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This study examines Brazil's foreign policy towards China, focusing on the extreme-right presidency of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022). Based on original and systematic quantitative data, we investigate the drivers behind policy variation and their implications for Brazil–China relations. Using measures of voting and speech convergence at the United Nations, legal agreements with China, and trade and investment, our data covers the period from 1995 to 2022. We then explore the concept of asymmetry and consider the asymmetric relationship between Brazil and China using CINC scores. Our empirical analysis indicates that Brazil's foreign policy stance towards China did change under Bolsonaro. However, this shift did not disrupt the broader relationship due to the pre-existing partnership and widening asymmetry between the two countries. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of Brazil–China relations and of Beijing's relations with other middle powers.
Climate movements have gained momentum in recent years, aiming to create public awareness of the consequences of climate change through salient climate protests. This paper investigates whether concerns about climate change increase following demonstrative protests and confrontational acts of civil disobedience. Leveraging individual-level survey panel data from Germany, we exploit exogenous variations in the timing of climate protests relative to survey interview dates to compare climate change concerns in the days before and after a protest (N = 24,535). Following climate protests, we find increases in concerns about climate change by, on average, 1.2 percentage points. Further, we find no statistically significant evidence that concerns of any subpopulation decreased after climate protests. Lastly, the increase in concerns following protests is highest when concern levels before the protests are low.
Taxes targeting fuel, road usage, or carbon emissions for environmental protection often face public opposition. Can widely accessible machine learning methods aid in predicting and understanding opposition to environmental taxes? This study uses the random forest algorithm to predict opposition to increased environmental taxes based on 41 theoretically relevant respondent characteristics. Drawing on nationally representative surveys, we predict individual tax opposition across 28 countries in 2010 and 2020 (N = 70 710). Personal values and environmental evaluations tend to be more influential than demographics in predicting tax opposition, with key variables differing between countries and over time. A lack of commitment to pro-environmental behavior is the most important predictor in emerging economies. Conversely, concerns about environmental issues and prioritization of jobs and prices are influential in high-income countries, gaining prominence over the previous decade. Policymakers can leverage these insights to tailor communication of environmental tax increases in different contexts, emphasizing, for instance, job creation.
Extreme Lockdowns and the Gendered Informalization of Employment: Evidence from the Philippines
(2024)
The adverse effects of COVID-19 on labour market outcomes are amplified by and partly attributable to the imposition of extreme mobility restrictions. While gendered disparities in job losses and reduction in working hours are demonstrated in the literature, is an informalization of employment observed, and is this phenomenon likewise gendered? This article analyses the Philippines, a country that imposed one of the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns, and specifically how its imposition affected informal employment. A conceptual and empirical distinction between compositional and survivalist informalization is proffered – the former referring to informality induced by changes in the size and composition of overall employment, and the latter referring to informality induced by the need to work owing to absent sufficient welfare support and precautionary household savings. Examining the regional variation in lockdowns as a quasi-experiment, results demonstrate that extreme lockdowns increased the probability of informal employment among employed women but not among employed men.
As a result of policy growth, implementing agencies often face new mandates without the necessary capacity expansion to comply with, thus resorting to intermediaries. However, intermediaries are not innocuous to the implementation process, especially when they are expected to play the double role of target and intermediary, responsible for translating/interpreting regulation for beneficiaries. How does the interaction between beneficiaries and intermediaries‐target shape policy implementation? I argue that such interaction is not only determined by the role the intermediary adopts, and their relation with the beneficiary, but also by the motivations beneficiaries have for engaging in the regulatory process, and their capacity to do so. I develop a theoretical framework for understanding their interaction and apply it to a new regulatory policy in Mexico to provide social security for paid domestic workers. I explore the mechanisms by which the interaction between intermediaries and beneficiaries affects the outcome of the regulatory process.
The aim of this paper is to explore how divorce is linked to pathways to retirement in West Germany and to understand whether and how patterns are gendered. Using German pension insurance data, I employ sequence and cluster analysis to map and group pathways to retirement of women and men who retired in 2018. Pathways to retirement are defined based on monthly pension insurance histories from age 50 to 65. I find nine distinct pathways to retirement, ranging from unemployment to stable low to high income pathways and to an early retirement pathway through the reduced-earnings-capacity pension, the latter representing 9.3% of the sample. Based on multinomial logistic regression models, I analyse how marital status, distinguishing between divorced and (re)married, was related to different pathways to retirement. The results show that divorced people were more likely than married people to retire through indirect and unstable pathways to retirement characterised by early exit from the labour market and receipt of reduced-earnings-capacity pensions and/or unemployment benefits. Whereas the relationship between divorce and pathways to retirement seemed to be overall unfavourable for men, the results for women are more ambiguous. Divorced women were also more likely to retire through a stable high-income pathway than married women. Nevertheless, the results suggest that divorce is associated with an early retirement pathway through the reduced-earnings-capacity pension for both women and men.
Sweden and West Germany have had persistently high divorce rates in recent decades, but these two welfare states were differently equipped to mitigate the economic consequences of divorce for individual security in old age: Sweden followed a gender-equal policy approach to enable women and men to achieve economic autonomy, while West Germany, following the male-breadwinner model, introduced the system of ‘divorce-splitting’ to account for differences in women's and men's income. Against this background, this study uses large-scale register data from the German Public Pension Fund and the Swedish population registers to examine how divorce is related to the monthly public old-age pension income of women and men. The main comparison groups are divorced and (re)married individuals who entered retirement between 2013 and 2018. We descriptively show annual income histories from ages 20 to 65, and calculate monthly public old-age pension income with respect to lifetime income and pension regulations, such as the supplements/deductions for ‘divorce-splitting’. Multiple ordinary least square regression models further examine how family status relates to monthly public old-age pension income by gender. The results reveal that women and men in Sweden experience similar working histories, although women's incomes are lower. This is also reflected in women still having lower pension incomes than men. However, divorced and married women show comparable pension incomes, while divorced men receive approximately 26 per cent less pension income than married men. In West Germany, divorced women have significantly higher pension incomes than married women. The system of ‘divorce-splitting’ increases women's and decreases men's pension incomes, which seems to equalise their pension incomes. However, both stay below a married man's pension income. The findings indicate economic inequality in public old-age pension income by family status in Sweden and West Germany.
This cumulative dissertation examines how couples with children in Germany divide paid and unpaid work and identifies several factors related to a more egalitarian division of labor. In the first paper, I focus on the division of paid work in couples with children, comparing female same-sex and different-sex couples, which constitutes an empirical novelty. Discussing the applicability of division of labor theories to same-sex couples, I further exploit the historically shaped gender culture of East and West Germany. Based on the German Microcensus (2010-2019) and using pooled OLS regressions, I show that female same-sex couples divide paid work more equally than different-sex couples. Comparing East and West Germany, I find a similarly equal division of paid work among same-sex and different-sex couples in the East, while different-sex couples in the West specialize more. The analysis highlights the importance of the cultural context and normative explanations of the division of labor.
The second paper turns to childcare, the intersection of the paid working life with the father’s contribution to childcare being a key concern of researchers and policymakers. The COVID-19 pandemic and the short-time work scheme provided a “natural experiment” for investigating this nexus. Based on IAB-HOPP data and multinomial logistic regressions, we show that fathers in short-time work take over more care responsibilities than fathers continuously employed with regular working 1 hours. The findings indicate that policies targeting men’s working hours can affect the gendered distribution of childcare within couples.
The third paper focuses on the methodological problem of analyzing the division of unpaid work in couples often from one partner’s perspective only. Therefore, I examine the determinants of ‘perception gaps’ (defined as the mismatches between partners’ responses). Based on pairfam data, I analyze respondents’ reports on housework and childcare during the transition to first parenthood and show that a substantial perception gap exists, with 30% regarding housework and 25% concerning childcare. Results of the logistic regressions indicate that perception gaps are lowest among couples where the woman is employed or highly educated. These findings clearly underline the importance of a dyadic perspective on the division of labor in couples.
This dissertation examines, from a socio-legal approach, the implications of the climate crisis on the adjudicative functions of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS). In particular, it focuses on three general aspects of the adjudicative building blocks: access to the climate litigation process, interpretation of the relevant legal norms, and the design and impact of the remedies awarded. To that end, this dissertation comprises six papers addressing one or more of said general aspects.
The first paper is about accessing the phenomenon of climate litigation itself. Mapping the legal opportunity structures of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) reveals how human rights-based climate litigation is developing. The multiplication of cases and the inchoate successes are partly explained by the IAHRS’s legal standards in the applicant’s arguments. However, it contrasts such development by laying bare potential barriers arising from the region’s extractivist economies and hyper-presidential constitutional designs.
The second and third papers situate the IAHRS in the scholarly descriptions of international human rights and environmental law. It argues that the IAHRS is a relatively progressive space for protecting human rights because of its constant interaction with marginalised communities in LAC. The resultant interpretation of human rights can be crucial in a climate litigation case in the IAHRS. However, filling in the details for the content of the right to a healthy environment and extraterritorial obligations is still pending.
The fourth, fifth and sixth papers discuss the tensions between climate litigation and justice in Global South jurisdictions, such as LAC. They explore why climate justice dimensions might be at odds with the results of a successful climate ruling that orders a State to remedy a plaintiff when such a State did not contribute meaningfully to generating and perpetuating the climate crisis in the first place. This tension is transposed to the IAHRS while adding the difficulty of non-compliance with systemic remedial orders. The papers explore how the organs of the IAHRS could address these tensions and reimagine remedies for the climate crisis.
