This edited volume analyzes, from a political science perspective, the wider social dynamics underlying the ecological and geological changes, as well as their implications for governance and politics in the Anthropocene. The focus is on two questions: (1) What is the contribution of political science to the Anthropocene debate, e.g. in terms of identified problems, answers, and solutions? (2) What are the conceptual and practical implications of the Anthropocene debate for the discipline of political science?
Overall, this book contributes to the Anthropocene debate by providing novel theoretical and conceptual accounts of the Anthropocene, engaging with contemporary politics and policy-making in the Anthropocene, and offering a critical reflection on the Anthropocene debate as such. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, global environmental politics and governance, and sustainable development.
Civil society is either considered as a motor of democratization or stabilizer of authoritarian rule. This dichotomy is partly due to the dominance of domains-based definitions of the concept that reduce civil society to a small range of formally organized, independent and democratically oriented NGOs. Additionally, research often treats civil society as a ‘black box’ without differentiating between potential variations in impact of different types of civil society actors on existing regime structures. In this thesis, I present an alternative conceptualization of civil society based on the interactions of societal actors to arrive at a more inclusive understanding of the term which is more suited for analysis in non-democratic settings. The operationalization of the action-based approach I develop allows for an empirical assessment of a large range of societal activities that can accordingly be categorized from little to very civil society-like depending on their specific modes of interactions within four dimensions. I employ this operationalization in a qualitative case study including different actors in the authoritarian monarchy of Jordan which suggests that Jordanian societal actors mostly exhibit tolerant and democratically oriented modes of interaction and do not reproduce authoritarian patterns. However, even democratically oriented actors do not necessarily take on an oppositional positions vis-à-vis the authoritarian regime. Thus, the Jordanian civil society might not feature a high potential to challenge existing power structures in the country.
Diese im Sommersemester 2006 eingereichte Diplomarbeit im Studiengang Verwaltungswissenschaft setzt sich mit der Frage auseinander, welche Rolle die Sozialpolitik im europäischen Integrationsprozess zwischen 1955 und 1992 spielte. Es wird analysiert, welche einzelnen Bereiche dieses Politikfeldes in welchem Umfang in den Kompetenzbereich der Europäischen Gemeinschaft übergingen und welche Gründe für diese Entwicklung zu nennen sind. Ein besonderes Augenmerk wird dabei auf das Verhältnis der Sozialpolitik zur Wirtschaftspolitik gelegt. Die Europäische Kommission, einzelne Nationalstaaten sowie die organisierten Arbeitgeber- und Arbeitnehmerinteressen stehen dabei im Mittelpunkt des Interesses. Die Arbeit ist chronologisch aufgebaut und in drei Phasen eingeteilt. Phase eins umfasst den Gründungsprozess der Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft bis zum Ende der 1960er Jahre. Phase zwei beinhaltet den Europäischen Sozialgipfel 1972 und endet mit der Einheitlichen Europäischen Akte. Phase drei schließlich untersucht die Diskussion um das Binnenmarktprojekt und den Vertrag von Maastricht aus einer sozialpolitischen Perspektive.
SNS Democracy Council 2023
(2023)
Transboundary problems such as climate change, military conflicts, trade barriers, and refugee flows require increased collaboration across borders. This is to a large extent possible using existing international organizations. In such a case, however, they need to be considerably strengthened – while current trends take us in the opposite direction, according to the researchers in the SNS Democracy Council 2023.
This study is analysing the transformation of Slovak administration in the telecommunication sector between 1989 and 2004. The dynamic telecom sector forms a good example for the transition problems of post-socialist administration with special regard to the regulation regime change. After describing briefly the role of the telecom sector within economy, the Slovak sectoral policy is analysed. The focus is layed on telecom legislation (including the regulation framework), liberalization of the telecom market and privatisation of the former state owned telecom operator. The transformation of the organizational structure of the "Slovak telecommunication administration" is analysed in particular at the level of the ministry and the regulating agency.
Nathalie Hirschmann geht der Frage nach, auf welche Weise sich die Sicherheitswirtschaft im System der Sicherheit zu etablieren sucht und wie erfolgreich ihr dies gelingt. Ihre Analyse verdeutlicht, wie Schmuddelimage und begrenzte Kompetenzzuschreibung der Branche einerseits erschweren, neben der Polizei als institutionelle Trägerin der öffentlichen Sicherheit zu bestehen, und andererseits, gegenüber dem Kunden bzw. Auftraggeber in ein professionelleres Gefüge zu treten. Einen inhaltsanalytisch theoriegeleiteten, soziologisch-konzeptionellen Blick einnehmend wird deutlich, welche Ausbaubestrebungen kognitiver und sozialer Art die Sicherheitswirtschaft vorgenommen hat und wo diese an ihre Grenzen stoßen.
The article responds to four commentaries on the concept of semi-parliamentary government and its application to Australian bicameralism. It highlights four main points: (1) Our preferred typology is not more ‘normative’ than existing approaches, but applies the criterion of ‘direct election’ equally to executive and legislature; (2) While the evolution of semi-parliamentary government had contingent elements, it plausibly also reflects the ‘equilibrium’ nature of certain institutional configurations; (3) The idea that a pure parliamentary system with pure proportional representation has absolute normative priority over ‘instrumentalist’ concerns about cabinet stability, identifiability and responsibility is questionable; and (4) The reforms we discuss may be unlikely to occur in Australia, but deserve consideration by scholars and institutional reformers in other democratic systems.
In my dissertation on 'Security Cooperation as a Way to Stop the Spread of Nu-clear Weapons? Nuclear Nonproliferation Policies of the United States towards the Federal Republic of Germany and Israel, 1945-1968', I study the use of security assistance as nonproliferation policy. I use insights of the Structural Realist and the Rational Institutionalist theories of International Relations to explain, respectively, important foreign policy goals and the basic orientation of policies, on the one hand, and the practical workings and effects of security cooperation on states’ behavior, on the other hand. Moreover, I consider the relations of the United States (US) with the two states in light of bargaining theory to explain the level of US ability to press other states to its preferred courses of action. The study is thus a combination of theory proposing and testing and historic description and explanation. It is also policy-relevant as I seek general lessons regarding the use of security cooperation as nonproliferation policy. I show that the US sought to keep the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from acquiring nuclear weapons in order to avoid crises with Moscow and threats to the cohesion of NATO. But the US also saw it as necessary to credibly guarantee the security of the FRG and treat it well in order to ensure that it would remain satisfied as an ally and without own nuclear weapons. Through various institutionalized security cooperation schemes, the US succeeded in this – though the FRG did acquire an option to produce nuclear weapons. The US opposed Israel’s nuclear weapon ambitions in turn because of an expectation that Arab states’ reactions could otherwise result in greater tension and risks of escalation and a worse balance-of-power in the area. But as also a US-Israel alliance could have led to stronger Arab-Soviet ties and thus a worse balance-of-power, and as it was not in US in-terest to be tied to Israel’s side in all regional issues, the US was not prepared to guarantee Israel’s security in a formal, credible way like it did in West Germany’s case. The US failed to persuade Israel to forgo producing nuclear weapons but gradually, an opaque nu-clear status combined with US arms sales that helped Israel to maintain a conventional military advantage over Arabs emerged as a solution to Israel’s security strategy. Because of perceptions that Israel and the FRG had also other options than cooperation with the US, and because the US ability to punish them for unwanted action was limited, these states were able to offer resistance when the US pressed its nonproliferation stance on them.
Review symposium
(2023)
Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: Democratic Design and the Separation of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2021) posits that “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” (Ganghof, 2021). To consider, examine and theorise about this, Ganghof urges engagement with semi-parliamentarism. As explained by Ganghof, legislative power is shared between two democratically legitimate sections of parliament in a semi-parliamentary system, but only one of those sections selects the government and can remove it in a no-confidence vote. Consequently, power is dispersed and not concentrated in the hands of any one person, which, Ganghof argues, can lead to an enhanced form of parliamentary democracy. In this book review symposium, George Tsebelis, Michael Thies, José Antonio Cheibub, Rosalind Dixon and Daniel Bogéa review Steffen Ganghof’s book and engage with the author about aspects of research design, case selection and theoretical argument. This symposium arose from an engaging and constructive discussion of the book at a seminar hosted by Texas A&M University in 2022. We thank Prof José Cheibub (Texas A&M) for organising that seminar and Dr Anna Fruhstorfer (University of Potsdam) for initiating this book review symposium.
Res Publica
(2011)
Die Frage nach der politischen Ordnung steht im Mittelpunkt des Lehrtextes zur Einführung in die Wissenschaft von der Res Publica. Dieses als Skript konzipierte Lehrbuch dient als Grundlage der Einführungsvorlesung an der Universität Potsdam. Mit einem nüchternen Blick in die Geschichte, von der Antike über die frühe Neuzeit bis in die Gegenwart – und dies global – wird das Politische aus verschiedenen Perspektiven diskutiert. Es ist vor allem ein Text für jene, die sich mit dem Politischen zu beschäftigen beginnen, jedoch auch für jene lohnenswert, die sich erneut der Grundlagen versichern möchten.