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Contrary to conventional wisdom, even Xi Jinping, who is often depicted in the media and pundit world as having centralized control over nearly every dimension of Chinese governance, still must rely on powerful technology corporations to carry out his will in the increasingly important Internet sector. This suggests a model of political control significantly more nuanced than most observers realize. This chapter argues that Xi Jinping does not rule the Internet and more specifically social media via a tight command-and-control structure, which implies that he is the ultimate decision-maker and companies simply implement his policy decisions. Instead, the chapter demonstrates based on process-tracing that China’s governance of the Internet is best understood as a corporate management model, whereby the Chinese state engages in a partnership with technology companies. Xi Jinping assumes a leadership role enforced by state instruments of control and cooptation strategies. At the same time, the state remains dependent on companies due to their informational, organizational, and institutional resources.
The aim of this chapter is to consider whether accusations of judicial activism towards the European Courts are rooted not in the activity of the CJEU per se but rather a wider ‘imbalance’ between law and politics in the present-day EU. Revisiting an earlier chapter, the chapter considers three sources of such an imbalance: the gap between the jurisdiction of the CJEU and the EU’s legislative competence; judicial reasoning at the EU level; and the imbalance in the EU between market and non-market objectives. While the chapter argues that the EU retains such an imbalance, recent developments, particularly the increasing dynamism of the EU legislature, have significantly narrowed the gap between the EU’s political and legal capacities in the last decade. As the chapter will conclude, the EU carries a less institutionally ‘lonely’ Court than in the past, providing the Union’s judiciary with greater leverage to temper activist claims.
The Court inhabits a ‘political space’ to which it is called upon to respond. This points to its need to develop cooperative relationships not only with courts but also with political actors (such as national governments and the EU legislature) and even to directly address and explain decisions to EU citizens themselves. This book is aimed at answering the question of ‘How does the CJEU position itself as a political as well as a legal actor?’ with a view to better understanding the work of the Court and addressing its contestation. For that purpose, we explore in this introductory chapter what is meant by judicial ‘activism’ and judicial ‘politics’, before examining the different varieties of judicial politics our authors have shown an interest in. This will pave the way to drawing some lessons on the factors to take into account when seeking to address and respond to contestation of the work of the Court.
KI und datengesteuerte Kampagnen: Eine Diskussion der Rolle generativer KI im politischen Wahlkampf
(2023)
Social constructivism
(2023)
From a social constructivist perspective, NATO is not just another alliance or security institution, but the institutional embodiment of the transatlantic security community, which is based on a collective identity of liberal democracies. This collective identity serves as the main explanatory factor for social constructivist research dealing with NATO’s creation, its specific institutional design and its unique culture of consultation. It also helps understand NATO’s persistence after the end of the Cold War, its enlargement and its (liberal) out-of-area operations and missions in the post-Cold War period. Constructivism has become one of the key theoretical approaches in NATO research, offering a broader view of the Alliance and accounting for empirical anomalies that competitors fail to explain. Still, constructivist research has arguably not yet reached its full potential and could offer additional insights into NATO’s past, presence and future. These lacunae are addressed in the chapter.
The chapter examines ministerial advisory structures in Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands and discusses if and how their emergence and roles are linked to the Continental administrative tradition - one which emphasises the rule of law, and a procedural orientation within and political responsiveness of the standing bureaucracy. The chapter reviews the state of the research on ministerial advisers in the three countries and finds various similarities. In all three contexts ministerial advisory positions have emerged: however, they are less formalised and have received less attention than their counterparts in other parts of the world in recent years.
This chapter seeks to bridge existing research on the politicisation of top civil servants and the roles of ministerial advisers by proposing a new conceptual approach for the comparative analysis of executive policy-making. We conceive of the executive triangle as a set of interdependent relationships between ministers, civil servants, and advisers. Those relationships may take different forms, depending on the distinct tasks performed by each actor and their roles in policy-making, which define mutual expectations. Thus understood, the executive triangle is an institution performing particular functions in policy-making (such as assessing policy alternatives, anticipating political support, and coordinating with other actors both inside and outside government). Those functions are performed by actors within the triangle and reflected in their roles and their direct and indirect relationships. The chapter conceptually explores such a system-perspective on the executive triangle; sketches analytical dimensions for understanding similarities and differences of executive triangles across contexts; provides empirical illustrations of variations of the executive triangle in Europe; and develops a research agenda using this concept to better understand the roles of ministers, ministerial advisers, and top civil servants in executive policy-making in a comparative perspective.
Diasporas and Proxy Wars
(2023)
This chapter discusses the role of diasporas in connection with proxy wars. It argues that diaspora support differs from external state support in important ways, from the sources and motivations of support to the means and types of support provided. Diasporas are often drawn into the conflict by kinship support or feelings of guilt, and often send foreign fighters or financial support to their kin, rather than direct military support. Diasporas are also more susceptible to pressures by rebel groups to provide support, and their assistance tends to be more reliable than that of state sponsors. Finally, diasporas have greater stakes in reducing harm to civilians than most state supporters and will therefore be inclined to support long-term solutions, including those involving rebel governance.
In this chapter, we examine the issue of competence to confer residence and citizenship based on a donation or investment in the light of international and European law as they stand today. We show that the national competence to do this is part of the sovereign nature of the modern state, which implies the ability to create a people and delimit the scope of the population granted a right to settle in the national territory, underpinned by rules behind such delimitation. We also explain why investment migration per se cannot be presented as unlawful and outlines the avenues for the eventual disciplining of its offshoots in areas unrelated to migration as such, thus connecting particularly well with Peter Spiro’s analysis of relevant international law.
Diaspora communities are not homogeneous entities even if they are characterized as such for analytical convenience. Often, members of the diaspora carry their political attitudes from their country of origin, which the next generation might also inherit. Given that political preferences in the country of origin might vary significantly, members of the diaspora should also have different political preferences. To test this variation, we explore the internal cleavages of the Indian-American community using a national sample of 1,003 members of this community. We find significant differences by political identity, religion, age, and state of origin in India on evaluations of politicians and policy in India. Moreover, we find that Indian-Americans are not only divided in their attitudes towards politics in India, but that the same factors predict differences in evaluating both politicians and policy in the United States (US). Our results contribute to our understanding of Indian American attitudes, and also offer clues to how diaspora communities carry their political predispositions with them to their destination country, as well as how the diaspora remains as a vital element in – and stimulus on – Indian foreign policy.
Corruption and Development
(2023)
As the most powerful executive actor in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the Eurogroup has faced continuous demands to improve its accountability record since the euro crisis. One reform introduced to meet these demands were the Economic Dialogue – a regular exchange of views between the European Parliament and the President of the Eurogroup designed to ‘ensure greater transparency and accountability’ in the EMU. This chapter investigates the practical functioning of the Economic Dialogues with the Eurogroup between 2013 and the 2019 European Parliament elections. Applying the theoretical framework of the introduction, the purpose is to examine the extent to which the Parliament focuses on procedural or substantive accountability when questioning the Eurogroup President. Moreover, the chapter investigates the reasoning of parliamentary questions in line with the four accountability goods identified at the outset (openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness, and publicness). The findings show that Members of the European Parliament are eager to question the extent to which Eurogroup decisions are substantively open and effective, and to a lesser extent whether they are arbitrary or protect EU interests more generally. The analysis is based on fourteen transcripts of Economic Dialogues with the Eurogroup President, which took place between 2013 and 2019.
This chapter provides the volumes general conceptual framework. It begins by addressing why new approaches to accountability are needed, arguing that accountability literature has reached a stalemate as a result of an impasse between deductive and inductive approaches to accountability in the EU. It then argues that overcoming the stalemate requires developing a generalised framework of what accountability is for, deriving four accountability goods to be used in subsequent chapters. The chapter argues that each of the goods can be delivered in procedural or substantive ways, focusing either on the process by which decisions are made or the substantive worth of decisions themselves. The chapter concludes by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of both varieties of accountability before mapping out how the concepts will be applied across policy fields and institutions in subsequent chapters.
This chapter serves as the general introduction to the volume. It discusses two major impasses plaguing EMU in the 2020s: the first, a clash between politicization of EMU decisions, on the one hand, and an institutional structure designed to reject political conflict, on the other; the second, a scholarly impasse between those analysing EMU accountability comparatively and those doing so through EMU specific standards. The chapter briefly introduces the core concepts used in the volume as a means of overcoming this impasse: the distinction between procedural and substantive accountability as well as the normative goods framework developed in Chapter 1. It finally provides an overview of the structure and content of the volume, concluding with a plea to focus scholarly attention on EMUs substantive accountability deficits.
This chapter introduces the contribution of Europe to the development of human rights ideas, law, and institutions. In a spirit of ‘provincialising Europe’, it argues that Europe’s contributions to human rights are ambivalent and dynamic. The chapter first examines natural rights and rights of citizens as twin, but also potentially conflicting, developments in demarcating Europe’s contributions to human rights. Europe is historically a home of human rights ideas as well as strong critiques and double standards in the use of these ideas. The chapter then examines European contributions to the legalization of human rights with a focus on two institutional Europes: that of the Council of Europe and the European Union. Finally, the chapter reviews contemporary human rights debates, against the backdrop of authoritarianization in Europe on the one hand and demands for new human rights to tackle the climate crisis, and digitalization of modern societies on the other.
Dieser Beitrag gibt auf Basis der Daten des Mikrozensus einen Überblick über den Wandel der Familienformen in Deutschland. Es wird untersucht, inwieweit alleinerziehende, nichteheliche und eheliche Familien sozialstrukturell differenziert sind und in welchem Ausmaß sich die ökonomische Lebenslage der verschiedenen Familienformen unterscheidet.
Die Verwaltungssysteme
(2023)
How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: ‘Hashjacking’ as a Disinformation Strategy in Times of COVID-19
(2022)
Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourses on social platforms can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of ‘hashjacking’(The use of someone else’s hashtag in order to promote one’s own social media agenda.). For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of ‘hashjacking’ in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by ‘hashjacking’ COVID-19 related hashtags, like #CoronaVirusDE or #FlattenTheCurve. This polarisation strategy is dominated by the activity of a limited set of heavy users. The results underline the necessity to understand the dynamics of discourse polarisation, as an active political communication strategy of the far-right, by only a handful of very active accounts.
The governments of today are not able to transform and adapt to changes in the world around them, as demanded by their constituents. The nature of work, value of public goods, and the constant bombardment of crises are making the old bureaucratic structures obsolete.
Agile Government is an emerging theme, that of government-wide reinvention for adaptiveness and responsiveness. It places the accountability, delivery, capture, design and creation of public value at the heart of the government. The concept of agile government is confused with terms like Agile Manifesto, agile governance, agility among others, and because of this, needs some unpacking.
This book is a deep dive into this topic. It offers insights from the theoretical development of the topic of agile government, some lessons from government practices around the world, and ongoing academic and policy research. The project is spearheaded by the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government, which is the first teaching and research institution in the Arab world focusing on public policy and governance.
The COVID-19 pandemic not only ravaged human bodies but also had profound and possibly enduring effects on the health of political and legal systems, economies and societies. Almost overnight, governments imposed the severest restrictions in modern times on rights and freedoms, elections, parliaments and courts. Legal and political institutions struggled to adapt, creating a catalyst for democratic decline and catastrophic increases in poverty and inequality.
This handbook analyses the global pandemic response through five themes: governance and democracy; human rights; the rule of law; science, public trust and decision making; and states of emergency and exception. Containing 12 thematic commentaries and 25 chapters on countries of diverse size, wealth and experience of COVID-19, it represents the combined effort of more than 50 contributors, including leading scholars and rising voices in the fields of constitutional, international, public health, human rights and comparative law, as well as political science, and science and technology studies.
Taking stock after the onset of global emergency, this book provides essential analysis for politicians, policy-makers, jurists, civil society organisations, academics, students and practitioners at both national and international level on the best, and most concerning, practices adopted in response to COVID-19 - and key insights into how states and multilateral institutions should reform, adapt and prepare for future emergencies.
Judicialization - and the influence of trans-national Courts - seems a perfect object of study for inter-disciplinary research and a potential spur for methodological innovation. In the case of the European Courts, however, this chapter argues that divides between law and political science have impeded the developments of accounts of judicialization able to take both the legal and political aspects of judicial activity seriously. The chapter discusses sociological institutionalism as an alternative approach to judicialisation. By stressing the importance of legal norms in structuring the 'space' for legal agency while abstaining from the assumption that norms apply equally in all situations, sociological institutionalism provides an inter- disciplinary framework for the study of Courts able to act as a bridge between both disciplines. As the chapter will conclude, while institutionalist approaches are complex and time-consuming, their focus on the language, ideas and cultural assumptions of actors and institutions provide a compelling method for the study of judicial behaviour.
Der Beitrag beschreibt die Grundzüge des sozialstrukturellen Wandels der Lebensformen in Deutschland. Zunächst werden Konzepte und theoretische Ansätze zur Erklärung von Lebensformen und familialen Verhaltensweisen skizziert. Anschließend werden Strukturen und Wandel der Lebens- und Familienformen in Ost- und Westdeutschland nach 1990 auf der Grundlage des Mikrozensus und des deutschen Beziehungs- und Familienpanels (pairfam) empirisch untersucht. Dargestellt werden die altersspezifische Verteilung der Lebensformen, der Wandel der Familienformen von Frauen und Männern seit den 1990er Jahren sowie bildungsspezifische Entwicklungen. Weiterhin beleuchtet der Artikel an den Beispielen des Übergangs zur Mutterschaft und der nichtehelichen Lebensgemeinschaft die kohortenspezifi sche Lebenslaufdynamik von Familienformen. Schließlich wird mit Stieff amilien ein in der empirischen Forschung bislang wenig untersuchter Aspekt der Differenzierung der Familienformen aufgegriffen.
The rapid pace of technological advancement and innovation has put existing governance and regulatory mechanisms to the test. There is a clear need for new and innovative regulatory mechanisms that enable governments to successfully manage the integration of digital technologies into our societies, and to ensure that such integration occurs in a sustainable, beneficial, and just manner. Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands out as one of the most debated of such innovations. What exactly is it, how should it be built and deployed, how can it be used, and how should it be regulated? Yet across the period of this debate, AI is becoming widely used and addressed within existing, evolving, and bespoke regulatory contexts. The present chapter explores the extant governance of AI and, in particular, what is arguably the most successful AI regulatory approach to date, that of the European Union. The chapter explores core definitional concepts, shared understandings, values, and approaches currently in play. It argues that not only are the Union’s regulations locally effective, but, due to the so-called “Brussels effect,” regulatory initiatives within the European Union also have a much broader global impact. As such, they warrant close consideration.
Higher education is typically viewed as offering the most assured pathways to secure careers and low unemployment rates. Yet, increasingly some groups, not least higher education graduates and their families paying ever-higher tuition fees, question the taken-for-granted contributions higher education makes to individuals and society. While participation rates have climbed worldwide, higher education systems continue to produce winners and losers. In the face of such challenges globally, which alternatives exist? A prominent possibility, pioneered in Germany, is ‘dual study’ programmes. These programmes fully integrate phases of higher education study and paid work in firms, illustrating how employer interests and investments are (re)shaping advanced skill formation. Co-developed and co-financed by employers, they could ameliorate the global trend towards saddling students with ever-higher education costs and student debt. Grounded in neo-institutional analysis, expert interviews, and document analysis, we analyse the genesis and rapid expansion of dual study programmes, emphasizing the role of employer interests and highlighting distributional conflicts in the new politics of advanced skill formation. Furthermore, we discuss lessons other countries might glean from a new form of work-based higher education in Germany. Reference: Graf, L./Powell, J.J.W. (2022) The Origins and Contemporary Development of Work-based Higher Education in Germany: Lessons for Anglophone Countries? In: Knight, E./Bathmaker, A-M./Moodie, G./Orr, K./Webb, S./Wheelahan, L. (Eds.) Equity and Access to High Skills through Higher Vocational Education. London, Palgrave, 125-144.
Interest in collective skill formation systems has been high for a long time, but recent structural economic and societal developments have led commentators to question their viability. In particular, the shift towards a knowledge economy creates a number of challenges for these highly praised systems of vocational training. These challenges relate to the growing importance of knowledge intensive production in advanced economies and with the accelerated pace of change due to innovation and globalization. What is more, these issues are compounded by coinciding developments in growing inequality and the emergence of multicultural societies. Can collective skill formation systems adapt fast enough to the needs of the knowledge economy? Can they continue to be as successful as they have been in the past in integrating youth in the labour market? Will employers be willing to participate in the delivery of vocational training in this new context? In this book, a world class team of leading experts on collective skill formation systems provide a thorough discussion of these and other questions raised by the shift to a knowledge economy. The book argues that collective skill formation systems remain attractive for firms and governments. However, continuous and profound adjustments will be needed if they are to fulfil their objectives in terms of equity and efficiency.
Regional protection
(2022)
Written by leading experts in the field, this compelling textbook explores the essentials of international human rights law, from foundational issues to substantive rights and systems of protection. A variety of perspectives bring this multifaceted and sometimes contentious subject to life, making International Human Rights Law the ideal companion for students of human rights.
In this chapter, Martijn van den Brink discusses two questions: what is the relationship between national and EU citizenship legally speaking, and what should it be normatively speaking? While often conflated, these questions must be considered independently of each other. He argues first that EU law is not even capable of justifying the very minimal restrictions CJEU case law has imposed on the authority of Member States to determine the rules on the acquisition and loss of national citizenship. It certainly cannot justify more far-reaching restrictions such as outlawing investor citizenship or allowing UK nationals to retain their EU citizenship. Normatively speaking, however, Martijn van den Brink makes the case for giving the EU greater influence over the conditions relating to the loss and acquisition of national and EU citizenship, in particular to ensure that third-country nationals with social ties to their society of residence have a credible path to citizenship.
Ministerial advisors are by now established actors at the apex of ministerial departments in many countries around the globe. They advanced to close and often the most intimate advisors to government ministers and other executive politicians and are often the only actors in the ministries allowed to provide political advice. Also, they are often closely involved in the coordination of government coalition politics alongside party-political lines and coordinate between the ministry and the party headquarter. While they, in general, fulfil a much more political role (compared to civil servants), their role and working conditions vary. The chapter looks into different types of ministerial advisory systems, their institutionalization, working dynamics and in particular their role as political advisors. And even though ministerial advisors have received considerable attention by public administration scholars for around two decades, their position has not been accounted for in general public administration or policy process theory. The chapter revises the current literature on the emergence and role of advisors in theoretical, conceptual and empirical regards to provide a state-of-the-art overview of variation in ministerial advisory systems.
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.
Seit 1995 werden im Internationalen Handbuch der Berufsbildung (IHBB) wissenschaftliche Länderstudien zu den weltweiten Berufsbildungssystemen publiziert. Das IHBB ist ein Standardwerk für diejenigen, die sich für die Berufsbildung in anderen Ländern interessieren. Dieser Jubiläumsband zum 25-jährigen Bestehen des IHBB stellt aktuelle Befunde zu unterschiedlichen Themen und Fragestellungen aus der Vergleichenden Berufsbildungsforschung vor. Die Vergleichende Berufsbildungsforschung zielt darauf ab, Merkmale und Prinzipien der Berufsbildung in verschiedenen nationalen und kulturellen Kontexten zu beschreiben, zu verstehen und zu erklären. Deutlich stärker als die allgemeine oder hochschulische Bildung ist die Berufsbildung aus internationaler Perspektive von großen Unterschieden geprägt. Doch zugleich kann die Annahme formuliert werden, dass sich die Merkmale und Prinzipien der Berufsbildung im Zuge der wachsenden Globalisierung, Internationalisierung und Europäisierung tendenziell annähern – wie in anderen gesellschaftlichen Teilsystemen auch. Der Blick auf die Berufsbildung erfolgt aus diversen wissenschaftlichen Perspektiven, aus Erziehungs- und Berufsbildungswissenschaft, Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie und Betriebswirtschaftslehre. Mit dieser Auswahl wird einem inter- und multidisziplinären Verständnis Vergleichender Berufsbildungsforschung Rechnung getragen. Der vorliegende Sammelband schließt damit den Kreis zu den Beiträgen zu Methoden und Theorien des Vergleichs aus der Anfangszeit des Handbuchs.
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.
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.
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.
Kommunikation zwischen Regierenden und Regierten ist eine notwendige Bedingung für repräsentative Demokratien. Bürgerinnen und Bürger müssen wissen, wofür Parteien und Kandidaten stehen. Gleichzeitig müssen diese über Interessen und Bedürfnisse der Bevölkerung informiert sein. Kurzum: ohne Kommunikation funktioniert repräsentative Demokratie nicht. Politik und politische Kommunikation sind für die allermeisten von uns aber nicht unmittelbar, sondern nur mittelbar erfahrbar - hier spielen die Medien als „Fenster zur Welt“ eine zentrale Rolle. In aller Kürze werden wir uns der Bedeutung der medialen Veränderung (Radio, Fernsehen, Internet, soziale Medien) für die politische Kommunikation nähern. Hierum geht es in einem ersten Teil meines Beitrags. Daran anschließend, im zweiten Teil: Streit! Die politische Auseinandersetzung als Herzstück der Demokratie und besondere Form der Kommunikation. Hart in der Sache, anständig im Ton um die beste politische Lösung ringen - so der Idealfall. Doch wo findet diese Auseinandersetzung statt? Im dritten Teil des Beitrags wird das Konzept der Öffentlichkeit genauer beleuchtet. Vor wenigen Jahrzehnten unterhielt man sich über dieselbe Sendung, die man am Abend davor gesehen hatte - das „rituelle Zusammensein der Nation“. Heute leben wir in geteilten und getrennten Öffentlichkeiten. Filterbubbles, Echokammern. Welche Auswirkungen lassen sich daraus für die demokratische Debatte und die politische Kommunikation ableiten? Im vierten Abschnitt widmet sich der Beitrag großen Fragen, ohne abschließende Antworten zu liefern: Braucht es Regulierung? Kann Kommunikation überhaupt reguliert werden? Und von wem?
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.
Bundestagswahl 2021
(2022)
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.
How to Square the Circle Between Economic Globalization, Social Cohesion, and Liberal Democracy?
(2022)
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.
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.
Country Size and Educational Change: Comparing Reforms of Skill Formation in Germany and Switzerland
(2021)
This conference paper argues that country size can play a crucial role in shaping the type of gradual change observed in collective skill formation systems. Collectively governed dual-apprenticeship training has its base in the industrial and crafts sectors of the economy and builds on the decentralized cooperation of multiple public and private stakeholders. As a result, it tends to be strongly path dependent, which favours gradual over radical forms of change. However, in recent years, dual-apprenticeship training has been increasingly challenged by the rise of the knowledge and service economy and the growing popularity of academic forms of education. In this context, I compare policy responses in Switzerland and Germany, which represent one small and one large collective skill formation system respectively. The historical-institutionalist analysis finds that the dominant trajectory of change is conversion in Switzerland but layering in Germany, with different implications for the future viability of collective skill formation.
The chapter examines article 31 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention), the provision which purports to protect refugees from penalization for ‘illegal entry and stay’. The chapter draws on the previous work by the authors for UNHCR, including a review of national caselaw and practice on article 31 from over forty States. It reflects on the crucial role of the provision in safeguarding the right to seek asylum and argues that non-penalization constitutes one of the objects and purposes of the Refugee Convention. As a result, the chapter considers the distinct obligation on States to refrain from any acts frustrating the treaty’s object and purpose. Beyond article 31 of the Refugee Convention, the chapter explores international human rights law as a potentially wider source of protection. It examines whether the criminalization of irregular migration itself may be regarded as a human rights violation, thereby opening up a new avenue for legal research and advocacy. Finally, the chapter argues that aside from treaty obligations under international refugee and human rights law there is an emerging general principle of law relating to non-penalization of refugees and some other migrants.
In South Africa, one of the world’s most carbon-intense economies and a society marked by gross social inequality, climate change is not a popular topic. As of 2018, more than half of the population had never heard of climate change and only one in five South Africans believed that human activities lead to global warming. The communication of climate change in South Africa is influenced by the notorious inequality that the country still suffers decades after the apartheid regime has ended. Few South Africans are able to live a life in prosperity and security on par with life in industrialized nations, more than half of the population are considered poor, almost a third of the population are chronically unemployed, and many work for carbon-intense industries.
The country’s prevalent inequality and its economic dependency on coal influence the way climate change is communicated and interpreted. Environmental NGOs, journalists, and scientists frequently set communication cues on climate change. However, their messages are largely circulated in newspapers catering to an urban and educated readership and resonate less with people living in rural areas or those who rely on employment in the coal and mining sector.
In South Africa, most people hear about climate change in mass media, but journalists frequently lack the resources and training necessary to investigate climate change stories or to interact with local scientists. Environmental NGOs, in contrast, provide easily comprehendible communication cues for unspecialized journalists and often share similar worldviews and demographic backgrounds with dedicated environmental reporters. However, because Black South Africans are underrepresented among environmental journalists and because many affordable local newspapers cannot afford to hire specialized reporters, climate change is covered mostly in high-quality English-language outlets to which most people have no access. Moreover, environmental NGOs are frequently accused of prioritizing abstract ecological concerns, like climate change, over the interests of the South Africans workers, a sentiment that is informed by the country’s history of racial injustice. Counterintuitively, living in a coal area is associated with higher climate change awareness and belief, likely because coal companies and trade unions conduct awareness-raising programs among their workers and because many residents experience the adverse impact of coal mining and combustion firsthand.
Global trends, such as an ever-rising service economy, rapid technological change and digitalization, challenge skill formation systems. Focussing on European countries, this edited volume examines the variety of European VET governance and VET governance research. In particular, it provides insights into regional, local and decentralized governance at meso (e.g. professional associations) as well as micro level (e.g. learning arrangements). As such, the edited volume sheds light on the hitherto far less explored dimensions of VET governance and highlights challenges as well as opportunities in VET governance in the 21st century.
Charitable Foundations
(2021)
Foundations are private institutions for public benefit. With a long history that reaches back to antiquity, inside the United States and globally, foundations are a growing organizational form that policy makers increasingly view with both potential (as a source of private funds to complement government services) and caution (given their autonomy and low level of accountability). Alongside the rise in commerce and finance, foundations experienced an initial growth period in the late Middle Ages and a second in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the Industrial Revolution. Political stability, an increase in demand for social, educational, and cultural services of all kinds, and economic prosperity are certainly significant factors behind this growth. Since the dawn of the 21st century, foundations have remained the primary legal structure through which newly minted and emerging wealthy individuals practice their philanthropy. The foundation form, or some similar iteration, is growing not just in many Western democratic countries but even in communist and other political regimes such as China and Russia. The reason for this growth is the way in which foundations have been envisioned as instruments of welfare state reform in the broadest sense. This growth implies a more important role for foundations as providers of relief to those most in need, protectors of traditional institutions and the status quo, and, to a lesser extent, as change agents. In particular, this is apparent among the “new philanthropists” of the 21st century, drawn from technology entrepreneurs, who are more actively engaged in public policy.
Die Personalarbeit hat sich stark verändert. Prägend sind der demografische Wandel, neue Werte in der Arbeitswelt und technologische Transformationen, die Unternehmen, Personalabteilungen und Mitbestimmungsakteure herausfordern.
Eine konstruktive Zusammenarbeit zwischen Personal- und Mitbestimmungsverantwortlichen ist - so die Botschaft dieses Buchs - der Schlüssel für gute und breit akzeptierte Lösungen. Wissenschaftliche Analysen und Praxisbeispiele zeigen, dass Mitbestimmung auf Augenhöhe die Zufriedenheit der Beschäftigten erhöht und zu einer besseren wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und ökologischen Nachhaltigkeit führt.
Dieses Buch eröffnet durch seinen Dreiklang aus Wissenschaft, Arbeitgeber- und Arbeitnehmersicht neue Perspektiven für die strategische Personalarbeit. Die praktischen Empfehlungen greifen dabei auf betriebliche Beispiele zurück, in denen Personalverantwortliche und Akteure der Mitbestimmung über Hürden und Erfolge im beruflichen Alltag berichten. Leserinnen und Leser gewinnen so wertvolle Denkanstöße und erhalten Gestaltungsimpulse für das weite Feld von Personalarbeit und Mitbestimmung.
Die Sozialpartnerschaft begleitete sowohl den ökonomischen Wiederaufstieg Deutschlands nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg als auch die permanent notwendigen Anpassungsprozesse an veränderte wirtschaftliche, soziale und gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen. In vielen Sektoren hat die Sozialpartnerschaft ihre Präge- und Gestaltungskraft jedoch eingebüßt. Mitgliederrückgang, Arbeitgeberverbände ohne Tarifbindung und neue Geschäftsmodelle sind taktgebende Treiber dieses Wandels. (...) Ist die Sozialpartnerschaft nur noch der Rahmen für einen etablierten, gleichwohl kleiner werdenden Club von Unternehmen und Beschäftigten, oder gelingt es, die Reichweite wieder zu erhöhen? Werden das Prinzip der Sozialpartnerschaft und die konkrete Praxis des FTV als Rahmen revitalisiert, um die Interessenskonflikte der Dekarbonisierung und Digitalisierung im fairen Ausgleich zu bewältigen? Dafür werden wir zunächst die Fragen der Organisationsmacht auf Arbeitnehmer- und Arbeitgeberseite klären, anschließend Lösungsperspektiven aufzeigen und zuletzt die Relevanz der Sozialpartner im Kontext der Transformation beleuchten.
Fintech applications such as robo-financial advisors (RAs) are complex algorithmic decision making systems, which gained prominence with their claim to democratize finance. Lack of transparency and explanations for these automated decisions leads to a trust deficit for users, limiting the potential of these applications. Our research aims to analyse the effectiveness of user-centric explanations in conveying the decision-making logic of complex algorithmic systems. Our user study tests techniques from explainable AI, varying in complexity and transparency. The quantitative aspects of our study determine the efficacy and usability of explanations and the qualitative aspects measure the effect of explanations on users and system usability. Our study finds trust and confidence of users in the system is positively correlated with comprehension and transparency provided by the presence of an explanation. There is a notable reduction in comprehension and trust between transparent white and opaque black box explanations of algorithms. This study is designed to aid policymakers and regulators in order to understand user needs which are crucial to designing better policies around algorithmic explainability for RAs.
In starkem Kontrast zu anderen Wissenschaftsnationen hat Deutschland bis vor kurzem kaum Public Policy Schools hervorgebracht. Damit gemeint sind universitäre Einrichtungen, die in der Forschung interdisziplinär und anwendungsorientiert ausgerichtet sind und in der Lehre vornehmlich postgraduelle Abschlüsse anbieten. Zwar gibt es seit der Jahrtausendwende Neugründungen – denken wir an die Hertie School of Governance, die NRW School of Governance oder die Willy-Brand-School of Governance an der Universität Erfurt, die Hochschule für Politik an der Technischen Universität München und in gewisser Hinsicht auch seit längerem die Universität für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer – aber es sind letztlich doch wenige im Vergleich zu den zahlreichen Einrichtungen in den USA, Kanada und Großbritannien.
Nongovernmental organizations or NGOs are part of a larger set of organizations that are self-governing, not-for-profit, noncompulsory, and institutionally separate from government. They emerged mostly during the process of mid-twentieth-century modernization and globalization, grew in scale and scope in subsequent decades, and assumed greater importance following the end of the Cold War. This was largely due to favorable economic, political, and social conditions after 1989. They fulfill four major roles: as service providers, innovators, value-guardians, and advocates. NGOs are trying to adjust to less favorable conditions in the early twenty-first century while many innovations are taking place.
This chapter argues that the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 2004 and its subsequent ratification by more than 180 parties indicates universal agreement on the norms of quality of government, putting an end to moral relativist arguments. While UNCAC does not define corruption, it defines good governance and sets ethical universalism as its key benchmark. The chapter then follows the intellectual history of this concept and its remarkable success, with the norm of equal, fair, and nondiscriminatory treatment of every citizen present in every current constitutional contract. Ratification does not necessarily mean implementation when corruption is concerned, and the chapter surveys limitations to the practice of ethical universalism in governance and existing approaches to narrow the gap between norm and practice.
Keywords: corruption, quality of government, equality of opportunity, ethical universalism, good governance
Although local governments are essential providers of public services and infrastructure across Europe, they ultimately depend on funding from higher levels of government. The clear relevance of local government finances necessitates effective regulation in order to ensure financial sustainability, but as of yet there has been hardly any comparative research regarding this particular topic. The 18 chapters contained in this volume bring together the work of 40 experts in the disciplines of political science, economics, and public administration research to approach the subject of local financial regulation in various scales and contexts across Europe. In this introductory chapter, we first outline key concepts such as fiscal decentralisation and regulation and briefly describe associated underlying theories and research. Secondly, we present comparative fiscal data to demonstrate the variance and trends of fiscal decentralisation across Europe. It also introduces the concept and components of regulatory regimes and develops the argument, that the effectiveness and outcome of fiscal regulation depends not only on the quality of individual components but also on the interactions of those components. We finally present the three guiding questions of this volume and provide a short overview of the chapters to follow.
In this contribution, we explore evolution and stasis in EU asylum law and policy. We identify two tensions at the heart of the CEAS, between the commitment to protection and deflection of protection obligations, and between internal mobility within the EU and the immobilization of asylum seekers and refugees. We note the role of these foundational tensions in generating and exacerbating the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015/16. This chapter is premised on a widely-shared understanding of the role of EU asylum policy in that crisis, namely that by illegalizing the travel of asylum seekers and refugees in search of protection, it contributes to the dangerous mass flight, which in turn generates humanitarian and political crises. We then analyse four key dimensions of EU asylum policy in light of these tensions: access to asylum, responsibility-allocation, legislative harmonisation, and institutionalised practical co-operation. Across these four fields, we identify the limits of EU law, and its general stasis, in spite of changes in Treaty telos, law-making processes, and EU enlargement. We briefly consider the role of the CJEU, still very much in the shadow of the ECtHR in asylum, in spite of its numerous rulings on the CEAS. Overall, we demonstrate its fairly minimalist approach in this area, avoidance of controversial cases by dubious use of inadmissibility findings, and failure to catalyse policy changes. Against this backdrop of legislative, political and judicial caution and inertia, we identify two key trends: a move towards greater institutional cooperation, including through the creation of a dedicated agency, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), and a general flight from law in this policy field. We conclude by considering the likely impact of these trends on EU asylum law.
Despite the growing significance of fiscal rules, there is little research about tools and practices of enforcement at the local level. Addressing this knowledge gap, this chapter makes three contributions: first, we review the literature on regulatory enforcement in the ‘public-to-private’ context and discuss six key insights. Second, we provide an empirical overview of enforcement instruments across 21 European countries and discuss them in light of those key insights. Third, we present findings from an in-depth over-time analysis of enforcement practices in Germany’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. We find that European supervisory bodies have a range of instruments that broadly follow the logic of the ‘enforcement pyramid’ at their disposal, but there is substantial cross-national variation in the instruments used. The case study reveals a ‘back and forth’ enforcement style alternating between strengthening and loosening rules and enforcement measures. We find political logics, regulators’ capacities and economic contexts as key drivers. Finally, we conclude that the idea of enforcement as a rational application of legal norms is unrealistic. In order to increase compliance, regulators should make more of an effort to understand the underlying rationale for compliance and violations; they need to secure political support and a credible strategy for escalating sanctions in case of non-compliance.
Die Rolle der Gewerkschaften in der Berufsbildung: Ein Vergleich Deutschlands und der Schweiz
(2021)
In unserem Beitrag untersuchen wir die Rolle der Gewerkschaften in der Berufsbildung. Dabei zeigen wir, dass in Deutschland den Gewerkschaften eine starke (paritätische) Rolle zukommt. Deutlich schwächer ist die Stellung der Gewerkschaften hingegen im schweizerischen System, in welchem Arbeitgeberinteressen Vorrang gegeben wird. Unsere historisch-vergleichende Analyse geht den Gründen für die jeweilige Rolle der Gewerkschaften in Deutschland und der Schweiz nach. Unterschiede im nationalen institutionellen Rahmen sowie in den Machtressourcen der entsprechenden Gewerkschaftsbewegungen sind massgeblich dafür verantwortlich, dass in Deutschland und in der Schweiz nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg unterschiedliche Entwicklungspfade eingeschlagen wurden.
In this chapter, we assess the link between scaling, control and organizational achievements. We argue that control is essential to coordinate organizational members towards a common and shared goal and to provide guardrails for scaling. We use the experience of the Aravind Eye Care System, a non-profit organization based in India providing eye care services to poor people to specify the mechanisms employed by Aravind underpinning three popular organizational scaling modes—branching, affiliation and dissemination. Our objective is to show how control and scaling can be combined in order to protect the value base of a social enterprise and at the same time ensure growth.
Diego A. Salazar-Morales In 1991, Peru’s autocratic leader Alberto Fujimori ordered the military to intervene in public universities, claiming that the Maoist organisation Shining Path had long been encouraging students’ ideological radicalisation. Together with this measure, Fujimori also introduced an aggressive privatisation scheme for Peru’s higher education system consisting of tax exemptions, consultancies for private universities, and a lack of general regulatory oversight. After ten years of military intervention and in the wake of Fujimori’s regime (1990–2000) , a dual system was established: a system of well-funded private universities, connected to international academic centres, serving the Peruvian elites; and another system of underfunded public universities, with few international connections, and peripheral to the global academic debate. However, this divide has not only led to marked differences in education quality and access to the job market, it has also created a stigma around public university students and their organised attempts to...
Administrative capacities are required to give effect to policy instruments. While seemingly obvious, policy research has, as yet, not systematically linked these two perspectives. The policy instrument perspective emerged in the context of implementation research and the wider debate about changing modes of governance. Administrative capacities and resources always played a role in this research, but cumulative empirical exploration or theory building has remained underdeveloped. A stronger integration of administrative capacity perspectives into research on policy instruments is essential so as to progress our understanding regarding the choice, design, and operation of policy instruments. A stronger policy orientation in research on administrative capacities can help to address limitations of indicator-based studies of capacity, which currently dominate empirical research on administrative capacities. The design and choice of policy instruments has an effect on administrative capacities: Capacity-reinforcing policies can be distinguished from capacity-undermining ones. A challenge for future research is under which conditions will politicians invest in administrative capacities, an investment that will only yield (uncertain) positive outcomes in the medium term.
This chapter situates ‘executive styles’ within the wider ‘family of styles’ approaches and discusses some of the challenges for advancing comparative research in this field. To this end, it introduces two key institutional dimensions of executive politics that shape executive styles. Subsequently, it reviews and discusses empirical research on executive styles and elaborates on two analytical dimensions for the comparison of national and sectoral executive styles. In a next step, the chapter moves to comparisons over time and reviews studies that analyse the change of executive styles in individual country cases. While a range of (country) examples are used, the chapter draws in particular on European examples and quite specifically on Germany and the UK. The chapter concludes that exploring the varieties of executive styles requires combining national accounts that engage with the institutional and political complexities of single countries, or families of nations, in detail with focussed comparisons zooming in on specific dimensions.
This chapter discusses how a classic perspective of public policy and public administration, incrementalism, contributes to questions of the politics of time. It argues that the contribution of incrementalism is not limited to emphasizing the advantages of small-scale and stepwise policy or institutional changes compared to comprehensive reform strategies. Beyond this, the chapter shows how contributions from diverse fields, ranging from comparative politics and behavioral insights to urban planning, develop the concept of incrementalism, and how these approaches can enrich debates on policy and institutional change. In particular, the common image of incrementalism as subservient to existing power structures is challenged. Linking the varieties of incrementalism to questions of politics of time helps to develop these insights.
This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the Anglo-Saxon and Rechtsstaat traditions with respect to their human resources management (HRM) policies and practices. It begins with a comparative analysis of the two traditions by examining their history, understanding of employment relations, and overall structure. In then discusses each tradition’s approach to the field of HRM and how public sector reforms have impacted the way their public personnel are managed. Following this, it compares the HRM cyle between the two systems with emphasis on: recruitment and selection, employment conditions, performance management, training, and promotion as well as leadership and the management of the senior civil service. The chapter ends by discussing future research avenues in comparative public administration including an emphasis on the necessity of understanding context and linking public administration traditions to behaviour outcomes, such as current challenges related to managing crises, diversity and inclusion and the future of public service in a digitalised world.
Many governments have problems with developing digital government services in an effective and efficient manner. One proposed solution to improve governmental digital service development is for governments to utilize agile development methods. However, there is currently a lack of understanding on two important and related topics. First, whether or not agile development might help to overcome common failure reasons of digital government projects. Second, what the challenges and success factors of agile digital government service development are. This paper addresses both of these gaps. By gathering insights from six cases where agile methods were used in the development of new digital services, it identifies five core categories of challenges and success factors encountered when utilizing agile development methods for governmental digital service development: organizational, methodological, end-user-related, technological, and regulatory. Furthermore, based on these findings, it makes initial recommendations on when and how to best use agile methods for digital government service development.
Robot Nannies Will Not Love
(2021)
How artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire: a philosophical thriller and essays.A chance encounter between two women and a road trip into the future: It's Christmas Eve, and Scarlett, banker-turned-technologist, is leaving a secret underground lab to catch the last flight that will get her home in time to open presents with her three-year-old son. She offers a lift to a young woman in distress, who shares her intimate life story as they drive to the airport. These revelations will have devastating consequences for both of them. The Love Makers is a philosophical thriller about female friendship, class, motherhood, women, and work--and how artificial intelligence and robotics are transforming the future of love and desire. Aifric Campbell combines her novel with essays from leading scientists and commentators who examine what's at stake in our human-machine relationships. What is our future as friends, parents, lovers? Will advances in intelligent machines reverse decades of progress for women? From robot nannies to generative art and our ancient dreams of intelligent machines, The Love Makers blends storytelling with science communication to investigate the challenges and opportunities of emergent technologies and how we want to live. ContributorsRonny Bogani, Joanna J. Bryson, Julie Carpenter, Stephen Cave, Anita Chandran, Peter R. N. Childs, Kate Devlin, Kanta Dihal, Mary Flanagan, Margaret Rhee, Amanda Sharkey, Roberto Trotta, E. R. Truitt, and Richard Watson