Aktuelle Publikationen

Public administrations are investing in the digital transformation of their citizen-oriented services and internal administrative processes. They are using co-production approaches and include different types of stakeholders into these transformative processes to increase service quality and generate public value. In this study, we investigate how these co-production approaches are implemented in both digital strategy formulation and implementation in Denmark. We identify four different types of public value: citizen, economic, administrative and societal public value.

What are the distributional implications of European institutional integration? This article argues that European institutional integration exerts a moderating effect on the relationship between trade union strength and income inequality—particularly inequality at the top—within countries of the European Union (EU). I contend that European institutional integration reduces the bargaining power of trade unions due to rising market competition and decreasing union control over the supply of labor. Thus, the effectiveness of trade unions in reducing inequality should decline with progressing European institutional integration. On the basis of a long-term within-country analysis of the EU15, I will show that the effect of trade unions on inequality varies strongly with European institutional integration. Consistent with the theoretical argument, the inequality-reducing effect of trade unions becomes substantially lower the more a country integrates in the EU.

This article studies how different systems of policy advice are suited to provide relevant knowledge in times of acute crisis. The notion of evidence-based policymaking (EBP) originated in the successful 1997 New Labour program in the United Kingdom to formulate policy based not on ideology but on sound empirical evidence. We provide a brief overview of the history of the concept and the current debates around it. We then outline the main characteristics of the policy advisory systems in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy through which scientific knowledge—in the form of either person-bound expertise or evidence generated through standard scientific processes—was fed into policy formulation processes before the COVID-19 crisis. Whereas EBP takes place in the form of institutionalized advisory bodies and draws on expertise rather than on evidence in Germany, the system in Switzerland focuses more on the use of evidence provided through external mandates. Italy has a hybrid politicized expert system. The article then analyzes how this different prioritization of expertise vs. evidence in the three countries affects policymakers’ capacity to include scientific knowledge in policy decisions in times of acute crisis. The comparison of the three countries implies that countries with policy advisory systems designed to use expertise are better placed to incorporate scientific knowledge into their decisions in times of acute crisis than are countries with policy advisory systems that relied primarily on evidence before the COVID-19 crisis.

The literature on autocracies has argued that repression of protest is either a result of the political environment in which protest occurs, or depends on particular characteristics of the protest events themselves. We argue that the interaction of both matters. Authoritarian regimes vary in how they legitimize their rule, and they should be particularly thin-skinned if protesters challenge the basis of their legitimacy. Using event-level data on mass mobilization in autocracies between 2003 and 2015, we use text classification methods to extract protest issues from newspaper reports. Our analysis shows that dictators are more likely to repress protest against incumbents when they claim legitimacy based on the person of the leader. Overall, our study shows that protest issues are not universal in triggering repression; rather, they need to be considered together with the political context in which they are raised.

Researchers on inequalities in representation debate about whether governments represent the preferences of the rich better than those of less affluent citizens. We argue that problems of high‐ and low‐status citizens are treated differently already at the agenda‐setting stage. If affluent and less affluent citizens have different priorities about which issues should be tackled by government, then these divergent group priorities explain why government favors high‐ over low‐status citizens. Due to different levels of visibility, resources and social ties, governments pay more attention to what high‐status citizens consider important in their legislative agenda and pay less attention to the issues of low‐status citizens. We combined three types of data for our research design. First, we extracted the policy priorities (most important issues) for all status groups from Eurobarometer data between 2002 and 2016 for 10 European countries and match this information with data on policy outcomes from the Comparative Agendas Project. We then strengthen our results using a focused comparison of three single country studies over longer time series. We show that a priority gap exists and has representational consequences. Our analysis has important implications for the understanding of the unequal representation of status groups as it sheds light on an important, yet so far unexplored, aspect of the political process. Since the misrepresentation of political agendas occurs at the very beginning of the policy‐making process, the consequences are potentially even more severe than for the unequal treatment of preferences.

Though negativity in political debates influences citizens’ attitudes towards legislative institutions, research on how Members of Parliaments (MPs) use negative language remains scant. This study shows how the gender of speakers and the context of debates influence the level of negativity in parliamentary speeches. We argue that female MPs use less negative language than male colleagues due to gender differences in socialisation and stereotypical expectations. Applying sentiment analysis with word embeddings to 20 years of plenary speeches in the Austrian parliament, we find that speeches by women MPs are less negative on average compared to those of their male colleagues. A more balanced gender distribution within a party group decreases differences in tone by lowering the negativity of male speakers. A growing share of women in parliament can thus change the tone of debates, which might enhance the legitimacy of political institutions and the quality of democracy.

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In the past decades, Germany was hit – in equal measure to other countries in Europe and beyond – by multiple transboundary and societal crises. We take stock of the ability of the German state to cope with the ensuing complexity in managing these exceptional situations. Conceptually, we apply a systemic perspective that asks about the resilience of the German state in the subsystems of policymaking in crises, implementation of administrative crisis management, as well as societal responses to crises. The paper draws on findings from a range of empirical studies assembled in this special issue, that focus either on the so-called refugee crisis of 2015/16 or the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020. Strikingly, the overall impression emerging from this research is generally favorable of the ability of the German politico-administrative system to master challenging crises – its resilience. But there are also areas for improvement.

Search engines serve as information gatekeepers on a multitude of topics that are prone to gender, ethnicity, and race misrepresentations. In this paper, we specifically look at the image search representation of migrant population groups that are often subjected to discrimination and biased representation in mainstream media, increasingly so with the rise of right-wing populist actors in the Western countries. Using multiple ( n  = 200) virtual agents to simulate human browsing behavior in a controlled environment, we collect image search results related to various terms referring to migrants (e.g., expats, immigrants, and refugees, seven queries in English and German used in total) from the six most popular search engines. Then, with the aid of manual coding, we investigate which features are used to represent these groups and whether the representations are subjected to bias. Our findings indicate that search engines reproduce ethnic and gender biases common for mainstream media representations of different subgroups of migrant population. For instance, migrant representations tend to be highly racialized, and female migrants as well as migrants at work tend to be underrepresented in the results. Our findings highlight the need for further algorithmic impact auditing studies in the context of representation of potentially vulnerable groups in web search results.

Background
Returning universities to full on-campus operations while the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is ongoing has been a controversial discussion in many countries. The risk of large outbreaks in dense course settings is contrasted by the benefits of in-person teaching. Transmission risk depends on a range of parameters, such as vaccination coverage and efficacy, number of contacts, and adoption of nonpharmaceutical intervention measures. Owing to the generalized academic freedom in Europe, many universities are asked to autonomously decide on and implement intervention measures and regulate on-campus operations. In the context of rapidly changing vaccination coverage and parameters of the virus, universities often lack sufficient scientific insight on which to base these decisions.

Methods
To address this problem, we analyzed a calibrated, data-driven agent-based simulation of transmission dynamics among 13 284 students and 1482 faculty members in a medium-sized European university. Wed use a colocation network reconstructed from student enrollment data and calibrate transmission risk based on outbreak size distributions in education institutions. We focused on actionable interventions that are part of the already existing decision process of universities to provide guidance for concrete policy decisions.

Results
Here we show that, with the Omicron variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, even a reduction to 25% occupancy and universal mask mandates are not enough to prevent large outbreaks, given the vaccination coverage of about 85% reported for students in Austria.

Conclusions
Our results show that controlling the spread of the virus with available vaccines in combination with nonpharmaceutical intervention measures is not feasible in the university setting if presence of students and faculty on campus is required.

Background: There is accumulating evidence about detrimental impacts of the pandemic on population mental health, but knowledge on risk of groups specifically affected by the pandemic and variations across time is still limited.
Methods: We surveyed approximately n=1,000 Austrian residents in 12 waves between April and December 2020 (n=12,029). Outcomes were suicidal ideation (Beck Suicidal Ideation Scale), depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), anxiety (Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale), and domestic violence. We also assessed the perceived burden from the pandemic. Demographic and Covid-19 specific occupational and morbidity-related variables were used to explain outcomes in multivariable regression analyses, controlling for well-established risk factors of mental ill-health, and variations over time were analyzed.
Results: Young age, working in healthcare or from home, and own Covid-19 illness were consistent risk factors controlling for a wide range of known mental health risk factors. Time patterns in the perceived burden from Covid-19-related measures were consistent with the time sequence of restrictions and relaxations of governmental measures. Depressive and anxiety symptoms were relatively stable over time, with some increase of depression during the second phase of lockdowns. Domestic violence increased immediately after both hard lockdowns. Suicidal ideation decreased slightly over time, with a low during the second hard lockdown. Mental health indicators for women and young people showed some deterioration over time, whereas those reporting own Covid-19 illness improved.
Limitations: Data from before the pandemic were not available.
Conclusions: Among mental health outcomes, increases in domestic violence and, to some smaller extent, depressive symptoms, appeared most closely related to the timing of hard lockdowns. Healthcare staff, individuals working from home, those with Covid-19, as well as young people and women are non-traditional risk groups who warrant heightened attention in prevention during and in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Sierra Leone is a successful case of postconflict democratization, but citizens' trust in parliament is low. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this article examines the relationship between MPs and their constituencies. Given the fierceness of the competition at the level of party primaries, aspiring MPs make promises they cannot keep. Confronted with unrealistic expectations, they reduce their presence in the constituency to a minimum. As a result, dissatisfaction increases, and disappointing MPs are voted out of office. The high turnover rate weakens the institutional memory and law-making capacities of parliament, thus creating even more disillusionment. In the long run, the continuation of this cycle may break the links between voters and political representatives.

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