Aktuelle Publikationen

How should small-n researchers aggregate the information collected during their research in an effort to measure the relevant theoretical concepts with high levels of validity and reliability? This article specifically focuses on the method of triangulation, which is frequently used in process-tracing approaches. We introduce and theorise different aggregation strategies commonly used in triangulation, such as weighted and simple averages or ‘the winner takes it all’ strategy. We then evaluate their performance with regard to their proneness to measurement error using computer simulations. Our simulation results show that averaging different information sources, in general, outperforms other aggregation strategies. However, this is not the case if poorly informed sources are biased in a similar direction; in these situations the 'winner takes it all' strategy shows a superior performance.

This article focuses on important but widely neglected problems of supranational employee involvement both at the level of information and consultation as well as at board level. It takes the most important pattern, the European Company (SE), and presents a systematic empirical analysis of its negotiated forms of worker representation and employee involvement. The questions addressed are: What do these new forms of collective voice and representation at the supranational level look like? What is the relevance of SEs for the development of an emerging system of European industrial relations in a broader perspective? Is the negotiated form of employee involvement likely to lead to new forms of harmonization and convergence or rather to heterogeneity and fragmentation?

Die Friedensmissionen der Vereinten Nationen sind in den letzten 20 Jahren umfangreicher und komplexer geworden, so dass die Organisationsstrukturen im UN-Sekretariat immer wieder angepasst werden mussten. Eine Folge dieser Anpassungen ist die immer stärkere Arbeitsteilung, welche mit einer Fragmentierung der Organisationsstrukturen einhergeht. Die dadurch entstandenen Probleme für die interne Koordinierung und Integration sind erheblich, können aber zumindest teilweise gelöst werden. Wie dies etwa auf der Landesebene geschehen kann, zeigt die Umstrukturierung der Feldbüros in der UN-Mission in Liberia.

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The article looks at the challenges and solutions to the Open Government and Accountability initiative of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration. It notes that the Open Government initiative has spurred technological and procedural innovation in public administration. The notion of information as a national-asset is regarded as the distinction of the initiative from previous Open Government efforts. The worldwide success of the Open Government initiative is explored.

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This brief article argues for a narrow definition of cyberwar and a technology-centric approach to understanding its strategic implications. Based on a review of the underlying technologies, approaches to facilitating peace in this rather new form of confrontation will be derived. This brief discussion already shows that Cold War era strategies such as credible deterrence through retaliation are ill-suited to serve peace in the digital domain. Generally, building offensive capabilities for cyberwar does not increase an actor’s security. Instead, geographically unrestricted security communities (Deutsch et al., 1957) of nationstates that employ similar technologies seem to serve individual security best.

This study sets out to explore the institutional embeddedness of civic engagement in the form of monetary donations and volunteering by firms in Western Europe. Drawing on a recent analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), two contradictory hypotheses—institutional mirror versus substitute—are discussed focusing on three institutional spheres: corporatism, welfare arrangements and statism. The paper argues for moving beyond a linear perspective and takes the interaction of institutional spheres into account. Using a comparative quantitative multilevel approach, institutional, sectoral and organizational determinants of enterprises' civic engagement are empirically analysed drawing on a survey of small- and medium-sized firms in 17 Western European countries. While firm size remains an important determinant of civic engagement, it is shown that the impact of welfare arrangements is conditional on the presence of corporatist arrangements and vice versa. This suggests that civic engagement both mirrors and substitutes for existing institutions, depending on underlying institutional complementarities.

In this article, we contrast the long-term consequences of incrementalism and punctuated equilibrium. We test what the impact of each of these types of policy change is on long-term budgetary outcomes for the American states. Policy scholars have applied both theoretical approaches to the study of budgetary spending as an extension of policymaking. Given the two contrasting paradigms of policy change, we develop the following line of inquiry: Does punctuated equilibrium create a different budget in the long term than incrementalism? We address this question through an analysis of American state budgets because the U.S. states provide a rich variation in both budgetary outcomes and political institutions. We use budget data from all American states across all government functions for the period between 1984 and 2009. We find that, first, state budgets and budget functions vary in their degree of punctuation and, second, the degree of punctuation in a state's budget function corresponds to smaller long-term growth. Additionally, the kind of spending matters: allocational budget categories are more likely to exhibit punctuations.

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The use of social media applications has been widely accepted in the U.S. government. Many of the social media strategies and day-to-day tactics have also been adopted around the world as part of local Open Government Initiatives and the worldwide Open Government Partnership. Nevertheless, the acceptance and broader adoption of sophisticated tactics that go beyond information and education paradigm such as true engagement or networking strategies are still in its infancy. Rapid diffusion is challenged by informal bottom-up experimentation that meets institutional and organizational challenges hindering innovative tactics. Going forward governments and bureaucratic organizations are also facing the challenge to show the impact of their social media interactions. Each of these challenges is discussed in this article and extraordinary examples, that are not widely adopted yet, are provided to show how government organizations can potentially overcome these challenges.