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In Germany, the Russian war on Ukraine is widely perceived as a “Zeitenwende,” a watershed moment undermining key foreign policy beliefs. Despite mounting evidence contradicting them, German elites previously failed to adapt core beliefs regarding Russia and the use of force because these beliefs were not only deeply embedded in largely uncontested identity constructions but also shaped the definition of economic interests, which in turn made ideational adaptation more costly. Moreover, Germany’s extraordinarily beneficial geopolitical situation in the post-Cold War era meant that the country could afford not to learn. Although the “Zeitenwende” will trigger significant change, it is unclear which lessons exactly Germans will now be learning and how far that adaptation will go. Given Germany’s key position in Europe and its previous role in shaping the European and transatlantic policy toward Russia, the results of these learning processes will significantly shape the emerging European security order.
Career Pressures and Organizational Evil: A Novel Perspective on the Study of Organized Violence
(2022)
Dictators, rebel commanders, and mafia bosses frequently delegate gruesome and immoral tasks to their subordinates. However, most individuals want to avoid such work. This analytical essay proposes an institutional logic to understand how dictatorships, insurgent organizations, and criminal gangs get their evil work done nonetheless. We argue that common features of organizations produce mundane career pressures that incentivize subordinates to zealously execute reprehensible tasks. Subordinates may come under pressure for six distinct reasons: incompetence, misconduct, origin, isolation, organizational backlog, and shrinkage. Superiors, in turn, can exploit that pressured subordinates hope to improve their prospects for advancement by loyally executing the organization’s evil tasks. Empirically, we illustrate how Nazi Germany utilized each of the suggested career pressures to staff the units in charge of the Holocaust. We highlight that our logic might also apply to less extreme forms of organizational evil. Together, the essay offers a novel perspective to demystify radical behavior in state and non-state organizations with important implications for our understanding of transnational terrorist violence and underworld crimes.
How does witnessing regime atrocities influence the political attitudes of bystanders? We argue that observing regime violence against innocent civilians triggers psychological dissonance between beliefs about the regime and the witnessed moral transgression. As a result, regime support should decrease among bystanders of state atrocities. We analyze original, highly disaggregated archival data from the Nazi death marches at the end of World War II, which confronted ordinary German citizens with the regime’s crimes. We find that locations with higher victim numbers had lower vote shares for right-wing nationalist parties after the war. Supporting our proposed mechanism, we show that (1) this effect was strongest when Nazi crimes were at the center of public discourse and (2) that witnessing Nazi atrocities was associated with individuals’ rejection of Hitler 20 years later. The findings have implications for understanding democratization prospects and people’s nostalgia for fallen autocrats.
Research on postwar peace focuses primarily on how elites and institutions can prevent relapse into civil war. In line with this special issue’s focus on citizens’ experiences, we take a micro-level approach to explore peace beyond the absence of war. We investigate how members of opposing sides experience peace a decade after a decisive victory of the majority. Using original survey data from a representative sample of 2000 respondents in 2018 Sri Lanka, we find that even one decade after the conflict members of the Sinhalese winning majority are consistently more likely to report improvements in peace than Tamils, who were represented by the defeated minority. But the benefit of a “victor’s peace” does not seem to translate into an optimistic outlook of the victorious group, nor does it increase people’s endorsement for repressive state measures. Despite the drastically improved physical security for the defeated ethnic minority since the war, they experience a deterioration in other dimensions of peace. Our findings have important implications for a deeper understanding of variations in peace and reconciliation processes.
Brexit initially raised the prospect of new forms of external differentiation in the European Union (EU), should the United Kingdom continue to participate in a number of the Union’s policy areas. Security and defence was one area where agreement on the terms of UK participation was more likely, given the clear interests of both sides in the development of a close partnership in this area. But agreement has been so difficult to reach, and the final Brexit deal makes no mention of collaboration in foreign, security and defence policy. We argue that the key to understanding this puzzle lies in understanding the politics of differentiated disintegration, of which Brexit is the prime example, and the distinction between strategic and political interests. While strategic interests constitute a driver for external differentiation, the political interests arising from the withdrawal process make it difficult to reach an agreement. Divorcing strategic cooperation from the short-term politics of negotiations is the first step to overcoming the stalemate, and this chapter presents several ways this can be achieved. By perceiving Brexit as a case of differentiated disintegration, this chapter accounts for the significant constraints associated with external differentiation as a mode of integration in the EU.
Research on differentiated integration has flourished in recent years, highlighting the political and efficiency gains to be had from selective participation and third country engagement in EU policy areas. Proposals for an EU-UK security and defence agreement represented a paradigmatic example of differentiated disintegration, for which both strategic and political prospects initially appeared positive, yet which ultimately foundered on the back of the EU’s reluctance to create new third country models and subsequent political upheaval in the UK. This Article asks why these proposals failed and what this can tell us about the politics of differentiated (dis)integration, focusing on the referendum to the recent Ukraine crisis, and drawing on several elite interviews conducted with policymakers in London and Brussels. It shows that while the strategic benefits of differentiation increased following the Brexit vote, the growing concern in Brussels for the precedent set by Brexit, the collapse of issue-specific dynamics into a singular concern for UK “cherry picking”, and the rightward shift in UK politics occasioned by the Brexit negotiations all undermined the prospects for a differentiated outcome in security and defence. The Ukraine crisis, while precipitating significant changes in many European states, had thus far failed to alter the new status quo locked in after Brexit.
Informal groupings have proliferated in EU foreign policy over the past decade, despite the enhanced role of the High Representative tasked with ensuring the coherence of this policy domain under the Lisbon Treaty. This article analyzes how the decision of select EU member states to act on certain policy issues through informal groupings, bypassing the EU framework, affects the High Representative’s room for maneuver. Drawing on the principal-agent model, the emergence of informal groupings is conceptualized as a manifestation of pathological delegation, which undermines High Representative’s role. The findings reveal two factors that may nevertheless increase the agent’s discretion in cases of delegation anomalies: the low heterogeneity of member state preferences toward the informal grouping and the interaction between agents in the same domain, facilitating agent’s performance. By examining agent's discretion when delegation anomalies arise, the article may be useful for scholars investigating delegation and agency in international organizations.
In the summer of 2021 deliberate actions by the Belarusian state authorities led to a huge increase of people irregularly crossing the border from Belarus to Poland. Instead of addressing this humanitarian crisis, the Polish government responded with actions that were in violation of its international obligations and domestic law. Among these measures was carrying out “pushbacks” and grounding them in Polish domestic law. “Pushbacks” are the practice of returning people to the border without assessing their individual situation. The formalization of those practices in 2021 was done within two legal frameworks; one interim and one permanent. They continue to function in parallel while containing different provisions. This article assesses the two frameworks’ compatibility with domestic and international law and concludes that they both violate domestic and international rules. In the context of EU law, the article demonstrates the incompatibility of the two frameworks with the so-called Asylum Procedures Directive and Return Directive. The article urther argues that the pushbacks violate the European Convention of Human Rights and would not fall within the exceptions to the prohibition of collective expulsions.
Both the academic political science literature and the popular discourse are replete with narratives seeking to explain the concurrent rise of income inequality and legislative polarization over the past half century. We focus on a prominent subset of such accounts, which posit the faithful representation of polarizing constituencies as the key causal mechanism linking the two phenomena, and which we therefore refer to as “electoral theories of polarization.” We show, however, that constructing a coherent, causal electoral theory of polarization is substantially more complicated than the literature has appreciated. First, we enumerate the necessary ingredients, with special emphasis on the importance of accounting for electoral geography. Second, we develop a causal framework for assessing the effect of income on polarization via a particular electoral channel, and we propose a set of estimation strategies that researchers may tailor to their particular model of how legislative ideology and partisanship are (co)determined. Third, we apply our framework to evaluate how well a model of self-interested “pocketbook voting” can explain patterns of polarization on the economic dimension observed in the U.S. Senate from 1984 to 2018. We conclude that voters’ private benefit from redistribution is unlikely to be a mechanism linking inequality to polarization.
Political scientists frequently interpret the results of conjoint experiments as reflective of majority preferences. In this article, we show that the target estimand of conjoint experiments, the average marginal component effect (AMCE), is not well defined in these terms. Even with individually rational experimental subjects, the AMCE can indicate the opposite of the true preference of the majority. To show this, we characterize the preference aggregation rule implied by the AMCE and demonstrate its several undesirable properties. With this result, we provide a method for placing bounds on the proportion of experimental subjects who prefer a given candidate feature. We describe conditions under which the AMCE corresponds in sign with the majority preference. Finally, we offer a structural interpretation of the AMCE and highlight that the problem we describe persists even when a model of voting is imposed.
The closure of the Greek-Macedonian border on 8 March 2016 entailed systematic pushbacks. The largest operation occurred on 14-15 March 2016, when more than 1500 refugees were summarily returned from North Macedonia to Greece. The complaint of AA and others v North Macedonia addressed this large-scale pushback operation. However, instead of condemning these pushbacks, the European Court of Human Rights expanded the exception from the prohibition of collective expulsions created in the case of ND and NT v Spain and found the applicants culpable of circumventing legal pathways, ignoring that these were clearly not available in practice. Thereby, the Court reproduces exclusionary reasoning that has shaped the European Convention on Human Rights since its inception.
Researchers specialising on China face severe challenges in carrying out original research. Five junior scholars wonder if the good times for research on China belong to the past. Foreign researchers have not been able to enter China for research purposes since the outbreak of the pandemic. This is especially limiting for those at a PhD or postdoc level whose projects have tight timeframes. In addition, research on China has to contend with an increasingly difficult political environment sensitive to work on politically-charged topics. Regardless of these challenges, Alice Trinkle, Felix Garten, Johannes Petry, Bo Yang and Yating Zhang believe that China research and expertise is needed now more than ever, especially from a new cohort of younger scholars. Drawing on their own experience, they highlight approaches that enable innovative research and methods of collecting primary data.
Do U.S. municipal police departments respond to news coverage of local crime? We address this question exploiting an exogenous shock to local crime reporting induced by acquisitions of local TV stations by a large broadcast group, Sinclair. Using a unique dataset of 8.5 million news stories and a triple differences design, we document that Sinclair ownership decreases news coverage of local crime. This matters for policing: municipalities that experience the change in news coverage have lower violent crime clearance rates relative to municipalities that do not. The result is consistent with a decrease of crime salience in the public opinion.
Das vorliegende Szenario kombiniert zwei für die Sicherheitspolitik relevante Dimensionen: Der Kampf gegen Klimawandel und Terrorismus. Aufbauend auf den jüngsten Ereignissen in Südeuropa und Afghanistan entwerfen wir ein Szenario, in dem dramatische Geschehnisse erfolgreichen Bemühungen vorweggehen - erst der Schock weiterer Niederlagen an beiden Fronten (z.B. die Folgen eines verheerenden Waldbrandes rund um Athen) führt dazu, dass die internationale Gemeinschaft zu Handeln beginnt und letztlich ambitionierte Maßnahmen ergreift, um beiden Bedrohungen erfolgreich zu begegnen. Die entscheidenden Meilensteine dieses Szenarios werden dabei in Schlagzeilen und kurzen Nachrichten dargestellt. Zum Abschluss werden zwei Handlungsempfehlungen formuliert: Eine Förderung von Solarstrom-Pilotprojekten in Nordafrika und der Sahelzone sowie eine Evaluation bestehender Anti-Terror-Strategien vor dem Hintergrund holistischer Präventionskonzepte.
Juszczyszyn v. Poland: Article 18 ECHR’s conservative contribution to the Polish rule of law crisis
(2022)
Insufficient access to medicines is a persistent global problem that affects billions of people in low- and middle-income countries. In this chapter, we use access to medicines as a case to understand how business can become instrumental in making progress on persistent and global problems we associate with sustainable development. We examine the emergence and evolution of access to medicines as a mandate for the pharmaceutical industry to contribute to sustainable development. More specifically, we trace the historical developments of corporate social initiatives in the industry and revisit existing research on access to medicines in management and related fields. We then introduce three distinct analytical perspectives - field emergence and change, firm heterogeneity, organizational processes - to examine access to medicine, expose managerial challenges and offer a research agenda that helps to advance research on access to medicines and, more generally, on corporate efforts to address pressing global problems subsumed under the Sustainable Development Goals.
This paper studies honesty in the face of changing cost. Using field data from a snack delivery company that employs an honesty payment system, the paper 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 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%.
This article investigates the role of privacy and transparency in the 4th Space and outlines their implications for the development and dissemination of conspiracy theories. We argue that privacy can be exploited by individuals and organizations to spread conspiracy theories online, while organizational transparency, intended to increase accountability and ultimately trust, can have the adverse effect and nurture conspiracy beliefs. Through the lens of the 4th Space concept, we offer suggestions on how to approach those challenges which emerge as a result of the complex entanglements of both actual and virtual world across time.
Combining earlier spatial typologies of places and communities with computer-mediated communication technologies, Hardegger developed the idea of the 4th space. Given that misinformation has become a crucial problem in many online environments over the course of the last few years, this article attempts to assess the implications of this development for the 4th space. This article begins with an analysis of people’s tendency to lie in different environments. Afterwards, properties of the 4th space are assessed that create opportunities for misinformation-based communities to emerge. Finally, open questions in relation to misinformation and the 4th space that deserve further attention are addressed.
The global power shift towards Brazil, India, China and other non-western powers has led to pressures to adjust international institutions to new economic realities. Most power shift theories assume that established powers defend their institutional privileges, while emerging powers challenge them. Conversely, in this article we reverse this assumption by shedding light on ‘privileges’ of the weak: many international institutions have established special rights for disadvantaged regime members. We ask what strategies emerging powers adopt as they come under pressure to give up these rights commonly reserved for regime members with developing country status. We present a novel conceptualization of four ideal-typical strategies that combine elements of resistance and accommodation. Empirically, we examine the strategies that Brazil, India and China (BICs) have adopted in the World Trade Organization. We find that no uniform approach exists across the BICs: while India fiercely resists giving up its status as a developing country and the flexibilities it comes with, Brazil adopts a pragmatic approach that largely accommodates established powers' demands to give up special rights reserved for developing countries. China pursues a mixed strategy of selective accommodation and resistance. These findings contribute to recent debates on global power shifts by illustrating how material incentives and status considerations shape the adaptation of international institutions as privileges for the weak are re-negotiated.
While recent literature in Germany has compared predictors of welfare use between EU and non-EU immigrants, refugees have yet to be added to the analysis. Using survey data of approximately 4,000 immigrants living in Germany, I examine the determinants of basic unemployment benefits receipt for intra-EU immigrants, refugees, and third country immigrants. In particular, I investigate how education affects the likelihood of welfare use for each immigrant group. Even after controlling for human capital factors, sociodemographic characteristics, and factors related to migration such as legal status and age at migration, refugees remain significantly more likely to receive benefits. Results demonstrate that higher education significantly decreases the likelihood of welfare receipt for EU and third country immigrants, but much less so for refugees. These findings may indicate that refugees' education is not being used to its full potential in the labor market or that they face additional challenges hindering their labor market integration. A further and unanticipated finding is that immigrants who hold permanent residency or German citizenship are less likely to receive unemployment benefits, pointing either to positive effects of a secure residency or selection into permanent residency and citizenship among those with the greatest labor market success. Overall, this research shows that challenges beyond human capital deficiencies and sociodemographic characteristics must be considered when studying immigrants' receipt of social benefits, that not all educational credentials are valued equally, and that the experiences of refugees differ in significant ways from those of other immigrant groups.
Great claims have been made about the benefits of dematerialization in a digital service economy. However, digitalization has historically increased environmental impacts at local and planetary scales, affecting labor markets, resource use, governance, and power relationships. Here we study the past, present, and future of digitalization through the lens of three interdependent elements of the Anthropocene: (a) planetary boundaries and stability, (b) equity within and between countries, and (c) human agency and governance, mediated via (i) increasing resource efficiency, (ii) accelerating consumption and scale effects, (iii) expanding political and economic control, and (iv) deteriorating social cohesion. While direct environmental impacts matter, the indirect and systemic effects of digitalization are more profoundly reshaping the relationship between humans, technosphere and planet. We develop three scenarios: planetary instability, green but inhumane, and deliberate for the good. We conclude with identifying leverage points that shift human–digital–Earth interactions toward sustainability.
Green hydrogen has become a cornerstone of the EU's industrial policy and decarbonisation plans. The EU plans to spend billions in hydrogen subsidies and provide extensive legislative support. However, its current approach risks throwing good money after bad. Producing renewable hydrogen requires a lot of energy, which means hydrogen will always remain comparatively scarce and expensive. Consequently, many hydrogen applications do not make sense at scale, neither economically nor for the climate. Yet, the EU supports all hydrogen applications without sufficiently factoring in their prospects. This policy brief argues that the EU needs to start ditching losers. Hydrogen applications that are unlikely to be viable should not get public money. To enable the EU to filter out losers, the Commission needs to take a stronger guiding role and bolster its administrative capacities.
The instrumentalisation of migration is back on the EU’s agenda. One year after Belarus instigated a migration crisis at its border with the EU, concerns emerge that Russia could instrumentalise a second exodus of Ukrainians to undermine the EU’s support to Kyiv. Member states’ recent failure to agree on the proposal for an Instrumentalisation Regulation should be an opportunity to revise the EU’s approach. In fact, the proposed Regulation would have done more harm than good. Two things need to happen for the EU to develop an effective response to the instrumentalisation of migration. First, the proposed Regulation should be amended to avoid the EU stepping into a “hypocrisy trap” by third countries seeking to expose the EU’s alleged double standards on fundamental rights. Second, the EU needs a revised migration diplomacy that addresses the structural factors facilitating the instrumentalisation of migration by third countries.
“Young people are at the heart of our policymaking and political priorities. We vow to listen to them, and we want to work together to shape the future of the European Union”, stated European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during the celebrations of the 2022 European Year of Youth. Nevertheless, young generations today are underrepresented in European institutions and their interests risk being sidelined. For this reason, we advocate the introduction of youth quotas in the European Parliament. These should take the form of legislated candidate quotas. Our aim is to increase the number of young adults elected to match more closely the share of under-35 in Europe. Only in this way can we ensure that the distinct concerns of younger generations are being adequately heard and discussed in the decision-making arena.
How to Square the Circle Between Economic Globalization, Social Cohesion, and Liberal Democracy?
(2022)
An early Christmas Gift from Karlsruhe? The Bundesverfassungsgericht’s NextGenerationEU Ruling
(2022)
The 6 December ruling of the German Constitutional Court on the constitutional complaints against the EU’s recovery instrument NextGenerationEU seemed to come as an early Christmas gift from Karlsruhe. This time, the German court avoided the head-on collision with the EU. At the same time, the ruling raises crucial questions about the future of EU fiscal integration. While it is not as constraining as some might have feared, it does not give card blanche for a more permanent EU fiscal capacity. In this policy brief, Thu Nguyen and Martijn van den Brink analyse the judgment and its possible implications going forward.
The battle over the rule of law in Hungary is coming to a head. Two separate but related rule of law procedures are currently on the Council’s agenda, with 7.5 billion Euros in cohesion funds and 5.8 billion Euros in grants from the EU recovery instrument on the line for Hungary. Both procedures are currently stuck in a political limbo as member states, faced once again with Hungarian vetoes, cannot agree on a common course of action. In this policy brief, Thu Nguyen untangles the two files and argues that the EU is in a strong negotiating position: The Hungarian government can, in the current economic climate, very ill-afford to lose the funds.
Renewable hydrogen is often depicted as the silver bullet for EU industry: manufacturers could use hydrogen to decarbonise production and rid themselves of their natural gas dependence. Since Europe cannot generate enough cheap hydrogen itself, the EU plans to import large volumes from world regions that have better wind and solar potential. However, transporting hydrogen over large distances will always be very expensive. Current EU policies do not factor this in sufficiently. Using a new interactive model of hydrogen transport costs, this policy brief discusses the various transport options and outlines EU policies to keep costs low. Hydrogen’s high transport costs also imply that some industries won’t be competitive in the EU in the long run, which should inform the design of public support packages for businesses in the current crisis.
The EU directive on adequate minimum wages marks an important change from previous policies in the field of labour relations. It introduces two novelties. First, by laying the foundations for a common governance of minimum wage-setting mechanisms, the directive could lead to a rise in minimum wages. Second, it lays out guidelines intended to strengthen the role of social actors in wage bargaining. In doing so, the directive differs from previous approaches advocated by the Commission on the need for member states to boost income growth. While post-Euro crisis recommendations were mostly centered on reducing labour costs, this directive reflects a greater concern in policymaking circles for the social role which income growth can play.
On 6 October 2022, the inaugural meeting of the new ‘European Political Community’ (EPC) took place in Prague. Moving from a vague idea, suggested in May by French President Macron, into a real-time meeting with more than 40 European leaders in just a matter of months was a success exceeding early expectations for the EPC. But this very success means that the EPC has been inaugurated before it acquired a clear purpose, agenda or framework. This policy brief traces the evolution of the EPC and illustrates possible models for its future shape to ensure that the EPC will be able to achieve more than just bringing together leaders for yet another photo-op.
Revising Citizenship within the European Union: Is a Genuine Link Requirement the Way Forward?
(2022)
EU institutions have argued on several occasions that national and EU citizenship should not be awarded without any genuine link with the Member State concerned. Some scholars have adopted the same position, justifying their position referring to the genuine link requirement established by the International Court of Justice in Nottebohm. This has prompted criticism from legal scholars, who point out that Nottebohm was wrong as a matter of international law and moral principle. This paper shows that supporters and critics have failed to recognise that they have been talking with different conceptions of the genuine link requirement in mind. The question of whether to apply a genuine link requirement for the recognition of nationality is altogether different from the question of whether to apply a genuine link requirement for the acquisition of nationality. Nottebohm concerns the first; the arguments of EU institutions the second. The argument of EU institutions cannot therefore be dismissed by dismissing Nottebohm. I subsequently explore the normative arguments for predicating the boundaries of national membership on a genuine link requirement. There are weighty moral reasons for member states to condition the acquisition of national and EU citizenship on the presence of a genuine link. Finally, moving from the normative to the practical, I argue that such a requirement would have far-reaching consequences (targeting not just investor citizenship schemes) and cannot be enforced as a requirement under EU law.
Searching for the centre of power in the German political system can be a cumbersome endeavour due to the strong separation of powers rooted in German history. Considering both formal and informal institutions, this chapter analyses the current state of the core executive in Germany at the end of the ‘era Merkel’. It outlines the German institutional setting with the role of the chancellor and the chancellery, defines main characteristics of politico-administrative relations and mechanisms of government coordination and discusses changes in the distribution of power related to recent developments of crisis management, Europeanisation and summitry, and personalisation and mediatisation. The analysis shows that the steering capacity of the German core executive is institutionally limited due to the strong coordination requirements stemming from administrative federalism, coalition governments and the strong departmental principle. Accordingly, the German core executive is no strong centre of power despite the international developments that have contributed to centralisation in many countries. The German core executive remains remarkably stable in formal terms and in international comparison despite some short-term power shifts in reaction to a changing environment.
With its constitutional separation of power between the executive and administration, over the years Sweden has frequently been held up as a shining example of modern state governance. However, recent decades of internationalising politics, EU membership and growing public-sector complexities have placed greater demands on the Swedish executive. In recent years, the established governance system has changed in several respects. First, the previously highly decentralised system has become more centralised and central-local relations remain tense. Second, at the central level, the government has sought to increase control through politicisation. Third, Swedish pandemic policy highlighted the promises and pitfalls of ‘Swedish dualism’. And fourth, government communication has become ever more mediatised. In consequence, the chapter concludes that what from the outside looks like an exemplar of meritocratic democracy is rather a tactically flexible realpolitik built on interpretive ambiguities in the constitution—providing the Swedish executive with much-needed responsiveness in times of significant change, but also the veil for greater centralisation and control from afar.
Die vierte Corona-Welle hat Deutschland wie ein Tsunami erfasst, in der Bevölkerung wachsen Angst und Ratlosigkeit. Der Bedarf an vertrauenswürdiger und gut gesicherter Information über die aktuellen Gesundheitsrisiken ist groß, der Wunsch nach praktischen Empfehlungen für das eigene Verhalten hoch. Seit Beginn der Pandemie aber es gibt keine landesweit abgestimmte, fachlich fundierte und sorgfältig choreografierte Informationsstrategie von Bund und Ländern.
While demand response is recognized as a useful tool for integrating renewable electricity, the related literature in developing countries has been limited. Meanwhile, the literature on demand side management (DSM) has ignored the value of agricultural demand as a demand side resource for integration of renewable energy. This article fills the gap by collecting agricultural load data from two distribution utilities in the Indian state of Gujarat and using it in a mixed-integer linear programming model to estimate the flexibility provided by agricultural DSM to the power system. Using a flexible load representation, the model chooses the optimal periods for agricultural supply subject to the constraints of meeting the irrigation needs of farmers and the marginal cost of electricity. This analysis shows that management of agricultural demand already reduces system costs by 4% or USD 6.09 per MWh of agricultural consumption. Going forward, with high shares of solar generation, shifting agricultural demand to daytime hours increases system flexibility. It reduces renewables curtailment by 4–7%, limits cycling costs of coal power plants, and reduces system integration costs by 22%. Agricultural DSM could be a cost-effective flexibility option in developing countries where only the least-cost options are economically viable.
Solar Power Generation
(2022)
Solar energy supplies increasing shares of global energy demand. As a renewable source of energy, it will play a major role in decarbonizing electricity supply. This chapter provides an overview on the solar sector from an economic perspective. It describes the technical characteristics of photovoltaic and concentrated solar power and explains how these affect the economic competitiveness of solar energy. The authors highlight trends in the solar sector and elaborate on how this intermittent source of energy can be integrated into a power system. They conclude with a discussion on how renewable energy support schemes can be designed to foster the deployment of solar power by accounting for the specific characteristics of solar power.
While the process of digitalization offers new opportunities, politics gets in the way of the already notoriously difficult to measure rule of law. This paper briefly presents the challenges to rule of law measurement and argues that sound measurement is possible only if the measure is narrowed down, or its components are separately examined. It then offers two innovations of such separate measurements on transparency and national integrity at national level developed by the European Research Center for Anticorruption and State-building (ERCAS) in Berlin. Finally, the paper argues that the governance context greatly impacts the quality of data used in public policy evaluation and should be used as controls. For instance, higher transparency predicts higher COVID 19 fatality rates at national level with all relevant controls, while higher corruption predicts more excess deaths, using the new indicators. This shows that the data on COVID 19 fatalities outside the democratic developed countries is likely to be seriously flawed and that it is worth investing in facts and not perceptions when measuring governance. The working paper pleads for the use of directly observable digital tools to move to a generation of more transparent and specific governance indicators, able to provide the evidence needed in public policy evaluation.
The Western Balkans EU candidate countries face rule of law challenges far more serious than Hungary or Poland did at the time of their accessions in 2004. Despite extensive EU conditionality and support, with 16% of EU pre-structural funds dedicated between 2014 and 2020 to rule of law projects, governance indicators show no substantial change. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) also found little impact in advancing the rule of law in the candidate countries in the Western Balkans. The European Commission, however, does report signs of progress. By drawing on public procurement data from the two sectors concentrating most public expenditure, namely health and construction, between the years 2017 and 2019, this paper solves the dilemma of how allegedly successful reforms can happen without much impact. By directly measuring government favouritism in procurement, before and after EU-driven reforms, the paper finds that evolution has so far been limited despite proving the effect of certain interventions. The paradox is explained by providing evidence of versatile behaviour by the main rent owners and the increasing discretionary power of Albania’s governing party.
Ziel
In dem Artikel werden die Ergebnisse von zwei Erhebungen der Gesundheitskompetenz (GK) der Bevölkerung in Deutschland im Zeitvergleich analysiert. Die erste Erhebung erfolgte 2014, die zweite 2020. Untersucht werden die Veränderungen der GK, gemessen über den Grad der subjektiv eingeschätzten Schwierigkeiten bei einzelnen Informationsaufgaben in den drei Bereichen Krankheitsbewältigung/Versorgung, Prävention, Gesundheitsförderung, in der Gesamtbevölkerung und in einzelnen Teilgruppen.
Methodik
Die Analysen basieren auf bevölkerungsrepräsentativen Querschnittsdaten, die 2014 im HLS-GER 1 und 2020 im HLS-GER 1‘ erhoben wurden. Dabei kam das international abgestimmte Instrument HLS-EU-Q47 zur Messung der GK zum Einsatz. Veränderungen in den Bevölkerungsgruppen wurden in einer Trendanalyse sowohl uni- und bivariat als auch multivariat analysiert.
Ergebnisse
Die GK der Bevölkerung in Deutschland hat sich im Zeitvergleich innerhalb von sechs Jahren statistisch signifikant verschlechtert. Dies lässt sich in allen drei untersuchten Handlungsbereichen beobachten. Der Effekt zeigt sich besonders bei Menschen mit niedrigem Sozialstatus und finanzieller Deprivation.
Schlussfolgerung
Im Zeitverlauf ist der Umgang mit gesundheits- und krankheitsbezogenen Informationen schwieriger geworden. Diese Entwicklung ist besonders stark bei sozioökonomisch benachteiligten Bevölkerungsgruppen zu beobachten, was die soziale Ungleichheit im Gesundheitsbereich verstärkt. Die Förderung der GK ist – wie diese und andere Studien zeigen – gesellschaftlich wichtiger denn je und sollte den genannten Bevölkerungsgruppen besondere Beachtung schenken.
Purpose
The German population-based longitudinal COVID-19 and Psychological Health study monitors changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and mental health of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies vulnerable groups.
Methods
A nationwide, population-based survey was conducted in May 2020 to June 2020 (Wave 1), December 2020 to January 2021 (Wave 2), and September 2021 to October 2021 (Wave 3). In total, n = 2,097 children and adolescents aged 7–17 years were investigated using measures to assess HRQoL (KIDSCREEN-10), mental health problems (SDQ), anxiety (SCARED), depressive symptoms(PHQ-2), and psychosomatic complaints(HBSC-SCL).
Results
The prevalence of low HRQoL increased from 15% prepandemic to 40% and 48% in Waves 1 and 2 and improved slightly to 35% in Wave 3 (all differences significant). Similarly, overall mental health problems increased from 18% prepandemic to 29% in Wave 1 and 31% in Wave 2 to 28% in Wave 3 (all differences significant, except Wave 3 vs. 2), anxiety increased from 15% prepandemic to 24% and 30% in Waves 1 and 2 and was still 27% in Wave 3. Depressive symptoms increased from 10% prepandemic to 11% and 15% in Waves 1 and 2 and were 11% in Wave 3. A group with low parental education, restricted living conditions, migration background, and parental mental health problems was at significantly increased risk of HRQoL and mental health impairments.
Discussion
The prevalence of low HRQoL, mental health problems, and anxiety has been elevated throughout the pandemic. Thus, mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention strategies need to be implemented to support adolescents–particularly those at risk.
Die coronaspezifische Gesundheitskompetenz der Bevölkerung in Deutschland lag im Jahr 2020 zwischen 34,8% und 50,1%, wobei sie sich im Jahresverlauf signifikant verbessert hatte. Einem großen Teil der Bevölkerung fällt es nicht immer leicht, mit Gesundheitsinformationen zu Covid-19 umzugehen, so wie es die hier beschriebene HLS-Covid-19 Studie zur coronaspezifischen Gesundheitskompetenz aufzeigt. Die größte Herausforderung stellt das Beurteilen von Informationen dar. Die Ergebnisse deuten zudem auf einen sozialen Gradienten für niedrige coronaspezifische Gesundheitskompetenz hin.
There is great interest in how the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning may affect global GHG emissions. However, such emissions impacts remain uncertain, owing in part to the diverse mechanisms through which they occur, posing difficulties for measurement and forecasting. Here we introduce a systematic framework for describing the effects of machine learning (ML) on GHG emissions, encompassing three categories: computing-related impacts, immediate impacts of applying ML and system-level impacts. Using this framework, we identify priorities for impact assessment and scenario analysis, and suggest policy levers for better understanding and shaping the effects of ML on climate change mitigation.
In this note, we provide direct evidence of cheating in online assessments of political knowledge. We combine survey responses with web tracking data of a German and a US online panel to assess whether people turn to external sources for answers. We observe item-level prevalence rates of cheating that range from 0 to 12 percent depending on question type and difficulty, and find that 23 percent of respondents engage in cheating at least once across waves. In the US panel, which employed a commitment pledge, we observe cheating behavior among less than 1 percent of respondents. We find robust respondent- and item-level characteristics associated with cheating. However, item-level instances of cheating are rare events; as such, they are difficult to predict and correct for without tracking data. Even so, our analyses comparing naive and cheating-corrected measures of political knowledge provide evidence that cheating does not substantially distort inferences.
Despite the salience of transparency in policy and democracy debates a global measurement of transparency has always been missing. In its absence, measuring the impact of transparency on accountability and corruption for a large number of countries has been difficult, with scholars using more or less adequate proxies. This paper introduces a new measurement of real transparency—the T-index—using 14 de facto components, based on direct observations of official websites in 129 countries and five de jure components, based on the transparency laws and conventions adopted. The resulting index is a measurement with very good internal and external validity and moderate precision. The paper argues that de facto transparency must be considered alongside de jure (legal) transparency if we are to judge the impact (or lack of) transparency against accountability and corruption, as a large implementation gap exists, in particular in poor countries, between legal commitments and real transparency. The T-index has significant impact on both perception and objective indicators of corruption, including perceived change in corruption over time as measured by the Global Corruption Barometer. An analysis of outliers shows that high transparency alone is not sufficient to achieve control of corruption, especially in countries with low human development and poor rule of law, although transparency is a robust predictor of corruption with GDP controls. The data with all sources is available for download as T-index 2022 dataset: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7225627 and an interactive webpage developed for updates is available at www.corruptionrisk.org/transparency.
Vaccination against COVID-19 is making progress globally, but vaccine doses remain a rare commodity in many parts of the world. New virus variants require vaccines to be updated, hampering the availability of effective vaccines. Policymakers have defined criteria to regulate who gets priority access to the vaccination, such as age, health complications, or those who hold system-relevant jobs. But how does the public think about vaccine allocation? To explore those preferences, we surveyed respondents in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United States from September to December of 2020 using ranking and forced-choice tasks. We find that public preferences are consistent with expert guidelines prioritizing health-care workers and people with medical preconditions. However, the public also considers those signing up early for vaccination and citizens of the country to be more deserving than later-comers and non-citizens. These results hold across measures, countries, and socio-demographic subgroups.
Immigrant non-citizens are often considered less deserving than citizens of welfare and other public services. The logic is that valuable and scarce public resources must be limited somehow, and the club of citizens is one way of drawing a boundary. In this paper, we examine how far that boundary extends, by analyzing the extent to which Germans prioritize citizens over non-citizens for access to life-saving healthcare. We implement a conjoint experiment to elicit preferences in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were collected between April 2020 and March 2021, in 23 waves of an online rolling crosssectional survey with roughly 17,000 respondents. Our main finding is that citizens are viewed as more deserving of healthcare than non-citizen immigrants, a relationship that is sizeable and robust. Our findings have implications for debates about social boundaries and how to allocate resources in Western Europe.
Wind Power Generation
(2022)
Wind power plays a major role in the decarbonization of the power sector. Already now, it supplies increasing shares of the global energy demand. This book chapter provides an overview on the economics of wind energy and highlight global trends in the wind sector. It describes the technical characteristics of onshore and offshore wind energy and explains how these affect the economic competitiveness of the respective technologies. The authors describe how wind power, as an intermittent source of energy, can be integrated into power systems. They also discuss how renewable energy support schemes contribute in fostering the deployment of wind power.
The Role of Weather Predictions in Electricity Price Forecasting Beyond the Day-Ahead Horizon
(2022)
Forecasts of meteorology-driven factors, such as intermittent renewable generation, are commonly included in electricity price forecasting models. We show that meteorological forecasts can be used directly to improve price forecasts multiple days in advance. We introduce an autoregressive multivariate linear model with exogenous variables and LASSO for variable selection and regularization. We used variants of this model to forecast German wholesale prices up to ten days in advance and evaluate the benefit of adding meteorological forecasts, namely wind speed and direction, solar irradiation, cloud cover, and temperature forecasts of selected locations across Europe. The resulting regression coefficients are analyzed with regard to their spatial as well as temporal distribution and are put in context with underlying power market fundamentals. Wind speed in northern Germany emerges as a particularly strong explanatory variable. The benefit of adding meteorological forecasts strongest when autoregressive effects are weak, yet the accuracy of the meteorological forecasts is sufficient for the model to identify patterns. Forecasts produced 2-4 days in advance exhibit an improvement in RMSE by 10-20%. Furthermore, the forecasting horizon is shown to impact the choice of the regularization penalty that tends to increase at longer forecasting horizons.
Recent scholarship on affective polarization documents partisan animosity in people's everyday lives. But does partisan dislike go so far as to deny fundamental rights? We study this question through a moral dilemma that gained notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic: triage decisions on the allocation of intensive medical care. Using a conjoint experiment in five countries we analyze the influence of patients’ partisanship next to commonly discussed factors determining access to intensive medical care. We find that while participants’ choices are consistent with a utilitarian heuristic, revealed partisanship influences decisions across most countries. Supporters of left or right political camps are more likely to withhold support from partisan opponents. Our findings offer comparative evidence on affective polarization in non-political contexts.
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs)—private governance mechanisms involving firms, civil society organizations, and other actors deliberating to set rules, such as standards or codes of conduct, with which firms comply voluntarily—have become important tools for governing global business activities and the social and environmental consequences of these activities. Yet, this growth is paralleled with concerns about MSIs’ deliberative capacity, including the limited inclusion of some marginalized stakeholders, bias toward corporate interests, and, ultimately, ineffectiveness in their role as regulators. In this article, we conceptualize MSIs as deliberative systems to open the black box of the different elements that make up the MSI polity and better understand how their deliberative capacity hinges on problems in different elements. On the basis of this conceptualization, we examine how deliberative mini-publics—forums in which a randomly selected group of individuals from a particular population engage in learning and facilitated deliberations about a topic—can improve the deliberative capacity of MSIs.
As greater shares of research and data are digitized, political scientists are increasingly confronted with questions pertaining to data security. Yet, data-management plans rarely evaluate the risks pertaining to a researcher’s data across all project phases. This article highlights distinct risks related to key phases of the research process that deserve more attention by scholars. We emphasize risks during a project’s inception and pre-data-collection phases, as well as risks associated with data publication and its afterlife. We discuss how shifts in political context and (re)newed politicization of topics can present new security risks for both the researcher and the researched communities long after a project has been completed. We provide a framework for recognizing and mitigating data risks, thereby contributing to the growing interest in data-security best practices.
How do leaders communicate during domestic crises? We provide the first global analysis of world leader communication on social media during social unrest. We develop a theory of leaders’ digital communication strategies, building on the diversionary theory of foreign policy, as well as research on the role of democratic institutions in explaining elite responsiveness. To test our theory, we construct a new dataset that characterizes leader communication through social media posts published by any head of state or government on Twitter or Facebook, employing a combination of automated translation and supervised machine learning methods. Our findings show that leaders increase their social media activity and shift the topic from domestic to foreign policy issues during moments of social unrest, which is consistent with a conscious strategy to divert public attention when their position could be at risk. These effects are larger in democracies and in particular in the run-up to elections, which we attribute to incentives created by democratic institutions. Our results demonstrate how social media provide meaningful comparative insight into leaders’ political behavior in the digital age.
Steuern und Abgaben auf Produkte oder Verbrauch mit gesellschaftlichen Folgekosten (externe Kosten) – sogenannte Pigou- oder Lenkungssteuern – sind ein gesellschaftliches „Win-Win-Instrument“. Sie verbessern die Wohlfahrt und schützen gleichzeitig die Umwelt und das Klima. Dies wird erreicht, indem umweltschädigende Aktivitäten einen Preis bekommen, der möglichst exakt der Höhe des Schadens entspricht. Eine konsequente Bepreisung der externen Kosten nach diesem Prinzip könnte in Deutschland erhebliche zusätzliche Einnahmen erbringen: Basierend auf bisherigen Studien zu externen Kosten wären zusätzliche Einnahmen in der Größenordnung von 348 bis 564 Milliarden Euro pro Jahr (44 bis 71 Prozent der gesamten Steuereinnahmen) möglich. Die Autoren warnen allerdings, dass die Bezifferung der externen Kosten mit erheblichen Unsicherheiten verbunden ist. Damit Lenkungssteuern und -abgaben ihre positiven Lenkungs- und Wohlstandseffekte voll entfalten können, seien zudem institutionelle Reformen notwendig.
The European Commission recommends evaluations of the economic plans of member states. The Council then provides final text. Previous research suggests that the Council selectively edits the Commission's recommendations. Both large member states and those with eurosceptic populations are likely to have the Council weaken what the Commission writes about them. We examine the determinants of the Council's editing of these texts after the introduction of the European Semester in the period 2011–18. We also account for different varieties of euroscepticism as the literature has become more differentiated. Using metrics of textual changes based on automated and hand-coding, we find little evidence of a systematic relationship between euroscepticism and textual editing. We do, however, find evidence that member state's voting power and euro status matters. Our findings suggest that eurosceptic no longer affects textual editing of such documents under the European Semester.
This chapter examines the caselaw of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on access to protection, the Dublin system and presumptions of 'safety', and detention, in order to provide critical insights into the concept of effective judicial protection in Europe since the so-called 'refugee crisis' of 2015. The two courts have not provided effective protection in a transformative sense, in that they have not adopted progressive rulings to overcome the crisis-inducing elements of European asylum and migration law. Instead, they have deferred to governmental accounts of 'crisis' and accepted dubious factual and legal arguments. Against this backdrop, we note that the need for effective judicial protection in even a minimal sense, to hold the line on the most basic of rights in this field - protection against refoulement and arbitrary detention - is more acute than ever, and may also be in decline.
As the research domain of digital government continues to develop as an important body of scholarly research, it is important to understand the core theoretical and philosophical basis of the discipline. Yet, in the domain of digital government, such an understanding does not exist. Therefore, there is currently a need for critical discussion about the concrete role of research philosophy in digital government research. This paper makes a first step in driving such a discussion by presenting arguments and discussion on the relevance of an interpretivist research philosophy for the domain of digital government. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of an interpretivist ontology and epistemology for digital government, discusses relevant theories and methods, and concludes with an overview of what is essential for conducting and carrying out interpretivist digital government research. This paper’s contributions represent one of the first concentrated efforts to lay out initial foundations for the role of interpretivism, and research philosophy more generally, for digital government research.
Environmental monitoring of rivers is a cornerstone of the European Union's Water Framework Directive. It requires the estimation and reporting of environmental flows in rivers whose characteristics vary widely across the EU member states. This variability has resulted in a fragmentation of estimation and reporting methods for environmental flows and is exhibited by the myriad of regulatory guidelines and estimation procedures. To standardise and systematically evaluate environmental flows at the pan-European scale, we propose to formalise the estimation procedures through automation by reusing existing river monitoring resources. In this work, we explore how sensor-generated hydrological open government data can be repurposed to automate the estimation and monitoring of river environmental flows. In contrast to existing environmental flows estimation methods, we propose a scalable IoT-based architecture and implement its cloud-layer web service. The major contribution of this work is the demonstration of an automated environmental flows system based on open river monitoring data routinely collected by national authorities. Moreover, the proposed system adds value to existing environmental monitoring data, reduces development and operational costs, facilitates streamlining of environmental compliance and allows for any authority with similar data to reuse or scale it with new data and methods. We critically discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with open government data, including its quality. Finally, we demonstrate the proposed system using the Estonian national river monitoring network and define further research directions.
Interoperability is a core component for any successful governmental digitalization initiative. Though there are numerous ways to build and enable this interoperability, it is possible to identify commonly occurring building blocks. This short report identifies these building blocks, maps them to relevant and common policy goals, and presents a reference architecture model for a digital government interoperability platform. To identify the relevant components of this architecture, desk research was conducted to identify common policy goals associated with interoperability, a workshop was conducted and a comprehensive systematic and comparative study was conducted that analyzed digital government interoperability platforms in twenty countries. The results of this report represent one of the most comprehensive studies to date on digital government interoperability and should, therefore, be of high interest for governmental practitioners, industry, and academics involved with interoperability studies and initiatives.
Health system governance has been receiving increasing attention in health system research since the 1980s. The contemporary challenges that the German health system is faced with are often closely linked to governance issues. Although Germany has the highest health expenditure as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the European Union (EU), the spending on healthcare is out of proportion to the health outcomes of the population. The reason for this lies mainly in the complexity of the German health system which is hard to steer due to several administrative levels in the country and numerous policy actors to whom the decision-making power on healthcare provision is delegated. In this paper, we present the results of focus group discussions on governance and build upon the insights gained through the Neustart project of the Robert Bosch Foundation. Based on an internationally recognised health governance framework from the World Health Organization (WHO), experts who work in, on or for the German health system addressed health governance challenges. They provided evidence-based recommendations for the new legislative period (2021-2025) on transparency, accountability, participation, integrity and capacity of the German health system.
Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet die Frage, wie politische und soziale Kategorisierungen den Zugang zu Aufnahmeprogrammen regulieren und wie entstehende Ungleichheiten gerechtfertigt werden. Über humanitäre Aufnahmeprogramme nehmen europäische und andere sichere Länder eine begrenzet Zahl Schutzsuchender aus Erstzufluchtsländern auf. Auf Basis von Herkunft, Geschlecht, Alter und anderen Kategorien wird entschieden, wer ›am schutzbedürftigsten‹ ist und entsprechend umgesiedelt werden soll. Anhand der deutschen humanitären Aufnahmeprogramme für syrische Geflüchtete untersucht der Beitrag Kategorisierungspraktiken aus praxistheoretischer und intersektionaler Perspektive entlang des gesamten Aufnahmeprozesses. Dadurch wird einerseits die Verwobenheit verschiedener Kategorisierungspraktiken unterschiedlicher Akteur:innen und andererseits die Hierarchisierung von Schutzbedarf deutlich.
Assessing Climate Policy Instrument Pathways: An Application to the German Light Duty Vehicle Sector
(2022)
Actualités/News
(2022)
Much of the democratic world faces a form of socio-political crisis. To varying degrees, four trends seem to be present in almost every case: declining institutional trust, failing leadership, increasing political polarisation, and weakened accountability. Although each trend has its own dynamic and causes, they jointly create complex challenges and governance problems for democratic societies. Furthermore, underlying them all is the persistent problem of inequality, which erodes trust, prevents the best leaders from rising to the top, polarises society, and shields elites from accountability. We propose a wide range of potential solutions to this crisis. Of the four, we propose that countries focus primarily on increasing institutional trust and improving leadership potential. Both aspects are particularly impactful and malleable, could influence the other two components and, over time, create a virtuous cycle pulling countries out of crisis. Proposed measures for institutional trust include expanded civic literacy, more expansive regulation of tech platforms, stricter media laws to foster better public discourse and a wider use of codes of conduct. For leadership, we propose more diverse channels and expanded selection pools for leadership recruitment, emphasising ethical conviction and targeted incentives for leadership roles. Essential to all of them, however, is tackling inequality.
Collective skill formation builds on a long tradition of cooperation between state actors, unions, and employer associations. As such, it can be considered strongly path-dependent, which also refers to deeply institutionalized arrangements reconciling economic and social objectives across public and private actors. Yet, given structural changes in the economy and crises on the training market, dual apprenticeship training has been increasingly challenged to maintain its balance between economic and social objectives. In this context, I analyse the expansion of short-track dual apprenticeship training, which represents a lower-cost, lower-qualification variant of traditional dual apprenticeships in Germany and Switzerland. In these countries—both of which are core examples of collective skill formation systems—such short-tracks were expanded starting in the early 2000s. However, German unions have heavily opposed this expansion, while Swiss unions have actively supported it. I carry out a comparative historical-institutional analysis to address this puzzle and unpack the respective change processes. Focussing on the dominant governance modes, I find that in Switzerland, the expansion of short-tracks is linked to path reinforcement in terms of a liberal corporatist system characterized by polite employer domination. In contrast, in Germany I observe that the developments around short-tracks are associated with a path switch from a social to a more liberal collective skill formation arrangement but one that is linked to rather ‘hostile’ employer domination.
This Learning Report is the result of the accompanying research project on the Open Social Innovation format UpdateDeutschland. The aim is to equip all interested parties with concepts, language and insights to better understand and jointly develop Open Social Innovation. The Learning Report provides an overview of UpdateDeutschland and uses UpdateDeutschland to explain the Open Social Innovation process; analyzes data around challenges, participation, and activity to deepen understanding of the Open Social Innovation methodology in UpdateDeutschland; highlights four different pathways that symbolize how impact was created in UpdateDeutschland; illuminates what broader benefits and challenges emerged for administrations throughout the process; addresses four key organizational challenges; and offers a critical reflection on Open Social Innovation and highlights its transformative potential.
We use worldwide satellite data to analyse how population size and density affect urban pollution. We find that density significantly increases pollution exposure. Looking only at urban areas, we find that population size affects exposure more than density. Moreover, the effect is driven mostly by population commuting to core cities rather than the core city population itself. We analyse heterogeneity by geography and income levels. By and large, the influence of population on pollution is greatest in Asia and middle-income countries. A counterfactual simulation shows that PM2.5 exposure would fall by up to 36% and NO2 exposure up to 53% if within countries population size were equalized across all cities.
This foresight project focuses on a key question for the future of Germany’s foreign policy: Given changing geopolitical and economic relationships among major powers, what possible futures can be foreseen soft power approaches or external cultural policy (ECP) in terms of narratives, strategies, goals, policies, and programmatic activities? To address this question, we place Germany in a comparative framework of international relations that considers soft power approaches in the context of prevailing geopolitical and economic relations between the European Union, the United States of America, and the People’s Republic of China as well as other global players. In each case, we consider soft power approaches relative to hard and sharp power options. The time frame for the future scenarios is the year 2030, anticipating likely and potential developments and events from 2022 onward. The scenarios are based on a series of brainstorming and validation sessions, literature reviews, personal interviews, and an online survey fielded among experts and representatives of leading institutions. We identified two major drivers of future developments: the state of the world economy and the state of the world’s security situation. Exploring the interaction between these two drivers yielded four distinct scenarios.
This foresight project focuses on a key question for the future of Germany’s foreign policy: Given changing geopolitical and economic relationships among major powers, what possible futures can be foreseen soft power approaches or external cultural policy (ECP) in terms of narratives, strategies, goals, policies, and programmatic activities? To address this question, we place Germany in a comparative framework of international relations that considers soft power approaches in the context of prevailing geopolitical and economic relations between the European Union, the United States of America, and the People’s Republic of China as well as other global players. In each case, we consider soft power approaches relative to hard and sharp power options. The time frame for the future scenarios is the year 2030, anticipating likely and potential developments and events from 2022 onward. The scenarios are based on a series of brainstorming and validation sessions, literature reviews, personal interviews, and an online survey fielded among experts and representatives of leading institutions. We identified two major drivers of future developments: the state of the world economy and the state of the world’s security situation. Exploring the interaction between these two drivers yielded four distinct scenarios.
Climate litigation in the Global South is a novel and increasingly prominent phenomenon that prompted a first wave of scholarly work examining and systematizing its main features. Despite the rigour that these academic accounts apply to assessing the main legal arguments of both litigants and courts, they fail to address the possible tensions between climate justice and the consequences of a domestic court decision in developing nations that did not substantially contribute to the climate crisis. This piece aims to fill that gap by using case law from the Global South to examine challenges around remedies, which will underscore the tensions between climate justice and litigation. Thereafter, this piece, drawing from international norms, advocates for the recognition of a duty of international cooperation, which can inform future courts’ orders in climate cases in both the Global North and the Global South. This normative exercise provides the basis to reconcile climate litigation in the Global South with climate justice, two reputed allies.
This article maps climate litigation developments in Latin America and their human rights and constitutional rights implications. As in other regions of the Global South, groups and individuals in Latin America have engaged in litigation to counter environmental harms threatening or violating the enjoyment of their human rights. Climate change, either as a primary or as a secondary concern, is slowly becoming a key focus of this form of strategic human rights-based litigation. Despite the gradual increase of the ‘Latin American docket’ of climate litigation cases, very few academic accounts have explored its legal dimensions or its contextual underpinnings. This article addresses this lacuna by identifying and examining the constitutional opportunities for and constraints upon adjudicating climate-related cases through human rights law, and also problematizes the development of climate litigation in Latin America by drawing attention to the influence of extractivist political and economic interests. The categories used for analysis stem from the literature on climate litigation in the Global South, case law and interviews with Latin-American litigants. The article concludes by stressing that this type of climate litigation is increasing and has led to several favourable verdicts, but caution is warranted as some political economy elements might hinder the development of such litigation, its inclusivity and long-term effectiveness.
Balance sheet smoothing
(2022)
We investigate how managers smooth volatility in balance sheets, using the pension accounting change IAS 19R as a shock to balance sheet volatility. This shock increases pension plans’ funding transparency, which is the source of volatility, without targeting actual plan funding. We find that managers adjust funding levels, pension asset allocation and assumptions to mitigate volatility at this source, but also plan settlements increase drastically. The volatility of accruals decreases, whereas volatility of discretionary real decisions increases pointing to managerial decisions to alleviate volatility in balance sheets. The exposure to balance sheet volatility and the relative net costs of related smoothing are cross-sectional predictors of smoothing activities. Overall, we provide evidence consistent with a vast body of pension accounting literature mentioning but not explicitly investigating the transmission of pension plan volatility on firms’ balance sheets. Our findings link this literature with studies on balance sheet management and provide a new angle on the effects of a transparency mandate in (pension) accounting on managerial decision-making.
Motherhood and parental leave are frequent causes of worker absences and employment interruptions, yet we know little about their effects on firms. Based on linked employer-employee data from Germany, we examine how more generous leave benefits affect firm-level employment and hiring decisions. Focusing on small- and medium-sized firms, we show that more generous benefits reduce firm-level employment in the short term, which is driven by firms with few internal substitutes for the absent mother. However, firms do not respond to longer expected absences by hiring fewer young women, even when few internal substitutes are available. To rationalise the findings, we show that replacement hiring occurs largely before the expected absence and that firms hire more external replacements when fewer internal substitutes are available. These findings indicate that extended leave does not harm _rms when these can plan for the longer worker absences.
Numerical optimization models are used to develop scenarios of the future energy system. Usually, they optimize the energy mix subject to engineering costs such as equipment and fuel. For onshore wind energy, some of these models use cost-potential curves that indicate how much electricity can be generated at what cost. These curves are upward sloping mainly because windy sites are occupied first and further expanding wind energy means deploying less favorable resources. Meanwhile, real-world wind energy expansion is curbed by local resistance, regulatory constraints, and legal challenges. This presumably reflects the perceived adverse effect that onshore wind energy has on the local human population, as well as other negative external effects. These disamenity costs are at the core of this paper. We provide a comprehensive and consistent set of cost-potential curves of wind energy for all European countries that include disamenity costs, and which can be used in energy system modeling. We combine existing valuation of disamenity costs from the literature that describe the costs as a function of the distance between turbine and households with gridded population data, granular geospatial data of wind speeds, and additional land-use constraints to calculate such curves. We find that disamenity costs are not a game changer: for most countries and assumptions, the marginal levelized cost of onshore wind energy increase by 0.2–12.5 €/MWh.
We examine the additivity of stock-market expectations over different time intervals. When asked about a ten-year interval, survey respondents expect a stock-price change that is not equal to, but closer to zero than, the sum of their expectations over two shorter time intervals that cover the same ten years. Such sub-additivity is irrational in that it cannot stem from aggregating short-term expectations. Model estimates show that the pattern is consistent with a time perception where shorter time intervals have a proportionally larger weight. We also find that the respondents’ degree of additivity is correlated with making larger financial investments.
Over the past decades, the share of very young children in daycare has increased significantly in many OECD countries, including Germany. Despite the relevance of child health for child development and later life success, the effect of early daycare attendance on health has received little attention in the economic literature. In this study, I investigate the impact of a large daycare expansion in Germany on children’s age-specific mental and physical health outcomes. Based on a unique set of administrative health records covering 90% of the German population over a period of ten years, I exploit exogenous variation in daycare attendance induced by the expansion. My results provide evidence for the substitution of illness spells from the first years of elementary school to the first years of daycare. Specifically, I find that early daycare attendance increases the prevalence of respiratory and infectious diseases and healthcare consumption when entering daycare (1–2 years) by 5–6 percent. At elementary school age (6–10 years), the prevalence decreases by similar magnitudes. I do not find evidence for an effect of daycare attendance on mental disorders, obesity, injuries, vision problems, or healthcare costs. Heterogeneity analysis indicates more pronounced effects for children from disadvantaged areas, earlier detection of vision problems, and a reduction in obesity in these children.
Representative Bureaucracy and Perceptions of Social Exclusion in Europe: Evidence From 27 Countries
(2022)
Representative bureaucracy theory predicts that mirroring social groups in the composition of the bureaucracy will lead to inclusive policies and less overall exclusion of diverse individuals. While supporting evidence on policy outcomes is abundant, findings on subjective perceptions are mixed. This study tests three hypotheses linking representative bureaucracy to perceived same-group discrimination in the general population. It introduces a novel multidimensional index of bureaucratic underrepresentation, and uses mixed effects hierarchical models to approximate answers. Exploratory findings suggest an “awareness” mechanism may explain the counterintuitive relationship between underrepresentation and feelings of exclusion, by which more diverse public sectors develop alongside higher awareness of discrimination.
Rituals are a means of regulation – they are a means for maintaining coherence and attaining long-term goals, including social coherence. But does their efficacy depend entirely, or at all, on their opacity? In this requested commentary on Harvey Whitehouse’s new book, The Ritual Animal, I discuss the utility of costly rituals in an evolutionary context, and suggest that causal opacity is only one, potentially substitutable cost. I relate this to the urgent topical concerns of polarization and of regulating sustainability globally.
The European Commission has proposed a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that would apply the carbon price prevailing in the EU emissions trading system to import-related emissions. We conducted a survey to study perceptions of an EU CBAM among German key stakeholders from industry, civil society, and research in July 2021. We find that substantial support for CBAM exists as well as the expectation that the mechanism will eventually be introduced. We identified divergent views on key design options among stakeholder groups. Stakeholders from industry generally favour the continuation of free allocation of emissions allowances, rebates for exporters from the EU, coverage of only scope 1 emissions, and use of revenues for domestic spending. Stakeholders from civil society prefer phasing out free allocation, coverage only of imports, an emissions scope including all indirect emissions, exempting low-income countries and countries that do implement non-price-based climate policies, and the use of revenues to finance green transformation in low-income countries. Respondents from research would generally rather see free allocation being phased out, emissions coverage of scope 1 and 2, exemptions for low-income countries and countries that do implement non-price-based policies with comparable effects in relevant sectors and a transfer of revenues to support clean technologies in low-income countries and green technologies in the EU. Our survey design allows us to identify three cross-stakeholder group clusters, one containing stakeholders who are comparably more hesitant towards CBAM, a second one with respondents most in favour of introducing CBAM, as well as a 'middle ground' cluster which contains views that are often in between the other two. We also compare the survey responses to the design of the Commission's CBAM proposal to identify the most likely points of political disagreement.