Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School
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08/2017
Are formal institutions always the rules of the game? In hybrid regimes, the surprising answer is no. Formal institutions regularly fail to shape actor expectations and guide behavior. As a result, gaps between formal rules and their actual implementation or longer term effects are a typical feature of these regimes in the gray area between democracy and authoritarianism. Such gaps occur and persist depending largely on the level of government control, the strength of the institutional environment, and the existence of informal institutions. They affect various actors and can present important governance dilemmas for NGOs and the state. This study draws on extensive field work, semistructured interviews, document retrieval, and participant observation to explain the sources and implications of gaps by comparing the two policy fields of social protection and criminal justice in post-Soviet Armenia and Georgia. The arguments resulting from the systematic analysis of the four in-depth case studies are extended by a comparison of gaps across regime types, and a discussion of gap varieties in hybrid regimes as diverse as Malaysia, Kenya, and Russia. By proposing a middle-range theory on institutional gaps in hybrid regimes, this research advances institutional theory by counterbalancing the empirical emphasis on advanced capitalist democracies with insights from hybrid regimes.
It also contributes to NGO research by suggesting a context-sensitive approach to organizational behavior and extends a nascent research agenda on the day-to-day governance of hybrid regimes.
07/2017
Accompanying developments in communication technologies and practices, new possibilities emerge for actors to participate in public debate on political issues. While the influence of traditional mass media on public opinion formation processes in the public sphere has been firmly established, the rise of digital media adds complexity to communication processes that are only beginning to be understood. This research aims to add to the understanding of how social media contributes to the normative goals of the public sphere.
Much of the research at the nexus of digital media and the public sphere focuses on extraordinary issues or events such as revolutions or electoral politics, leaving a gap as to how everyday political issues are discussed and debated in a hybrid media context. This research addresses that gap by examining a non-sensational policy issue – bikesharing – in two public sphere arenas. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses of print media and Twitter texts are applied to compare and contrast these two mediums across three cases. This comparative approach using the German, North American, and Spanish cases offers insight into the role of social media in different traditional media systems.
The findings indicate that while framing of the issue of bikesharing in print media is commonly reflected on Twitter, the reverse is seldom the case. Frame and issue spill-over from Twitter to print media was only found in the North American case, where the meaning of bikesharing represents the largest departure from the status-quo. Political and cultural contextual factors led print media frames to go unchallenged on Twitter in the Spanish case and the debate was channeled through a stronger political logic in the German case.
There was an observed preference for obtrusive issue attributes when legitimizing positions for or against bikesharing on Twitter, suggesting a bias for experience-based rationale on that medium. Social media does not have a unified effect on the legitimacy and efficacy of the public sphere, rather political and cultural factors influence the role of social media in public debate as well as the efficacy of social media to help impact political decisions.