Aktuelle Publikationen

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Although scholars and practitioners alike perceive ‘state fragility’ to be a key challenge for security and development, there are significant variations in the definition of this phenomenon. This article analyses the European Union’s notion of ‘state fragility’. Based on a document analysis covering the years 2001–12 and expert interviews conducted in November 2012, the article reveals that the EU has not (yet) decided on a clear-cut definition of ‘state fragility’. Three factors explain this lack of decisiveness: the EU’s complex institutional framework, which impedes policy coherence; developments at the international level that require the EU’s compliance; and the organisation’s diplomatic efforts to maintain cooperative relationships with aid-recipient countries that have been labelled ‘fragile’. The result is conceptual ambiguity that potentially reduces the EU’s capacity to respond to fragile situations.

This study investigates the relationship between the Japanese climate change policy network and its policy output based on a face-to-face questionnaire survey. During 2012 and 2013, a total of 72 organizations active in Japanese climate change policy-making, such as ministries, political parties, mass media, industrial organizations, individual companies, and NGOs, were interviewed. Each organization was asked to evaluate several climate change mitigation policies to reveal its underlying policy preferences. According to the factor analysis, two factors emerged from the evaluation. The first factor revealed inversely related preferences for voluntary technology-oriented measures (voluntary action plan and nuclear energy) or measurements to bring about socioeconomic structural change (carbon tax and emission trade). The second factor was related to the evaluation of tax exemptions and subsidies to encourage the growth of renewable energy and energy efficient products. To analyze the relationship between these policy preferences and the policy network, we asked the respondent organizations about which bodies they cooperated with and took advice from, when setting their own policy positions. We also enquired about which organizations had sufficient power to influence policy outcomes. Next, we applied the block-modeling method of social network analysis and observed a triple-pole structure in the organizational support network. In this network structure, two blocks consisting of the Ministry of the Environment and the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) are on either side of the middle block that consists of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry; the two side blocks have support ties to the middle block. This triple-pole structure strongly affects how Japanese climate policy outcome is brought about. Because each block has no distinctively different policy preferences regarding tax exemptions and subsidies, namely policies in factor 2 of the factor analysis, these policies were applied first. However, the policies were insufficient for reducing greenhouse gases in order to meet the target in the first commitment period stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol. Moreover, related tax exemptions and subsidies had limits for providing further fiscal stimulus. Consequently, other types of policies, namely policies in factor 1, were required to achieve the target. Nevertheless, the above mentioned three entities expressed considerable differences regarding the implementation of these policies. Finally, voluntary action and nuclear energy were selected under the influence of the more powerful Keidanren Block. It is still important to remember that this block cannot avoid implementing this mitigation policy in order to prevent the other two blocks forming a coalition and applying other policies, even if it is reluctant to participate in any particular policy measure. As a result of the power balance among the three blocks in the policy network, Japanese climate change policy consists of a combination of tax exemptions, subsidies, voluntary actions, and nuclear energy promotions.

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This text questions the status and role of political theory. It is argued that political theory is different from other subfields of political science as well as from science in general, because of its relation with normativity and because it aims at judgment and interpretation and not at the discovery of scientific mechanisms of cause and effect. Political theory is also distinct from ideology as well as from philosophy to the extent that its normativity, although it is unavoidable, is also unavoidably limited in scope.

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The 21st century is predicted to become the century of the city, in which urban spaces will be sites, laboratories, and catalysts for global, local, and transnational forms of (democratic) governance. This sound declaration of another spatial turn puts cities once again at the center of interest, especially when it comes to studying the localization of the global. Cities have become objects, loci, subjects, and agents of emerging transnational forms of governance and cooperation. They increasingly now operate not only within but also parallel to and beyond states on the local, regional, as well as global stages. In the context of the contemporary scientific debate about “written” and “unwritten rules” of political and legal practices in different political spaces around the world, the following reflections focus specifically on global public cities. To this end, the article adds new perspectives on democracy and on both written and unwritten rules of the political realm when it comes, for instance, to cities’ relations with the (democratic) state as well as with other cities as participants in global networks. In these relations cities increasingly use the language of interstate relations and international law, and mimic states’ practiced forms of institutionalized and legalized interaction. The paper briefly summarizes key arguments made from international law and political science perspectives, before then presenting selected voices from the literature who might enable us to enter into a transdisciplinary dialogue with them — especially focusing on comparative and cross-regional ones regarding the 21st century global public city.

Academic analyses of the prolonged crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR) and the international response to it are rare. This masks the depth of the crisis. The most recent outbreak of conflict alone, following a coup d'état staged by the Séléka rebels in March 2013, left countless civilians dead,1 more than half a million people displaced, and over half of the 4.6 million population in immediate need of aid.2 Several regional and international organizations, including the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the European Union (EU), and the United Nations (UN), became involved in the process of crisis solution, with all of the organizations deploying troops to the CAR. Their efforts have thus far born limited results; fighting and human suffering continue.
After a brief overview of the conflict, this Briefing documents and explores the international response to the current crisis, mainly covering the period between the Séléka's rise to power in March 2013 and April 2014, when the UN Security Council passed resolution 2149 to establish the UN operation MINUSCA (Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation de la République centrafricaine). The Briefing specifically seeks to scrutinize relations between the various stakeholders involved in crisis solution, including international and regional organizations and individual states. It shows that there is competition between them for visibility, relevance, and control over the process, leading to strained relations between the key organizations, particularly between the ECCAS and the AU and between the AU and the UN. These strained relations in turn have led to delayed responses to the crisis and are only understandable through a consideration of the interests of the organizations' member states. Particularly interesting in this context are Chad and France, the two states with most influence over the CAR.

In Germany's compensatory mixed electoral system, alternative electoral routes lead into parliament. We study the relationship between candidates' electoral situations across both tiers and policy representation, fully accounting for candidate, party and district preferences in a multi-actor constellation and the exact electoral incentives for candidates to represent either the party or the district. The results (2009 Bundestag election data) yield evidence of an interactive effect of closeness of the district race and list safety on candidates' positioning between their party and constituency.

This study investigates the influence of leadership on followers' identification with their work group. Adopting a qualitative research approach, it takes on the followers' perspective for inductively deriving leadership behaviors that pertain to the development of team identification. Based on in-depth data from members of seven teams in the context of UN peacebuilding operations, four aggregate leadership dimensions can be identified that are conducive to members' team identification: providing guidance, encouraging involvement, role modeling, and administering teamwork. Accordingly, this study adds to the exploration of leadership behaviors relevant for team identification that have not been considered by extant research. The results may lay the foundations for future investigations on complementary effects of different leadership behaviors for fostering followers' identification with their work group.