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Institute
- Sozialwissenschaften (187) (remove)
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.
This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform.
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.
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.
In recent years, governments have increased their efforts to strengthen the citizen-orientation in policy design. They have established temporary arenas as well as permanent units inside the machinery of government to integrate citizens into policy formulation, leading to a “laboratorization” of central government organizations. We argue that the evolution and role of these units herald new dynamics in the importance of organizational reputation for executive politics. These actors deviate from the classic palette of organizational units inside the machinery of government and thus require their own reputation vis-à-vis various audiences within and outside their parent organization. Based on a comparative case study of two of these units inside the German federal bureaucracy, we show how ambiguous expectations of their audiences challenge their organizational reputation. Both units resolve these tensions by balancing their weaker professional and procedural reputation with a stronger performative and moral reputation. We conclude that government units aiming to improve citizen orientation in policy design may benefit from engaging with citizens as their external audience to compensate for a weaker reputation in the eyes of their audiences inside the government organization. Points for practitioners: many governments have introduced novel means to strengthen citizen-centered policy design, which has led to an emergence of novel units inside central government that differ from traditional bureaucratic structures and procedures ; this study analyzes how these new units may build their organizational reputation vis-à-vis internal and external actors in government policymaking. ; we show that such units assert themselves primarily based on their performative and moral reputation.
Worldwide, governments have introduced novel information and communication technologies (ICTs) for policy formulation and service delivery, radically changing the working environment of government employees. Following the debate on work stress and particularly on technostress, we argue that the use of ICTs triggers “digital overload” that decreases government employees’ job satisfaction via inhibiting their job autonomy. Contrary to prior research, we consider job autonomy as a consequence rather than a determinant of digital overload, because ICT-use accelerates work routines and interruptions and eventually diminishes employees’ freedom to decide how to work. Based on novel survey data from government employees in Germany, Italy, and Norway, our structural equation modeling (SEM) confirms a significant negative effect of digital overload on job autonomy. More importantly, job autonomy partially mediates the negative relationship between digital overload and job satisfaction, pointing to the importance of studying the micro-foundations of ICT-use in the public sector.
There is a growing recognition that international organizations (IOs) formulate and adopt policy in a wide range of areas. IOs have emerged as key venues for states seeking joint solutions to contemporary challenges such as climate change or COVID-19, and to establish frameworks to bolster trade, development, security, and more. In this capacity, IOs produce both extraordinary and routine policy output with a multitude of purposes, ranging from policies of historic significance like admitting new members to the more mundane tasks of administering IO staff. This article introduces the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD), which covers close to 37,000 individual policy acts of 13 multi-issue IOs in the 1980–2015 period. The dataset fills a gap in the growing body of literature on the comparative study of IOs, providing researchers with a fine-grained perspective on the structure of IO policy output and data for comparisons across time, policy areas, and organizations. This article describes the construction and coverage of the dataset and identifies key temporal and cross-sectional patterns revealed by the data. In a concise illustration of the dataset’s utility, we apply models of punctuated equilibria in a comparative study of the relationship between institutional features and broad policy agenda dynamics. Overall, the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset offers a unique resource for researchers to analyze IO policy output in a granular manner and to explore questions of responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy of IOs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mit narrativen Medien lernen
(2022)
Serene Khader ist eine der wenigen feministischen Philosoph:innen in der anglosächsischen Philosophie, die sich gezielt mit globaler Ungerechtigkeit und Imperialismus aus Sicht jener Frauen beschäftigen, die von kolonialer und kultureller Herrschaft betroffen sind. Hierbei entlarvt sie eindrucksvoll die oftmals westliche Prägung von Feminismus, Gleichstellungspolitik und Philosophie und verfolgt so das Ziel, die Autonomie und Entscheidungskraft aller Frauen anzuerkennen. So zielt Khader in Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic auf eine Neuausrichtung der feministischen Perspektive, welche es schafft, dekolonial und anti-imperialistisch zu sein, ohne gleichzeitig dem Universalismus komplett abzuschwören. Die folgende Buchdiskussion begibt sich in eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Khaders interessanter wie wichtiger Theorie. Einleitend werden wir einen Überblick über Khaders Grundgedanken geben. Es schließen sich kritische Kommentare von Tamara Jugov, Mirjam Müller, Kerstin Reibold sowie Hilkje C. Hänel und Fabian Schuppert an, auf die Serene Khader abschließend antwortet.
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.
This study examines how public policies affect parents' preferences for a more egalitarian division of paid and unpaid work. Based on the assumption that individuals develop their preferences within a specific policy context, we examine how changes in three policies affect mothers' and fathers' work-family preferences: the availability of high-quality, affordable childcare; the right to return to a full-time job after having reduced hours to part-time and an increase in the number of 'partner months' in parental leave schemes. Analysing a unique probability sample of parents with young children in Germany from 2015 (N = 1756), we find that fathers would want to work slightly fewer hours if they had the right to return to a full-time position after working part-time, and mothers would want to work slightly more hours if childcare opportunities were improved. Full-time working parents, moreover, are found to prefer fewer hours independent of the policy setting, while non-employed parents would like to work at least some hours. Last but not least, our analyses show that increasing the number of partner months in the parental leave scheme considerably increases fathers' preferences for longer and mothers' preferences for shorter leave. Increasing the number of partner months in parental schemes hence has the greatest potential to increase gender equality.
The recent debate on administrative bodies in international organizations has brought forward multiple theoretical perspectives, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches. Despite these efforts to advance knowledge on these actors, the research program on international public administrations (IPAs) has missed out on two important opportunities: reflection on scholarship in international relations (IR) and public administration and synergies between these disciplinary perspectives. Against this backdrop, the essay is a discussion of the literature on IPAs in IR and public administration. We found influence, authority, and autonomy of international bureaucracies have been widely addressed and helped to better understand the agency of such non-state actors in global policy-making. Less attention has been given to the crucial macro-level context of politics for administrative bodies, despite the importance in IR and public administration scholarship. We propose a focus on agency and politics as future avenues for a comprehensive, joint research agenda for international bureaucracies.
Mundus vult decipi
(2021)
Die Menschen glauben, was sie glauben wollen. Betonung auf wollen. (…) Nein, der Glaube der Menschen hängt nicht von Fakten ab, nicht von Beweisen. Schlimmer noch – und das ist fast so etwas wie der zweite Teil der Erleuchtung, eine Steigerung: Man kann ihnen Fakten liefern, man kann sie widerlegen, es hilft nichts. Im Gegenteil, wer etwas glauben will, findet einen Weg! Er wird sich durch den winzigen Spalt quetschen, den die Wahrheit im lässt. Wird die Dinge so lange so drehen und wenden, bis sie wieder in seinen Glauben hineinpassen, und seine ganze Klugheit wird ihn nicht etwa daran hindern, sondern ihm noch dabei behilflich sein.
Eugen Ruge, Metropol
Toren sind, die alles loben und lieben, was im Nebel verdrehter Worte dunkel daherkommt; Toren, die für wahr halten, was ihnen eingefärbt durch wohltönende Phrasen, reizvoll die Ohren kitzelt.
Lukrez, Über die Natur der Dinge
Ein Volkskanzler
(2021)
Wie Grundrechte unter den Augen aller ausgehöhlt und umgebaut werden, wie kurz der Weg von der Demokratie zur Diktatur ist, zeigt Maximilian Steinbeis‘ Gedankenexperiment »Ein Volkskanzler« in sechs Schritten. Auf der Grundlage seines Essays hat er ein Theaterstück verfasst, das bereits auf vielen Bühnen gespielt und nun auch als Kammerspiel verfilmt wurde.
Die didaktische Handreichung unterstützt Lehrerinnen und Lehrer bei der Einbettung des Theaterstücks oder der Verfilmung von »Ein Volkskanzler« im Unterricht.
Aporien des Rechts
(2021)
Die vorliegende Research Note stellt die erste systematische Dokumentation der Gesetzgebung in den deutschen Landtagen vor. Der Datensatz umfasst insgesamt 16.610 dokumentierte Gesetzgebungsvorgänge zwischen den Jahren 1990 und 2020. Nach einer Beschreibung des Datensatzes werden einige Gesetzgebungsmuster in den deutschen Ländern exemplarisch dargestellt. Die Landesgesetzgebung erweist sich dabei als stark durch den neuen Dualismus zwischen Regierung und Opposition geprägt. Im Initiativverhalten lassen sich zudem die Anreize des thematischen Parteienwettbewerbs ablesen. Wenig Evidenz findet sich für die These, dass innerkoalitionäre Gegensätze die Dauer der Gesetzgebungsverfahren in die Länge ziehen. Der mit dieser Research Note veröffentlichte Datensatz steht der Forschung für die Untersuchung zahlreicher weiterer Fragestellungen zur Verfügung.
Ingo Juchler setzt sich am Beispiel des Romans „Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee“ (1999) von Thomas Brussig mit „Groteske und Satire im DDR-Roman als didaktische Momente in der politischen Bildung“ auseinander. Nach der Einführung in den Roman erörtert er dessen politischen Sinngehalt, den er in der Auseinandersetzung mit den literarischen Leitfiguren des Romans, Friedrich Schiller und Jean-Paul Sartre, im besonderen Wert der Freiheit findet. Den Toten der Berliner Mauer, die davon Zeugnis geben, setzt Juchler im abschließenden Kapitel ein Denkmal.
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.
International organizations (IOs) experience significant variation in their decision-making performance, or the extent to which they produce policy output. While some IOs are efficient decision-making machineries, others are plagued by deadlock. How can such variation be explained? Examining this question, the article makes three central contributions. First, we approach performance by looking at IO decision-making in terms of policy output and introduce an original measure of decision-making performance that captures annual growth rates in IO output. Second, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for decision-making performance. This account highlights the role of institutional design, pointing to how majoritarian decision rules, delegation of authority to supranational institutions, and access for transnational actors (TNAs) interact to affect decision-making. Third, we offer the first comparative assessment of the decision-making performance of IOs. While previous literature addresses single IOs, we explore decision-making across a broad spectrum of 30 IOs from 1980 to 2011. Our analysis indicates that IO decision-making performance varies across and within IOs. We find broad support for our theoretical account, showing the combined effect of institutional design features in shaping decision-making performance. Notably, TNA access has a positive effect on decision-making performance when pooling is greater, and delegation has a positive effect when TNA access is higher. We also find that pooling has an independent, positive effect on decision-making performance. All-in-all, these findings suggest that the institutional design of IOs matters for their decision-making performance, primarily in more complex ways than expected in earlier research.
Clubs of autocrats
(2021)
While scholars have argued that membership in Regional Organizations (ROs) can increase the likelihood of democratization, we see many autocratic regimes surviving in power albeit being members of several ROs. This article argues that this is the case because these regimes are often members in "Clubs of Autocrats" that supply material and ideational resources to strengthen domestic survival politics and shield members from external interference during moments of political turmoil. The argument is supported by survival analysis testing the effect of membership in autocratic ROs on regime survival between 1946 to 2010. It finds that membership in ROs composed of more autocratic member states does in fact raise the likelihood of regime survival by protecting incumbents against democratic challenges such as civil unrest or political dissent. However, autocratic RO membership does not help to prevent regime breakdown due to autocratic challenges like military coups, potentially because these types of threats are less likely to diffuse to other member states. The article thereby adds to our understanding of the limits of democratization and potential reverse effects of international cooperation, and contributes to the literature addressing interdependences of international and domestic politics in autocratic regimes.
Conclusion
(2020)
Does political repression work for authoritarian rule? On the one hand, repression is a hallmark of authoritarian governance. It denotes any action governments take to increase the costs of collective action. Autocrats consciously apply repression to curb popular opposition within their territorial jurisdiction. They repress in order to protect their policies, personnel, or other interests against challenges from below. Repression is, thus, a means to the end of political survival in non-democratic contexts. A useful means lives up to its promises. Does repression do that? This project started on the suspicion that we do not yet know the answer. This concluding chapter recalls the key theoretical ideas developed along the way, highlights the main findings of the book, and concludes with opportunities for future research.
Using a novel agent-based model, we study how US withdrawal might influence the political process established by the Paris Agreement, and hence the prospects for reaching the collective goal to limit warming below 2 degrees C. Our model enables us to analyze to what extent reaching this goal despite US withdrawal would place more stringent requirements on other core elements of the Paris cooperation process. We find, first, that the effect of a US withdrawal depends critically on the extent to which member countries reciprocate others' promises and contributions. Second, while the 2 degrees C goal will likely be reached only under a very small set of conditions in any event, even temporary US withdrawal will further narrow this set significantly. Reaching this goal will then require other countries to step up their ambition at the first opportunity and to comply nearly 100% with their pledges, while maintaining high confidence in the Paris Agreements institutions. Third, although a US withdrawal will first primarily affect the United States' own emissions, it will eventually prove even more detrimental to other countries' emissions.
Focusing on forest policy and urban climate politics in Brazil and Indonesia, the primary objective of this chapter is to identify domestic pioneers and leaders who, compared to other sectors, governmental levels or jurisdictions within the same nation-state, move ‘ahead of the troops’ (Liefferink and Wurzel, 2017: 2-3). The chapter focuses especially on the role of multilevel governance in bringing about pioneership and leadership and on the different types of that have emerged. It also explores whether and, if so, to what extent domestic pioneers and leaders attract followers and whether there are signs of sustained domestic leadership. The chapter identifies the actors that constitute pioneers and leaders and assesses the processes which lead to their emergence. The chapter authors take up Wurzel et al.’s (2019) call to open up the black box of the nation-state. But instead of stressing the role of non-state actors, the chapter authors focus on vertical interactions among different governmental levels within nation states. The main argument put forward is that international and transnational processes, incentives, and ideas often trigger the development of domestic pioneership and leadership. Such processes, however, cannot be understood properly if domestic politics and dynamics across governmental levels within the nation-state are not taken into account.
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.
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.
Zur Jahreswende 1959/60 sorgten Hakenkreuzschmierereien an jüdischen Einrichtungen in Köln und anderswo für Entsetzen und Empörung. Diese Vorkommnisse machten bewusst, was im Verlauf der 1960er Jahre zu einem Politikum für die jüngere Generation werden sollte: Die mangelnde Aufarbeitung der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit. Diese Thematik sowie der von den USA in Vietnam geführte Krieg stellten mobilisierende Faktoren für die Herausbildung einer außerparlamentarischen Opposition (APO) in der Bundesrepublik dar, die sich in der zweiten Hälfte der 1960er Jahre verbreitert. Prof. Ingo Juchler beschreibt den Weg der Politischen Bildung durch die 60er Jahre und die Entwicklung hin zur sog. „didaktischen Wende“.
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?
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.
Politische Urteilsbildung
(2020)
Die Fähigkeit zum politischen Urteilen gilt als das übergeordnete Ziel politischer Bildungsbemühungen. Epistemologisch nimmt das Theorem der politischen Urteilsbildung seinen Ausgang in der Epoche der Aufklärung. Immanuel Kants Ausführungen über den Zusammenhang von Aufklärung und Mündigkeit in seiner Schrift Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? bietet eine programmatische Vorlage für die weitere Auseinandersetzung mit Mündigkeit und politischer Urteilsbildung. Der Königsberger Philosoph erklärte hierin eingangs: „Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.“
Global food security governance is fraught with fragmentation, overlap and complexity. While calls for coordination and coherence abound, establishing an inter-organizational order at this level seems to remain difficult. While the emphasis in the literature has so far been on the global level, we know less about dynamics of inter-organizational relations in food security governance at the country level, and empirical studies are lacking. It is this research gap the article seeks to address by posing the following research question: In how far does inter-organizational order develop in the organizational field of food security governance at the country level? Theoretically and conceptually, the article draws on sociological institutionalism, and on work on inter-organizational relations. Empirically, the article conducts an exploratory case study of the organizational field of food security governance in Côte d’Ivoire, building on a qualitative content analysis of organizational documents covering a period from 2003 to 2016 and semi-structured interviews with staff of international organizations from 2016. The article demonstrates that not all of the developments attributed to food security governance at the global level play out in the same way at the country level. Rather, in the case of Côte d’Ivoire there are signs for a certain degree of coherence between IOs in the field of food security governance and even for an – albeit limited – division of labour. However, this only holds for specific dimensions of the inter-organizational order and appears to be subject to continuous contestation and reinterpretation under the surface.
In a critical approach to Mommsen’s classical thesis, which states the dependence of Weber’s sociology on his political position, the article reconstructs the foundation of Weber’s ‘The Profession and Vocation of Politics’ on his sociological analyses of the political domain in the manuscripts for the posthumous publication of Economy and Society. The first two pages of his 1919 lecture particularly show that Weber can fall back on the definitions of State and politics that he had already developed for his political sociology. Yet, to appreciate the full extent of this theoretical contribution, it is necessary to present Weber’s entire ideal-typical analysis of the political. The article then shows that Weber provides an unlabelled definition of ‘modern politics’ that negates ante litteram Carl Schmitt’s foundation of politics on the idea of enmity. In this context, Weber’s sound plea for parliamentarism and against the fascination of civil war comes to the fore that he wanted to deliver to his audience of young revolutionaries in January 1919.
This article analyses salient trade-offs in the design of democracy. It grounds this analysis in a distinction between two basic models of democracy: simple and complex majoritarianism. These models differ not only in their electoral and party systems, but also in the style of coalition-building. Simple majoritarianism concentrates executive power in a single majority party; complex majoritarianism envisions the formation of shifting, issue-specific coalitions among multiple parties whose programs differ across multiple conflict dimensions. The latter pattern of coalition formation is very difficult to create and sustain under pure parliamentary government. A separation of powers between executive and legislature can facilitate such a pattern, while also achieving central goals of simple majoritarianism: identifiable cabinet alternatives before the election and stable cabinets afterward. The separation of powers can thus balance simple and complex majoritarianism in ways that are unavailable under parliamentarism. The article also compares the presidential and semi-parliamentary versions of the separation of powers. It argues that the latter has important advantages, e.g., when it comes to resolving inter-branch deadlock, as it avoids the concentration of executive power in a single human being.
This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.