Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School
Refine
Year of publication
- 2021 (18) (remove)
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (18)
Language
- English (18)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (18)
08/2021
What drives the positions taken by EU member states in the Council? Liberal Intergovernmentalism most prominently argues that governments enjoy the leeway of a ‘permissive consensus’ to represent the interests of strong domestic producer groups in the Council. Yet, in a Postfunctionalist Union, where citizens are no longer ‘rationally ignorant’ about their governments’ decisions in Brussels, identity politics are expected to override issue-specific business interests. The key mechanism that brings us from Moravcsik’s insulated ‘client politics’ to Postfunctionalist ‘mass politics’ is the phenomenon of politicisation.
EU labour migration policies targeting third country nationals is a policy field where both clientelist business interests and politicised mass public interests are likely to surface, clash, and influence policymakers. While business demands liberalised and harmonised labour migration policies, governments under public scrutiny and pressure from right-wing populist parties are concerned that meeting the employers’ demands when legislating in Brussels will be costly in upcoming elections.
This dissertation poses the question whether and to what extend politicisation of the EU and of immigration moderates the responsiveness of government to issues-specific interests of employers or mass public interests when negotiating EU labour migration policies. Drawing on a time-consistent quantitative measurement of politicisation of the EU and immigration in four member states, I study the impact of politicisation on the state preferences regarding five draft directives on EU labour migration policies.
My research finds that the evidence for a moderating effect of politicisation on the responsiveness of governments is weak. Instead, whether governments respond to business or mass public interests is largely determined by the issue-specific dependence of employers on a common EU policy to attract labour migrants. If dependence is considered high, governments tend to represent employers’ interests and harmonise labour migration policies. Yet, this dissertation shows that identity and sovereignty related concerns matter as well but manifest more strongly in governments’ preferences when issue-specific dependence is low, because unilateral policies are considered more effective. Only against this background of an ‘ignorant or sceptical business’ does politicisation have at times a reinforcing effect upon the responsiveness of governments to the communitarian parts of their electorate.
11/2021
This dissertation is an attempt to align the research and policy agendas in the field of anti-corruption. It explores the issue of measurement and looks at the relationship between the widely used “subjective indicators of corruption” (e.g., expert perception-based indicators and popular opinion surveys) and the more recently developed methods of quantifying corruption either through indirect measurements or administrative data. After the validation of the measurement instruments, it dives into some of the most widely cited “theories of change” in the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of the legal and economic approaches to fight corruption, while incorporating more nuanced explanatory models that focus on the interactions between institutional and policy factors rather than assuming that different elements have isolated effects on the societal levels of corruption. The idea of interactions in then taken forward to explore the potential of information communication technologies (ICTs) in creating virtuous cycles to control corruption. The final section summarises the main findings and contributions to the existing anti-corruption literature and advocates in favour of using methods that recognise the complex relationships between the different causes of and constraints against corruption. It calls for more multi-disciplinary approaches to improve our understanding of corruption and support the design of policies to curb it.
12/2021
Against the backdrop of mounting public demand for action against corruption the world over, the central objective and motivation behind this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of strategies that can help societies improve their control of corruption. More specifically, it investigates the overarching, policy-relevant research question of how to render donor-supported anti-corruption efforts more effective. Rooted in a cumulative research design, this thesis consists of three papers that approach the research question from different angles.
The first paper lays the theoretical groundwork by tracing the historic roots of the widespread view today that corruption is unacceptable and delimits the corruption phenomenon conceptually by comparing it to its opposites. In addition, it places corruption in the context of the grand theories of development and derives the main theories of change from the corruption literature.
The second paper connects contemporary corruption research with anti-corruption practice and identifies paradigmatic shifts in donor-supported anti-corruption efforts. It discusses the most frequently adopted anti-corruption instruments and develops typologies of interventions to facilitate a systematic analysis of the fragmented landscape of donor-supported anti-corruption activities.
The third paper applies the analytical framework introduced in the second paper to study the case of the World Bank. The paper presents and interprets the first comprehensive inventory of World Bank activities that addressed corruption explicitly between 1996 and 2016. Building on the inventory data and on expert interviews, the paper investigates the impact of factors internal and external to the World Bank on the institution’s anti-corruption programming.
Overall, the in-depth analysis of a major donor revealed that organizational-level factors such as those related to the underlying financial model, organizational culture, and policy mandate may constrain the anti-corruption policy formulation process and lead to inapt design and reduced effectiveness of anti-corruption reforms. From this finding follows the practical conclusion for donors that giving greater consideration to internal incentive structures and its impact on development policy design may contribute to improving the effectiveness of interventions.
06/2021
10/2021
One central manifestation of the digital transformation that has caused profound structural changes to all parts of economic and social life are platform companies. The dissemination of platforms is associated with the restructuring of entire markets, the reorganisation of companies and the restructuring of employment relationships. This dissertation asks to what extent platform companies as a new organisational form and their impact on employment represent a disruption or a continuation of liberalization trends that have been in place for a longer time. Two arguments are advanced in this context. First, it is argued that platform companies are worth to be discussed as a distinct topic, as they differ in important regards from previous organisational forms and have profound effects on the political economy of industrialized countries. Platform companies occupy a central position in the economy and control large parts of the critical infrastructure of the internet. Although platform companies share some similarities with previous firm models such as the vertically integrated firm and the nexus of contracts model, they depart in other regards. In particular, network effects and the control of information converted into data points are key features that give them unprecedented power. Second, the effect of platform companies on employment is moderated by institutions. However, not all institutions are equally important. Whereas the employment contract, for instance, has proven to be a very resilient institution preventing the dissemination of independent contractors as preferred employment model of platform companies, the influence of unions has been limited. Moreover, the largest effect of platform companies on employment may be more of an indirect than a direct nature. Platform companies had only limited success in disseminating their preferred employment model of independent contracting, but rather reinforced existing subcontracting trends. All chapters in this dissertation contribute to these arguments from different perspectives. Moving from a macro-perspective to a micro-perspective, Chapter Two represents a review chapter on key features of platforms and their impact on the political economy of industrialized countries. Chapter Three analyses mechanisms that explain responses in ten major European countries to regulate platform work. Finally, Chapter Four represents a case study on the effect of Amazon logistics on employment in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.
05/2021
This dissertation asks three interrelated questions about economic policy coordination: (1) Why do we see persistent macroeconomic imbalances that make international coordination necessary? (2) What kind of economic policies does the European Union promote in its member states via its coordination framework, the European Semester? (3) What determines whether governments implement recommendations issued under the Semester?
The first paper argues that economic ideas, and their emphasis in media reporting, help secure public support for policies that result in external imbalances. It finds that the dominant interpretations of current account balances in Australia and Germany concur with distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations of the current account has a causal effect on citizens’ support for their country’s economic strategy.
The second and third papers analyse policy recommendations under the European Semester, arguably the most ambitious example of economic policy coordination worldwide. The findings show that the European Union does not use the Semester to promote a single economic model across all member states. Recommendations do not uniformly recommend more reliance on the market or the state. Rather, they tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, recommendations have gradually become more favourable of state intervention.
The fourth paper investigates possible reasons for (non-)compliance with the Semester. It argues that recommendations are more likely to be implemented when their policy direction is in line with national governments’ economic ideology. The analysis shows that recommendations advocating less state intervention in the economy are more likely to be implemented under right-wing governments.
02/2021
This thesis consists of three chapters investigating the interactions between the financial and real sector. It provides new evidence on (i) the correlation between portfolio investment integration and business cycle synchronization, (ii) financial regulation and how it is driven by the business cycle, and (iii) electoral incentives influencing financial regulators.
Chapter 1 analyses the correlation between cross-border portfolio investment integration and business cycle synchronization. Using data on 29 advanced economies’ cross-border financial asset holdings, it shows that portfolio investment integration correlates positively with business cycle synchronization when faced with idiosyncratic shocks. However, it correlates negatively when faced with common or global shocks.
Chapter 2, coauthored with Gonçalo Pina, employs a text-mining approach to build a new dataset on regulatory actions against the US financial advisor industry. Employing a Bartik shift-share instrument, it provides causal evidence that regulatory actions are driven by the business cycle.
Chapter 3, coauthored with Gonçalo Pina, discusses the political economy of regulatory actions against the US financial advisor industry. It shows that regulators consistently delay punishment against firms prior to gubernatorial elections.
07/2021
This dissertation uncovers how pressure for change in the European Union (EU) open market is translated into actual change by explaining how employers’ use of migrant labour, and trade unions’ responses thereto, drive institutional developments in three areas central to the governance of work: collective bargaining, job security regulations, and workplace representation. Based on process-tracing case studies of the German manufacturing sector, the German, Norwegian, and Swedish construction and hotel and restaurant sectors, I trace how sectoral differences in the interactions between employers and trade unions trigger distinct causal processes that contribute either to institutional continuity or liberalization. The findings reveal that liberalization in Germany does not follow a single trajectory: while employers’ and trade unions’ responses to migrant labour in the manufacturing sector contribute to dualization, the responses in the construction and hotel and restaurant sectors instead contribute to deregulatory liberalization. I find that the class actors’ responses in the Swedish construction and hotel and restaurant sectors, in turn, contribute to a third variety of liberalization – socially embedded flexibilization, whereas the actors’ responses in the Norwegian construction sector trigger a process of institutional resilience creation, endeavouring to contribute to institutional continuity under high pressure for change. In capturing how individual employers through their use of migrant labour are pursuing non-politically controlled change strategies, this dissertation offers us the insight that employers’ logic of action based on compliance with employment relations rules and practices is explicitly contested by the logic of action stimulated by the increased marketization generated through European integration. Aside from addressing the micro-level drivers of change resulting from the accumulated actions of individual employers, this dissertation also highlights the role of different labour supplies in enabling change processes to take place. It is argued that unless trade unions, as counterpart to employers, and nation states in their enforcement and legislative capacities create conditions that disable employers from noncompliance with existing institutions in their use of migrant labour, employers will follow the logic of action encouraged in the EU open market and use their access to migrant labour in ways that result in liberalization of the employment relations.
18/2021
This thesis examines the causal process that led to policy change in the field of impact assessment (IA) in France, Germany and Italy since the mid-2000s. I seek to understand whether changes to the goals and/or ends of IA may be explained by symbolic politics or by a domestic learning process. Additionally, I aim to find out how and under which conditions policy learning results in policy change, and how the policy process affects the type of policy change that is adopted. Based on the policy diffusion literature, the policy learning framework and the Multiple Streams Framework, I operationalise three different causal mechanisms: symbolic politics, problem-oriented learning and power-oriented learning. Using document analysis and expert interviews, I trace the causal process that resulted in nine selected cases of policy change.
I find that in most cases policy changes resulted from a domestic learning process, whereby domestic entities defined policy problems and/or goals, acquired and diffused knowledge, and adopted measures to implement and enforce the policy change. This shows that France, Germany and Italy have gone beyond the symbolic phase in the implementation of IA. In Germany and Italy, recent policy changes may be explained by problem-oriented learning. Domestic entrepreneurs identified problems in the implementation of IA and aimed at improving the performance of the instrument. In these two countries stable organisations with a mandate to evaluate IA were the main policy entrepreneurs. They facilitated the acquisition of knowledge on IA, acted as learning fora, and largely contributed to disseminating knowledge and setting the policy agenda.
With respect to how and under which conditions policy lessons may be translated into policy change, findings show that this depends on the ability of policy entrepreneurs to use windows of opportunities such as changes of government to translate the acquired knowledge into policy change. I find that because the type of causal mechanism affects who learns and what is learnt, problem-oriented learning tends to result in incremental change of the means of IA, while power-oriented learning is more conducive to redefining the ends of IA.
03/2021
This dissertation in economics studies the effects of changing individuals’ choice environments on their behavior. The choice environment is the setting within which an individual makes her decision. It is widely acknowledged that even inconspicuous changes to this environment can have strong effects on behavior. This notion has spurred large efforts in the public and private sector to design these environments and steer behavior. The dissertation studies four measures that change choice environments to achieve public and private objectives.
The first chapter investigates the effects of community meetings on behavior changes that were desired by the central government in Rwanda. It studies these effects with and without performance incentives for local leaders and sheds light on who controls meetings and how they operate. The second chapter studies expected effects of Basic Income on time use, deploying a large-scale survey experiment. The results show intended reallocations that may contribute to foster social cohesion in society. In addition, the chapter suggests its methodology as a new approach to explore policies that are difficult or costly to test. Finally, the third and fourth chapter study the effects of social information and defaults in online donations. The third chapter shows that the empirical regularity of conditional cooperation fails. The fourth and last chapter explores the complex relationship between different numbers and values of donation amount defaults.