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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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
From explanation to outcome: The use of institutional theory in corporate responsibility research
(2021)
Public servants are an important component of any functioning administrative system. However, a comprehensive, comparative analysis of public servants from a global perspective is rare. The purpose of this chapter and section is therefore to analyze the concept of the civil servant from a global perspective. In order to do so, the chapter examines the concept of the civil servant, who they are, how they are trained, what they do, how they are rewarded, and how political and institutional factors shape personnel systems. Special attention is placed upon comparisons between civil service traditions, international conceptualizations of civil servants, the scope of public service work, and the status of women in public service. The chapter concludes with a brief introduction to each of the subsequent chapters in this section.
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)
This chapter discusses the dialectic relationship of general principles and the evolution of human rights in the EU legal order. Human (or fundamental) rights are of specific signifcance for general principles as an area of reference in a number of ways: in regard to the methodology of defining and identifying general principles; their link to constitutional values of the EU, the relationship between different sources of human rights in the EU; the relationship between unwritten general principles and a codified source; the specific, active and multidimensional dynamics of general principles in the context of fundamental rights; the relationship of general principles in the area of fundamental rights with their codification in the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights; and their possible continued relevance for courts in adjudicating human rights in the UK in post-Brexit.
This contribution takes Turkey’s use of the derogation mechanism in the aftermath of the failed military coup of 15 July 2016 as a springboard to critically address the operation and the fallacies of the contemporary European derogation regime. The assessment will reveal whether the European system of human rights protection has succeeded in adopting an adequate and viable approach that can counterbalance the increased leeway accorded to derogating states, and formulate safeguards to mitigate human rights abuses. The contribution concludes by providing a road map proposal for adequate oversight marked by rigorous scrutiny of derogation claims that can be described as a ‘consultation and cooperation process’. This process would place the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in a more active and operationally focused position to influence state decisions, to counterbalance the increased leeway accorded to derogating states, and to formulate safeguards to mitigate human rights abuses.
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.