Part of a Book
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Part of a Book (923) (remove)
Language
- English (649)
- German (249)
- French (10)
- Spanish (7)
- Italian (3)
- Other (2)
- Multiple languages (1)
- Dutch (1)
- Portuguese (1)
Keywords
- social innovation (10)
- Governance Report (7)
- Social Entrepreneurship (4)
- Sociology (4)
- Centre for Fundamental Rights (3)
- Liberal Order (3)
- Ministerial advisers (3)
- Social Policy (3)
- Social entrepreneurship (3)
- China (2)
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.
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.
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.
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.
How to Square the Circle Between Economic Globalization, Social Cohesion, and Liberal Democracy?
(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.
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.
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.
In today's world, disasters, both natural and manmade, are becoming increasingly frequent, and new solutions are of a compelling need to provide and disseminate information about these disasters to the public and concerned authorities in an effective and efficient manner. One of the most frequently used ways for information dissemination today is through social media, and when it comes to real-time information, Twitter is often the channel of choice. Thus, this paper discusses how Big Data Analytics (BDA) can take advantage of information streaming from Twitter to generate alerts and provide information in real-time on ongoing disasters. The paper proposes TAGS (Twitter Alert Generation System), a novel solution for collecting and analyzing social media streaming data in realtime and subsequently issue warnings related to ongoing disasters using a combination of Hadoop and Spark frameworks. The paper tests and evaluates the proposed solution using Twitter data from the 2018 earthquake in Palu City, Sulawesi, Indonesia. The proposed architecture was able to issue alert messages on various disaster scenarios and identify critical information that can be utilized for further analysis. Moreover, the performance of the proposed solution is assessed with respect to processing time and throughput that shows reliable system efficiency.
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.
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.
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.
Bundestagswahl 2021
(2022)
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?
States of emergency are often declared due to underlying problems of minority group accommodation, and the extraordinary limitation of rights arising from them tends to have a particularly striking effect on such groups. This was true, for instance, with the emergency measures adopted by the British authorities in the context of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. The same appears true in respect of the Turkish state of emergency in the aftermath of the failed military coup of 15 July 2016 vis-à-vis the position of Turkey’s Kurds. In spite of the fact that the declaration of the state of emergency constituted a response to an attempted coup which was, allegedly, orchestrated by the Gülen Movement, it is clear that the resulting derogating measures have also targeted ‘other individuals and organizations’, mainly those allegedly connected to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), and thus extended to Turkey’s Kurdish periphery. This chapter seeks to map the impact of the Turkish post-coup derogation measures on Turkey’s Kurds and to test them against the non-discrimination principle, minority rights, and the right of self-determination.
A Dynamic Analysis of Judicial Behaviour: The Auto-Correct Function of Constitutional Pluralism
(2018)
Die Corona-Pandemie stellt die zweite große Bewährungsprobe für die Eurozone seit ihrem Bestehen dar. Nachdem die Wirtschafts-und Währungsunion (WWU) aus der Eurokrise der Jahre 2010 bis 2015 mit einigen Narben, aber doch weitestgehend intakt und handlungsfähig hervorgegangen ist, sah sie sich ab Anfang 2020 erneut einer potenziell existenzgefährdenden Krise ausgesetzt. Die Antworten, die die Mitgliedstaaten bis Ende Juli 2020 auf die Pandemie gefunden haben, unterscheiden sich von der Politik in der Eurokrise: Während der Fokus zur Krisenrettung zuvor auf der Vergabe von Krediten gegen Auflagen und einem punktuellen Umbau der Euro-Architektur im Bereich der Bankenaufsicht und-abwicklung lag, stand im Sommer 2020 ein umfassendes schuldenfinanziertes EU-Wiederaufbauinstrument im Zentrum der Krisenbekämpfung. Es ging nicht mehr um Kredite, sondern um gemeinsame …
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.
Employment Relations is widely taught in business schools around the world. However, an increasing emphasis is being placed on the comparative and international dimensions of the relationships between employers and workers. It is becoming crucial to consider today’s work and employment issues alongside the dynamics between global financial and product markets, global production chains, national and international employment actors and institutions, and the ways in which these relationships play out in different national contexts.
Comparative Employment Relations in the Global Economy addresses this need by presenting a cross-section of country studies – including the UK, Germany, USA, Brazil, India, Russia, China and South Africa – alongside integrative thematic chapters covering essential topics such as theoretical approaches, collective representation and employment regulation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This chapter examines the role played by law and legal institutions in systems of multi-level of governance. While the de-centring of state institutions has been a common concern in legal and political science literature in the last three decades, there remains a lack of attention to how literature on multilevel governance can be better coupled with related work in comparative public law. The chapter attempts to fill this gap by sketching four possible conceptualizations of law’s role in multilevel governance systems. Law may either demarcate (by dividing authority), facilitate (by ensuring systems of shared rule), catalyze (by undermining hierarchical systems) or colonize multilevel governance (by shifting power from other spheres in society towards the legal system itself). These conceptualizations are intended to provide a framework on how patterns in the role of law across multilevel governance systems can be analyzed in future work across the social sciences.
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.
Informed by multiple disciplines, theories, and methods, higher education scholars have developed a robust and diverse literature in many countries. Yet, some important (organizational) sociological perspectives, both more established and more recent, are insufficiently linked. In particular, we identify two theoretical strands – institutional and relational – that, when joined, help to explain contemporary developments in global higher education and yield new organizational insights. We review relevant literature from each perspective, both in their general formulations and with specific reference to contemporary higher education research. Within the broad institutional strand, we highlight strategic action fields, organizational actorhood, and associational memberships. Within the relational strand, we focus on ties and relationships that are especially crucial as science has entered an age of (inter)national research collaboration. Across these theories, we discuss linkages between concepts, objects, and levels of analysis. We explore the methodological approach of social network analysis as it offers great potential to connect these strands and, thus, to advance contemporary higher education research in a collaborative era.
The gradual transformation of the social contract of science, in which policy-makers demand value for money and relevant knowledge to contribute to the solution of societal problems, has contributed to change the model provision of funding for science. Such quests for relevance recognises its genesis in the idea of evidence-based policy and practice that originally started in the field of medicine and quickly spread to other fields, such as education, and the overall policy process. In the search for what has been called the “what works” movement, one of the funding arrangements that has recognised special momentum since the 1990s is the thematic research programmes, sponsored by governments or research state agencies, to directly targeted research topics and develop research capacity. Considerable sums of public research funding for educational research has been allocated through thematic national programmes in order to guarantee quality in research, to create research capacity, and to provide results that could inform practitioners and policy-makers. In this chapter, I discuss how intrinsically and extrinsically related aspects of programmification in the United Kingdom and Germany foresee and impact the sustainability in educational research.
Developed throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, structural-functionalism profoundly shaped social sciences thinking, including Comparative and International Education. This school of thought analyzes the functions of the interrelated parts that constitute society, including education, to explain how they contribute to maintaining order and harmony in society. The first part of the chapter provides an overview of the antecedents and developments of the structural-functionalism by making reference to the main scholars and ideas that contributed to its elaborations. The second part of the chapter explores its applications in the field of comparative international education by providing several examples of how structural-functionalism influenced the analyses of early comparativists. The chapter ends with a conclusion, a list of further reading, and a mini-case study.
This book is the most comprehensive study of the European member states available. It covers the principal member states in separate chapters, as well as bringing together the smaller member states in comparative groupings, and also includes a chapter on the new member states. The country chapters look at the wider political issues associated with integration and not just policy machinery. In order to help readers understand the interaction of the member states, there are sections which cover analytical and empirical themes such as EU member relations and the European economy.
Régulation
(2004)
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.
Conclusion
(2004)
Usages et travail politiques : une sociologie compréhensive des usages de l’intégration européenne
(2004)
Regulation
(2007)
The Demise of Statism? Associations and the Transformation of Interest Intermediation in France
(2009)
What role do firms play in the making of EU trade policy? This chapter surveys the policy domain and lays out the instruments firms can employ to influence decisions on trade. It underlines that European trade policy is characterized by a high degree of institutional complexity, which firms have to manage in order to be successful. In particular, the European Commission works intensively to solicit business input in order to gain bargaining leverage vis-à-vis third countries and the EU member states. This reverse lobbying creates a two-channel logic of trade policy lobbying in the EU. Corporate actors have a very good chance of working closely with the European Commission if they can propose pan-European trade policy solutions. This can be either trade liberalization or EU-wide regulatory restrictions on trade. Demands for traditional protectionist measures, especially those that reveal national interest divergences, are difficult to defend at the supranational level. Protectionist lobbying therefore goes through the national route, with corporate actors working to block liberalization by affecting the consensus in the Council of Ministers. The chapter illustrates this two-channel logic by studying business–government interactions in agricultural trade, textiles and clothing, financial services, and telecommunication services.
La politique de concurrence
(2009)
POLITIQUES EUROPEENNES offre une vue d'ensemble du système institutionnel, des acteurs, du jeu politique et des modes d'action de l’Union, à la fois dans les domaines où son intervention est ancienne et dans ceux où son influence est plus récente. Agriculture, monnaie, concurrence, mais aussi commerce, enseignement supérieur, social, environnement ou même politique étrangère : l’influence de l’Europe se fait sentir dans un grand nombre de domaines, et pourtant son action reste largement méconnue. Fruit d’une coopération entre politistes, juristes, économistes et sociologues, tous enseignants à Sciences Po, ce manuel sans équivalent en langue française donne les clés pour mettre en perspective les dynamiques de la construction européenne depuis ses origines et pour comprendre les défis auxquels elle fait face aujourd’hui. Conçu comme un support pour des enseignements d’introduction à l’intégration européenne, il propose un panorama clair et synthétique des politiques européennes et de leur développement. Enrichi de nombreux encadrés, zooms, documents et références bibliographiques, il s’adresse aux étudiants, chercheurs et enseignants des premiers et deuxièmes cycles en science politique, droit, économie, administration publique et administration économique et sociale.
Abstract : Many observers agree that the multilateral liberalization of service trade was a response to the intense lobbying efforts of financial service companies. In contrast, many of the firms that were affected by the General Agreement on the Trade of Services did not know where their interests lay in the multilateral negotiations and only began to work with their governments very late in the process. This paper shows that the preference evolution of service companies - both the first movers and the late comers - cannot be explained with reference to material rationality only. As a radically new trade issue, service trade was a realm of great uncertainty for business and they relied on social devices rather than pure economic calculations to determine how to position themselves on liberalization. In times of uncertainty, the differential logic of social embeddedness and the institutional constraints of a firm's national setting are therefore a more appropriate indicator for business demands than material incentives arising from the global economy.
In the late twentieth century, the rise of neo-liberal economics appeared to some to signal the withdrawal of the nation state from key areas of economic life in the industrialized world. However, this was always an illusion. The recent financial crisis has demonstrated clearly that states remain the actor of last resort when the business system begins to collapse. International efforts at coordination have been dwarfed by the fiscal policies of states to stimulate their economies. These revival efforts reveal the underlying differences which remain between states and how economic policy-making in crisis responds most directly to threats to the national system. This chapter examines these processes and how they can be combined with continued commitment to a neo-liberal global order and efforts at global coordination.
This chapter examines business lobbying at the WTO. It argues that the role of companies in multilateral trade is tightly linked to the evolution of the trading system, with the most decisive influence during the creation of the WTO institutions. In an initial phase, business lobbying concentrated on tariff barriers. As the GATT expanded its scope during the Uruguay Round, large US companies became very active participants and crucially shaped the agenda, in particular with respect to service trade and intellectual property rights. In other areas, however, active lobbying was less effective, most notably investment protection and textiles. With the establishment of the WTO, lobbying has begun to partially shift to the supranational level. Some relationships exist between the WTO secretariat and companies, but the most important new pillar of political activity relates to dispute settlement. At the same time, the WTO secretariat tries to reach out to a more diverse set of stakeholders. In many ways, the influence of global companies on WTO affairs is much more indirect today than it was during its creation.
Neo-liberalism has had one central message for the state: scale back, cut back, cut out, transform. This brings to mind Winston Churchill's reply to an opponent who asked, ‘How much is enough?’ to Churchill's repeated push to spend increasingly more on defence in the 1930s. Churchill's rejoinder came in the form of a story about a Brazilian banker with whom he had just had lunch. The banker had received a cable informing him of the death of his mother-in-law and asking for instructions. He cabled back: ‘embalm, cremate, bury at sea; leave nothing to chance’.
This take on neo-liberalism – as burying the state – is certainly exaggerated because neo-liberalism comes in many different forms with many different policy applications. Only the recommendations of the most radical strands come close to the Brazilian banker's response to his mother-in-law's death. Yet the story as a metaphor for neo-liberal views of the state nonetheless somehow rings true. This is largely because neo-liberals have been more anti-state in their rhetoric than in their actions.
The state has been neo-liberalism’s bête noire, as its main focus of attack, because neo-liberals – whatever their differences – have viewed the state as consistently doing too much in the wrong ways with the worst consequences not only for the markets but also for democracy, by endangering individual freedom through its interventions. As a provider of public goods, the state had to be scaled back to leave room for the market, which would assure more efficiency. However, the state has also been neo-liberalism’s greatest conquest, as its main locus of action, because it has been primarily through the state that neo-liberals have been able to realize their vision(s).
The Beatty Lecture, established in 1952 in honour of former Canadian Pacific Railway president and McGill chancellor Sir Edward Beatty, is McGill University's most anticipated annual event. Some of the series'greatest lectures, delivered by Nobel Prize laureates, world leaders, and cultural icons, have been forgotten, carefully stowed away in the McGill Archives.To help us understand some of the most significant moments and discoveries of our time, With the World to Choose From spotlights fifteen outstanding Beatty Lectures, spanning seven decades. Readers can discover – or rediscover – these important and inspiring lectures, all in print for the first time. One of the twentieth century's most influential visionaries, the economist Barbara Ward, opens this anthology with her future-looking 1955 lecture. Lectures from acclaimed biologist Robert Sinsheimer, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, philosopher Charles Taylor, and author and social commentator Roxane Gay carry readers through the decades that followed and up to the present, treating subjects from the tensions of Cold War politics and the implications of genetic engineering to the origins of life in the universe and the watershed #MeToo movement. Some of today's leading academics add contextual and biographical information to each chapter, and an introduction sheds light on the history of the Beatty Lecture and the life of its notable namesake.Illustrated with a selection of photographs and ephemera, With the World to Choose From provides a historical and behind-the-scenes look at one of Canada's longest-running lecture series.
Regulatory governance of nonprofit organizations: legal frameworks and voluntary self-regulation
(2021)
This multi-perspective Research Handbook provides a clear pathway through the nonprofit governance research field, pushing beyond the borders of current theory to expand and deepen the analytical framework for nonprofit governance. It offers an analysis of the basics including definitions, organizational forms and levels of governance, and takes a critical approach towards the normative and prescriptive tendencies in much of contemporary governance scholarship. Divided into four distinctly thematic parts, contributors provide an in-depth review of the last 20 years, building on the foundations of classical contributions and further exploring new theoretical approaches, while examining the governance challenges of diverse types of organizations, including those from both developed and developing countries. Future challenges including multilevel governance are expertly addressed, and insights leading towards a unified theory are proposed. This thoroughly engaging Research Handbook will be an excellent resource for scholars in business and strategic management, nonprofit management and civil society, interested in topics such as nonprofit governance practice and boards of directors, governance theory, stakeholder management, membership organizations, foundations and hybrid organizations. Teachers of nonprofit management will also find this invaluable as it addresses both the core concepts and the most recent developments.
The chapter shows how European internal market regulation expanded and was transformed from a limited and often non-binding set of policies to an integrated and wide-ranging framework. Incremental but profound change was possible because critical junctures, in particular judgments by the European Court of Justice, allowed the European Commission and its allies to advance new policy proposals with new default positions. This affected the preferences of major member states, created new coalitions, and also led to the emergence of new actors. Feedback loops reinforced the orientation of previous agreements and created changes that most observers would have qualified as impossible three or four decades earlier.
The financial crisis revealed the vulnerability of states with financialized economies, but also the extraordinary measures they had recourse to in order to reign in market forces. This chapter argues that this paradox is based on another contradiction: the ambiguity of government–finance relations. While financial institutions are considered to be the culprits of the recent crisis, they were also necessary to support government action and enable a quick recovery. Undoing the ties between banks and states is thus not only a response to conflicts of interests. Uncoupling banks from states through European financial integration also contains risks for future crisis management.
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.
European Community Judicial Review in the Irish Courts -
Scope, Standards and Separation of Powers
(2003)
In this chapter we argue that hybrid organizations, i.e., organizations pursuing dual goals, are an important site for rethinking and potentially recasting our perspective on organizational governance. We give an overview of the specific governance challenges hybrid organizations face and probe conventional and more novel approaches and their potential to understand governance in hybrid organizations. Introducing empirical findings from a large-scale qualitative and quantitative study about governance in social enterprises, we propose to complement the reactive approach dominant in the governance literature with a more proactive approach: drawing on the work of Philip Selznick, we introduce a governance approach focused on purpose, commitment and new ways of coordination. We propose that these three interlocking governance mechanisms allow hybrid organizations such as social enterprises to mitigate governance challenges such as the risk of mission drift in a proactive rather than reactive manner.
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.
This chapter studies decision-making behaviour of independent regulatory agencies. Theoretical accounts of delegation to regulatory agencies emphasise that losses of political accountability of regulators are traded off against potential gains in regulatory efficiency. The theory of credible commitment suggests that independent (non-majoritarian) regulatory agencies are more effective in regulating markets than organisations under direct political control. However, independent regulatory agencies operate in a political context and need to demonstrate their benefit to a diverse set of stakeholders, including elected politicians. We are hence confronted with a ‘paradox of autonomisation’ according to which more autonomous public organisations have to take into consideration external demands to a greater degree than less autonomous organisations. Independent regulatory agencies will thus be subjected to high …
It’s Christmas Eve when Scarlett leaves an underground tech 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, but these revelations will have devastating consequences for both of their lives.
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? What is the future of love? 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The road freight sector is responsible for a large and growing share of greenhouse gas emissions, but reliable data on the amount of freight that is moved on roads in many parts of the world are scarce. Many low-and middle-income countries have limited ground-based traffic monitoring and freight surveying activities. In this proof of concept, we show that we can use an object detection network to count trucks in satellite images and predict average annual daily truck traffic from those counts. We describe a complete model, test the uncertainty of the estimation, and discuss the transfer to developing countries.
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.
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.
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