TY - THES A1 - Le Noan, Anne-Clémence T1 - Changing the way social inequality in education is treated in France and Germany: Schule macht stark (2019) and Les contrats locaux d’accompagnement (2020) as contrasting examples of layering N2 - France and Germany are among the OECD countries where social origin most strongly affects educational achievement. While the structural causes of this phenomenon have been widely studied, the institutionalization of its policy treatment and the room for manoeuvre available to policymakers to bring change in these two contrasting education systems remain underexplored. This dissertation addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of two recent policies targeting schools in disadvantaged areas: Schule macht stark in Germany and les contrats locaux d’accompagnement in France. Drawing on process-tracing, the analysis of documents and 50 interviews, and grounded in neo-institutionalist theory, this research shows that these policies exemplify layering: strong veto players constrained policymakers to implement change through the addition of experimental initiatives rather than through reform of existing policies. These shifts affected policy orientations—toward greater efficiency in France and greater equity in Germany—policy instruments—via the strengthening of New Public Management—and governance levels—with the involvement of the federal tier in Germany. In France, changes were rapid but short-lived, marked by the political instrumentalization of experimentation. In Germany, they were slower but more enduring, supported by academic expertise. In both cases, broader initiatives—Conseil national de la refondation and the Startchancen-Programm—have continued these trajectories, illustrating the relevance of the layering approach. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 04/2026 Y1 - 2026 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-61674 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6167 N1 - Shelf mark: 2026D004, 2026D004+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Wilkins, Katherine T1 - The New ‘NORMal’? How innovative actors are reshaping the global approach to controlling corruption N2 - This dissertation explores the evolving global anti-corruption regime and examines the interplay between norms and strategic interests in shaping responses to corruption. While traditional narratives portray anti-corruption policy as a normative undertaking, in this dissertation I argue that states’ responses to corruption are meaningfully shaped by the pursuit of geopolitical interests. At the theoretical level, this dissertation contributes to the rationalism-constructivism debate in international relations theory. Drawing on March and Olsen’s dual logics analytical framework, this dissertation introduces a model of bounded decision-making in which norms serve as boundary conditions for responses, but interests shape their scope and intensity. In this model, states attempt to balance norms and interests by prioritizing interest-driven actions while still seeking to maintain normative legitimacy within the international system. Examining the recent decade of anti-corruption rulemaking and a key case of enforcement, this dissertation offers evidence that states may introduce or enforce anti-corruption rules as an instrument of geopolitical strategy. These findings have broad implications for international cooperation on corruption. Additionally, this dissertation contributes to the theoretical understanding of norm development within the analytical framework of network governance theory, which posits that complex global challenges can be effectively addressed through decentralized approaches to governance. This research further examines the role of non-state actors in anti- corruption governance, offering new evidence of how non-state actors navigate norm development, and examining these processes in the context of broader governance trends, especially the shifting relationships between state and non-state actors. These findings support the arguments of network governance theory on the role of non-state actors in global governance, demonstrating how they are shaping norms, including normative constraints on state decision-making. The empirical findings of this dissertation highlight the complexity of anti-corruption governance in a competitive global environment. By emphasizing the role of geopolitical interests in shaping responses to corruption, this research counters the prevailing narrative of anti-corruption as an exclusively normative field. These findings have significant implications for policymakers and anti-corruption advocates, calling for a nuanced understanding of state interests and the influence of non-state actors for advancing global anti-corruption efforts in an increasingly competitive international environment. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 03/2026 Y1 - 2026 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-61661 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6166 N1 - Shelf mark: 2026D003; 2026D003+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - García-Corral, Paulina T1 - Framing attributions: A methodological and conceptual contribution to the study of explanations in political discourse N2 - As humans, we think of the social world in causal terms, seeking to answer questions that help us make sense of what happens around us, predict future outcomes, and address current issues. The way we communicate displays our causal reasoning, as it is through language that we share how we think the world works, and also attempt to control how others perceive who is responsible of social issues and how to fix them. Therefore, analyzing the use of causal expressions in the public sphere is crucial to better understand political discourse and its downstream effects on political opinion, attitudes, and behavior. In this dissertation, I develop a framework to identify and extract expressions of causal attributions from political text, drawing on techniques from computational linguistics. To do this, I design a coding scheme and create a corpus annotated for causal language in the political domain. I test the corpus on a broad range of pre-trained language models on the task of identifying and parsing expressions of causality: from smaller transformer-based models such as Bert, to modern Large Language Models, like GPT-4. Additionally, I introduce an evaluation strategy tailored to test if a model’s causal extraction is done through linguistic parsing or by leveraging causal patterns learned during pre-training. After interpreting experimental results, I develop a framework to parse expressions of causal attributions in text, adapted for political methodology. With this novel measurement tool, I empirically examine the constructions of causality used in the coverage of two international conflicts. I demonstrate the method’s capabilities and ease of use for political science research. With insights from the case study, I conceptualize “non attribution”, and posit it as a unique framing practice, complementary to responsibility framing. With it, I argue that the omission of causal attributions is a distinct frame, and not a neutral absence in news coverage. With this dissertation, I extend the current scholarship on causal language modeling, and show how new text-as-data methods can be used to scale and examine discourse to identify novel concepts, and extend previous work in political communication. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 02/2026 Y1 - 2026 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-61241 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6124 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: A. Garcia Corral, P., Bechara, H., Zhang, R., & Jankin, S. (2024). PolitiCause: An Annotation Scheme and Corpus for Causality in Political Texts. In N. Calzolari, M.-Y. Kan, V. Hoste, A. Lenci, S. Sakti, & N. Xue (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024) (pp. 12836–12845). ELRA and ICCL. https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1124/ B. Garcia-Corral, P., Bechara, H. D., Manohara, K., & Jankin, S. (2025). Causally fooled in the name of being honest? Evaluating causal extraction in LLMs for political text. In C. Wartena & U. Heid (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Conference on Natural Language Processing (KONVENS 2025): Workshops (pp. 36–53). HsH Applied Academics. https://aclanthology.org/2025.konvens-2.4/ N1 - Shelf mark: 2026D002, 2026D002+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Tiedemann, Silvana T1 - Essays in empirical energy economics: Real-time electricity pricing, energy saving rewards, and auctions in the energy transition N2 - The transition to a sustainable energy system requires a balance between climate protection, economic efficiency, and energy security. This dissertation contributes to understanding how to achieve these policy goals by evaluating the effect of real-time pricing on demand-side flexibility, financial incentives for energy savings, and auction-based steering of the national capacity mix. The two articles in the first part examine the challenges of estimating the response of electricity demand to real-time pricing. Despite theoretical expectations that dynamic pricing allows for flexible electricity consumption, empirical analyses show that consumers respond little to short-term fluctuations. However, they may systematically adjust consumption, providing a form of demand flexibility that is not captured by some econometric models. Moreover, time dynamics can bias results if not properly addressed. This work therefore advances our understanding of how to isolate different types of responses and how to interpret empirical findings. The article in the second part examines financial incentives for energy savings, focusing on gas saving rewards implemented during the European energy crisis of 2022/23. Analyzing micro-level consumption data, this research employs a matched control group design and the presently developed Double/Debiased Machine Learning estimator to show that direct financial incentives significantly reduce gas consumption. The two articles in the third part evaluate auctions to manage the national capacity mix. An evaluation of Germany’s coal phase-out auctions shows that the mechanism was designed to balance competing policy objectives, resulting in relatively low compensation costs but increasing the carbon intensity of the remaining coal fleet. The study of renewable energy auctions estimates bidders’ true costs and mark-ups, revealing significant heterogeneity in bidding strategies based on firm size and market experience. Overall, this dissertation provides empirical evidence for designing effective policies to advance the energy transition, drawing on econometric and causal methods. The findings underscore the need for tailored incentive structures and market mechanisms that are consistent with policy objectives, consumer behavior, and market dynamics. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 01/2026 Y1 - 2026 N1 - List of publications: Tiedemann, S., & Müller-Hansen, F. (2023). Auctions to phase out coal power: Lessons learned from Germany. Energy Policy, 174, 113387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113387 Tiedemann, S. (2025). How to estimate and interpret the response of electricity consumers to real-time pricing. SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5140165 Tiedemann, S., Sgarlato, R., & Hirth, L. (2023). Price elasticity of electricity demand: Using instrumental variable regressions to address endogeneity and autocorrelation of high-frequency time series. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.12863 Lamp, S., Samano, M., & Tiedemann, S. (2025). Firms' bidding behavior in a new market: Evidence from renewable energy auctions. SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4780866 Amberg, M., Kalkuhl, M., Koch, N., Ockenfels, A., & Tiedemann, S. (2025) Managing an energy crisis: Large-scale evidence of residential natural gas savings through financial rewards. SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5747645 N1 - Shelf mark: 2026D001, 2026D001+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Gao, Lin T1 - Polyphony in Motion: The Sustained Multivocality of Social Entrepreneurship in China N2 - Sustained multivocality – the coexistence of divergent interpretations of the same phenomenon – is a common yet under-theorized condition in field evolution. This dissertation examines how the multivocality surrounding the concept of social entrepreneurship persists and even deepens in China, despite conditions that typically favor convergence. The study focuses on three key intermediary organizations in China, which interpret social entrepreneurship in increasingly distinct ways, despite all emerging from the field’s early discourse and facing pressure from powerful forces to forge consensus. This study employs a qualitative research design to unpack the processes and mechanisms through which the multivocality not only persists but also deepens over time. The study contributes to our understanding of meaning-making and field evolution in three ways. First, it develops a relational frame typology, identifying four types of frames – elastic, normative, ideological, and pragmatic – each carrying distinct relational implications. It advances the literature by demonstrating that frames are relation-laden constructs and, once enacted, position actors relationally within the field and shape the opportunity space for future meaning-making. Second, building on and extending the insights from the framing and sensemaking literature, it conceptualizes meaning construction as a multifaceted, situated, and relational process in which actors construct meanings through the simultaneous interpretation of the self, the object, and the context. Central to this process is the self-context orientation, which refers to how one perceives and positions oneself in relation to the context. Third, it explains that sustained multivocality emerges from the dynamic interplay between actors’ places in the context, or the situated self, and their choice of frames. Drawing on Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony, it then theorizes sustained interpretive divergence not as a temporary disarray or failure of power to converge, but as a durable and generative form of order. Polyphony, as theorized here, offers a lens for understanding how order can emerge through divergence, moving beyond the consensus-driven paradigm and the power-centric view. The study concludes by inviting a rethinking of consensus, relationality, and organizing in a world characterized by increasing fluidity, ambiguity, and ongoing change. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 16/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60259 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6025 ER - TY - THES A1 - Koh, Allison T1 - Platformed Power Plays: Authoritarian Adaptations in Foreign Social Media Spaces N2 - Social media platforms profoundly influence our perception of the world, shaping the way we receive and spread information. They shed light on crucial issues such as political violence and police repression, thereby holding governments accountable for their repressive actions. However, the governments implicated in such cases often attempt to curtail the impact of these digital platforms. They restrict domestic access to international communication channels, impose internet blackouts during political unrest, and intimidate dissidents into silence. Despite these efforts, states persistently grapple with the challenge of controlling the global narratives being spread on foreign social media platforms that lie just beyond their reach. In this cumulative dissertation, I attempt to answer the question of how repressive regimes control information flows in foreign social media spaces, even when they cannot exercise direct provision over these platforms. I argue that states “play by the rules” of the foreign social media spaces that they intend to influence, which often entails producing content that aligns with liberal democratic norms. In doing so, they evade sounding the alarm for foreign governments and the international community to sanction them. In a constantly evolving landscape of transnational social media regulation, states also benefit from foreign platforms that recently became havens for contentious political activity. In the conceptual work of this dissertation, I offer a broad overview of how states deal with diaspora dissent on foreign platforms. To empirically test my expectations on how regime supporters exploit platform governance vulnerabilities, I analyze pro-PRC actors’ responses to Uyghur regime critics in exile on Twitter. To test my expectations on recent shifts in the global regulatory landscape of foreign social media spaces, I leverage a recent change in Twitter’s policies for government and state-affiliated media. Overall, the evidence presented in this dissertation supports the notion that limited information control in foreign social media spaces can pose obstacles for contemporary governments who aim to engage in digital authoritarian practices. However, there remain vulnerabilities in platform governance that make it possible for states and their proxies to target key regime threats and manipulate the global public sphere as part of their foreign policy. Ultimately, this has important ramifications for policies aimed at transnational social media regulation and mitigating the online facets of global authoritarianism. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 15/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60240 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6024 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D015, 2025D015+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Wriedt, Vera T1 - Bordering Belonging: Colonialism, Nationality and Expulsions in the European and African Human Rights Systems N2 - This thesis investigates how the European and African regional human rights systems reproduce or counteract border coloniality in their drafting of norms and subsequent caselaw on matters of nationality and expulsions. Rather than taking the European human rights system as a yardstick to emulate, the analysis critiques its restrictive moves, whilst highlighting transformative contestations of exclusion in the African human rights system. In the European system, the colonial clause built into the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights was further refined in its 1963 Protocol 4 to distinguish between metropolitan and non-metropolitan territories with regard to entry and expulsion. These differentiations reverberate in caselaw that denies the right to nationality and legitimises collective expulsions based on tropes of danger and culpability, whereas judgments upholding the rights of people on the move across borders appear as outliers. In the African system, the anti-colonialism shaping the drafting of the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights was followed by innovative interpretations reading the right to nationality into the right to recognition of legal status, as well as holistic protection against collective expulsions linked to related rights, but the jurisprudence is limited. Despite epistemic shifts away from the denigration of former colonial subjects crossing borders and moves towards the expansive interpretation of some rights, both systems operate within the limits of codified human rights law, in which many structural elements of border coloniality engrained in statist migration law remain unchallenged and perhaps unchallengeable. By providing the first juxtaposition of these issues in the European and African human rights systems, the thesis contributes to comparative international human rights law, critiques of the coloniality of international law, and border regime studies. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 14/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60236 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6023 N1 - Shelf mark : 2025D014; 2025D014+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Groß, Greta Frederike T1 - Narrating for Democratic Resilience: Morality and Future Orientation in Political Communication N2 - This dissertation examines how political communication shapes democratic resilience under conditions of compounding crises. It starts from the premise that liberal democracies confront an external crisis of global threats such as climate change and an internal crisis of democratic legitimacy, expressed through affective polarization and institutional short-termism. Both dynamics constrain democracies’ capacity for problem-solving and raise questions about the role of political communication in shaping public understanding and collective action. The dissertation studies two communicative obstacles to democratic problem-solving: the difficulty of engaging across affectively polarized groups and the challenge of articulating shared future-oriented narratives. Three empirical studies investigate how democratic actors navigate these barriers and how specific narrative strategies may help to overcome them. Chapter 2 compares the moral rhetoric used by Jacinda Ardern and Boris Johnson in their parliamentary communication before and during the COVID-19 crisis. Drawing on the idea that political messages employing a broad moral repertoire may appeal across partisan lines, the chapter develops a scalable measure of moral diversity. Automated content analysis reveals limited differences between both leaders and no substantial increase in moral diversity during the crisis. The findings indicate unexploited potential to build more inclusive and persuasive crisis communication. Chapter 3 uses a survey experiment in Germany to test whether moral reframing—aligning policy messages with recipients’ moral values—can decrease affective polarization. Varying the message framing, issue domain, and messenger characteristics, the study shows that moral reframing increases openness to cross-partisan policy proposals among respondents on both the political left and right. The results inform debates on the effectiveness and limits of depolarizing communication strategies in divided societies. Chapter 4 analyzes temporal narratives in German parliamentary discourse from 1991 to 2024 to assess how often and under which institutional conditions politicians refer to the future. The findings show that future-oriented rhetoric clusters in the early stages of legislative periods and is more prevalent among governing parties, suggesting that electoral incentives contribute to democratic myopia and reduce attention to long-term challenges. Overall, the dissertation advances research on the communicative foundations of democratic resilience by highlighting narrative approaches that may help solving contemporary crises. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 13/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60199 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6019 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D013, 2025D013+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Ramirez-Ruiz, Sebastian T1 - The Evidence Interface: How policymakers encounter, engage with, and make sense of scientific knowledge N2 - While evidence can be a critical input for policymaking, our understanding of how it flows from research and expert communities to elite decision-makers remains remarkably limited. Studying these flows, and the relationships that underpin them, is inherently difficult. They are fragmented, politically mediated, and largely unobservable. This dissertation addresses these challenges by advancing a data-extensive computational social science approach, drawing on alternative (largely unstructured) data sources to systematically observe and characterize elite–evidence interactions. This project consists of four studies, involves the creation of new data infrastructures, and provides a foundation for future research and a proof of concept for investigating these dynamics. The first study analyzes behavioral data from nearly 3,700 legislators across 12 countries to examine how elected officials follow and interact with academic researchers on Twitter, revealing that engagement is rare and shaped by partisanship and educational background, though exogenous shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic can increase attention to medical expertise. The second study maps the evidence cited in 1.2 million policy documents across 185 countries, demonstrating the persistent dominance of research produced in the global North and highlighting systematic epistemic asymmetries in policy-relevant knowledge. The third study introduces the Bundestag Expert Witness Tracker (BEWIT), capturing all public expert hearings in the German Bundestag from 2009 to 2024, and shows how political gatekeeping and transparency reforms shape which experts inform legislative processes. The fourth study develops and validates the INSPIRE instrument, a psychometrically robust measure of scientific evidence consumption literacy for public policy contexts, providing a framework for assessing individuals’ capacity to engage with complex evidence. Together, these studies offer new perspectives on who gets seen and heard, what kinds of expertise gain traction, and how institutional and individual factors can shape evidence use in practice. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 12/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60150 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6015 N1 - Parts of this dissertation have been published: I. Ramirez-Ruiz, S. (2025). Politicians from 12 countries rarely engage with researchers on social media, but this can change when expertise gains salience (No. wqbe4_v1). OSF Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/wqbe4_v1 II. Ramirez-Ruiz, S., & Senninger, R. (2025). Policy documents across 185 countries predominantly rely on evidence from the Global North (No. w8q3y_v1). OSF Preprints. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/w8q3y_v1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Harter, Anina T1 - Essays in Applied Microeconomics: How Shocks and Institutions Shape Policy Preferences and Public Spending N2 - This dissertation in applied microeconomics studies how political institutions and external shocks shape individual policy preferences and public spending. It comprises three self-contained chapters. Chapter 1 investigates the role of legislative institutions in the allocation of public funds. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the impact of disruptive events on individual preferences for health policies. Chapter 1 studies how legislative institutions shape distributive policy outcomes. Specifically, it examines the allocation of federal grants by the German Bundestag’s budget committee. Using a difference-in-differences design, the analysis shows that gaining a seat on the budget committee doubles the average grant amount allocated to a legislator’s electoral district. This committee benefit in the allocation of grants is driven by internal committee hierarchy, rather than affiliation with the government or incentives from mandate types. Chapter 2 examines how individuals’ previous experience of disruptive events shapes demand for current crisis remedies. Using a model of experience-based learning and micro-level survey data from 19 countries, this chapter finds that individuals who have been exposed to disasters or armed conflict are more willing to get vaccinated against COVID-19. A case study using survey data from Russia reveals that this effect is conditional on trust in government. Chapter 3 analyzes how a single disruptive event can alter individuals’ preferences for abortion policy. It studies the 1976 Seveso chemical disaster which sharply increased perceived risk of industrial toxic exposure, particularly for pregnant women. Using pre-accident data on industrial plant locations and municipality-level voting, this study finds that proximity to hazardous industry reduced support for a restrictive abortion policy. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 11/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60126 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6012 N1 - Parts of this dissertation have been published: Chapter 1 Harter, A. (2025). Legislative institutions and distributive politics: Evidence from Germany’s federal budget committee. Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers; No. 75. https://doi.org/10.48462/OPUS4-5942 Chapter 2 Borisova, E., Gründler, K., Hackenberger, A., Harter, A., Potrafke, N., & Schoors, K. (2023). Crisis experience and the deep roots of COVID-19 vaccination preferences. European Economic Review, 160, Article 104607. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2023 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D011; 2025D011+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Minetto, Francesca T1 - Shaping Brussels from the outside in: The role of international institutions in EU policymaking N2 - As global governance becomes increasingly complex, interconnected, and contested, this dissertation examines a dimension that remains largely overlooked: the relevance of international institutions on the EU’s legal order. While the EU’s role as an international actor and exporter of norms has received significant scholarly attention, far less is known about how this outward engagement generates feedback effects that shape policymaking within the Union itself. This dissertation shifts the focus from the well-established image of the EU as a global rule-shaper toward a more reciprocal and layered understanding of its embeddedness in international institutional structures. My research foregrounds the EU’s role as a recipient of external policies, standards, and forms of expertise—raising new questions about the implications of this embeddedness for the EU legal order and its internal policymaking dynamics. Theoretically, the dissertation focuses on international institutions as epistemic authorities and standard-setters that feature in EU policymaking and its legislative processes. I draw on insights from policy diffusion, epistemic communities, EU external governance and EU actorness to advance a relational understanding of how external frameworks become internalised in the EU legislative process. Empirically, the dissertation makes three key contributions. First, it demonstrates through large-scale citation analysis that international institutions consistently function as evidence providers in EU policy documents, and that their inputs are not sporadic or symbolic but structurally embedded within EU knowledge practices. Second, it introduces the EUxII database—an original dataset covering over 1,400 legislative files—that enables the systematic mapping of international institutional presence across EU lawmaking. Third, it shows that nearly one in four legislative proposals reflects substantive policy import, meaning external policies stemming from international institutions are incorporated into EU legal texts. The findings reveal clear patterns in when and how policy import occurs: legislative proposals are more likely to draw on external models under conditions of institutional expansion, global alignment pressure, or heightened uncertainty. These dynamics challenge conventional accounts of EU actorness and policy diffusion by demonstrating that the EU is not only a source of global governance innovation but also a structured recipient of transnational expertise. By tracing this underexplored “outside-in” dynamic, my dissertation contributes to broader debates in European integration, EU actorness, inter-organisational influence and policy diffusion. It offers a data-rich, theoretically grounded account of how international institutions shape the EU’s legislative output, and in doing so, repositions the EU as a polity co constituted by its global institutional environment. In a context of contested multilateralism, this entanglement is both functionally significant and normatively consequential. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 10/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-60004 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-6000 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published. Paper 3: Minetto, F. (2025). Does the EU ever import its policies? The overlooked role of international institutions. Journal of European Public Policy, 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2570885 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D010; 2025D010+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Molina, Stefania T1 - The influence of family dynamics on the well-being of adults and children N2 - This cumulative dissertation examines how family dynamics—such as union dissolution, cohabitation, and repartnering—shape the well-being of adults and children in Germany and Colombia. It situates these family changes within broader social transformations across Europe and Latin America, emphasizing how socioeconomic inequality, gender norms, and cultural contexts influence diverse family structures. A distinctive contribution lies in integrating partnership quality and intimate partner violence (IPV) as key dimensions linking family dynamics to individual and child well-being. Drawing on both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, the dissertation presents five empirical analyses. The first study investigates how mothers’ partnership status and experiences of physical IPV during pregnancy are related to infant health in Colombia. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), it finds that cohabiting and separated mothers face higher IPV risks, highlighting IPV as a critical determinant of family and child outcomes. The second study examines women’s economic independence and the risk of IPV during separation in Germany, using data from the German Family Panel (pairfam). Results show that employment and higher education reduce IPV risk, while women with minor children remain particularly vulnerable. The third study employs an intersectional approach to analyse divorce and mental health in Germany. Results show that women are more likely than men to receive a mental health diagnosis following divorce, especially at older ages, and that low income increases the likelihood of mental illness for both men and women. The fourth study explores how partnership quality and separation relate to parental mental health, showing that separation can relieve depression for those leaving low-quality partnerships but may exacerbate it for fathers exiting high-quality ones. The fifth study assesses how family structure and parental partnership quality affect children’s socio-emotional well-being, finding that children in stepfamilies report greater difficulties, although higher parental esteem mitigates some negative effects. Together, these findings underscore the complex interplay between family structures, partnership quality, and well-being. The dissertation calls for policies that promote gender equality, prevent IPV, and support families through transitions to enhance both adult and child well-being. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 09/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-59685 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5968 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter 2 Molina, S. (2025). Unmarried motherhood and infant health: The role of intimate partner violence in Colombia. Demographic Research, 52, 141–178. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2025.52.6 Chapter 3 Molina, S., Wagner, L., & Kreyenfeld, M. (2025). Women’s economic independence and physical intimate partner violence (IPV) during separation. PLOS ONE, 20(6), e0326529. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0326529 Chapter 4 Molina, S., Alonso-Perez, E., & Kreyenfeld, M. (2025). Divorce and Mental Health: Is Late Divorce Particularly Harmful for Women with Low Earnings? Social Indicators Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-025-03721-8 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D009; 2025D009+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Koranyi, Kinga T1 - The Power of the Weak: Strategic Framing and Selective Compliance in Asymmetric Redistributive Negotiations N2 - This dissertation investigates how weaker actors navigate power asymmetries in political negotiations, challenging conventional expectations that material capabilities determine outcomes. Through three interconnected studies examining different contexts of asymmetric bargaining, I demonstrate how seemingly disadvantaged actors employ sophisticated strategies to secure outcomes that defy power-based predictions. The first paper reveals how fiscally weaker Canadian provinces enhanced their bargaining positions in redistribution negotiations through strategic framing, employing communitarian appeals and coercive tactics despite structural disadvantages. The second paper examines Hungary’s selective compliance with unprecedented EU rule of law sanctions, demonstrating how the government conducted sophisticated cost-benefit analyses balancing economic impacts against political costs. The third paper uncovers Hungary’s dual-level communication strategy toward EU sanctions, revealing stark contrasts between public rhetoric and private negotiation approaches. Together, these studies advance a more nuanced understanding of bargaining power that extends beyond material capabilities to encompass strategic dimensions. Weaker actors systematically enhance their positions through strategic framing, which shapes how negotiations are perceived across multiple audiences, and strategic cost calculations, which identify areas for selective engagement to maximize leverage while minimizing disadvantages. The findings reveal how seemingly disadvantaged actors transform structural weaknesses into bargaining advantages through sophisticated negotiation approaches. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 08/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-59514 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5951 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter 2 Koranyi, K. (2025). Power of the weak? Framing strategies in fiscal redistribution negotiations. Regional & Federal Studies, 35(4), 511–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2023.2295407 Chapter 3 Koranyi, K. (2025). The limits of EU rule of law financial sanctions: How economic and political costs shaped Hungary’s selective compliance strategy. Journal of European Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2553752 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D008; 2025D008+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Finnerty, Joseph T1 - Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Conservative Contribution to Responding to Authoritarian Practices through International Human Rights Law N2 - Combining dogmatic legal doctrinal and quasi-critical approaches, this dissertation investigates the role that Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights has played in the European Court of Human Rights’ response to authoritarian practices across the Member States of the Council of Europe. Through its examination of 121 Article 18 judgments, the dissertation maintains that the provision has an important role to play in the Court’s response to authoritarian practices. It employs a three-dimensional analytical framework to constructively critique the Article 18 case law in the context of autocratisation across three papers. This framework encompasses the following dimensions of the doctrine: (1) substantive interpretation of Article 18 by the Court (interpretation); (2) the evidentiary approach employed by the Court to determine the existence of ulterior authoritarian purposes under Article 18 (evidence and proof); and (3) the remedies that flow from the identification of ulterior authoritarian purposes under Article 18 (remedies). Each dimension of analysis enables the dissertation to delineate a limiting force, restricting the potential of Article 18 as an effective response mechanism to authoritarian practices. The dissertation further articulates normative recommendations to mitigate or remove these limitations and unlock the full potential of Article 18 in the context of autocratisation. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 07/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-59092 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5909 N1 - Parts of this dissertation have been published: Ch. 2 Finnerty, J., & Çalı, B. (2025). The Travaux Préparatoires and Progressive Treaty Interpretation: Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights. European Journal of International Law, chaf029. https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chaf029 Ch. 3 Finnerty, J. (2023). When is a State’s ‘Hidden Agenda’ Proven? The Role of the Merabishvili’s Three-Legged Evidentiary Test in the Article 18 Strasbourg Case Law. European Convention on Human Rights Law Review, 4(4), 447-472. https://doi.org/10.1163/26663236-bja10077 Ch. 4 Finnerty, J. (2024). How Should the European Court of Human Rights Remedy Violations of Article 18 echr? The Case for Remedial Realignment. European Convention on Human Rights Law Review, 5(3), 380-399. https://doi.org/10.1163/26663236-bja10100 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D007; 2025D007+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Hansum, Romy T1 - Implementation of cohesion policy funds in the EU member states – who gets what, when and how? N2 - This cumulative dissertation investigates which driving forces shape the national distribution of EU cohesion policy funds. Despite the important role that distributive policies play in the EU’s governance framework, drivers beyond administrative and government capacity have been neglected in previous EU implementation research. Consequently, this dissertation aims to contribute to a more detailed understanding of the national implementation phase of EU funds. Adopting a political science perspective, three concepts are tested for EU distributive policies that have so far been primarily applied to domestic funds, namely vote-buying strategies, policy continuity, and non-demand. The three separate analyses explore on the distribution of cohesion policy funds across regions, budgetary priorities, and beneficiaries. Cohesion policy funds are chosen as a relevant and appropriate case due to their important financial volume, their long-standing implementation in all member states, and their interesting variance in implementation during the Covid-19 pandemic. The dissertation draws on qualitative and quantitative methods, spanning from interviews conducted in one region to statistical analyses including all EU member states. The findings are threefold. First, the analysis shows that vote-buying strategies do not explain the allocation of cohesion policy funds across EU regions. Despite the extraordinary discretion of the national governments in the studied Covid-19 recovery programme REACT-EU, electorally opportune regions are not targeted with these cohesion policy funds. Second, policy continuity characterizes the budgetary choices of national governments during the implementation phase. Even though the national political and socioeconomic context changes, national governments largely adhere to past budgetary priorities. Third, a lack of applications from potential beneficiary organisations can be a challenge despite adequate administrative capacity. Non-demand mainly results from unawareness of the offers, a too high administrative burden, and a low need for additional funding. In brief, the findings indicate that even with adequate government and administrative capacities, inherent processes and third parties have a larger impact on the distribution of EU funds than deliberate political actions and strategies. The results of the dissertation provide avenues for future EU implementation research but are also of interest for reforms of the cohesion policy funds and the development of new EU distributive policies. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 06/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-58950 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5895 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter 2: Hansum, R. (2025). The Role of Electoral Interests in the National Distribution of EU Covid‐19 Funds. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 63(4), 1027–1051. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13711 Chapter 3: Hansum, R. (2025). Continuity amid change: Explaining budgetary choices in the national implementation of EU cohesion policy funds. European Union Politics, 14651165251365553. https://doi.org/10.1177/14651165251365553 Chapter 4: Hansum, R. (2025). 'Why organizations leave money on the table: explaining non-demand for EU funds'. Regional & Federal Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2025.2485052 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D006; 2025D006+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Garten, Felix T1 - Hierarchical Networks in Finance and Trade: How Do Digital Platforms Shape Foreign Markets? N2 - The digital economy has reached a point where the globalization of trade and finance is increasing, rather than decreasing, power structures between states, as complex interdependence theory suggests. In this cumulative dissertation, I shed more light on digital platforms that have built infrastructures and act as intermediaries between states. I define these platforms as hierarchical networks because they build power structures between states that shape foreign markets. To understand the underlying mechanism, I provide answers to the guiding research question: How do hierarchical networks of digital platforms shape foreign markets? Using a unique network structure approach, I explore new angles in the political economy and international relations literature. I develop four theoretical types that describe varying degrees of market power shaped by economic dependence and the regulatory environment. To further understand the conditions, I use these theoretical types to select suitable cases for the analysis of hierarchical networks. In chapter 2, Nora Kurzdorfer and I show that the EU is an example of the Autonomous Sphere. The EU has a strong regulatory framework that limits the spread of digital hierarchical networks. In chapter 3, I show that Malaysia and Singapore are examples of the Center-Controlled Sphere, where China’s hierarchical network shapes the markets according to the interests of the Chinese government. In chapter 4, I show how countries that are part of the Sovereigntist Sphere, can use the nature of hierarchical networks to shield against Chinese or US-American payment platforms that countries economically depend on. In this dissertation, I use a mixed methods approach. In chapter 2, Nora Kurzdorfer and I build a theoretical framework guiding a case study that explores both quantitative and qualitative data on the eWTP Belgium. In chapters 3 and 4, I use comparative studies to analyze semi-structured interviews and several background conversations with policy makers, regulators and business experts working in the FinTech sector in India, Malaysia and Singapore. I show that hierarchical networks of digital platforms in finance and trade build new market infrastructures that either create dependencies or that shield from dependencies on US-American or Chinese networks. These networks therefore align with the existing order or build an alternative order. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 05/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-58060 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5806 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D005; 2025D005+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Simstich, Anna T1 - Ministerial policy autonomy in executive policy formulation N2 - Bureaucratic influence on public policies is both necessary and potentially problematic for democratic governance. However, surprisingly little is known about how ministerial bureaucracies exercise their policy autonomy (or influence potential) in executive policymaking. This dissertation investigates under what conditions policy bureaucracies have high policy autonomy in policy formulation. It focuses on the role of lead ministerial departments in policy formulation in parliamentary democracies. From an organizational perspective and in a case-oriented research design, it analyzes two dimensions of ministerial policy autonomy: 1. Under what conditions lead ministries successfully realize their policy preferences in policy proposals and 2. under what conditions these ministerial policy proposals prevail throughout executive coordination. Based on comparative case studies on the design of a technical, low-salience waste policy provision in the French and German environment ministries, this study finds that ministerial drafts do not always reflect the policy position of the lead ministry. Instead, the realization of ministerial policy positions in ministerial drafts depends on their ability to mobilize political support or expertise in favor of their policy proposal. They do so based on their organizational interests in anticipation of opposition from political executives and stakeholders. Second, based on a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of German policy proposals, this dissertation finds that technical and low-salience ministerial policy proposals tend to prevail throughout executive coordination. In contrast, coalition partners hold each other to account in executive coordination on politically salient cross-cutting reforms leading to major edits of ministerial drafts. Overall, the findings indicate a surprisingly moderate ministerial policy autonomy in consensual parliamentary systems of government. The relative policy autonomy of the policy bureaucracy and political executives over policy proposals depends on the type of policy, i.e. their complexity, political salience to the coalition government, and alignment with bureaucratic interests. This points to a functioning democratic control of ministerial bureaucracies in policy formulation. Further research is needed, however, to better understand the substantive policy preferences of policy bureaucracies, how they exercise their organizational role of balancing political preferences, stakeholder interests, and professional expertise and how the organizational structure, politicization and civil service systems of ministerial bureaucracies affect ministerial policy autonomy in practice. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 04/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-57630 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5763 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D004; 2025D004+1 N1 - List of publications: Simstich, A. (2025). Bureaucratic politics in customized implementation of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive in France and Germany. Journal of Public Policy, 1–25. doi:10.1017/S0143814X2500011X ER - TY - THES A1 - Goedeking, Matthias T1 - Weak Ties, Strong Threats? Building and Undermining Inter-Ethnic Coalitions in Civil Wars N2 - This dissertation examines how ethnic groups cooperate against the state in civil wars and how the state strategically responds to this threat of multi-ethnic rebellion. Through three papers, I demonstrate that, first, ethnic groups frequently form coalitions in civil wars when structural conditions facilitate trust-building; second, states preemptively co-opt small ethnic groups when they could serve as bridges between potential challenger groups; and third, governments strategically direct economic investments toward excluded groups that occupy central positions in ethnic networks to prevent conflict diffusion. Leveraging group-level data on ethnic power relations, settlement patterns, and economic development at a global scale, I show that rather than being isolated actors, ethnic groups exist in networks of ties that shape both their ability to become part of threatening inter-ethnic rebellions and state responses to this threat. The findings contribute to our understanding of ethnic politics by highlighting the role of inter-ethnic relations in driving minority group behavior and ethnic politics. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 03/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-57464 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5746 N1 - Shelf mark: 2025D003; 2025D003+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Michel, Cynthia L. T1 - Social policy expansion in Latin America amidst limited capacities N2 - . T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 01/2025 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-56813 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5681 N1 - The following paper has been published: III. Unraveling How Intermediary-Beneficiary Interaction Shapes Policy Expansion: The case of Paid Domestic Workers in Mexico • Published as: Michel, C. L. (2024). Unraveling how intermediary-beneficiary interaction shapes policy implementation. Regulation & Governance. https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12592 N1 - shelfmark: 2025D001 + 2025D001+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kürzdörfer, Nora Marie T1 - The End of the Golden Weather? — Addressing the Geoeconomic Shift in Global Trade Governance N2 - . T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 13/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-56588 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5658 N1 - shelfmark: 2024D013 + 2024D013+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Arend, Tom T1 - Voting With Your Wallet? Essays on Accountability and the Economic Vote N2 - . T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 12/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-56114 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5611 N1 - shelfmark: 2024D012 + 2024D012+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Frank, Emily T1 - Bureaucracy as Borders: Refugees’ Experiences of Citizenship at Government Offices N2 - . T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 11/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-56104 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5610 N1 - shelfmark: 2024D011 + 2024D011+1 N1 - A part of this dissertation has been published: Chapter 2 Frank, E. (2025). “Why It’s Different?”: Hierarchies of (Non-) Belonging in German Refugee Categorizations. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2025.2529497 ER - TY - THES A1 - Ramos, Vincent Jerald R. T1 - Essays on the Causes and Demographic Consequences of Employment Uncertainty N2 - . T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 10/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-55990 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5599 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published. Chapter 2: Ramos, V. J. (2024). Extreme Lockdowns and the Gendered Informalization of Employment: Evidence from the Philippines. Work, Employment and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170241247121 Chapter 4: This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use (https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-science/policies/accepted-manuscript-terms), but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-023-09656-5 Kreyenfeld, M., Konietzka, D., Lambert, P., & Ramos, V. J. (2023). Second Birth Fertility in Germany: Social Class, Gender, and the Role of Economic Uncertainty. European Journal of Population, 39(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-023-09656-5 N1 - shelfmark: 2024D010 + 2024D010+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Naujoks, Tabea T1 - The division of labor in couples with children: A dyadic analysis in the German context N2 - This cumulative dissertation examines how couples with children in Germany divide paid and unpaid work and identifies several factors related to a more egalitarian division of labor. In the first paper, I focus on the division of paid work in couples with children, comparing female same-sex and different-sex couples, which constitutes an empirical novelty. Discussing the applicability of division of labor theories to same-sex couples, I further exploit the historically shaped gender culture of East and West Germany. Based on the German Microcensus (2010-2019) and using pooled OLS regressions, I show that female same-sex couples divide paid work more equally than different-sex couples. Comparing East and West Germany, I find a similarly equal division of paid work among same-sex and different-sex couples in the East, while different-sex couples in the West specialize more. The analysis highlights the importance of the cultural context and normative explanations of the division of labor. The second paper turns to childcare, the intersection of the paid working life with the father’s contribution to childcare being a key concern of researchers and policymakers. The COVID-19 pandemic and the short-time work scheme provided a “natural experiment” for investigating this nexus. Based on IAB-HOPP data and multinomial logistic regressions, we show that fathers in short-time work take over more care responsibilities than fathers continuously employed with regular working 1 hours. The findings indicate that policies targeting men’s working hours can affect the gendered distribution of childcare within couples. The third paper focuses on the methodological problem of analyzing the division of unpaid work in couples often from one partner’s perspective only. Therefore, I examine the determinants of ‘perception gaps’ (defined as the mismatches between partners’ responses). Based on pairfam data, I analyze respondents’ reports on housework and childcare during the transition to first parenthood and show that a substantial perception gap exists, with 30% regarding housework and 25% concerning childcare. Results of the logistic regressions indicate that perception gaps are lowest among couples where the woman is employed or highly educated. These findings clearly underline the importance of a dyadic perspective on the division of labor in couples. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 09/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-55381 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5538 N1 - Part of this dissertation has been published: Chapter 3 Journal article: Naujoks, T., Kreyenfeld, M., & Dummert, S. (2022). The division of child care during the coronavirus crisis in Germany: How did short-time work affect fathers’ engagement? Journal of Family Research, 34(1), 67-98. https://doi.org/10.20377/jfr-717 Pre-print: Naujoks, T., Kreyenfeld, M., & Dummert, S. (2021). The Coronavirus Crisis, Fathers’ Short-Time Work, and the Division of Child Care in Couples. Working Paper. Hertie School. https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-3870 Chapter 4 Naujoks, T. (2024). The division of housework and childcare from a dyadic perspective: Discrepancies between partners’ reports across the transition to parenthood. Demographic Research, 51, 927–964. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2024.51.30 N1 - shelf mark: 2024D009 + 2024D009+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Auz, Juan T1 - Dissecting the Inter-American Human Rights System in the Age of Climate Change N2 - This dissertation examines, from a socio-legal approach, the implications of the climate crisis on the adjudicative functions of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS). In particular, it focuses on three general aspects of the adjudicative building blocks: access to the climate litigation process, interpretation of the relevant legal norms, and the design and impact of the remedies awarded. To that end, this dissertation comprises six papers addressing one or more of said general aspects. The first paper is about accessing the phenomenon of climate litigation itself. Mapping the legal opportunity structures of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) reveals how human rights-based climate litigation is developing. The multiplication of cases and the inchoate successes are partly explained by the IAHRS’s legal standards in the applicant’s arguments. However, it contrasts such development by laying bare potential barriers arising from the region’s extractivist economies and hyper-presidential constitutional designs. The second and third papers situate the IAHRS in the scholarly descriptions of international human rights and environmental law. It argues that the IAHRS is a relatively progressive space for protecting human rights because of its constant interaction with marginalised communities in LAC. The resultant interpretation of human rights can be crucial in a climate litigation case in the IAHRS. However, filling in the details for the content of the right to a healthy environment and extraterritorial obligations is still pending. The fourth, fifth and sixth papers discuss the tensions between climate litigation and justice in Global South jurisdictions, such as LAC. They explore why climate justice dimensions might be at odds with the results of a successful climate ruling that orders a State to remedy a plaintiff when such a State did not contribute meaningfully to generating and perpetuating the climate crisis in the first place. This tension is transposed to the IAHRS while adding the difficulty of non-compliance with systemic remedial orders. The papers explore how the organs of the IAHRS could address these tensions and reimagine remedies for the climate crisis. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 08/2024 Y1 - 2024 N1 - List of publications: Auz, J. (2022). Human rights-based climate litigation: A Latin American cartography. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2022.01.05 Auz, J. (2021). Situating the Inter-American Human Rights System in the Oscillation of International Law. Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.5070/LP62155395 Auz, J. (2021). ‘So, This Is Permanence’: The Inter-American Human Rights System as a Liminal Space for Climate Justice. Melbourne Journal of International Law, 22(2). https://law.unimelb.edu.au/mjil/issues/issue-archive/volume-222-2021 Auz, J. (2022). Two Reputed Allies: Reconciling Climate Justice and Litigation in the Global South. In C. Rodríguez-Garavito (Ed.), Litigating the Climate Emergency (pp. 145–156). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009106214.009 Auz, J. (2024). The Political Ecology of Climate Remedies in Latin America and the Caribbean: Comparing Compliance between National and Inter-American Litigation. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 16(1), 182–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/huad057 Auz, J. (2023). Climate Crisis and the Testing of International Human Rights Remedies: Forecasting the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In S. Maljean-Dubois & J. Peel (Eds.), Climate Change and the Testing of International Law / Le droit international au défi des changements climatiques. The Centre for Studies and Research in International Law and International Relations. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1875-8096_pplcdu_A9789004682399_13 N1 - shelf mark: 2024D008 + 2024D008+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Daub, Sara T1 - External Diaspora Sponsorship to Rebel Organizations. Causes and Consequences N2 - While intrastate conflicts remain the dominant form of armed conflict and migration receives increasing attention, the international dimension of civil wars, particularly non-state sponsorship, has largely been overlooked. This dissertation examines the phenomenon of diasporas as external sponsors in intrastate conflicts. It investigates: (1) Why do diasporas support rebel organizations? (2) Under what conditions is diaspora support more or less likely? (3) How does diaspora sponsorship of rebel organizations impact civilian victimization and rebel governance? To understand the logic of diaspora support, I employ a principal-agent framework. Conflict, rebel group, diaspora, and homeland characteristics are determinants of diaspora sponsorship. I argue that diasporas aim for kin support and changes in the homeland and consequently prefer limited violence against civilians and co-ethnic civilians. Diasporas benefit from delegating the task of combat and limited civilian victimization but risk agency slack. Concurrently, the rebel organization gains additional resources but loses autonomy. I introduce an information-sharing mechanism between co-ethnics in the conflict zone and the diaspora, which enhances the monitoring capability of the diaspora. I employ a mixed-methods approach to answer the research questions. Interviews conducted in the Washington DC area with members of various diasporas and experts provide evidence for the information-sharing between the diaspora and co-ethnics. I produced a unique data set on diaspora support for African and Asian intrastate conflicts between 1989 and 2014. Findings from multiple large-N analyses, utilizing extreme bounds analysis, logistic regression, and negative binomial analyses, serve as the empirical base for examining the causes and consequences of diaspora sponsorship to rebel organizations. I demonstrate that conflict and rebel group characteristics are strong determinants of diaspora sponsorship, while homeland and diaspora characteristics yield mixed results. Diaspora support significantly reduces the number of civilian killings. The impacts on ethnic violence and rebel governance are heterogeneous. Overall, this dissertation enriches our understanding of diasporas’ roles as external actors in conflict dynamics and as non-state sponsors for rebel organizations. It opens further avenues for researching civilian-rebel relationships and host country-homeland dynamics. Policy discussions may follow around monitoring of sponsorship activities and the responsibilities of host countries. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 07/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-54847 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5484 N1 - Shelf mark: 2024D007 + 2024D007+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Lohse, Anna Prisca T1 - Higher Education in an Age of Disruption: Comparing European Internationalisation Policies N2 - This book investigates European higher education internationalisation policies during a period marked by extreme upheaval due to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. Situating her analysis at the intersection of higher education research and policy studies, the author combines historical and sociological institutionalism to investigate how this time of disruption impacted higher education policies in England, France and Germany. Based on extensive qualitative data derived from expert interviews and document analysis, the study offers timely insights into dynamics of institutional change and stability in higher education governance, as well as implications for the future of cross-border education and internationalisation. The book will appeal to academics and students interested in education policy and the internationalisation of higher education. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 06/2024 Y1 - 2024 SN - 9783031579110 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57912-7 PB - Palgrave Macmillan CY - Cham ER - TY - THES A1 - Jerg, Lukas T1 - New forms of economic risk and political attitudes: Analyzing the influence of technological change and financialization in housing on political attitudes. Examining the effect of personality on the prevalence and persistence of atypical employment. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 05/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-53927 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5392 N1 - Shelf mark: 2024D005 + 2024D005+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Sorg, Alexander T1 - Understanding Foreign Deployed Nuclear Weapons N2 - This dissertation delves into the complex dynamics of U.S. nuclear weapon deployments. Scholarly work on nuclear weapons has predominantly focused on strategic forces. However, many escalation scenarios foresee the use of tactical nuclear weapons as a precursor, which could eventually lead to an all-out nuclear war. These are exactly the weapons that the United States has deployed across the world, and we know little about their strategic causes and consequences. My study addresses this gap in the literature. The first part of this dissertation investigates the causes of U.S. nuclear weapon deployments. It emphasizes the importance of assurance, which has commonly been neglected or subsumed under non-proliferation. Through a comprehensive conceptualization, I distinguish assurance from other strategies of interstate interaction, explaining how the U.S. uses nuclear weapon deployments to assure allies and maintain its sphere of influence. Utilizing an original dataset, I find evidence that largely confirms my assurance hypotheses. With regard to alternative explanations, the power projection hypotheses are supported, but the extended deterrence hypotheses are not. These results contribute to the underdeveloped literature on assurance and provide valuable insights into the strategic considerations underlying U.S. nuclear weapon deployments. The second part, which is co-authored with Julian Wucherpfennig, examines the consequences of U.S. military deployments, both conventional and nuclear. The theory of free-riding in military alliances postulates that member states piggyback on security commitments by guardian states. We argue that free-riding critically implies that foreign military deployments positively affect subjective feelings of security – in other words: that they assure. In contrast, if citizens hold skeptical views of the guardian or do not subscribe to the (extended) deterrence logic, they might experience an increase in threat perception. We investigate how foreign military deployments impact attitudes toward defense policies in host states through an observational data analysis and a survey experiment. While nuclear and conventional troop deployments decrease citizens’ subjective need for defense, they do not necessarily increase their sense of protection, challenging the logic of free-riding. Taken together, my findings suggest a mismatch between objectives and outcomes. While I find evidence that nuclear weapons are deployed to assure allies, this aim does not appear to be effective at the micro-level. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 04/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50862 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5086 N1 - Shelf mark: 2024D004 + 2024D004+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Stoll, Julius T1 - Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics: A Microeconomic Study of Snacks, Beer, and Real Estate Agents N2 - This dissertation comprises three essays. Although their titles make clear their self-contained nature, all essays share a common motivation: to combine economic theory with modern tools of causal inference to understand applied problems. The first chapter studies honesty when the costs to behave honestly change. Using field data from a snack delivery company that employs an honesty payment system, the chapter presents an event study to analyze how price increases affect pay rates. The honesty payment system expects customers to pay a listed price for each consumed snack. This allows me to measure honesty with the pay rate that compares consumption to payments. The results, which draw on deliveries from several thousand firms, show that price increases that make honest behavior more costly cause more cheating. Price increases of 15% trigger a fall in pay rates of 11%. The second chapter studies a recent legal reform in Germany, which aims to lower commission rates of real estate agents by raising the cost salience of sellers. I find that the reform has backfired and real estate agents have exploited the transition to increase their commission rates. The findings document that in some regions real estate agents increase their commission by up to 2 percentage points, adding over e6,000 in transaction cost to the average home sale. As explicit collusion is unlikely in this setting, I argue that this arbitrary increase points to seller ignorance instead. To verify if and why sellers fail to induce price competition, I run a pre-registered survey experiment with 1,062 real estate agents. Although commission rates should be negotiated independently for each sale, the survey confirms that 85% of sellers do not attempt to negotiate lower commission rates. The randomized experimental questions suggest that real estate agents may cater to the low willingness of sellers to negotiate by providing misleading reference commission rates and shrouding the economic incidence for sellers. The third chapter is co-authored with Christian Traxler and Carsten Burhop and examines the causal effect of beer on crime based on unique panel data from Germany between 1882 and 1913. Using exogenous variation in the yield of spring barley, a key input in beer production, we identify a quantitatively and qualitatively significant effect of beer on violent crimes. This effect is mainly driven by a positive effect on assaults, where our findings suggest that a 1% increase in beer production raises assault rates by the same percentage. These findings are corroborated using a complementary empirical design that exploits a brewing tax reform in Prussia. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 03/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-53268 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5326 N1 - List of publications Stoll, J. (2022). The cost of honesty: Field evidence. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 101, 101943. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2022.101943 Stoll, J. (2023). How not to reduce commission rates of real estate agents: Evidence from Germany. Berlin School of Economics (Discussion Paper No. 26). https://doi.org/10.48462/OPUS4-5077 N1 - Shelf mark: 2024D003 + 2024D003+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Uttenthal, Maria T1 - Trust in democratic societies: A conceptual, methodological, and empirical contribution N2 - This thesis is a comprehensive study of trust. The study rests on the argument that all forms of trust stem from the same universal concept. Once trust has been defined at its core, the concept can be specified within a wide variety of contexts, such as trust in your friends and family, in your fellow citizens, or in different kinds of institutions within your country. Although trust is an increasingly popular topic within the social sciences, a lack of consensus on the true meaning of the concept remains. One the one hand, this can be attributed to diverging conceptualisations in a rich and multidisciplinary conceptual literature. On the other, to empirical studies where quantifiable measures do not spring from a clear conceptual account, but rather take survey responses directly at face value. Based on this fundamental issue, the overarching goal of my thesis is to bridge the gap between the conceptual and empirical literature. I achieve this goal with three contributions. Firstly, I conduct a conceptual analysis of trust, which results in a unifying conceptual framework. The framework acknowledges and combines different conceptual understandings from political science, psychology and sociology, thereby representing a move towards clearer consensus on the meaning of trust within the conceptual literature. Secondly, I develop a new measurement model for trust, which is directly rooted in the conceptual framework. The model reflects an alternative approach to empirical research, where quantitative measures of trust are derived from a conceptual argument on the appropriate structure and dimensionality. Thirdly, I identify a typology of citizens who trust in fundamentally different ways. The typology acts as a complementary perspective on the meaning of trust, studied from the viewpoint of citizens in a heterogeneous population. As a whole, I argue that the thesis represents a new approach to trust research, where conceptual and empirical methods are closely intertwined. In order to advance our understanding of this fundamentally important concept, it is crucial to bring the two strands of the literature closer together. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 02/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-52159 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5215 N1 - Shelf mark: 2024D002 + 2024D002+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Mones, Haytham T1 - Unveiling the Dynamics of Public Value Creation on Social Media: A New Zealand Perspective N2 - In the past decade, social media has revolutionized how governments create public value through online communication and collaboration with citizens. Despite this, academic literature still lacks a comprehensive understanding of how public value is disseminated via social media. This research delves into the process of public value creation on social media in New Zealand, a leading country in leveraging social media for government-to-citizen communication, particularly during crises. The study seeks to answer two questions about creating or eroding public value over social media. The first question investigates the socio-demographic factors correlating with citizens' varying perceptions of public value from social media adoption. The findings suggest that citizens with similar public value perceptions share common socio-demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, education, trust in government, platform usage, and following government accounts. The study also reveals differences in public value perceptions based on the platform type, with platforms like Twitter garnering more positive public value perceptions than Facebook. The second question examines how using social media in government can enhance or diminish public value perceptions among citizens. The research constructs a causal model where specific social media practices during peaceful and crisis times, along with the engagement of external stakeholders, lead to increased perceptions of public value creation. The study also uncovers two causal mechanisms for the erosion of public value. In the first model, government reactions to opposing opinions on social media, such as hiding or removing comments, result in low public value perceptions. The second model shows that over-posting or posting irrelevant information can reduce citizens’ trust in the government, limit government posts' reach, and lower public value perception. This research encourages future studies to replicate the experiment across various platforms and countries to better understand how public value can be created or eroded over social media. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 01/2024 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-52099 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5209 N1 - Shelf mark: 2024D001 + 2024D001+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Lindemann, Korinna O. T1 - The Indelible Past: The Effects of Authoritarianism on Political Behaviour T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 11/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-51975 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5197 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D011 + 2023D011+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Nicolaides, Panayiotis T1 - Essays on the Economics of Taxation T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 10/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-51510 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5151 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D010 + 2023D010+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Sgarlato, Raffaele T1 - Weather-driven electricity systems T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 09/2023 Y1 - 2023 N1 - List of publications: Sgarlato, R., & Ziel, F. (2023). The role of weather predictions in electricity price forecasting beyond the day-ahead horizon. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 38(3), 2500–2511. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPWRS.2022.3180119 Sgarlato, R. (2023). Statistical electricity price forecasting: A structural approach. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2306.14186 Tiedemann, S., Sgarlato, R., & Hirth, L. (2023). Price elasticity of electricity demand: Using instrumental variable regressions to address endogeneity and autocorrelation of high-frequency time series. https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2306.12863 Ruhnau, O., Eicke, A., Sgarlato, R., Tröndle, T., & Hirth, L. (2022). Cost-potential curves of onshore wind energy: The role of disamenity costs. Environmental and Resource Economics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-022-00746-2 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D009 + 2023D009+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Oswald, Lisa T1 - Public Discourse in Online Environments. Contributions to description, measurement and communication behavior change in political online ecosystems N2 - The public discourse is an essential element of democracy. Today, political information consumption is largely mediated through digital technologies and important political discussions have moved to online platforms. This dissertation examines different elements and dynamics of the online public discourse within five research articles. First, a systematic review synthesizes evidence on the broader relationship between digital media and democracy, which highly depends on political context. While most beneficial effects of information access and political participation can be found in autocratic regimes and emerging democracies, there is more reason for concern in established democracies where negative effects on political trust, populism and polarization accumulate. Next, using digital trace data combined with survey data to zoom into the political information ecosystem in Germany, I find that it consists of far more than news media, but that in-depth political discussions also take place in seemingly unpolitical niches of the internet. While the user base of online public broadcasting consists of a comparably narrow audience, most citizens consume political content via mainstream information hubs that can provide a common basis for public discourse. The most predictive variable for selection into political information consumption is political knowledge, not partisanship. However, people who actively write comments online show more extreme political opinions, highlighting differences between active and passive political engagement online. This differential selection pattern is further mirrored in the final project, where high levels of social media activity also relate to stronger comment toxicity. An agenda to reduce online toxicity requires an efficient method to measure the quality of online discussions. Using discussion data from Reddit, I compare simple computational measures to manual content coding and find that an automated toxicity classifier combined with the length of comments corresponds to established indicators of deliberative quality. I then develop a preemptive strategy with the aim to reduce toxicity in political discussions among highly active social media users. Testing various behavioral interventions, I find that simple ‘nudges’ in the user interface do not reduce the toxicity of comments. However, mixed findings on a more complex ‘boosting’ intervention, explaining the role of empathy and perspective taking for political discussions, evince opportunities to open up online public discourse for those who may otherwise be silenced by high levels of toxicity. Especially when combined with established approaches of survey methodology and content analysis, computational social science commands many tools to map elements and dynamics of the online public discourse from a holistic perspective. This does not only bear potential to reconnect theoretical ideals of the public sphere with real life online, but it also enables the generation of evidence for policymakers and civil society to keep up with the pace of the fast moving target of digital media. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 08/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50666 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5066 N1 - List of publications 1. Lorenz-Spreen, P., Oswald, L., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2023). A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01460-1 2. Oswald, L. (2022). More than news! Mapping the deliberative potential of a political online ecosystem with digital trace data. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/68udg 3. Oswald, L., Munzert, S., Barberá, P., Guess, A., & Yang, J. (2022). Beyond the tip of the iceberg? Exploring characteristics of the online public with digital trace data. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/yfmzh 4. Oswald, L. (2022). Automating the analysis of online deliberation? A comparison of manual and computational measures applied to climate change discussions. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/qmzwx 5. Oswald, L. (2023). Effects of preemptive empathy interventions on reply toxicity among highly active social media users. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/evdxy N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D008 + 2023D008+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Brüggmann, Daniel T1 - Consequences of Divorce in Germany N2 - This cumulative dissertation investigates the economic consequences of divorce in Germany. It includes a general introduction (Chapter 1), three research papers (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) and one article that validates the data quality (Chapter 5). The analysis is based on register data from the statutory German pension fund. The data provide not only large sample sizes but also detailed earnings, employment and marital histories of the divorcees. On the basis of these data, the (causal) effects of divorce on employment, health and earnings are examined by relying on the propensity score framework. However, because propensity scores are sensible to the estimation strategy and the observed covariates, robustness checks with alternative estimation frameworks are also performed. Finally, to address the issue of hidden bias, estimated results are also challenged by sensitivity analyses. The results may be summarised as follows: Among other strategies, women can cope with economic strain connected with divorce by increasing their labor supply and/or by earning higher incomes (compared to their married counterparts). While the income effect is negligible, the employment effect is very pronounced. I find particularly strong negative employment effects with respect to marginal employment and strong positive effects with respect to regular employment. Furthermore, the lower the labour market attachment before separation, the more pronounced the employment effect. Aside from labour market outcomes, health (measured in days of work disability) also declined considerably around the time of separation. However, I demonstrate that a naïve descriptive investigation would overestimate the effect of divorce on health because there is substantial selection into divorce. Thus, poor health is not only a cause of divorce but also a pathway to divorce. Lastly, the data set allowed me to link former couples and examine their employment and earning trajectories across divorce. Results indicate that women’s earnings increased in the years around divorce, whereas their ex-partner’s earnings declined. Nevertheless, huge gender differences persist. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 07/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50610 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5061 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter 2: Women’s employment, income and divorce in West Germany: A causal approach. The version of record of this article, first published in Journal for Labour Market Research, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-020-00270-0 Brüggmann, D. (2020). Women’s employment, income and divorce in West Germany: A causal approach. Journal for Labour Market Research, 54(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-020-00270-0 Chapter 3: Earnings Trajectories after Divorce: The Legacies of the Earner Model during Marriage. The version of record of this article, first published in Population Research and Policy Review, is available online at Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09756-4 Brüggmann, D., & Kreyenfeld, M. (2023). Earnings Trajectories After Divorce: The Legacies of the Earner Model During Marriage. Population Research and Policy Review, 42(2), 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09756-4 Chapter 4: Work disability and divorce. Published in: Brüggmann, D. (2020). Work Disability and Divorce. In M. Kreyenfeld & H. Trappe (Eds.), Parental Life Courses after Separation and Divorce in Europe (pp. 289–308). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44575-1_14 Chapter 5: Statutory Pension Insurance Accounts and divorce: A new scientific use file. The final publication is available at www.degruyter.com. Keck, W., Radenacker, A., Brüggmann, D., Kreyenfeld, M., & Mika, T. (2020). Statutory Pension Insurance Accounts and Divorce: A New Scientific Use File. Jahrbücher Für Nationalökonomie Und Statistik, 240(6), 825–835. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2019-0064 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D007 + 2023D007+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Darius, Philipp T1 - Are social media platforms accelerators of democratic fragmentation? An inquiry into the relationship of democratic fragmentation and social media platforms in three political arenas: political campaigns, protest movements and democratic institutions N2 - Whilst social media platforms provide global communication environments, these platforms are not primarily designed for political debates. This may have adverse effects on democracy and contribute to democratic fragmentation. This dissertation project investigates the role of social media platforms as potential accelerators of fragmentation in established democracies. The overarching question of this dissertation explores to what extent social media platforms may contribute to fragmentation that may result in the erosion of democracy. This dissertation comprises three articles focusing on three political arenas 1) political campaigns, 2) protest movements, and 3) democratic institutions. The first paper investigates the polarisation of online political behaviour on Twitter in democratic election campaigns. The analysis is based on Twitter data of German political parties and election hashtags during the final week of the 2017 and 2021 German Federal elections. The study’s findings suggest that the far-right party AfD seeks to polarise online discourse as a strategy and that far-right online partisans may influence the public reception of politicians and established parties. The second paper examines the formation of protest movements on Twitter during the Covid-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The study monitors two established conspiracy narratives and their communities on Twitter, the anti-vaccination and anti-5G communities, before and during the first UK lockdown. The study finds that, despite content moderation efforts by Twitter, conspiracy groups were able to proliferate their messages and influence broader public discourses on Twitter, such as #Lockdown in the United Kingdom. The findings underline social platforms' potential for protest formation that can result in disinformed social movements. The third paper inspects social platform companies’ mimicking of democratic institutions like Meta’s oversight board for content decisions that may erode existing democratic institutions. The study traces the emergence of the supreme court metaphor for Meta’s oversight board and its use in the US News discourse. The findings emphasise how private organisations and the use of constitutional metaphors can erode the legitimacy of supreme courts and other democratic institutions. The dissertation’s findings imply that social media platforms, besides their democratically desirable function for democratic participation and deliberative potentials, contribute to democratic fragmentation in the inspected arenas of political campaigns, disinformed protest movements and democratic institutions. Thus, extended research data access is key to better understanding the social implications of social media platforms and finding adequate regulations of recommender systems, content moderation, and advertisement-based business models. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 06/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50557 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5055 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter 3: Darius P (2022) “Who Polarizes Twitter? Ideological Polarisation, Partisan Groups and Strategic Networked Campaigning on Twitter during the 2017 and 2021 German Federal Elections ‘Bundestagswahlen.’” Social Network Analysis and Mining 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-022-00958-w. The version of record of this article, first published in Social Network Analysis and Mining, is available online at the Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-022-00958-w Chapter 4: Darius P, Urquhart M (2021) “Disinformed Social Movements: A Large-Scale Mapping of Conspiracy Narratives as Online Harms during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Online Social Networks and Media 26: 100174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.osnem.2021.100174 Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Chapter 5: Cowls J, Darius P, Santistevan D, Schramm M (2022) “Constitutional Metaphors: Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court’ and the Legitimation of Platform Governance.” New Media & Society, April 5, 2022, 14614448221085560. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221085559 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D006 + 2023D006+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Schmauk, Sarah T1 - Divorce and economic wellbeing. A life course perspective on the interplay of work-family lives in West Germany and Sweden N2 - This cumulative dissertation investigates the relationship between divorce and economic wellbeing from a life course perspective in West Germany and Sweden. The analyses are based on large-scale register data from the German public pension and the Swedish population registers. The first paper studies mothers’ earnings trajectories from one year before their first childbirth until ten years after in both countries. Separation negatively affects mothers’ earnings trajectories in Sweden, while it positively affects them in West Germany. In Sweden, although the earnings of separated mothers lag behind those of partnered mothers, both groups can surpass their pre-birth earnings, which is not the case for either separated or partnered mothers from western Germany. The second paper investigates how divorce relates to retirement trajectories, defined as the monthly insurance history from age 50 to age 65 of women and men in West Germany. Divorcees are more likely than married to retire through unstable retirement trajectories characterised by receipt of reduced-earnings-capacity pensions and unemployment. Whereas the relationship between divorce and retirement trajectories seems to be overall adverse for men, it is more ambiguous for women. Some divorced women are also more likely than married women to retire through a stable high-income trajectory. The third paper compares the gendered consequences of divorce on public pension income in both countries. Divorced women from West Germany have significantly higher public pension incomes than married women. The German ‘divorce splitting’ mechanism increases women’s and decreases men’s pension incomes, which contributes to equalising their public pension incomes. In Sweden, women show comparable pension incomes across marital status, although divorced women have slightly lower pension incomes, while divorced men receive approximately 26 % less pension income than married men. The dissertation illustrates that family and work life are intertwined, that they unfold gradually across the life course, and that the welfare state context shapes the interrelation of divorce and economic wellbeing: The event of divorce (and separation) not only directly impacts employment biographies of mothers but is, in a long-term perspective, related to retirement trajectories of women and men and their public pension incomes. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 05/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50499 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5049 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D005 + 2023D005+1 N1 - List of publications Schmauk, S., & Kridahl, L. (2024). Who receives most? Gendered consequences of divorce on public pension income in West Germany and Sweden. Ageing and Society, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X23000703 Schmauk, S. (2024). Pathways to retirement in West Germany: Does divorce matter? Advances in Life Course Research, 60, 100595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcr.2024.100595 Schmauk, S., & Nylin, A.-K. (2025). Mothers’ earnings trajectories in Sweden and West Germany: The role of separation, socioeconomic position, and the welfare state. Genus, 81(1), 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-025-00270-3 ER - TY - THES A1 - Rackwitz, Maike T1 - Understanding the causes, dynamics, and consequences of corporatization: An analysis of local government evidence in England and Germany N2 - This dissertation explores corporatization–the provision of public services by publicly-owned companies–as a specific public management reform that has strongly been endorsed in the last decades. However, despite the significance of corporatization in public administration and the controversy over its viability as a strategy for enhancing public service provision, there is limited empirical research on its trajectory and associated effects. This dissertation fills this important gap in the literature by examining the causes, dynamics, and consequences of corporatization. It challenges the claim that we are witnessing a resurgence of the state in recent years, resulting in a pendulum shift from the private to the public sector. A mixed-methods approach is employed to analyze three original datasets from English and German local government contexts. Theoretical perspectives rooted in rational choice are complemented by those accounting for irrational ambiguity to capture the unique ambidexterity of corporatization. After clarifying the theoretical background in Chapter 1, this exploration unfolds across three empirical chapters. Chapter 2 investigates what drives corporatization. It reveals that ownership structures in corporatization have become increasingly complex and political–rather than economic–incentives may explain shifts toward indirect municipal ownership. Chapter 3 examines what causes corporatization to reverse. It shows that a return of services to the core local government after a company closes is less likely than other forms of service provision, while the type of service is the factor that matters most for termination decisions. Chapter 4 analyzes how local governments experience and cope with reverse corporatization. Local governments and their employees evidently and mutually impact the return process, which can induce private sector-informed change within the bureaucracy, albeit with limited transformative power. Ultimately, this dissertation finds no clear evidence of a pendulum shift toward the local public sector. This conclusion follows from conceptual and empirical differentiation and depends on how corporatization is framed, as well as on the specific country, service type, and dimension of public influence considered. It also suggests that the notion of the pendulum shift needs reevaluation. For practitioners, this holds several implications that encourage optimism about reform, and advise against an arbitrary approach to diversifying costs. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 04/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50441 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5044 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter 3. Termination traits of local government corporatization This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Public Management Review on 26 April 2023, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2204323 Rackwitz, M. (2023). Fraught with tension? A machine-learning approach to termination traits of public corporations in English and German local governments. Public Management Review, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2204323 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D004 + 2023D004+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Abels, Christoph M. T1 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Lie. Investigating Intra- and Extra-Individual Factors of Susceptibility to False Information N2 - At least since the 2016 presidential elections in the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, misinformation has gained increasing prominence in the public discourse. Only four years later, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and was accompanied by an “Infodemic”, misleading individuals about the origin of the virus, its severity, and the intentions of governments coping with the virus. Misinformation was itself deemed a considerable threat to public health. Although COVID-19 misinformation was widely circulating at that time, and continues to do so, a substantial share of individuals did not believe this misleading information. That begs the question, why do people fall for misinformation? This question is at the heart of this dissertation project, which explores the role of social media, trust, and values in individuals’ susceptibility to false information. Through comparative research, the project investigates how these variables affect the reception of misinformation and attempts to combine multiple levels of analysis and consider different forms of misinformation. The core of this dissertation consists of three chapters, each of which addresses the research question from a different but complementary perspective. Chapter 2 provides the conceptual basis for the subsequent empirical chapters. The chapter investigates how individual, group, and system-level variables contribute to social media’s role as a vector for misinformation. In the third chapter, I employ an experimental research design to assess whether superficial characteristics of different social media platforms affect users’ credibility judgements regarding manufactured news. Contrary to existing literature, the experiment’s results suggest that social media platforms do not differ in their effects on perceived credibility of news. The fourth chapter builds on data from a multinational research project that explored the role of values during the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on individuals’ propensity to believe in COVID-19-related conspiracy theories. Through a comparative design, using samples from Germany and Poland, the chapter finds considerable differences in the pattern of influential values and trust concepts on the adoption of conspiracy beliefs. Although the findings of this dissertation project come with limitations, the research nevertheless highlights the importance of comparative research designs in the study of misinformation. The dissertation concludes by discussing avenues for further research. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 03/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-50130 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-5013 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D003 + 2023D003+1 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Peitz, Laura Francesca T1 - The Dual Nature of Multilateral Development Banks: Balancing Development and Financial Logics N2 - This Element offers a novel, highly relevant perspective towards Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), which are development and financial organizations at the same time. Based on the elaborate institutional logics perspective borrowed from organizational sociology, it uncovers the complex trade-offs between financial and development pressures faced by MDBs and explains variation in organizational responses thereto across types of MDBs. The argument is tested with an original dataset using Data Envelopment Analysis to explain variation in response patterns across MDBs. The analysis shows that lending to the private sector as well as being predominantly owned by borrowing members increase MDBs' emphasis on the financial at the expense of the development nature. Thereby, this Element provides unique insights into MDBs' responses to their dual nature and significantly advances our understanding of MDB lending operations, drawing attention to the complexities involved in the unique MDB business model. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 02/2023 Y1 - 2023 SN - 9781009392303 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009392297 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D002 + 2023D002+1 PB - Cambridge University Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - THES A1 - Cova, Joshua T1 - The new political economy of wage formation: Party-political preferences, growth models and EU preferences N2 - Wage formation in Europe has undergone considerable changes over the past decades. In particular, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Eurozone crisis have significantly accelerated and enhanced liberalization reforms in wage bargaining and industrial relations in several European countries. Moreover, decreasing collective bargaining coverage, lower union membership rates, weaker social actors and increasing low-wage employment have allowed the state to play an increasingly important role in the regulation and the stipulation of wage minima. The growing importance of governments in the political economy of wage formation is nowhere clearer to observe than in the politicization of statutory minimum wages: minimum wages have not only progressively become the ‘going rate’ for low-wage employment in a variety of countries displaying different political-economic characteristics, but have also featured prominently in electoral debates. Using state-of-the-art quantitative research methods, I examine this remarkable transition in Chapters 2-3 and provide empirical evidence contextualizing the transformation of Europe’s low-wage policy space. As it is also important to acknowledge the important role played by the EU institutions in structuring member states’ wage-setting systems, I examine in Chapter 4 the growing relevance of the new European economic governance in determining member states’ labour markets and wage bargaining mechanisms. This dissertation is composed of three single-authored chapters and is structured as follows: Chapter 1, serve as this thesis’ introduction. Here, I present the rationale for focusing on minimum wages and wage formation, I describe the main debates in the academic literature and lay out how the papers I have worked on contribute to the topics I address. This is followed by the presentation of the three chapters, which examine the topic of change in the political economy of wage formation and in particular of minimum wages over the last decades in Europe. Chapter 2 offers a first assessment of the political, economic and institutional determinants of minimum wage growth in Europe. By using quantitative text analysis and statistical methods, I show that the electoral salience of minimum wages has increased. Chapter 3 builds upon the increased politicization of minimum wages, which I find empirical evidence for in Chapter 2, by contextualizing the role of minimum wages in different European political economies. By building on new research in the field of European comparative political economy, which has focused on the drivers of aggregate demand, I examine the existence of long-term equilibria between minimum wage growth, taken as proxy for government-determined wage-led growth, and household consumption and exports. As the EU institutions have been found to be important actors in driving change in wage-setting mechanisms, I devote my final paper (Chapter 4) to an assessment of the wage bargaining preferences of the European Commission within the framework of the new European economic governance. In particular, I focus on the drivers of country-specific recommendations (CSRs) in wage bargaining. In this paper, I find that recommendations in the field of wage bargaining are mostly decoupled from time-varying economic indicators and are instead tied to country-specific institutional factors. Finally, I conclude by summarizing my results on change in the European low-wage policy space, my contributions to evolving and still far from resolved debates in the literature of the political economy of advanced European capitalist democracies’ wage formation and point to possible future avenues of research. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 01/2023 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-47056 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4705 N1 - Shelf mark: 2023D001 + 2023D001+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Salazar Morales, Diego Alonso T1 - Patterns towards Effective Policy Implementation in Patrimonialist Bureaucracies N2 - This thesis seeks to respond to the central question of how successful public policies could be obtained in countries whose bureaucracies are predominantly considered as ‘patrimonialist’. To respond to this guiding question, and by departing from existing public administration on bureaucratic professionalism and policy effectiveness, I formulate that the different conjunction of institutional incentives, motivations and abilities of policy actors might structure varied patterns of effective policy delivery in patrimonialist contexts. Drawing on this framework, three arguments are advanced in this dissertation. First, I sustain that in patrimonialist bureaucracies, politicians have powered access to shape the inclusion and promotion of bureaucrats therefore being central for policy delivery. Second, I sustain that because politicians are central for policy delivery, I suggest that ‘reputation building’ underlies the production of effective policy outputs in patrimonialist bureaucracies. Yet, I also stress that this finding comes with the nuance that in patrimonialist settings politicians not only ‘deliver’, but also reconcile good performance in office with rent extraction. Finally, I also document how ‘politicians’ who acquire ‘expert knowledge’ of the administrative functions of their bureaucracies are endowed with unprecedented access to utilise their resources –hence strategically distributing them to aides and supporters, while sabotaging office when they know they will lose the ballots. Overall, my thesis also finds that tenure (prior office experience) mediates performance in office generally rendering seasoned politicians to be more strategic when it comes to extracting and distributing public goods –meaning that they are more careful in selecting and appointing loyal knowledgeable aides in key positions, manoeuvring key aspects of the bureaucracy especially those related to budgeting. Together, these findings configure three important patterns leading to successful policy delivery in contexts plagued with patronage dynamics: (i) that politicians’ positive perspectives of winning office underlie sound policy delivery, (ii) that older politicians tend to deliver better policies, but also are more detrimental to their country’s bureaucratic capacity, and (iii) that politicians’ who acquire ‘expert knowledge’ deliver better policies, but also extract more rents. Such patterns towards leading to implementation also have important repercussions to public administration and political science scholarship. My contributions are therefore threefold: (i) my thesis advances the comprehension of politicians’ careers and their effects on policy success; (ii) it also formulates novel theoretical frameworks to comprehend the role impact of patronage on policy success, and my thesis (iii) advances ‘expert knowledge utilisation’ theory by documenting the long-ignored functions and utilisation of ‘expert knowledge’ by incumbents in office, and how such usage, is mediated by their tenure. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 13/2022 Y1 - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-46545 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4654 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D013 + 2022D013+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Khanna, Tarun T1 - Essays on the economics of energy systems transformation: incentives and policies N2 - This thesis discusses the role of the economic incentives and policies required to build energy systems that are compatible with achieving the goal of net-zero carbon emissions. I try to look beyond the techno-centric solutions that focus on new electricity generation technologies to explore how the way we consume and supply energy may be changed to facilitate the energy transition. The first paper of this cumulative thesis identifies packages of demand-side policy interventions in household energy consumption that can deliver an immediate reduction in carbon emissions. The second paper quantifies the relationship between electricity demand and prices in electricity markets using an instrumental variable approach. This relationship can provide the basis for designing policies that use electricity demand as a tool for integrating high shares of renewable energy in the power system. Following the theme of renewable energy integration, the third paper looks at the policies for influencing electricity demand from agricultural consumers in developing countries to increase the share of solar and wind while lowering the associated integration costs. And the last paper focuses on the need for policy instruments that determine the spatial allocation of renewable energy. The four papers together highlight that using the right economic incentives and policies, we can foster flexibility in both energy demand and supply that reduces the reliance on technological innovation and revolution for achieving the transformation to a low carbon energy system. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 12/2022 Y1 - 2022 N1 - List of publications Peer-reviewed 1. Khanna, T. M. Using agricultural demand for reducing costs of renewable energy integration in India. Energy 254, (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2022.124385 2. Khanna, T. M. et al. A multi-country meta-analysis on the role of behavioural change in reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions in residential buildings. Nature Energy 6, 925–932 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00866-x 3. Eicke, A., Khanna, T. & Hirth, L. Locational Investment Signals: How to Steer the Siting of New Generation Capacity in Power Systems? The Energy Journal 41, (2020). https://doi.org/10.5547/01956574.41.6.aeic Working papers 4. Hirth, L., Khanna, T. M. & Ruhnau, O. The (very) short-term price elasticity of German electricity demand. Econstor (2021). https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/249570. N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D012 + 2022D012+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Schöfer, Till T1 - Trading Places. Rethinking Trade Governance and the Status of Emerging Powers N2 - This dissertation examines recent contestation surrounding the status of emerging economies in international trade politics. In particular, it looks at the ways in which the rise of Brazil, India and China – the BICs – has shaped special rights for developing countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The primary focus of the thesis is the WTO’s principle of Special and Differential Treatment (SDT), which provides developing countries with exemptions from certain liberalization commitments, implementation flexibilities, and pledges of technical assistance. At the WTO, access to such special rights is based on individual members’ selfdeclaration as developing countries. However, as the BICs have risen, the ‘North’- ‘South’ binary that underpins SDT has become less clear. The continued use of a legal norm based on the strict bifurcation of WTO members into sets of developed and developing countries has thus been called into question, most notably by the United States. At the outset, the dissertation develops a conceptual framework for delineating the different ideal typical pathways along which special and differential treatment can develop. An overall process of fragmentation is then outlined, characterized by the unmaking of special rights for developing countries, in parallel to the resilience of differential treatment for the smaller sub-group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The thesis continues by examining the contestation at the heart of these processes more closely. In doing so, it sets up a novel theoretical framework to analyse the potential adaptation strategies that emerging economies can adopt in response to contestation of their special rights. Significant strategic variation amongst the BICs comes to the fore in a series of case studies, as well as two chapters on China’s strong defence of its developing country status and Brazil’s recalibration of its (previously held) Southern leadership role. The thesis closes with an in-depth case study of negotiations on intellectual property rights. While the divergence of emerging economy positions and the fragmentation of SDT have marked the WTO era, the final chapter shows that in areas where BICs unity is still possible – such as on LDC rights – normative erosion is slowed. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 11/2022 Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-45041 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4504 N1 - Parts of the dissertation have been published: Chapter Two: The Unmaking of the North-South Distinction in a Multipolar Era. • Published as Weinhardt, C. and Schöfer, T. (2021). ‘Differential Treatment for Developing Countries at the WTO: The Unmaking of the North-South Distinction in a Multipolar World’. Third World Quarterly 43:1, 74-93. Chapter Three: ‘Privileges’ of the Weak – Emerging Powers’ Pursuit of Special Rights for Developing Countries. • Published as Schöfer, T. and Weinhardt, C. (2022). ‘Developing Country Status at the WTO: Brazil, India and China’s Divergent Strategies.’ International Affairs 98:6. Chapter Five: From Southern Leader to Flexible Negotiator: New Directions in Brazilian Trade Policy. • Published as Schöfer T (2023). From Developing Country Leader to Flexible Negotiator: New Directions in Brazilian Trade Strategy. World Trade Review 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474745623000319 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D011 + 2022D011+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kleinaltenkamp, Moritz J. T1 - The Future Is Now: Non-Linear Temporality in Blockchain Organizing N2 - This cumulative dissertation advances management scholarship by studying the novel phenomenon of Blockchain organizing. Blockchain is an emerging technology that facilitates the maintenance of data across networks of computers, as opposed to more traditional central servers. These distributed data maintenance capabilities may have wide-ranging consequences. Ever since Blockchain’s inception in 2008, a discourse identifying this technology as an enabler of radically new and decentralized modes of collective and societal coordination has gained traction. “Blockchain organizing” refers to practices in which such Blockchain technology artefacts are being developed, implemented, and/or utilized by organizations. Studying these practices presents a unique opportunity to further management scholarship; particularly subjective time research following the neo-institutional tradition. Blockchain is not only an emerging technology associated with significant future expectations, but further a meta-organizational technology whose very raison d'être is the transformation of entrenched organizational structures. When organizational actors develop, implement, and/or utilize Blockchain technology, bureaucratic ways of organizing that have been established in the past and continue to be legitimized in the present may become reevaluated in light of bold visions for an organizational and societal future that looks radically different. The dissertation at hand utilizes this Blockchain context as an exemplary case to develop theory on how transformative future visions and expectations associated with emerging technologies may become instantiated within the present, and conceptualizes this phenomenon as “present-future convergence”. Developed based on a field-level pilot study that led to an 18-month ethnographic engagement with one Blockchain start-up, the three papers gathered in the dissertation utilize an interpretivist approach to explain how present-future convergence is rooted in conjoined processes of intra- and inter-subjective temporal experience. Furthermore, the papers highlight the counterintuitive consequences that present-future convergence may have for processes of technological, organizational, and societal change. In doing so, the dissertation opens promising research avenues at the intersection of temporality, performativity, and sociomateriality, and contributes to scholarly understanding of Blockchain organizing. Practically speaking, the dissertation helps answer the question of how actors may “pull” the future into the present to realize transformative future visions like those associated with emerging technologies. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 10/2022 Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-44986 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4498 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D010 + 2022D010+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Samper Mejia, Cristina T1 - Employment Trajectories of Women with a Migration Background in Germany: A Life Course Perspective N2 - The aim of this dissertation is to study the employment behaviour of women with a migration background from a life course perspective. Data for the analyses come from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the German Microcensus. The first paper studies the entrance into employment of immigrant women who arrived in Germany while childless between 1990 and 2016. The main findings show that women who moved as marriage migrants were highly likely to have a child shortly after their arrival. Having a child before they enter the labour market strongly delays the participation of migrant women in remunerated work. In the German context, marriage migration is most common among women who are third country nationals, and have comparatively low levels of labour market capital upon arrival. The second paper studies the employment trajectories of women who immigrated from Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. By distinguishing the trajectories of women who came from similar female employment contexts, but who arrived through different migration channels (ethnic Germans vs. third country nationals), the paper sheds light on the selection mechanisms of the different legal entry modes, and the post-migration adaptation patterns associated with them. The third paper looks at the early life employment participation trajectories of women of the second migrant generation who were born in Germany. It shows that women who follow early family formation trajectories are also less likely to participate in the labour market early in life. Early family formation is found to be most common among second-generation migrant women with parents of Turkish origin. The three papers together illustrate the strong relationship between migrant women’s (non)-employment behaviour and the onset family formation. From a migration policy perspective, the findings show the selective effects of migration channels. From a social and labour market policy perspective, the results allude to the importance of childcare access, and the need for activation policies tailored to mothers with a migration background. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 09/2022 Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-44965 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4496 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D009 + 2022D009+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Eicke, Anselm T1 - Regulation of the power sector in times of the Energy transition. Four contributions on price incentives reflecting the cost of the transmission system N2 - Governments use regulation to affect the behavior of market participants such that welfare is maximized. Good regulation in the electricity sector aims to achieve an affordable, sustainable, and secure supply of electricity. However, the energy transition fundamentally changes the way electrical energy is produced and consumed. Consequently, market rules and regulatory interventions need to be adjusted to cope with these new political targets, technological innovations, and societal trends. This cumulative dissertation contributes to the academic literature on regulatory incentives in the electricity sector with four scientific articles. At the core of this dissertation are incentives for participants of the electricity market that result from the market design and other regulatory interventions. I study how such incentives can be designed to minimize the cost of expanding and operating the transmission network. The transmission system is confronted with several new challenges resulting from the energy transition, including an increasing distance between generators and consumers, power flows that quickly change over time, and declining share of dispatchable generators that complicates frequency stability. The first three articles of this dissertation study incentives for market participants to account for the cost of operating and expanding the transmission network in their investment and dispatch decisions. The first article introduces a conceptual framework for categorizing and analyzing locational signals that result from the market design and from other regulatory interventions. It classifies, quantifies, and discusses locational instruments in twelve jurisdictions. It finds that all reviewed systems apply regulatory locational instruments, and many systems even combine multiple instruments. Only few instruments result in economic incentives that are strong enough to affect investment decisions. The second article focuses on one key market design: nodal pricing. It identifies and assesses the main arguments against the concept of nodal pricing based on the experience made in US power markets. It shows that most of the perceived drawbacks of the concept in the European debate are misconceived and can be sufficiently addressed as it is done in systems that already implemented a nodal market. The third article studies the long-run effects of optimal administratively determined locational signals. To do so, it introduces a complementary power market model. Applying the model to a sample case study reveals characteristics of such signals and highlights their potential welfare gains. The fourth article is dedicated to the balancing mechanism, which maintains the grid frequency by balancing the feed-in of electricity into the network and its withdrawal. This is another source of cost that arise in the transmission system. The article analyses the economic incentives resulting from the design of the balancing mechanism. It quantifies the price response of balancing responsible parties to the imbalance price and finds a significant effect. This finding is politically delicate because such a price responsiveness is forbidden by the regulator. With these four articles, the dissertation provides insights how the regulator can affect the behavior of market participants through economic incentives, which is of interest for researchers and policy makers alike. It adds to the literature by proposing new frameworks and models, and by drawing from experiences in other jurisdictions. Thereby, it contributes to adapting the regulation of the power sector in times of the energy transition. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 08/2022 Y1 - 2022 N1 - All papers have been published and are openly accessible here: Eicke, A., Khanna, T., & Hirth, L. (2020). Locational Investment Signals: How to Steer the Siting of New Generation Capacity in Power Systems? The Energy Journal, 41(6). https://doi.org/10.5547/01956574.41.6.aeic Eicke, A., & Schittekatte, T. (2022). Fighting the wrong battle? A critical assessment of arguments against nodal electricity prices in the European debate. Energy Policy, 170, 113220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.113220 Eicke, A. (2022). Where should generators be built in a zonal electricity market? A numerical analysis of administratively determined investment signals. ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/261346 Eicke, A., Ruhnau, O., & Hirth, L. (2021). Electricity balancing as a market equilibrium: An instrument-based estimation of supply and demand for imbalance energy. Energy Economics, 102, 105455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105455 Print copy of the dissertation is available at the Hertie Library. N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D008 + 2022D008+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Bünder, Tobias T1 - The Pharmaceutical Industry and Access to Health Products. Interrogating the Role of Multinational Companies in Tackling Global Development Challenges N2 - Society increasingly calls on business, in particular multinational companies, to contribute to solving global challenges such as poverty, hunger, or the recent pandemic. Many companies and industries have responded positively to these expectations and use a broad set of efforts to work toward objectives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. However, research has frequently pointed out that that there is limited evidence for multinational companies being effective to this end, as they have to overcome many internal and external hurdles in tackling such development challenges. Thus, uncertainty remains with regard to how multinational companies can become instrumental in addressing the persistent and global problems we associate with sustainable development. This cumulative dissertation explores this question by studying how the multinational pharmaceutical industry has acted upon the challenge of insufficient access to medicines, vaccines, and other health products in low- and middle-income countries. By analyzing how two companies have tried to integrate access objectives into their business, the first empirical paper brings to surface two types of integration efforts that differently enable companies to make progress on the access challenge. It also highlights the strategizing needed for each type of integration to overcome internal and external challenges. The remaining two papers look at the pharmaceutical industry’s contributions to the Kenyan response to non-communicable diseases as a case of the growing scale and scope of involvement of multinational companies on the local level. One paper shows that local development actors perceive this as a challenging and risky phenomenon and lays out why and how they engage with companies as development agents regardless. By studying the Kenyan case, the final piece looks more closely at how governance structures may help to ensure that industry-led public health initiatives contribute to development objectives. Together, these papers contribute to management research by showcasing different pathways through which companies can become instrumental in making progress on development challenges: an internal pathway of integrating social objectives into the business as well as an external pathway of steering corporate initiatives through local actors and governance structures. Finally, it also informs debates in global health research by adding often neglected firm- and country-level perspectives on the growing role of business in global health. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 07/2022 Y1 - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-44746 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-4474 N1 - List of pre-publications Parts of Chapter 2, 3 and 7: Bünder, T., Rathert, N., Mair, J., Understanding firm- and field-level change toward sustainable development: insights from the pharmaceutical industry and access to medicines 1960‒2020. In: George, G., Haas, M.R., Joshi, H., McGahan, A.M. and Tracey, P. Handbook on the Business of Sustainability: The Organization, Implementation, and Practice of Sustainable Growth. Edward Elgar Publishing. Chapter 6: Bünder, T., Karekezi, C., & Wirtz, V.J. (2021). Governing industry involvement in the non-communicable disease response in Kenya. Globalization and Health, 17. doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00776-3 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D007 + 2022D007+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Ruhnau, Oliver T1 - The Economics of Flexible Electricity Demand N2 - In electricity systems, supply traditionally follows demand. Consequently, economists have focused on analyzing supply while assuming perfectly inelastic demand. Demand flexibility, if at all, occurred in deterministic patterns, such as during peak and off-peak periods, incentivized by static time-of-use tariffs. Nowadays, the role of electricity demand is changing fundamentally: growing shares of fluctuating wind and solar energy require flexibility in a larger quantity and on a stochastic basis; increasing loads of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and hydrogen electrolyzers could provide flexibility through battery, thermal, and gas storage; and the introduction of smart meters enables dynamic real-time tariffs and an automated response of distributed loads. This cumulative dissertation contributes to the economic understanding of flexible electricity demand with five scientific articles. Article 1 starts with reviewing the role of electrification in decarbonization scenarios for heating and road transport in Germany. The article finds that decarbonization drives electrification, leading to an increase in electricity demand by a factor of roughly two. Direct and indirect electrification options are contrasted with respect to their distinct flexibility potential. Articles 2 and 3 explore the implications of decentralized electric heat pumps and centralized electrolytic hydrogen, respectively, for the market value of renewables. Both use the same numerical electricity market model. Article 2 finds that the volatility of the heat pump’s electricity demand challenges the electricity system, which becomes apparent in increasing load cost. A flexible operation of heat pumps may reduce this challenge, but potential benefits for the market value of wind energy are minor. By contrast, Article 3 shows that hydrogen electrolyzers have the potential to stabilize renewable market values at high renewable market shares effectively and permanently, because additional renewable supply can trigger investment in additional hydrogen electrolyzers with additional demand. Articles 4 and 5 investigate the flexibility of the current electricity demand using econometric models with instrumental variables. Article 4 reveals that, at an hourly temporal resolution, the aggregated electricity demand in Germany is indeed price-elastic; it decreases by 70 MW for every € 1 per MWh increase in the day-ahead wholesale price. Article 5 finds that demand is also price-responsive in the very short term: the demand for imbalance energy responds to the imbalance price—despite the legal obligation in Germany to minimize imbalances independent of prices. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 06/2022 KW - Centre for Sustainability Y1 - 2022 N1 - Publications: Ruhnau, O., Bannik, S., Otten, S., Praktiknjo, A., Robinius, M., 2019. Direct or indirect electrification? A review of heat generation and road transport decarbonisation scenarios for Germany 2050. Energy 166, 989–999. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.10.114 Ruhnau, O., Hirth, L., Praktiknjo, A., 2020. Heating with wind: Economics of heat pumps and variable renewables. Energy Economics 104967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104967 Ruhnau, O., 2021. How flexible electricity demand stabilizes wind and solar market values: The case of hydrogen electrolyzers. Applied Energy 118194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.118194 Hirth, L., Khanna, T., Ruhnau, O., 2022. The (very) short-term price elasticity of German electricity demand. Working Paper. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/249570 Eicke, A., Ruhnau, O., Hirth, L., 2021. Electricity balancing as a market equilibrium: An instrument-based estimation of supply and demand for imbalance energy. Energy Economics 102, 105455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105455 N1 - Shelf mark: 2022D006 + 2022D006+1 ER -