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Negotiated “policy-arrangements” and their institutionalization are at the heart of global governance. This chapter focuses on the European Union (EU) as one particular arena that produces binding decisions beyond the nation state. For scholars of global governance, the EU constitutes an interesting but idiosyncratic case: the EU’s system of decision-making and enforcement is highly institutionalized; the EU covers a broad policy-remit, touching upon core areas of national sovereignty such as monetary policy or border control; and the EU is exceptionally intrusive and effective, producing binding laws that are widely complied with in its member states. At the same time, the nature of supranational governance – famously described as “less than a federation, more than a regime” (Wallace 1983) – remains open and undefined. For scholars of argumentation, deliberation and persuasion, the European Union is an equally fruitful object of study: the EU’s deliberative decision-style is used to explain compliance with European law (Neyer 2004); the EU is conceptualized as an actor that projects “normative” rather than military power (Manners 2002) and the supranational decision-process serves as testing ground for theories of deliberation (Eriksen and Fossum 2000; Joerges and Neyer 1997a, 1997b), argumentation (Naurin 2010), problem-solving (Elgström and Jönsson 2000), rhetorical action (Schimmelfennig 2001) and judgment (Kornprobst 2008).
Economic Policy
(2010)
Written by four recognized experts with senior experience in research and government, this text is the first comprehensive survival kit for students and practitioners of economic policy. It is set to become an indispensable resource for everyone involved or interested in modern economic policy. Academic scholars willing to engage in policy discussions and students at graduate or advanced undergraduate levels will find it an essential bridge to the policy world.
What makes the book unique is that it combines like no other, facts-based analysis, state-of-the art theories and models, and insights from first-hand policy experience at national and international levels. The book has grown out of ten years of experience teaching economic policy at the graduate level. It provides an intellectually coherent framework to understand the potentialities and limits of economic policy. It addresses positive dimensions (how do policies impact on modern economies?), normative dimensions (what should policymakers aim to achieve and against what should their action be judged?) and political-economy constraints (which are the limits and obstacles to public intervention?). It fills an important gap by reconciling in each major policy area stylized facts of recent economic history, key questions faced by contemporary policymakers, and essential lessons from theory which are captured and explained in a clear, concise, and self-contained way.
All major areas of domestic and international policymaking are covered: fiscal policy, monetary policy, international finance and exchange-rate policy, tax policy, and long-term growth policies. The book concludes with a special chapter on the lessons of the financial crisis.
The authors are intellectually non-partisan and they draw examples from various countries and experiences; from emerging markets to developing economies, shedding light when necessary on local specificities such as European Union rules and instruments. Economic Policy: Theory and Practice is the essential guide to economic policy in the new post-crisis context.
This article examines the domestic impact of supranational human rights litigation on acknowledgment of state violence in the context of macroprocesses of global governance. The article's argument is that the impact of supranational human rights litigation on the process of acknowledgment must be seen through counternarratives on state violence. The article undertakes a detailed textual analysis of the truth claims and denial strategies that emerged from the European Court of Human Rights proceedings on state violence during Turkey's struggle against the armed group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It assesses these in the context of the human rights reforms that were created following pressure from European-level governance processes. The article argues that attention must be paid to agency in acknowledgment and truth-telling processes, and points to the limits of technical-bureaucratic forms of human rights reform interventions in the context of state violence.
Reserve Prices as Reference Points : Evidence from Auctions for Football Players at Hattrick.org
(2010)
We study the impact of sellers’ reserve prices on transfer prices in online auctions of virtual football players at Hattrick.org. We introduce an empirical model that distinguishes between two separate effects from public reserve prices: (1) a mechanical effect, which is driven by the design of the English auction and (2) a psychological reference-dependence effect through reserve prices serving as reference points. The psychological effect has recently been introduced in behavioral models of situations where agents are uncertain about their own willingness-to-pay, while the mechanical effect is well captured by standard auction theory. Controlling for censoring when players are not sold, both effects are observed. Once we account for the potential endogeneity of reserve prices, however, we do not find evidence for reference dependence in Hattrick auctions.
This paper incorporates tax morale into the Allingham and Sandmo (1972) model of income tax evasion. Tax morale is modeled as a social norm for tax compliance. The strength of the norm is shaped endogenously, depending on the share of evaders in the society. Taxpayers act conditionally cooperative as their evasion depends on the others' compliance. We characterize the equilibrium which accounts for this interdependence and study the implications for tax and enforcement policies. The analysis is extended to the case of a society consisting of heterogenous communities. Individual evasion decisions are then embedded in a complex social structure and behavior is influenced by the norm compliance among morale reference groups. Within this framework, we highlight the role of belief management as an alternative policy tool.
While many histories of the Balkans have been published, some very good and others poor, there is as yet no history of institutions in the Balkans. This is what the contributors to Ottomans into European offer the reader: a history of the most salient political institutions of the region: bureaucracies, judiciaries, democratic elections, free media, local and central government – and their frequently strained relations with traditional institutions. They also examine the selection, evolution, and performance of institutions in the post-Ottoman Balkans, and try to account for variations throughout the region. In writing this institutional history of the Balkans the contributors set themselves two key questions: did the post-Ottoman wave of Europeanization and Western-type institution building fail in the Balkans, and does this explain the region’s continuing political fragility? And if this is the case, are there underlying structural determinants explaining that failure which might manifest themselves again in present attempts to re-integrate the region, from Turkey to Albania?
Consumer Emissions
(2010)
CITIES: Car Industry, Road Transport and an international Emission Trading Scheme. Policy options
(2010)
A non-fiction book about the social engineering operated in rural Eastern Europe by the Communist regime, based on the history of two villages in Romania. One of the two villages is the birthplace of Nicolae Ceausescu, the former Communist dictator, Scornicesti, which received massive investment during communist years and was turned into a mixture of underdeveloped village and industrial town. The other is Nucsoara, the Carpathian cradle of peasants' resistance against Communism, where half the village was executed or imprisoned and their lands divided between the other half. The state intervention failed in both villages to attain the planned objectives, but it nevertheless changed fundamentally the life of villagers. This book is mostly about the consequences of unlimited state power over people and communities.
Model analysis within the ADAM project has shown that achieving low greenhouse gas concentration levels, e.g. at 400ppm CO 2 -eq, is technologically feasible at costs of a few percent of GDP. However, models simplify the dynamics involved in implementing climate policy and the results depend on critical model assumptions such as global participation in climate policy and full availability of current and newly evolving technologies. The design of a low stabilization policy regime in the real world depends on factors that can only be partly covered by models. In this context, the paper reflects on limits of the integrated assessment models used to explore climate policy and addresses the issues of (i) how global participation might be achieved, (ii) which kind of options are available to induce deep GHG reductions inside and outside the energy sector, and (iii) which risks and which co-benefits of mitigation options are not assessed by the models.
This article argues that a legally binding, multilateral agreement is a necessary condition for achieving the highest levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions consistent with limiting warming to below either 2°C or below 1.5°C. Clear legally binding commitments within a multilaterally agreed process with strong legal and institutional characteristics are needed to give countries the confidence that their economic interests are being fairly and equally treated. Common accounting rules are needed for comparability of effort, and in order to protect environmental integrity, to demonstrate transparency, for effective monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions and actions, and to facilitate and support a strong international carbon market. Securing full implementation will depend, in part, on the strength of an agreement's compliance mechanism. The Copenhagen Accord, by itself, represents a quintessential ‘bottom-up’/‘pledge and review’ approach. It is open to interpretation whether the Accord can become a stepping stone on the way to strengthening the legally binding, multilateral framework to fight climate change, building on both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, or whether it will lead to the unravelling and fragmentation of all that has been built up to date. Legal architecture choices made in 2010 and beyond are likely to be determinative.
The word most frequently uttered by Greece and Turkey with regard to their Muslim1 and non-Muslim minorities, respectively, is most probably ‘reciprocity.’ For more than half a century, in both countries, virtually all administrations,irrespective of their political leanings and ideological base, resorted to the good old ‘reciprocity argument’ to legitimize their laws, policies, and practices restricting the minority rights of Muslim and non-Muslim communities.
Both states have for decades justified their policies on the basis of a theory that argues that Article 45 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne provided the legal basis for reciprocity. Deliberately distorting a crystal-clear provision, which simply confers parallel obligations on Greece and Turkey for the protection of the Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, respectively, both states have for decades held their own citizens hostage, pitting them against each other in the name of defeating the other in foreign policy. Disregarding the objections of international lawyers and institutions that the reciprocity principle does not apply to human rights treaties and that states cannot condition the protection of the fundamental rights of their citizens on the policies of other states, both Greece and Turkey have successfully manipulated their national
public opinion into believing in the legitimacy of treating minorities as lesser citizens. This report analyzes the implications of reciprocity policies on the day-to-day lives of Muslim and
non-Muslim minorities in Greece and Turkey, specifically their impact on the community foundations2 belonging to these minorities. With a specific focus on the property and self-management issues of Muslim and non-Muslim community foundations in Greece and Turkey, the report situates the issue in its historical context and trace the evolution of the ‘community foundation issue’ from Lausanne to the present day. Drawing similarities and differences between the laws, policies, and practices of Greek and Turkish states vis-à-vis their minority foundations, the report critically assesses the progress made to this day as well as identify the outstanding issues.
Introduction
(2010)
Until 2008, Germany’s vital statistics did not include information on the biological order of each birth. This resulted in a dearth of important demographic indicators, such as the mean age at fi rst birth and the level of childlessness. Researchers have tried to fill this gap by generating order-specifi c birth rates from survey data, and by combining survey data with vital statistics. This paper takes a different approach by using Perinatal Statistics to generate birth order-specific fertility rates for the period 2001 to 2008. Perinatal Statistics includes information on births that took place in German hospitals. Out-of-hospital births, which account for about 2 % of all births, are not included in the Perinatal Statistics. In a sensitivity analysis, we show how robust our estimates are to the inclusion of out-of-hospital births. Our general assessment is that the Perinatal Statistics is a valuable source for generating order-specific fertility rates, regardless of whether out-of-hospital births are included.
Nearly every European Country has experienced some increase in nonmarital childbearing, largely due to increasing births within cohabitation. Relatively few studies in Europe, however, investigate the educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation or how it changed over time. Using retrospective union and fertility histories, we employ competing risk hazard models to examine the educational gradient of childbearing in cohabitation in eight countries across europe. In all countries studied, birth risks within cohabitation demonstrated a negative educational gradient. When directly comparing cohabiting fertility with marital fertility, the negative educational gradient persists in all countries except Italy, although differences were not significant in Austria, France, and West Germany. To explain these findings, we present an alternative explanation for the increase in childbearing within cohabitation that goes beyond the explanation of the Second Demographic Transition and provides a new interpretation of the underlying mechanisms that may influence childbearing within cohabitation.
This article investigates whether the increase in the labour force participation of mothers in western Germany has been accompanied by growing social inequalities in maternal employment. The focus is on education-related differences in full-time, part-time and marginal employment, and, in particular, changes therein over time. It is assumed that worsening labour market opportunities for the less educated and a ‘familialistic’ social policy context have resulted in growing differentials in mothers’ employment by education. Data from the scientific use files of the German micro-censuses for the years 1976 to 2004 show that the part-time and marginal employment rates of mothers have increased, while full-time employment rates have declined. Reductions in full-time employment are most pronounced among less educated mothers, resulting in growing educational differences in the employment of mothers.
This paper investigates whether uncertainties in female employment careers result in a postponement of family formation. Data for this analysis comes from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which provides longitudinal information on economic uncertainty and fertility for the period 1984 to 2006. We employ objective measures of uncertainty (unemployment) as well as subjective measures (whether the respondent is worried about her economic situation, whether she is worried about the security of her job). We find little evidence that uncertainties in female employment careers generally lead to a postponement of parenthood. Hence, the relationship between economic uncertainty and first birth varies by level of education. While more highly educated postpone parenthood when subject to employment uncertainties, women with low levels of education often respond to these situations by becoming mothers.
In recent years, considerable progress has been made in improving the data infrastructure for fertility and morality researchers in Germany. Several large scale data sets have been made available through the research data centers: the micro-censuses of the 1970s and 1980s, the censuses of the GDR and FRG, the micro-census panel, data from the pension registers, individual level data from the vital statistics, and the central foreigner registers have become available for scientific usage. Vital statistics have been reformed, and the micro-census now includes information on number of children ever born. Despite these improvements, there are still some “weak spots” in Germany’s data infrastructure. Germany is lacking official counts of reconstituted families. We know little about the mortality risks of immigrants. In addition, the data infrastructure for studying the socio-economic differences in mortality risks could be improved, thus enabling Germany to catch up with international developments in this area. This paper concludes by making some suggestions for improving the data available.
The Human Fertility Database (HFD) is a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany and the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) in Vienna, Austria, based at MPIDR. We seek to provide free and user-friendly access to detailed and high-quality data on period and cohort fertility and thus to facilitate research on changes and inter-country differences in fertility in the past and in the modern era. The HFD is entirely based on official vital statistics and places a great emphasis on data checking and documentation and on warranting data comparability across time and countries by means of uniform methodology
PURPOSE:
Adherence to dental preventive programmes in young adults is low. The aim of the present longitudinal study was to evaluate whether tutoring peers can be a compliance-enhancing tool or not.
METHODS:
In Part 1, two randomly selected classes (49 female students, mean age 19.8 + or - 2.3 years) were taught adult toothbrushing technique (the modified Bass technique) in a project-like manner. After the course, knowledge was tested using a class test, and compliance was evaluated using anonymous quantitative questionnaires. Compliance was defined as a reported degree of change from the easy-to-learn childhood toothbrushing techniques to the more efficient and challenging Bass technique. In Part 2 of the present longitudinal study, the compliance of these students was re-evaluated after having developed and applied themselves a programme of how to tutor peers in oral health. Re-evaluation of compliance was performed after 3 and 9 months.
RESULTS:
In Part 1, 28.5% of the students were compliant after 1 week. Compared with Part 1, the compliance in Part 2 was significantly higher (P u 0.001), both after 3 months (90%) and after 9 months (82%).
CONCLUSIONS:
Tutoring peers can significantly enhance the compliance over a period of 9 months. Tutoring can function as a form of empowerment and can establish a strong sustained health engagement. Tutoring peers in health-related subjects can readily be implemented in schools and might be an additional means of oral health promotion with fewer additional costs.
Private sector development in central China: patterns, causes, and the role of local governments
(2010)
Transforming into what?: New Governance in the EU and the “Managerial Sensibility” in Modern Law
(2010)
As part of his account of "fragmentation" in international law, Martti Koskenniemi has described the advance of a "managerial sensibility" in modern law. This sensibility incorporates two claims—first, the increasing differentiation of international rules; and second, a tendency to see law not as an end in itself, but as a managerial technique. It is not difficult to apply both tenets of managerialism to the practice of "new governance." On the one hand, methods like the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) attest to a feeling that law is too distanced a register to capture the kinds of detailed intervention that EU regulation requires, leading to differentiation between policy fields. On the other hand, this has been carried out in order to "specialize," allowing overall targets to be reached through narrow administrative elites. Managerialism is present in processes like the OMC both as a differentiation of legal procedures, and as a view of rules as "flexible" in service of the evolving goals and self-image of a particular policy community. While this managerial ethos would seem suitable for a particular vision of the EU polity—the depoliticized regulatory state—it is increasingly problematic. As the principle vehicle for the delivery of the Lisbon strategy, determining the indicators and objectives of the OMC is a far from technical task. What appears and has been marketed as a "micro-politics" of expert based benchmarking has the potential to invoke larger strategic questions for the EU while simultaneously placing them out of public view. In response, new avenues for politicizing new governance or for opening its principle procedures and indicators up to critical evaluation and scrutiny (including to a non-expert public) may be needed. While this is no easy task, this Article will explore two modest proposals—first, the scrutiny role of the European Parliament, and second, the development of the European Ombudsman as an avenue to provide non-judicial means for addressing problems of intransparency and accountability in EU governance. In both cases, while a full politicization of the method may be difficult, a partial strategy may be an important first step in reconciling new governance procedures with the democratic values upon which the Treaties of the EU claim to be based.