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When sender states consider the imposition of sanctions, they also take into account the consequences that these measures have on their own economy and on their domestic economic actors. How do these economic considerations affect the imposition of sanctions as well as the effectiveness of coercive measures after their imposition?

Trade restrictions that have been imposed because of the perceived political misbehavior of a target state do not simply limit the activities between the governments of the sanctioning states and the target state. Sender governments rather have to restrict the activities of their own domestic actors in the target country. Despite the importance of economic actors within sender states, their role has often been neglected in research on sanctions. The goal of this dissertation is to provide a conceptual framework for the different aspects how economic considerations affect the imposition and effectiveness of sanctions. I show that there are three important dimensions: first, lobbying by economic actors can lead to restrictive measures that are less comprehensive than they would have been without these efforts. Second, there are resulting selection effects on the effectiveness of sanctions, which reflect the impact of domestic economic actors on the sanctioning process. Finally, the way companies of the sanctioning states operate in a sanctions regime also has an impact on the effectiveness of these measures. This dissertation contributes four articles to analyze these different dimensions.

This dissertation analyzes the influence of the European Council (EUCO) in the legislative process of the European Union (EU) by examining the inter-institutional relationship between EUCO and the Council of the EU (‛Council’) in EU decision-making. EUCO comprises the Heads of State or Government of all EU member states, the President of the Commission and, since December 2009, a permanent EUCO President. It is therefore the highest political body of the EU. However, the functions of the institution are ambiguous. According to the EU Treaties EUCO sets the broad guidelines for the EU, but is excluded from the legislative process. Lawmaking is formally in the remits of the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission. However, I suggest that EUCO plays an important, albeit informal, role in the decision-making process by influencing the Council. The core argument is that EUCO´s influence in EU decision-making is based on a principal-agent relationship between EUCO and the Council. As principal of the Council, EUCO can control the Council´s legislative behavior and, thereby, the decisions the Council takes. My dissertation examines how and with what consequences EUCO controls the Council in legislative decision-making in three studies.
Study 1 illustrates the causal mechanisms how EUCO controls the Council in five case studies. It shows that EUCO controls the Council manifestly or latently. While EUCO interferes in the Council´s activities in manifest control, latent control works through anticipation. I find that the Council´s response to manifest control depends on its zone of discretion that it enjoys after EUCO interfered. Low discretion leads to an obedient Council, while high discretion results either in an obedient or shirking Council. In Study 2, I analyze EUCO control over time and across policy areas through a content analysis of all EUCO conclusions from 1975 until 2016. According to the principal-agent model the frequency and intensity of control is lower in informationally intense policy areas and increase if the principal gains resources to exert control. The results show more control activity in the post-Lisbon period, in intergovernmental policy areas, but less intensive control. Study 3 examines the effect of EUCO on the number of legislative decisions. A count model of all EU legislation adopted from 1976 until 2009 shows that EU output increases in anticipation of EUCO meetings, but drops shortly after the summits.
In sum, the dissertation shows that EUCO influences the Council in legislative decision-making. EUCO keeps, and is anticipated to keep, a watchful eye on the Council. Yet, EUCO influence over the Council is not absolute. The dissertation offers the first comprehensive investigation of the relationship between EUCO and the Council in EU decision-making by theorizing it through the principal-agent model and analyzing it through multiple methods and data. The thesis contributes to research on delegation in the EU political system and carries implications for research on (global) summitry and on the politics in national (core) executives.

This dissertation studies how three different liberal democracies; Germany, Canada, and Australia, have experienced and reacted to contemporary migration, focusing on asylum seekers and refugees. Conceptually, it assumes that their admission leads to paradoxes for host states’ governmental apparatuses: If these migrants’ reasons to seek new lives outside of their home countries and regions are recognized, they need to be granted protection statuses and thus be ‘welcomed’ to stay temporarily or permanently. As a consequence of public ‘backlashes’ and anxieties, destination countries’ governments have however increasingly attempted to control and restrict their entry. To understand these phenomena, this study explains the underlying incentives and scopes for handling contemporary migratory movements primarily from a governmental top-down point of view. Historical institutionalism helps to understand the path-dependent emergence of certain policies in the context of each state’s particular actor constellations. Approaches taken from public choice theory are adopted to illuminate the connection between societal sentiments, discourses, and domestic political decisionmaking. Insights from delegation, blame and signaling games are used to complete this picture. Supplemented by expert interviews, the empirical part of this study deciphers the observable political developments, as well as the resulting administrative asylum/refugee regimes in 21st century Germany, Canada, and Australia. The selected cases include one ‘newcomer’ and two ‘classic’ immigration countries. In line with the conceptual model, its focus lies on key actors’ influences in the corresponding institutional set-ups, as well as the internal developments that are shaped by the historical paths, discourses and public opinion. The crosscountry comparison in this most different systems design shows that, although Germany’s, Canada’s, and Australia’s humanitarian commitments and overall experiences with contemporary migratory movements have differed sharply in many regards, certain phenomena have been recurring. In particular, political elites in all three states have been maneuvering fine lines between different policy objectives, attempting to ‘filter’ and ‘manage’ migration and settlement. The advancing externalization of border regimes made it more difficult to physically reach these states in the first place. But also once there, migrants have been facing other obstacles before eventually being granted protection statuses and the corresponding socioeconomic rights. The legal regimes have been complemented by widely hidden practices of ‘administrative deterrence’ aiming at the reduction of so-called ‘pull factors’. This has entailed dysfunctional and discriminatory refugee status determination systems which pit different migrant groups against each other and leave many in legal uncertainty for long periods. Only for particular subgroups of refugees, the way to an arrival in dignity has been paved in all three states. Further crucially, the observable overall convergence to more selective admission frameworks cannot distract from the fact that related challenges have been of completely different scales: The implementation of well-functioning asylum administrations certainly depends on the corresponding claimants’ numbers and profiles. Domestic conflicts over material priorities have nonetheless contributed to the development of short-term pseudo-solutions to the inherent dilemmas in all three cases. These often came at the expense of procedural fairness and long-term goals such as social ‘integration’. Instead of reflecting strategic decisions, many findings thus point out to political ‘muddling through’. The comparison of their preconditions and the corresponding outcomes provides starting points for emulating, consolidating or abolishing certain policies – in order to achieve more coherent and evidence-based decisionmaking in this controversial area.