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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 -