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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.
Little is known about how far-reaching decisions in UN Security Council sanctions committees are made. Developing a novel committee governance concept and using examples drawn from sanctions imposed on Iraq, Al-Qaida, Congo, Sudan and Iran, this book shows that Council members tend to follow the will of the powerful, whereas sanctions committee members often decide according to the rules. This is surprising since both Council and committees are staffed by the same member states.
Offering a fascinating account of Security Council micro-politics and decision-making processes on sanctions, this rigorous comparative and theory-driven analysis treats the Council and its sanctions committees as distinguishable entities that may differ in decision practice despite having the same members. Drawing extensively on primary documents, diplomatic cables, well-informed press coverage, reports by close observers and extensive interviews with committee members, Council diplomats and sanctions experts, it contrasts with the conventional wisdom on decision-making within these bodies, which suggests that the powerful permanent members would not accept rule-based decisions against their interests.
This book will be of interest to policy practitioners and scholars working in the broad field of international organizations and international relations theory as well as those specializing in sanctions, international law, the Security Council and counter-terrorism.
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.
What shapes peace, and how can peace be successfully built in those countries affected by armed conflict? This paper examines mpeacebuilding in the aftermath of civil wars in order to identify the conditions for post-conflict peace. The field of civil war research is
characterised by case studies, comparative analyses and quantitative research, which relate relatively little to each other. Furthermore, the complex dynamics of peacebuilding have hardly been investigated so far. Thus, the question remains of how best to enhance the prospects
of a stable peace in post-conflict societies. Therefore, it is necessary to capture the dynamics of post-conflict peace. This paper aims at helping to narrow these research gaps by 1) presenting the benefits of set theoretic methods for peace and conflict studies; 2) identifying remote conflict environment factors and proximate peacebuilding factors which have an influence on the peacebuilding process and 3) proposing a
set-theoretic multi-method research approach in order to identify the causal structures and mechanisms underlying the complex realm of post-conflict peacebuilding. By implementing this transparent and systematic comparative approach, it will become possible to discover
the dynamics of post-conflict peace.
Public opinion polls have become vital and increasingly visible parts of election campaigns. Previous research has frequently demonstrated that polls can influence both citizens' voting intentions and political parties' campaign strategies. However, they are also fraught with uncertainty. Margins of error can reflect (parts of) this uncertainty. This paper investigates how citizens' voting intentions change due to whether polling estimates are presented with or without margins of error.
Using a vignette experiment (N=3224), we examine this question based on a real-world example in which different election polls were shown to nationally representative respondents ahead of the 2021 federal election in Germany. We manipulated the display of the margins of error, the interpretation of polls and the closeness of the electoral race.
The results indicate that margins of error can influence citizens' voting intentions. This effect is dependent on the actual closeness of the race and additional interpretative guidance provided to voters. More concretely, the results consistently show that margins of error increase citizens' inclination to vote for one of the two largest contesting parties if the polling gap between these parties is small, and an interpretation underlines this closeness.
The findings of this study are important for three reasons. First, they help to determine whether margins of error can assist citizens in making more informed (strategic) vote decisions. They shed light on whether depicting opinion-poll uncertainty affects the key features of representative democracy, such as democratic accountability. Second, the results stress the responsibility of the media. The way polls are interpreted and contextualized influences the effect of margins of error on voting behaviour. Third, the findings of this paper underscore the significance of including methodological details when communicating scientific research findings to the broader public.
Signals for 2 degrees C
(2019)
The targets of the Paris Agreement make it necessary to redirect finance flows towards sustainable, low-carbon infrastructures and technologies. Currently, the potential of institutional investors to help finance this transition is widely discussed. Thus, this paper takes a closer look at influence factors for green investment decisions of large European insurance companies. With a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the importance of policy, market and civil society signals is evaluated. In summary, respondents favor measures that promote green investment, such as feed-in tariffs or adjustments of capital charges for green assets, over ones that make carbon-intensive investments less attractive, such as the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies or a carbon price. While investors currently see a low impact of the carbon price, they rank a substantial reform as an important signal for the future. Respondents also emphasize that policy signals have to be coherent and credible to coordinate expectations.
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.
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.
The chapter presents an overview about the evolution of the teaching dimension in the academic debate within the EGPA community. Major topics of EGPA’s permanent study group on “PA and teaching” over the last decade are displayed. From a more general perspective, the authors discuss the various types and target groups of academic programs in Public Administration and their change over time. They also shed some light on the change of contents and pedagogical approaches in the last decades. Furthermore, different patterns and degrees of institutionalization of Public Administration as academic discipline across Europe are illustrated. In a short résumé the authors reflect about future educational developments in our field and about the role of EGPA
Speaking the unspeakable
(2019)
This article discusses the filmic representation of the infamous Wannsee Conference, when fifteen senior German officials met at a villa on the shore of a Berlin lake to discuss and co-ordinate the implementation of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question. The understanding reached during the course of the ninety-minute meeting cleared the way for the Europe-wide killing of six million Jews. The article sets out to answer the principal challenge facing anyone attempting to recreate the Wannsee Conference on film: what was the atmosphere of this conference and the attitude of the participants? Moreover, it discusses various ethical aspects related to the portrayal of evil, not in actions but in words, using the medium of film. In doing so, it focuses on the BBC/HBO television film Conspiracy (2001), directed by Frank Pierson, probing its historical accuracy and discussing its artistic credibility.
Speaking the Unspeakable
(2019)
This article discusses the filmic representation of the infamous Wannsee Conference, when fifteen senior German officials met at a villa on the shore of a Berlin lake to discuss and co-ordinate the
implementation of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question. The understanding reached during the course of the ninety-minute meeting cleared the way for the Europe-wide killing of six million Jews. The article sets out to answer the principal challenge facing
anyone attempting to recreate the Wannsee Conference on film: what was the atmosphere of this conference and the attitude of the participants? Moreover, it discusses various ethical aspects related to the portrayal of evil, not in actions but in words, using the medium of film. In doing so, it focuses on the BBC/HBO television film Conspiracy (2001), directed by Frank Pierson, probing its historical accuracy and discussing its artistic credibility.
A growing number of expert organizations aim to provide knowledge for global environmental policy-making. Recently, there have also been explicit calls for stakeholder engagement at the global level to make scientific knowledge relevant and usable on the ground. The newly established Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is one of the first international expert organizations to have systematically developed a strategy for stakeholder engagement in its own right. In this article, we analyze the emergence of this strategy. Employing the concept politics of legitimation, we examine how and for what reasons stakeholder engagement was introduced, justified, and finally endorsed, as well as its effects. The article explores the process of institutionalizing stakeholder engagement, as well as reconstructing the contestation of the operative norms (membership, tasks, and accountability) regulating the rules for this engagement. We conclude by discussing the broader importance of the findings for IPBES, as well as for international expert organizations in general.
Narratives are shaping our understanding of the world. They convey values and norms and point to desirable future developments. In this way, they justify and legitimize political actions and social practices. Once a narrative has emerged and this world view is supported by broad societal groups, narratives can provide powerful momentum to trigger innovation and changes in the course of action. Narratives, however, are not necessarily based on evidence and precise categories, but can instead be vague and ambiguous in order to be acceptable and attractive to different actors. However, the more open and inclusive a narrative is, the less impact can be expected. We investigate whether there is a shared narrative in research for the sustainable economy and how this can be evaluated in terms of its potential societal impact. The paper carves out the visions for the future that have been underlying the research projects conducted within the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funding programme "The Sustainable Economy". It then analyzes whether these visions are compatible with narratives dominating societal discourse on the sustainable economy, and concludes how the use of visions and narratives in research can contribute to fostering societal transformations.
Narratives are shaping our understanding of the world. They convey values and norms and point to desirable future developments. In this way, they justify and legitimize political actions and social practices. Once a narrative has emerged and this world view is supported by broad societal groups, narratives can provide powerful momentum to trigger innovation and changes in the course of action. Narratives, however, are not necessarily based on evidence and precise categories, but can instead be vague and ambiguous in order to be acceptable and attractive to different actors. However, the more open and inclusive a narrative is, the less impact can be expected. We investigate whether there is a shared narrative in research for the sustainable economy and how this can be evaluated in terms of its potential societal impact. The paper carves out the visions for the future that have been underlying the research projects conducted within the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funding programme "The Sustainable Economy". It then analyzes whether these visions are compatible with narratives dominating societal discourse on the sustainable economy, and concludes how the use of visions and narratives in research can contribute to fostering societal transformations.
Strange New Worlds
(2022)
The Indo-Pacific is fast becoming the main arena for great power competition. After explaining the regional power hierarchy, the paper describes how the EU defines like-mindedness as an explicit partnership category in the Indo-Pacific and which of the countries qualify. Finally, the paper also examines the structural problems the EU faces when projecting power into a faraway region such as this one. The paper argues that for China’s rise to remain peaceful and in the absence of fully regional security arrangements, other Asian actors are increasingly looking for new regional structures that combine elements of cooperation, competition and containment vis-à-vis China - including a more pronounced EU role in the region.
This article discusses the challenges for providers of local public services to adapt to increasing marketization and competition in the public sector. Based on some empirical evidence from local government in Germany, the article describes different adaptive measures in the past and shows the legal restrictions to strengthening performance and particularly competitiveness. Furthermore, the article presents some findings from good practice cases of local service providers in Germany who have successfully exposed themselves to market mechanisms. Finally, the article discusses observed results of increased competitiveness in the local government sector, with special regard to quality, efficiency and public employment. The article concludes with describing necessary elements of a competitive regime for public services and with some general reflections about the role of competition in the public sector.
Conservation nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are often involved in the design and implementation of global forest management initiatives such as the REDD+, which currently is being rolled out by the UNFCCC, the UN-REDD Programme and the World Bank as part of efforts to mitigate climate change. Nigeria joined the UN-REDD in 2010 and submitted its REDD+ readiness proposal in 2011. The proposal has a national component and subnational forestry activities in the Cross River State (CRS) as the pilot site. This chapter examines the involvement of local NGOs in the CRS consultative participatory meetings to validate the Nigeria-REDD proposal. It shows that political representation of local communities in the validation exercise was through customary authorities and NGOs who claim to speak for and are recognised as advocates for the communities. Local government authorities, the substantive political representatives of local communities were left out of the process. The chapter also shows how the CRS Forestry Commission, which organised the validation exercise, used NGOs as pawns to legitimise it, and how these NGOs were powerless to challenge the Forestry Commission. In contrast, local governments, the third tier of government and political authority routinely disrespected by state-level administrators, regularly challenge such higher level government actors in the courts and the national legislature. Thus, local NGOs may speak and work for local social development but compared to the substantive political representatives at the local level (e.g., local government authorities), local NGOs have limited resources to challenge the political shenanigans of the state.
Transitional justice is conventionally theorized as how a society deals with past injustices after regime change and alongside democratization. Nonetheless, scholars have not reached a consensus on what is to be included or excluded. Recent ideas of transformative justice seek to expand the understanding of transitional justice to include systemic restructuring and socioeconomic considerations. In the context of Nicaragua — where two transitions occurred within an 11-year span — very little transitional justice took place, in terms of the conventional concept of top-down legalistic mechanisms; however, distinct structural changes and socioeconomic policies can be found with each regime change. By analyzing the transformative justice elements of Nicaragua’s dual transition, this chapter seeks to expand the understanding of transitional justice to include how these factors influence goals of transitions such as sustainable peace and reconciliation for past injustices. The results argue for increased attention to transformative justice theories and a more nuanced conception of justice.
Stuck in the past?
(2018)
After the Civil War the Spanish army functioned as a guardian of domestic order, but suffered from antiquated material and little financial means. These factors have been described as fundamental reasons for the army’s low potential wartime capability. This article draws on British and German sources to demonstrate how Spanish military culture prevented an augmented effectiveness and organisational change. Claiming that the army merely lacked funding and modern equipment, falls considerably short in grasping the complexities of military effectiveness and organisational cultures, and might prove fatal for current attempts to develop foreign armed forces in conflict or post-conflict zones.
Sub-municipal units (SMUs) in Germany differ in German Länder. In Berlin, Hamburg and München Metropole Districts fulfill a number of quasi-municipal self-government rights and functions. They have their own budget and strong councils, as well as mayors. In all other Länder, most sub-municipal councils were subordinated under the municipal council and directly elected mayor heading the administration. SMUs were introduced as a kind of compensation with different territorial reforms in the 1970s. Although directly elected, sub-municipal councilors are weak, and their advisory role competes with other newly established advisory boards. Here the focus remains on traffic and town planning. Some sub-municipal councils fulfill smaller administrative functions and become more relevant and important in recent decentralization strategies of neighborhood development.
Kuhlmann, Laffin and Wayenberg point out three main strands of subnational changes that have significantly dominated the research field and focus of Permanent Study Group 5. Elaborating upon the Study Group’s contributions, the chapter overviews relevant research questions, approaches and findings that have been touched upon concerning local and regional government systems, subnational reforms and their evaluation in a multi-level governance setting. The chapter concludes with zooming in on austerity as a main driver of future developments upon and amongst all levels of government.
In this article, I give an overview on nativist street protests in Germany from the early nineteenth century to the present from an historical perspective. In a preliminary re-mark, I will reflect on some recent developments in Germany, where nativist protest campaigns against immigration took place in the streets when voters were turning towards the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In the first section, I will outline an older tradition of anti-immigration protest in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany, which is closely connected to modern antisemitism. In sections two and three, I will retrace how, from the late 1960s onward, the far right in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) discovered concerns about immigra-tion in the German population, addressed them in protest campaigns and developed narratives to integrate such sentiments into a broader right-wing extremist ideology, itself deeply rooted in antisemitism. Studying nativism and the radical right from an actor-oriented perspective, I will focus on traditionalist movements, including the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) and neo-Nazi groups.
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.
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.
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.
This chapter takes stock with the research on the authority of international organizations (IOs) and international public administrations (IPAs) in the fields of International Relations (IR) and Public Administration (PA). It combines arguments from conceptual and theoretical debates with empirical findings to explore under which conditions IPAs are likely to enjoy authority. Based on a review of the literature and on conceptual clarifications, we define authority as a social relationship between holders and granters of authority. We distinguish two types of authority, namely, political and expert authority, and two forms of recognition, namely, in practice (de facto) and by formal delegation (de jure). Given that the de facto expert authority of IPAs has received least attention in the literature, while the PA literature reminds us that knowledge lies at the heart of bureaucratic power, we develop propositions on how de facto expert authority could be measured and how the anticipated variation of expert authority among IPAs could be explained. We illustrate our argument with reference to empirical findings in the IR and PA literature. We conclude by highlighting the implications of our discussion for future research on the authority of national and IPAs.
The impact of civilian harm on strategic outcomes in war has been the subject of persistent debate. However, the literature has primarily focused on civilian casualties, thereby overlooking the targeting of civilian infrastructure, which is a recurrent phenomenon during war. This study fills this gap by examining the targeting of healthcare, one of the most indispensable infrastructures during war and peace time. We contend that attacks on medical facilities are distinct from direct violence against civilians. Because they are typically unrelated to military dynamics, the targeting of hospitals is a highly visible form and powerful signal of civilian victimization. To assess its effects, we analyze newly collected data on such attacks by pro-government forces and event data on combat activities in Northwest Syria (2017-2020). Applying a new approach for panel data analysis that combines matching methods with a difference-in-differences estimation, we examine the causal effect of counterinsurgent bombings on subsequent violent events. Distinguishing between regime-initiated and insurgent-initiated combat activities and their associated fatalities, we find that the targeting of hospitals increases insurgent violence. We supplement the quantitative analysis with unique qualitative evidence derived from interviews, which demonstrates that hospital bombings induce rebels to resist more fiercely through two mechanisms: intrinsic motivations and civilian pressure. The results have important implications for the effects of state-led violence and the strength of legal norms that protect noncombatants.
This book compares local self-government in Europe. It examines local institutional structures, autonomy, and capacities in six selected countries - France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, and the United Kingdom - each of which represents a typical model of European local government. Within Europe, an overall trend towards more local government capacities and autonomy can be identified, but there are also some counter tendencies to this trend and major differences regarding local politico-administrative settings, functional responsibilities, and resources. The book demonstrates that a certain degree of local financial autonomy and fiscal discretion is necessary for effective service provision. Furthermore, a robust local organization, viable territorial structures, a professional public service, strong local leadership, and well-functioning tools of democratic participation are key aspects for local governments to effectively fulfill their tasks and ensure political accountability. The book will appeal to students and scholars of Public Administration and Public Management, as well as practitioners and policy-makers at different levels of government, in public enterprises, and in NGOs.
Long-term environmental policy remains a vexing puzzle of environmental policy. Following its definition, the author reviews the methods suitable for the study of long-term environmental policy and develops a typology of policy instruments to cope with these challenges. The concluding section offers five central research challenges to advance the study of long-term environmental policy.
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.
This article investigates local perceptions of international peacebuilding in Sierra Leone and Liberia and explains the need for an inclusive framework addressing peace and justice at the same time. These neighbouring countries in West Africa not only share the burden of an intertwined conflict history but have also been described as prototypes for successful peacebuilding. However, both cases show striking differences with regard to the relative importance given to security and justice during the peace process and within the selected peacebuilding approaches. In Liberia, the peacebuilding framework was clearly sequenced, favouring security over justice. In Sierra Leone, it included a comprehensive TJ component, which was implemented alongside security-centred initiatives. In order to compare these two cases and to elaborate on the challenges of establishing both peace and justice in post-conflict settings with a more people-centred focus, we conducted expert interviews with (inter)national peacebuilding actors and opinion surveys, asking how the civilian populations themselves perceive the peace process and the effectiveness of international peacebuilding. The findings provide insights into local experiences with the inclusive peacebuilding framework implemented in Sierra Leone and the drawbacks of delaying justice and accountability in Liberia.
Major international organizations (IOs) are heavily contested, but they are rarely dissolved. Scholars have focused on their longevity, making institutional arguments about replacement costs and institutional assets as well as IO agency to adapt and resist challenges. This article analyzes the limits of institutional stickiness by focusing on outlier cases. While major IOs are dissolved at considerably lower rates than minor IOs, the article nevertheless identifies twenty-one cases where major IOs have died since 1815. These are tough cases as they do not conform to our institutionalist expectations. To better understand these rare but important events, the article provides case illustrations from the League of Nations and International Refugee Organization, which were dissolved due to their perceived underperformance and a disappearing demand for cooperation. These cases show the limits of the institutional theories of IO stickiness: sometimes member states find high replacement costs justified or consider assets as sunk costs, and IOs may lack agency to strategically respond. This article refines theories of institutional stickiness and contributes to the institutional theory of the life and death of IOs.
Les principales organisations internationales (OI) sont fortement contestées, mais rarement dissoutes. Pour expliquer leur longévité, les chercheurs ont avancé des arguments institutionnels concernant les coûts de remplacement et les actifs de l'institution, mais aussi la capacité des OI à s'adapter et à résister aux défis. Cet article analyse les limites de la persistance des institutions en se concentrant sur des cas particuliers. Tandis que les principales OI sont dissoutes bien moins fréquemment que des OI moins importantes, cet article identifie néanmoins 21 cas de disparition d'OI principales depuis 1815. Ces derniers sont particulièrement difficiles, car ils ne correspondent pas à nos attentes en termes d'institutions. Afin de mieux comprendre ces événements rares, mais non moins importants, l'article propose comme illustrations de cas la Société des Nations et l'Organisation internationale pour les réfugiés, qui ont été dissoutes à cause de leur manque apparent de résultats et de la disparition de la demande de coopération. Ces cas mettent en évidence les limites des théories institutionnelles de persistance des OI : parfois, les États membres considèrent les coûts de remplacement élevés justifiés ou les actifs comme des coûts irrécupérables, et les OI n'ont peut-être pas la capacité de leur répondre de manière stratégique. Le présent article affine les théories de persistance institutionnelle et contribue à la théorie institutionnelle de vie et de mort des OI.
Las organizaciones internacionales (OI) más importantes son muy cuestionadas, pero rara vez se disuelven. Los investigadores se han centrado en la longevidad de las IO, formulando argumentos institucionales sobre los costes de sustitución y los activos institucionales, así como sobre la capacidad de adaptación y resistencia de las organizaciones internacionales. Este artículo analiza los límites de la rigidez institucional centrándose en casos atípicos. Aunque las OI más importantes se disuelven en proporciones considerablemente menores que las OI de menor importancia, el artículo identifica 21 casos en los que OI más importantes desaparecieron desde 1815. Se trata de casos difíciles, ya que no se ajustan a nuestras expectativas institucionalistas. Para comprender mejor estos raros pero importantes acontecimientos, el artículo ofrece ejemplos de casos de la Sociedad de Naciones y de la, Organización Internacional para los Refugiados que se disolvieron debido a su bajo desempeño percibido y a la desaparición de la demanda de cooperación. Estos casos muestran los límites de las teorías institucionales sobre la rigidez de las OI: En ocasiones, los Estados miembros consideran justificados los elevados costes de sustitución o consideran que los activos son costes irrecuperables, y las OI pueden no disponer de capacidad de respuesta estratégica. Este artículo profundiza en las teorías de la rigidez institucional y contribuye a la teoría institucional de la vida y la muerte de las organizaciones internacionales.
The name Mandela became first inscribed in the annals of African liberation as nothing particularly unusual at the time. The late fifties was an era of trials and detentions in the colonies. The Treason Trial, which took place from 1956 to 1961, was closely followed by those of my generation largely through Drum Magazine.
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.
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 article explores whether and to what extent expert recommendations affect decision-making within the Security Council and its North Korea and Iran sanctions regimes. The article first develops a rationalist theoretical argument to show why making many second-stage decisions, such as determining lists of items under export restrictions, subjects Security Council members to repeating coordination situations. Expert recommendations may provide focal point solutions to coordination problems, even when interests diverge and preferences remain stable. Empirically, the article first explores whether expert recommendations affected decision-making on commodity sanctions imposed on North Korea. Council members heavily relied on recommended export trigger lists as focal points, solving a divisive conflict among great powers. Second, the article explores whether expert recommendations affected the designation of sanctions violators in the Iran sanctions regime. Council members designated individuals and entities following expert recommendations as focal points, despite conflicting interests among great powers. The article concludes that expert recommendations are an additional means of influence in Security Council decision-making and seem relevant for second-stage decision-making among great powers in other international organisations.
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.
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.
The European Union’s 2030 climate and energy package introduced fundamental changes compared to its 2020 predecessor. These changes included a stronger focus on the internal market and an increased emphasis on technology-neutral decarbonization while simultaneously de-emphasizing the renewables target. This article investigates whether changes in domestic policy strategies of leading member states in European climate policy preceded the observed changes in EU policy. Disaggregating strategic change into changes in different elements (goals, objectives, instrumental logic), allows us to go beyond analyzing the relative prioritization of different goals, and to analyze how policy requirements for reaching those goals were dynamically redefined over time. To this end, we introduce a new method, which based on insights from social network analysis, enables us to systematically trace those strategic chances. We find that shifts in national strategies of the investigated member states preceded the shift in EU policy. In particular, countries reframed their understanding of supply security, and pushed for the internal electricity market also as a security measure to balance fluctuating renewables. Hence, the increasing focus on markets and market integration in the European 2030 package echoed the increasingly central role of the internal market for electricity supply security in national strategies. These findings also highlight that countries dynamically redefined their goals relative to the different phases of the energy transition.
The Eye of the Beholder?
(2019)
Over the last decades, Better Regulation has become a major reform topic at the federal and—in some cases—also at the Länder level. Although the debate about improving regulatory quality and reducing unnecessary burdens created by bureaucracy and red tape date back to the 1960s and 1970s, the introduction by law in 2006 of a new independent institutionalised body for regulatory control at the federal level of government has brought a new quality to the discourse and practice of Better Regulation in Germany. This chapter introduces the basic features of the legislative process at the federal level in Germany, addresses the issue of Better Regulation and outlines the role of the National Regulatory Control Council (Nationaler Normenkontrollrat—NKR) as a ‘watchdog’ for compliance costs, red tape and regulatory impacts.
West German anticommunism and the SED’s Westarbeit were to some extentinterrelated. From the beginning, each German state had attemted to stabilise itsown social system while trying to discredit its political opponent. The claim tosole representation and the refusal to acknowledge each other delineated governmentalaction on both sides. Anticommunism inWest Germany re-developed under theconditions of the Cold War, which allowed it to become virtually the reason ofstate and to serve as a tool for the exclusion of KPD supporters. In its turn, theSED branded the West German State as‘revanchist’and instrumentalised itsanticommunism to persecute and eliminate opponents within the GDR. Bothphenomena had an integrative and exclusionary element.
This paper offers a new theoretical framework for studying the problem of generations and social change in contemporary Iran. It offers a model which is called „articulation of cultural modes“. The paper agrees with Ronald Inglehart that ‘culture’ is now playing a more dominant role in the social formation of current societies, as ‘technology’ once did in the modern era. But it goes one step further by arguing that culture cannot be approached as a holistic concept building on a comprehensive theoretical framework.
The reaction of the German labor market to the Great Recession 2008/09 was relatively mild – especially compared to other countries. The reason lies not only in the specific type of the recession – which was favorable for the German economy structure – but also in a series of labor market reforms initiated between 2002 and 2005 altering, inter alia, labor supply incentives. However, irrespective of the mild response to the Great Recession, there are a number of substantial future challenges the German labor market will soon have to face. Female labor supply still lies well below that of other countries and a massive demographic change over the next 50 years will have substantial effects on labor supply as well as the pension system. In addition, due to a skill-biased technological change over the next decades, firms will face problems of finding employees with adequate skills. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, we outline why the German labor market reacted in such a mild fashion, describe current economic trends of the labor market in light of general trends in the European Union, and reveal some of the main associated challenges. Thereafter, the paper analyzes recent reforms of the main institutional settings of the labor market which influence labor supply. Finally, based on the status quo of these institutional settings, the paper gives a brief overview of strategies to combat adequately the challenges in terms of labor supply and to ensure economic growth in the future.
Expert authority is regarded as the heart of international bureaucracies' power. To measure whether international bureaucracies' expert authority is indeed recognised and deferred to, we draw on novel data from a survey of a key audience: officials in the policy units of national ministries in 121 countries. Respondents were asked to what extent they recognised the expert authority of nine international bureaucracies in various thematic areas of agricultural and financial policy. The results show wide variance. To explain this variation, we test well-established assumptions on the sources of de facto expert authority. Specifically, we look at ministry officials' perceptions of these sources and, thus, focus on a less-studied aspect of the authority relationship. We examine the role of international bureaucracies' perceived impartiality, objectivity, global impact, and the role of knowledge asymmetries. Contrary to common assumptions, we find that de facto expert authority does not rest on impartiality perceptions, and that perceived objectivity plays the smallest role of all factors considered. We find some indications that knowledge asymmetries are associated with more expert authority. Still, and robust to various alternative specifications, the perception that international bureaucracies are effectively addressing global challenges is the most important factor.