TY - THES A1 - Scherer, Nikolas T1 - Insuring against climate change : The global career of regional index insurance instruments N2 - One of the most prominent policy instruments currently put forward in a variety of climate change-related initiatives are ‘regional index insurance instruments’. These instruments are generically designed to protect states from a region from the economic consequences of natural disasters and allow quick access to capital in the case of a major catastrophe. What unites these insurances is that it is not the actual financial loss which triggers a payment, as in more traditional forms of insurance, but the occurrence of a pre-defined weather event (e.g. hurricane, drought, tsunami). The performance of one a pool of variables is thereby used as a proxy for the actual loss. Another characteristic is that the provision of the insurance cover is often supported through financial market instruments such as weather derivatives, catastrophe bonds or catastrophe swaps. That means, financial market investors operate as ‘insurer of last resort’. (...) T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 06/2017 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-23053 N1 - See also: Scherer, Nikolas (2020): Insuring against climate change: The Emergence of Regional Catastrophe Risk Pools, Routledge, Abingdon/New York. Copies available at the Hertie School Library. N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D004 + 2017D004+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Timeus, Krista T1 - Approach with care? A study on risk behaviour and innovation in the public sector N2 - The main aim of this dissertation is to explore how public professionals‘ risk behaviours affect the management of innovation processes. It addresses a gap in the literature because although risk is inseparable form innovation processes, there is very little literature focusing directly on the question of how risk affects innovation in the public sector context. The dissertation analyses this question in three main chapters: Chapter 2 asks ‗what types of risk do innovation managers perceive?‘ Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with ‗innovation managers‘ in Copenhagen municipality, the chapter finds that public managers and professionals working on public service innovation perceive different types of risk related to innovation depending on their position in the administrative hierarchy and on their proximity to service users. The analysis also showed that there is hardly any communication across hierarchical levels or policy divisions about risk. This can lead to intra-organisational conflicts that block innovation processes, and to blind spots in attempts to manage the risks of innovation. Chapter 3 focuses on whether blame and credit expectations impact support for innovation. This question is examined through a quasi-experimental research design consisting of an ‗experimental vignette survey‘ where respondents were assigned to different treatment groups and the effect of being promised blame or credit for innovation outcomes was analysed. The findings show that contrary to common expectations, how much respondents thought the innovation was beneficial was a much stronger predictor of whether they would support it than the expectation of blame or credit. At the very least, this questions the assumption that blame aversion is a primary behavioural barrier to innovation.(...) T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 05/2017 Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-2304 N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D001 + 2017D001+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Vaz Mondo, Bianca T1 - The Role of Accountability in the Relationship between Democracy and Corruption N2 - Democracy is discussed in the comparative empirical literature as an important determinant of corruption. Several studies show that not only are democracies less corrupt than authoritarian regimes, but also that there is great variation in corruption levels across democratic regimes. This dissertation is concerned with examining the reasons behind this pattern. It begins by arguing that the study of democracy’s impact on corruption requires a stronger focus on the causal mechanisms linking these two phenomena. Based on a review of causal arguments raised in the literature, a discussion of different dimensions of accountability–electoral, social and horizontal–is introduced as a useful framework for this purpose. This sets the ground for the two main empirical contributions of the dissertation. In both cases, the study relies on original corruption data collected from over 600 audit reports on municipalities randomly selected through a federal audit program implemented in Brazil. First, a panel data set with 130 municipalities that have faced multiple audits between 2003 and 2013 is used to examine whether those three dimensions of accountability exert a deterrent effect on corruption over time. Second, a cross-section of 383 municipalities is the basis for analyzing the factors explaining when accountability effectively occurs, focusing on conditioning factors of electoral accountability against corrupt politicians.(...) T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 04/2017 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-23778 N1 - Shelf mark: 2019D010 + 2019D010+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Drauth, Carlo Manuel T1 - What drives a systematic human rights management? : a multi-method study of large German companies N2 - Under which conditions do multinational enterprises systematically manage human rights risks with a view to preventing human rights abuses across their operations? Using a multi-method research design combining qualitative comparative analysis (QCA)and process tracing case studies (PT-CS), this study of the 30 largest German companies finds that it is neither institutional forces nor stakeholder pressures alone, but their combined effect that leads to a systematic human rights management at the firm-level: That is, stakeholders (e.g. NGOs) as more proximate actors act on and transmit existing institutional pressures (e.g. social expectations) to firms, while institutions provide stakeholders with the legitimacy necessary to successfully influence corporate behaviour. This conjunctional effect implies that a systematic approach to human rights is more likely to be found among firms with consumer proximity. Why? It is a firm’s position in the value chain that determines the concrete configuration of institutional and stakeholder pressures for a company: Downstream the value chain in the B2C business, where institutional and stakeholder pressures are generally high due to greater public exposure, most companies systematically address human rights issues: These B2C firms are exposed to an institutional environment, where firms are not only socialised into newly-emerging CSR-topics like human rights through institutional learning in CSR initiatives like the UNGC, but also constantly monitored by civil society actors like NGOs whether they walk the talk (i.e. 1st path to a systematic human rights management). (...) T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 03/2017 Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-2306 N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D005 + 2017D005+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Tiefensee, Anita T1 - Wealth and Inheritances in Europe N2 - The knowledge of the distribution of assets and liabilities as well as the key determinants of the distributions of private wealth represent an important basis for decision-making for social and political action like levying taxes. In the three papers, which make up this dissertation, I contribute to these aspects for several European countries. In the first paper (with M.M. Grabka) the data quality of the Household Finance and Consump-tion Survey (HFCS) is investigated. The survey provides information and enables comparison of assets and liabilities held by households in the Euro area. We investigate potential methodo-logical constraints regarding cross-country comparability and evaluate their impact on the surveyed net wealth (assets minus liabilities). In addition, we investigate item non-response patterns, a serious issue in wealth surveys. We find that the surveyed net wealth in Finland, the Netherlands, Italy and Slovakia is most likely not comparable with the other countries.(...) T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 02/2017 KW - Europäische Union KW - Mitgliedsstaaten KW - Privatvermögen KW - Vermögensverteilung KW - Erbschaft KW - Vermögen KW - Generationengerechtigkeit KW - Einkommensverteilung KW - Erbe KW - Erbschaftsteuer KW - EU-Staaten Y1 - 2016 N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D006 + 2017D006+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Leininger, Arndt T1 - Direct Democracy and Representative Government N2 - Direct democracy, an addition to representative democracy allowing citizens to directly vote on substantive issues parliaments usually vote on, has an intuitive appeal in appearing to be the most obvious institutionalization of democracy itself. Increased institutionalization and usage of direct democracy has heightened interest in the topic in political science. In the three papers which make up this dissertation I explore different aspects of the political effects of direct democracy with an aim to provide insights how it affects citizens' representation as well as their behavior and attitudes. In a first paper I test the claim that referendums are unrepresentative because turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. The analysis is made possible by a unique feature of Swiss post-referendum surveys which also asked non-voters about their opinion on the referendum's subject. Comparing opinion majorities in the surveys against actual referendum outcomes we show that representativeness increases slightly in turnout as well as over time. On balance we find more representative than unrepresentative outcomes implying that direct democracy, at least in Switzerland, seems to improve representation. In a second paper I focus on citizens' attitudes towards and actual participation in referendums. Using data from the European Social Survey I find that voting, other forms of political activity and political interest are positively associated with support for direct democracy. Analyzing post-referendum surveys I find the same pattern to hold for actual participation in referendums. Hence, direct democracy, despite its widespread popularity, appears insuff� cient to bring the politically disengaged back into democratic politics. In a third and final paper, I investigate whether direct democracy increases citizens' satisfaction with democracy. After all, they give citizens participatory opportunities and promise to offer them more control over policy. Combining aggregate data on satisfaction with democracy from semi-annual Eurobarometer surveys from 1973 to 2013 with data on all national referendums in the same period, I find no evidence for an (average) effect of referendums on democratic satisfaction. While an analysis of individual time-series suggests that referendums may have an effect under certain circumstances, significant positive estimates obtain for two countries, my empirical investigation of possible mechanisms remains inconclusive. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 01/2017 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-22780 N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D007 + 2017D007+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - von Schiller, Armin T1 - The importance of consent : the politics of progressive taxation in developing countries N2 - Developing countries are far more successful in increasing tax pressure on the poor than on the wealthy. To explain this difference, I argue that taxing the wealthy is more prominently a problem of credibility than of coercion. The poor can be forced to pay taxes. Given weak administrative capacities and de facto political power distributions, governments in many developing countries cannot force the wealthy to the same degree. In this line, I examine the conditions under which wealthy taxpayers consent to taxation in developing countries from different methodological angles. The second chapter analyses the Peruvian and the Colombian tax history between 1970 and 2010 using a comparative case study framework. The analysis provides evidence suggesting that stable party systems and strong business organizations increase the capacity of collective action between political actors and wealthy taxpayers. Thereby these factors also enable the definition of fiscal contracts involving higher tax contributions by the latter group. The third chapter examines the effect of institutional trust on the support for progressive taxation using public opinion data from the Latin American Opinion Project (LAPOP). The results show that trust in political institutions strongly mitigates the opposition of wealthy taxpayers to progressive taxation. The fourth chapter four uses panel data for over 90 countries to explore the relationship between party system institutionalisation and reliance on the personal income tax. The analysis indicates that administrative capacity mitigates the effect of party system institutionalization: where the level of administrative capacity is low, party system institutionalisation has a positive and highly significant effect. At high levels of administrative capacity this effect disappears. Overall, the findings support the notion that especially in developing countries taxing the wealthy is best understood as a political challenge. The good news is that contrary to what is commonly assumed, wealthy taxpayers are not a priori opposed to higher taxes on them. There is scope for wealthy taxpayers to support taxation but this demands reliable political and institutional systems that are able to credibly commit to not misusing the tax contributions. The analysis has major implications for development cooperation active in this field as it demands that the approaches employed balance better the technical and the political dimensions of taxation. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 05/2016 KW - Steuerprogression KW - Neue politische Ökonomie KW - Entwicklungsländer Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-2291 N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D003 + 2017D003+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Müller-Färber, Thomas T1 - How the Qaddafi regime was driven into nuclear disarmament N2 - How can we drive atomic renegades – states that run illegal nuclear weapons programs – into disarmament with the help of negotiations? This question, which puts the design of negotiation strategies at the focus of attention, has puzzled foreign policy makers for decades. It has, thus far, lost nothing of its relevance. But despite its importance, bargaining dynamics with atomic renegade states – so-called Nuclear Reversal Negotiations (NRN) – were largely omitted in International Relations (IR) literature. A systematic and theoretically grounded analysis on NRN is still missing.[...] T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 04/2016 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-23341 N1 - Prior title: Nuclear Reversal Negotiations with the Qaddafi Regime : How to Design well-fitting Diplomatic Interventions that Drive Atomic Renegate States into Disarmament N1 - Shelf mark: 2017D008 + 2017D008+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Meijers, Maurits J. T1 - Contagious Euroscepticism. The Impact of Eurosceptic Challenger Parties on Mainstream Party Attitudes toward European Integration N2 - This project argues that Eurosceptic challenger parties can affect mainstream parties’ attitudes toward European integration in Western Europe. Defined as anti-European parties without governing experience, Eurosceptic challengers have become a pervasive electoral phenomenon. On the backdrop of both spatial theory and issue saliency theory of party competition, this project argues that Eurosceptic challenger parties can influence mainstream parties’ positions on as well as emphasis of the European integration issue. After comparative overview of party-based Euroscepticism, a historical and descriptive quantitative analysis of mainstream EU positions and EU issue salience demonstrates that mainstream party attitudes vary significantly over time – an important precondition for Eurosceptic challengers’ programmatic influence.(...) T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 03/2016 Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.48462/opus4-2289 N1 - Shelf mark: 2016D002 + 2016D002+1 ER - TY - THES A1 - Phillips Williams, Zoe T1 - Risky Business or Risky Politics: What Explains Investor-State Disputes? N2 - Although not a clear cut question of treaty compliance, this project takes as its theoretical point of departure two potentially opposing explanations for state compliance with international agreements, and asks whether investor-state disputes are better explained by shifting state preferences toward FDI (or a particular investment), or the lack of state capacity to maintain an investment-friendly environment. The project is structured around three sub-research questions: 1) which domestic institutions are taking the measures that are subsequently challenged by investors? What is the content of these measures? Against investors in which industries are these measures being taken? 2) Under what economic and political conditions are investor-state arbitration cases most likely to occur?3) Are these changes in policy toward investment the outcome of a shift in preferences on the part of state actors toward investment, or are they instead the result of a lack of institutional capacity to respect IIAs? This project adopts a mixed-methods approach to the research question, with empirical chapters based on the qualitative coding of an original dataset of investor-state disputes; a regression analysis, and three case studies of specific disputes in Canada, El Salvador, and Hungary. Therefore, this project paints a general picture of investor-state disputes not as the result of a failure of bureaucratic capacity, but as incidences in which (private) transnational actor preferences truly conflict with those of domestic actors, and in which the state chooses its obligation to the latter rather than the former. If we accept that investor-state arbitration has the potential to impose significant costs on states, it is important when either justifying or criticising the regime to have an understanding of for which policy measures, and at whose behest, states are incurring these costs. These findings in turn have relevance for those who wish to improve investor-state relations and avoid investor-state disputes, as well as attempts to reform the investment arbitration system. T3 - Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School - 02/2016 Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-23690 N1 - Shelf mark: 2018D004 + 2018D004+1 ER -