Aktuelle Publikationen

How do decentralized systems deal with innovation? In particular, how do they aggregate the myriad experiences of their component parts, facilitate diffusion of information, and encourage investments in innovation? This is a classic problem in the study of human institutions. It is also one of the biggest challenges that exists in the governance of decentralized systems: How do institutions shape individual behavior around solving problems and sharing information in a fashion that is reasonably compatible with collective well-being? We use a particular decentralized institution (the U.S. House of Representatives), wrestling with a novel problem (how to utilize the Internet), to explore the implications of three archetypical principles for organizing collective problem solving: market, network, and hierarchy.

Ongoing changes in social structures, orientation, and value systems confront us with the growing necessity to address and understand transforming patterns of tolerance as well as specific aspects, such as social tolerance. Based on hierarchical analyses of the latest World Values Survey (2005–08) and national statistics for 28 countries, we assess both individual and contextual aspects that influence an individual's perception of different social groupings. Using a social tolerance index that captures personal attitudes toward these groupings, we present an institutional theory of social tolerance. Our results show that specific institutional qualities, which reduce status anxiety, such as inclusiveness, universality, and fairness, prevail over traditional socio-economic, societal, cultural, and democratic explanations.

The question of ‘who gets what?’ is one of the most interesting issues in coalition politics. Research on portfolio allocation has thus far produced some clear‐cut empirical findings: coalition parties receive ministerial posts in close proportion to the number of parliamentary seats they win. This article poses two simple questions: Why did the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats agree to form a coalition government and, secondly, did the process of portfolio allocation in the United Kingdom in 2010 reflect standard patterns of cabinet composition in modern democracies? In order to answer these questions, a content analysis of election manifestos is applied in this article in order to estimate the policy positions of the parties represented in the House of Commons. The results show that a coalition between the Tories and Lib Dems was indeed the optimal solution in the British coalition game in 2010. When applying the portfolio allocation model, it turns out that the Conservatives fulfilled the criteria of a ‘strong party’, implying that the Tories occupied the key position in the coalition game. On account of this pivotal role, they were ultimately able to capture the most important ministries in the new coalition government.

This article examines the differential development of higher education governance in two Central and Eastern European countries since 1989. In current discourse, the market‐oriented model of higher education governance has established itself as an anchor point towards which systems are gradually converging. At the same time international organisations, in particular the EU and OECD, are promoting the use of market‐oriented instruments to meet the demands of massification, the knowledge society and the transforming role of the state. As a result, Romania has shrugged off its historical pattern of state‐centred governance and control and rapidly converged on the market‐oriented model. The Czech Republic, however, has resisted trends towards marketisation and clung to its historically anchored model. The analysis aims to offer theoretical explanations based on historical institutionalism and organisational isomorphism for the divergent development of these two countries despite similar internal and external conditions and their tight integration into the Bologna Process.

This article evaluates the influence of different models of democracy on individual volunteering in associations and organizations. More precisely, we investigate the extent to which the degree of liberal and participatory conceptions of democracy respectively shapes the conditions under which voluntary engagement thrives. We apply multilevel analysis—a method that corresponds well to the central hypothesis of institutional approaches and is most suitable for modeling the relationship between the democratic context and individual volunteering. We show that both a representative conception of democracy, as well as strong direct democracy, leads to advantageous conditions for civic engagement. In contrast, if the two models of democracy are combined, the two different logics of the democratic process disturb one another, resulting in less voluntary engagement.

The policy of unemployment is probably one of the most controversial issues among economists, social scientists and politicians. In this article, we argue that European regions with higher levels of social capital will tend to have lower levels of unemployment. Using a macro-quantitative cross-sectional analysis of 134 European regions, we show that a great deal of variability in sub-national unemployment rates can be accounted for by a particular level of regionally aggregated measures of the density and depth of social networks between individuals. In other words, higher levels of social capital will lead to more efficient use of information about the labour market, to lower search and transaction costs on both sides of the market, to a higher quality of applicants, to the efficient placement of individual workers, to less conflict between insiders and outsiders and to more intensive efforts to find work. All in all, higher levels of social capital can be expected to limit the numbers of unemployed. Even when applying simultaneous equation modelling to counter against a possible endogeneity problem, our findings remain robust.

This article presents a baseline theory of asymmetrical federalism in multinational states. Two arguments building on a game-theoretic foundation link central and regional elites’ strategic choices to questions of federal stability. The first argument concerns the creation of asymmetrical institutions. In a confrontation game between the center and national minorities credibly threatening to exit the framework, the center’s decision to grant asymmetrical autonomy ensures mutual cooperation. Yet by extending the level of autonomy for minority regions, federal asymmetry creates a third player, the nonadvantaged regions. Consequently, the second argument models asymmetrical federalism as a “nested game” where events in the ethnonational arena determine the payoffs in the federal arena. Asymmetrical federal rules turn out to be inherently unstable from a perspective that takes all actors in all arenas into account. A narrative of the development of Russian federalism exemplifies the theory.

Previous studies of aid allocation have concluded that foreign aid is allocated not only according to devel-opment needs but also according to donor self-interest. We revisit this topic and allow for donor- as well asrecipient-specific effects in our analysis. In addition to comments on the statistical significance of our resultswe assess the relative economic importance of recipient need, merit, and donor self-interest. Our resultsindicate that all bilateral donors allocate aid according to their self-interest and recipient need. However,most bilateral donors seem to place little importance on recipient merit. Less than 1% of the variance of aidis accounted for by merit,ceteris paribus. The UK and Japan are exceptions: they allocate more aid tocountries with higher growth, higher democracy scores, and fewer human rights abuses.

Objective: e-Health has become a major topic in the European Union (EU) Commission due to the assumption that it improves the quality and effectiveness of health services and, at the same time, promotes information and communications technologies in this emerging high-technology area. In 2004, the EU Commission adopted the first e-health Action Plan, which sets targets for member states in the adoption of telematics applications. This article aims at explaining the variance in the application of e-health tools across 24 EU member states. Methods: The study includes the implementation of 12 e-health policies as of early 2007. Each policy was coded on a binary scale distinguishing between implementation and nonimplementation. The summing up of all binary values created an additive index. We used several multiple linear regression models to estimate the impact of socio-economic, political and healthcare related variables on the scope of implementation. Results: The scope of implementation mostly depends on political factors, whereas economic and health-related variables scarcely account for cross-country variance. Only the scope and importance of the domestic information and communication technology market have a significant effect on the scope of implementation. In contrast, political variables constitute most of the variance in the implementation scope. The strength of left parties in government has a significant effect: an increase of left parties in government increases the total amount of e-health measures implemented. Conclusion: Governments that included e-health applications in policy documents rather early have adopted more telematics applications.

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This article investigates whether and how family policy influences the probability and intensity of mothers' labor market participation. Unlike previous studies, this contribution focuses on group‐specific policy effects, thereby accounting for the fact that, theoretically, women with different resources and preferences should respond differently to given policy measures. The analyses show that varying individual characteristics indeed influence the impact family policy measures have on women's individual behavior. First and foremost, family policies most strongly influence mothers with medium levels of education, for whom labor market participation tends to be “optional.” Moreover, high direct and indirect cash benefits to families, which primarily stem from traditional conservative family policy, reduce the probability of employment for women with low to medium levels of education.

This article evaluates the influence of welfare state policy on individual social volunteering. Unlike previous studies that have investigated the relationship between the welfare state and civic engagement, this contribution focuses on those areas of civil society that are most directly related to public welfare state activities. Moreover, it is assumed that welfare state policy does not uniformly affect the civic engagement of various social groups. The analyses provide support for the crowding out hypothesis: individual social volunteering is lower in extensive welfare states than it is in countries that spend less on welfare state policy. However, when group-specific welfare state effects are modelled, it is revealed that the crowding out effect of public social services does not hold for the low-income group. Additionally, extensive welfare policy reduces the negative effect of low affluence on social volunteering. Crowding out and crowding in thus go hand in hand: while state activities indeed serve as a substitute for social volunteering in some places, in others they are found to have a stimulating effect.

The Nordic countries serve as models for successful employment and labour market policies. In this article, Nordic employment and labour market policies are analyzed from a comparative point of view. It is argued that Nordic employment and labour market policies have lost some of their distinctive features. Active labour market policies, for example, are now at the centre of policy priorities in many countries of the EU. And in some other respects, the Nordic countries have converged towards political patterns characteristic for states in central Europe, for example, de-centralized patterns of wage bargaining and the partial lack of corporatist concertation. During the current financial crisis, specific patterns of crisis management can be observed in Scandinavia that make these countries distinct from many other countries in Europe.

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze the relationship between religious differences (i.e. religious diversity and tolerance diversity), on the one hand, and dysfunctional intergroup conflicts, on the other.

Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative research design is used, through which the paper examines 47 public schools in India.

Findings – Religious diversity, that is, the distribution of heterogeneous religious affiliations in an organization, is unrelated to dysfunctional intergroup conflicts. By contrast, tolerance diversity, that is, the heterogeneity of organizational members' beliefs regarding the question of how strictly religious commandments should be followed, is positively related to dysfunctional conflicts.

Research limitations/implications – The results of this study are limited to public organizations in the Indian context.

Practical implications – Since religious diversity is not connected to intergroup conflicts, fostering religious diversity in organizations could render the societal norm “unity in diversity” more authentic and attractive. This in turn would enhance the ability of different religions to cooperate in Indian organizations. In contrast with religious diversity, the heterogeneity of religious tolerance is significantly related to intergroup conflicts; a possible remedy could be the use of a transformational leadership style.

Originality/value – This study is the first to investigate both religious diversity and tolerance diversity in their effects on the emergence of intergroup conflicts, that is, apparent emotional tensions between organizational subgroups.

The article analyses how enlargements affect the speed of European Union (EU) decision-making. In line with rationalist theories of group choice, we argue that enlargements increase the costs of organizing decisions, i.e. transaction costs. Increasing transaction costs, in turn, slow down EU law-making. We test this theory by estimating Cox regression models that incorporate time-varying covariates on all directives, regulations and decisions submitted by the European Commission between 1976 and 2006. In contrast to previous analyses, we show that an increase in group size indeed slows down EU law-making.