Aktuelle Publikationen
Auf dieser Seite finden Sie die chronologisch geordneten Veröffentlichungen unserer Wissenschaftler*innen aus den vergangenen Jahren.
Aktuelle Publikationen (Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaft)
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(2019): The Politics of Trade-Offs : Studying the Dynamics of Welfare State Reform With Conjoint Experiments Comparative Political Studies. Sage. 2019, 52(7), pp. 1059-1095. ISSN 0010-4140. eISSN 1552-3829. Available under: doi: 10.1177/0010414018797943
Welfare state reform in times of austerity is notoriously difficult because most citizens oppose retrenchment of social benefits. Governments, thus, tend to combine cutbacks with selective benefit expansions, thereby creating trade-offs: to secure new advantages, citizens must accept painful cutbacks. Prior research has been unable to assess the effectiveness of compensating components in restrictive welfare reforms. We provide novel evidence on feasible reform strategies by applying conjoint survey analysis to a highly realistic direct democratic setting of multidimensional welfare state reform. Drawing on an original survey of Swiss citizens’ attitudes toward comprehensive pension reform, we empirically demonstrate that built-in trade-offs strongly enhance the prospects of restrictive welfare reforms. Our findings indicate that agency matters: governments and policy makers can and must grant the right compensations to the relevant opposition groups to overcome institutional inertia.
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(2019): Learning from the Commission case : The comparative study of management change in international public administrations Public Administration. Wiley-Blackwell - SSH. 2019, 97(2), pp. 384-398. ISSN 0033-3298. eISSN 1467-9299. Available under: doi: 10.1111/padm.12546
Despite the growing importance attributed to organizational performance in global governance, management change in international public administrations (IPAs) is still poorly understood. In particular, the lack of comparative analyses that cover a broader range of management areas limits our descriptive knowledge about the direction and intensity of management change in IPAs. Without such knowledge, however, refining existing theories about the causes and consequences of change is difficult. Based on the reforms of the European Commission, the article reviews available studies about managerial change in IPAs to identify pertinent topics, available knowledge and gaps in the literature. Aiming to narrow these gaps, empirical data on three IPAs are presented to show in which areas and to what degree the management changed over time in these cases and to illustrate how multi-dimensional managerial change can be studied comparatively in future research more generally.
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(2019): Party institutionalization and intra-party preference homogeneity Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft. Springer. 2019, 13(2), pp. 199-224. ISSN 1865-2646. eISSN 1865-2654. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s12286-019-00421-9
This paper studies the relation between party institutionalization and intra-party preference homogeneity in democracies. In weakly institutionalized parties, it cannot be taken for granted that party actors have similar policy views because they lack the capability or motivation to coordinate agreement and to recruit personnel in line with this agreement. This should matter most when other safeguards against preference heterogeneity are missing. Empirically, we explore the association between institutionalization and intra-party preference homogeneity at the level of candidates to the national legislature based on survey data. In a single-country study, we first look at the case of Germany in 2013 and 2017, contrasting the young and weakly institutionalized Alternative for Germany (AfD) with the older, established parties. In a second step, we study the link between party institutionalization and preference homogeneity in a cross-country analysis of 19 established democracies. We find that parties with high value infusion—parties whose candidates are committed to the party—are generally more homogenous in their policy preferences. Moreover, value infusion is more consequential when the issues in question are not constitutive for the party and when candidates are selected in a decentralized way. Similarly, routinization of internal party behavior—the second dimension of institutionalization that we account for—seems to contribute to preference homogeneity only when parties are less policy oriented and have decentralized candidate selection procedures.
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(2019): Targeting the Motivated? : Ethnicity and the Pre-emptive Use of Government Repression Swiss Political Science Review. 2019, 25(3), pp. 203-225. ISSN 1424-7755. eISSN 1662-6370. Available under: doi: 10.1111/spsr.12370
Research on government repression often focuses on the comparison between states over time and provides little insight about the targets of repression within a state. This article unpacks government repression against different ethnic groups. It argues that non‐democratic governments use pre‐emptive and targeted repression against ethnic groups that are discriminated, strong, or have a history of protest or rebellion in order to prevent future ethnic rebellions. For democratic governments, on the other hand, the cost of pre‐emptive repression is too high. The article tests this argument in a quantitative analysis of government‐group dyads. It finds at least partial support for some implications of the argument: Autocratic governments use more repression than democracies against discriminated groups, but only when they are also weak, and against groups with a history of protest. There is little evidence that regimes of either type respond to previous violent mobilization or group strength with repression.
Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)
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dc.contributor.editor: Baumgartner, Frank R.; Grossman, Emiliano
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(2019): Street-level bureaucracy research and accountability beyond hierarchy HUPE, Peter, ed.. Research Handbook on Street-Level Bureaucracy : The Ground Floor of Government in Context. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019, pp. 223-239. ISBN 978-1-78643-762-4. Available under: doi: 10.4337/9781786437631.00025
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dc.contributor.author: Lieberherr, Eva
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(2019): Agile Verwaltung KLENK, Tanja, ed., Frank NULLMEIER, ed., Göttrik WEWER, ed.. Handbuch Digitalisierung in Staat und Verwaltung : Springer Nature Living Reference. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019. ISBN 978-3-658-23669-4. Available under: doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-23669-4_12-1
Ereignisse wie die Flüchtlingskrise, terroristische Bedrohungen oder Umweltprobleme stellen die öffentliche Verwaltung vor neue Herausforderungen, die wegen der Komplexität der Ereignisse kaum mehr nach dem klassischen Zuständigkeitsprinzip innerhalb der Verwaltung gelöst werden können. Diesen Herausforderungen kann die Verwaltung, so das Konzept der „agilen Verwaltung“, nur vernetzt begegnen. Was aber ist wirklich neu an der agilen Verwaltung? Welche Rolle spielt dabei die Digitalisierung? Der Beitrag setzt sich kritisch mit der Funktionalität, der Umsetzbarkeit und der Zukunft einer agilen Verwaltung auseinander.
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(2019): The Entanglement of Public Bureaucratic Institutions : Their Interactions with Society, Culture, Politics, and the Economy BOUDREAUX, Donald J., ed., Christopher J. COYNE, ed., Bobbi HERZBERG, ed.. Interdisciplinary Studies of the Political Order : New Applications of Public Choice Theory. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, pp. 99-130. ISBN 978-1-78660-980-9
Scholars of public administration apply different perspectives to understand bureaucratic institutions. Many excellent studies consider the influence of bureaucracies on one aspect of their environment, like politics, society, culture, or the economy. Alternatively, scholars sometimes analyze the impact of one of these factors on the public administration. However, the recent literature on institutional entanglement shows us that relationships between social institutions are often mutually constitutive, meaning that their interaction is not one-directional. In this chapter, I build upon a large number of previous studies on public administration to create a synthesized perspective of how public bureaucracies interact with their broader environment, including the social, cultural, economic, and political context in which they operate. Through a number of empirical examples, I show how useful this view can be for understanding the characteristics of public bureaucracies.
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(2019): Das Engagement der Mitarbeitenden richtig messen und fördern Personal quarterly. Haufe-Lexware. 2019, 71(1), pp. 46-49. ISSN 2193-0589. eISSN 2365-8622
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(2019): Public Support for European Solidarity : Between Euroscepticism and EU Agenda Preferences? Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS). Wiley. 2019, 57(3), pp. 533-550. ISSN 0021-9886. eISSN 1468-5965. Available under: doi: 10.1111/jcms.12833
This article investigates public support for two types of EU-wide solidarity that currently exist, namely member state solidarity (such as transfers to less developed and crisis-hit countries) and transnational solidarity (such as granting cross-border social rights to EU citizens). Drawing on data from the 2014 Belgian National Election Study, we find that opposition towards European integration – in particular regarding EU enlargement – reduces citizens' willingness to support European solidarity to a large extent. However, this article reveals that public support for European solidarity cannot simply be reduced to a pro-versus anti-integration, nor to a domestic left–right conflict. Citizens' substantive positions towards the EU's social and economic agenda are a crucial element in understanding contestation over European integration issues.
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How does a citizen's decision to participate in political activism depend on the participation of others? We examine this core question of collective action in a nation-wide natural field experiment in collaboration with a major European party during a recent national election. In a seemingly unrelated party survey, we randomly assign canvassers to true information about the canvassing intentions of their peers. Using survey evidence and behavioral data from the party's smartphone canvassing application, we find that treated canvassers significantly reduce both their canvassing intentions and behavior when learning that their peers participate more in canvassing than previously believed. These treatment effects are particularly large for supporters who have weaker social ties to the party, and for supporters with higher career concerns within the party. The evidence implies that effort choices of political activists are, on average, strategic substitutes. However, social ties to other activists can act as a force for strategic complementarity.
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(2019): Analyzing Biases in Perception of Truth in News Stories and Their Implications for Fact Checking FAT* '19 : Proceedings of the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. New York, NY: ACM, 2019, pp. 139. ISBN 978-1-4503-6125-5. Available under: doi: 10.1145/3287560.3287581
Recently, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have been severely criticized by policy makers, and media watchdog groups for allowing fake news stories to spread unchecked on their platforms. In response, these sites are encouraging their users to report any news story they encounter on the site, which they perceive as fake. Stories that are reported as fake by a large number of users are prioritized for fact checking by (human) experts at fact checking organizations like Snopes and PolitiFact. Thus, social media sites today are relying on their users' perceptions of the truthfulness of news stories to select stories to fact check. However, few studies have focused on understanding how users perceive truth in news stories, or how biases in their perceptions might affect current strategies to detect and label fake news stories. To this end, we present an in-depth analysis on users' perceptions of truth in news stories. Specifically, we analyze users' truth perception biases for 150 stories fact checked by Snopes. Based on their ground truth and the truth value perceived by users, we can classify the stories into four categories -- (i) C1: false stories perceived as false by most users, (ii) C2: true stories perceived as false by most users, (iii) C3: false stories perceived as true by most users, and (iv) C4: true stories perceived as true by most users. The stories that are likely to be reported (flagged) for fact checking are from the two classes C1 and C2 that have the lowest perceived truth levels. We argue that there is little to be gained by fact checking stories from C1 whose truth value is correctly perceived by most users. Although stories in C2 reveal the cynicality of users about true stories, social media sites presently do not explicitly mark them as true to resolve the confusion. On the contrary, stories in C3 are false stories, yet perceived as true by most users. Arguably, these stories are more damaging than C1 because the truth values of the the story in former situation is incorrectly perceived while truth values of the latter is correctly perceived. Nevertheless, the stories in C1 is likely to be fact checked with greater priority than the stories in C3! In fact, in today's social media sites, the higher the gullibility of users towards believing a false story, the less likely it is to be reported for fact checking. In summary, we make the following contributions in this work.
1. Methodological: We develop a novel method for assessing users' truth perceptions of news stories. We design a test for users to rapidly assess (i.e., at the rate of a few seconds per story) how truthful or untruthful the claims in a news story are. We then conduct our truth perception tests on-line and gather truth perceptions of 100 US-based Amazon Mechanical Turk workers for each story.
2. Empirical: Our exploratory analysis of users' truth perceptions reveal several interesting insights. For instance, (i) for many stories, the collective wisdom of the crowd (average truth rating) differs significantly from the actual truth of the story, i.e., wisdom of crowds is inaccurate, (ii) across different stories, we find evidence for both false positive perception bias (i.e., a gullible user perceiving the story to be more true than it is in reality) and false negative perception bias (i.e., a cynical user perceiving a story to be more false than it is in reality), and (iii) users' political ideologies influence their truth perceptions for the most controversial stories, it is frequently the result of users' political ideologies influencing their truth perceptions.
3. Practical: Based on our observations, we call for prioritizing stories to fact check in order to achieve the following three important goals: (i) Remove false news stories from circulation, (ii) Correct the misperception of the users, and (iii) Decrease the disagreement between different users' perceptions of truth. Finally, we provide strategies which utilize users' truth perceptions (and predictive analysis of their biases) to achieve the three goals stated above while prioritizing stories for fact checking. -
(2019): Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in Public Administration THOMPSON, William R., ed.. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-0-19-022863-7. Available under: doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1444
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is increasingly establishing itself as a method in social research. QCA is a set-theoretic, truth-table-based method that identifies complex combinations of conditions (configurations) that are necessary and/or sufficient for an outcome. An advantage of QCA is that it models the complexity of social phenomena by accounting for conjunctural, asymmetric, and equifinal patterns. Accordingly, the method does not assume isolated net effects of single variables but recognizes that the effect of a single condition (that is, an explanatory factor) often unfolds only in combination with other conditions. Moreover, QCA acknowledges that the occurrence of a phenomenon can have a different explanation from its non-occurrence. Finally, QCA allows for different, mutually non-exclusive explanations of the same phenomenon. QCA is not only a technique; there is a diversity of approaches to how it can be implemented before, during and after the “technical moment,” depending on the analytic goals related to contributing to theory, engaging with cases, and the approach to explanation. Particularly since 2012, an increasing number of scholars have turned to using QCA to investigate public administrations. Even though the boundaries of Public Administration (PA) as an academic discipline are difficult to determine, it can be defined as an intellectual forum for those who want to understand both public administrations as organizations and their relationships to political, economic, and societal actors—especially in the adoption and implementation of public policies. Owing to its fragmented nature, there has been a long-lasting debate about the methodological sophistication and appropriateness of different comparative methods. In particular, the high complexity and strong context dependencies of causal patterns challenge theory-building and empirical analysis in Public Administration. Moreover, administrative settings are often characterized by relatively low numbers of cases for comparison, as well as strongly multilevel empirical settings. QCA as a technique allows for context-sensitive analyses that take into account this complexity. Against this background, it is not surprising that applications of QCA have become more widespread among scholars of Public Administration. A systematic review of articles using QCA published in the major Public Administration journals shows that the use of QCA started in mid-2000s and then grew exponentially. The review shows that, especially in two thematic areas, QCA has high analytical value and may (alongside traditional methodological approaches) help improve theories and methods of PA. The first area is the study of organizational decision-making and the role of bureaucrats during the adoption and implementation of public policies and service delivery. The second area where QCA has great merits is in explaining different features of public organizations. Especially in evaluation research where the aim is to investigate performance of various kinds (especially effectiveness in terms of both policy and management), QCA is a useful analytical tool to model these highly context-dependent relationships. The QCA method is constantly evolving. The development of good practices for different QCA approaches as well as several methodological innovations and software improvements increases its potential benefits for the future of Public Administration research.
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(2019): Bildung : Kontinuität und Wandel in der Politik der Großen Koalition (2013–2017) ZOHLNHÖFER, Reimut, ed., Thomas SAALFELD, ed.. Zwischen Stillstand, Politikwandel und Krisenmanagement : eine Bilanz der Regierung Merkel 2013-2017. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2019, pp. 487-512. ISBN 978-3-658-22662-6. Available under: doi: 10.1007/978-3-658-22663-3_20
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(2019): At Africa's Expense? : Disaggregating the Employment Effects of Chinese Mining Operations in Sub-Saharan Africa World Development. 2019, 118, pp. 39-51. ISSN 0305-750X. eISSN 1873-5991. Available under: doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.02.007
China’s increasing investments in African countries have attracted considerable media attention and are the subject of scholarly debate. However, the socioeconomic impacts of China’s presence in Africa remain poorly understood. While some case studies maintain that Chinese projects have an enclave character and have largely failed to promote economic spillovers and local employment, others claim that Chinese activities have in fact encouraged infrastructural development and local economic activity. Focusing on the labor market effects of foreign mining investments in Africa, this article examines whether Chinese-controlled companies generate fewer local jobs compared to non-Chinese mining operations. Theoretically, we argue that—due to a competitive advantage in the employment of expatriate workers and a lower readiness to invest in local skill formation—Chinese firms are less likely to foster regional employment. Relying on novel data on the control-rights regimes of diamond, gold, and copper mines and georeferenced information from Afrobarometer surveys, we test the effect of mining contractors’ nationality on local employment rates. Our individual-level logistic models show that respondents living close to Chinese mining areas are more likely to report being unemployed compared to individuals living in the vicinity of non-Chinese mining operations. Times-series cross-sectional estimations employing district-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for 20 sub-Saharan countries over the period 1997–2015 corroborate these findings. Furthermore, we find evidence that negative perceptions of China among indigenous populations are largely driven by the belief that Chinese workers are crowding out local employment.
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(2019): Towards a peaceful world MATTHEWS, Ron, ed.. The Political Economy of Defence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 453-475. ISBN 978-1-108-44101-8. Available under: doi: 10.1017/9781108348058.020
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(2019): Passive, Aggressive or Creative? : Adjustment Strategies of Companies Affected by Sanctions VAN TULDER, Rob, ed., Alain VERBEKE, ed., Barbara JANKOWSKA, ed.. International Business in a VUCA World : The Changing Role of States and Firms. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 2019, pp. 131-156. Progress in International Business Research. 14. ISBN 978-1-83867-256-0. Available under: doi: 10.1108/S1745-886220190000014009
The probability of sanctions’ effectiveness increases not only due to their severity for the target country’s economy but is also a function of adherence to their principles by enterprises from senders’ countries. Sanctions avoidance and increasing investments in the target country (the observed behavior of many companies facing the European Union (EU) sanctions against Russia which were imposed in 2014) mitigate the impact of these restrictive measures. In this chapter we show (by analyzing adaptation strategies of EU enterprises affected by sanctions imposed on Russia by EU) how particular types of strategies affect the effectiveness of sanctions and what factors determine the choice of their respective behavior. We draw our conclusions from the online survey of more than 1,000 responses from British, French, German, Italian, and Polish enterprises. We find that while administrative burdens make conformance to sanctions more likely, market dependency and non-tangible assets in the target country induce strategies that challenge sanction policies. We conclude that the EU–Russian sanctions dispute incentivizes European companies to increase their engagement in Russia. These so-called defiance strategies diminish the real economic effect of the sanctions and generate a new equilibrium which outlasts the lifting of these restrictive measures and has negative long-term political implications.
Forschungszusammenhang (Projekte)
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(2019): Energy Governance in the Netherlands KNODT, Michèle, ed., Jörg KEMMERZELL, ed.. Handbook of Energy Governance in Europe. living reference work. Cham: Springer, 2019. ISBN 978-3-319-73526-9. Available under: doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-73526-9_20-1
The Dutch energy transition governance is marked by distinct approaches of policy coordination, expert involvement and strategic planning, consensus building, and mutual self-commitments. These patterns of negotiation democracy with their roots in the period of pillarization (1890 until 1960s) have already been successfully applied by the Dutch government in the past. In the 1980s and 1990s, the government negotiated a consensus on socioeconomic policy reforms with the social partners, the so-called polder model. State actors also referred to this governance approach in the fields of immigrant integration and religious governance. In the field of energy, led by the Social and Economic Council (SER) in 2013, the Dutch government negotiated a comprehensive energy accord with employers’ federations, trade unions, energy suppliers, environmental and conservationist organizations, and other interest groups. However, path dependence went along with institutional adaptations. These changes are manifest in the inclusion of lower administrations, new forms of citizen participation, and improved monitoring and evaluation systems.
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(2019): Norwegen BENZ, Arthur, ed. and others. Handbuch der europäischen Verfassungsgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert : Institutionen und Rechtspraxis im gesellschaftlichen Wandel ; Band 5: Seit 1989. Bonn: Dietz, 2019, pp. 897-930. ISBN 978-3-8012-4251-0
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