Aktuelle Publikationen

This paper illustrates the divergent party alliances established by former corporatist organisations to influence policymaking after the demise of one‐party rule in Mexico. Using a Most Similar Systems Design, the analysis suggests that variations in outcome owe to: a) the extent to which the organisation was relevant for advancing and implementing the agenda of the new presidential party and b) the ability of the organisation in question's leadership to loosen its formal ties with the PRI. The argument is grounded on three cases studies: the National Farm Workers’ Confederation, the National Teachers’ Union and the Confederation of Mexican Workers. The period under study is 2000–2012, which covers the first two non‐PRI presidencies – of Vicente Fox (2000–2006) and then Felipe Calderón (2006–2012).

Social interaction and data integration in the digital society can affect the control that individuals have on their privacy. Social networking sites can access data from other services, including user contact lists where nonusers are listed too. Although most research on online privacy has focused on inference of personal information of users, this data integration poses the question of whether it is possible to predict personal information of nonusers. This article tests the shadow profile hypothesis, which postulates that the data given by the users of an online service predict personal information of nonusers. Using data from a disappeared social networking site, we perform a historical audit to evaluate whether personal data of nonusers could have been predicted with the personal data and contact lists shared by the users of the site. We analyze personal information of sexual orientation and relationship status, which follow regular mixing patterns in the social network. Going back in time over the growth of the network, we measure predictor performance as a function of network size and tendency of users to disclose their contact lists. This article presents robust evidence supporting the shadow profile hypothesis and reveals a multiplicative effect of network size and disclosure tendencies that accelerates the performance of predictors. These results call for new privacy paradigms that take into account the fact that individual privacy decisions do not happen in isolation and are mediated by the decisions of others.

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En los últimos cincuenta años, la participación de Brasil en el total de capacidades materiales de América del Sur ha aumentado de un tercio a la mitad de las mismas. Semejante cambio en la estructura de poder regional no puede haber pasado desapercibido para los vecinos de Brasil. En este artículo intento resolver el puzle principal de la unipolaridad sudamericana: ¿por qué la mayoría de los países de la región no ha aplicado estrategias consistentes de balancing o bandwagoning frente a Brasil? Basándome en algunas intuiciones del realismo neoclásico, propongo que ciertas variables internas (la inestabilidad de gobierno, la baja institucionalización del sistema de partidos y presidentes delegativos) han desviado la atención de las elites políticas y poderes ejecutivos de los desafíos generados por el crecimiento de Brasil. Un análisis comparativo cualitativo de conjuntos nítidos (csQCA) compara esta hipótesis y otras explicaciones alternativas para el desequilibrio regional.

Nighttime illumination can serve as a proxy for economic variables in particular in developing countries, where data are often not available or of poor quality. Existing research has demonstrated this for coarse levels of analytical resolution, such as countries, administrative units or large grid cells. In this article, we conduct the first fine-grained analysis of night lights and wealth in developing countries. The use of large-scale, geo-referenced data from the Demographic and Health Surveys allows us to cover 39 less developed, mostly non-democratic countries with a total sample of more than 34,000 observations at the level of villages or neighborhoods. We show that light emissions are highly accurate predictors of economic wealth estimates even with simple statistical models, both when predicting new locations in a known country and when generating predictions for previously unobserved countries.

Do prime ministers pay an electoral penalty for using procedural force to pass laws? Influential theories of parliamentary governance and legislative bargaining assume that the use of the confidence vote procedure – parliamentary governments’ most powerful legislative weapon – entails an electoral cost, but evidence on this important claim has been scarce. This article provides the first estimates of how prime ministers’ public approval responds to their use of the confidence vote. Analysing time series data from France 1979–2008, it is found that prime ministers experience a considerable drop in approval after their use of the confidence vote that is not accounted for by standard economic and political covariates. The effect size is similar to a 1 per cent decline in economic growth. The findings help explain French prime ministers’ selective use of the confidence vote procedure. They also suggest that political costs constrain the bargaining power conferred by the confidence vote.

In 2011–2012 Russia experienced a wave of mass protests surrounding the Duma and presidential elections. The protests, however, faded shortly after the second election. We study the Russian political discourse on Twitter during this period and the main actors involved: the pro-government camp, the opposition, and the general public. We analyze around 700,000 Twitter messages and investigate the social networks of the most active Twitter users. Our analysis shows that pro-government users employed a variety of communication strategies to shift the political discourse and marginalize oppositional voices on Twitter. This demonstrates how authorities can disempower regime critics and successfully manipulate public opinion on social media.

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Wird eine verwaltungswissenschaftliche Perspektive für die Analyse von internationalen Organisationen fruchtbar gemacht, kann als Ausgangspunkt die Annahme dienen, dass die Leistungsfähigkeit internationaler Organisationen mit der Qualität ihrer internen Organisationsstrukturen sowie personellen und sachlichen Ressourcen zusammenhängt. Bisher gibt es aber kaum verwaltungswissenschaftliche Studien, die sich systematisch-vergleichend mit internationalen Organisationen und ihren Verwaltungsstäben auseinandersetzen. Dabei gilt, dass je mehr internationale Organisationen mit Policy-Gestaltungsaufgaben betraut werden, sich desto drängender Fragen nach deren politisch-administrativer Führung, demokratischer Legitimation und nach der Verselbständigung ihrer Verwaltungsstäbe stellen. Hier setzt der vorliegende Beitrag an. Es wird ausgelotet, ob und mit welchem analytischen Gewinn das klassische Konzept der Verwaltungsautonomie auf die Verwaltungsstäbe internationaler Organisationen übertragen werden kann. In einem ersten Schritt werden dazu die theoretischen Grundlagen der Autonomie von Verwaltungen diskutiert und, darauf aufbauend, ein Vorschlag entwickelt, wie die Autonomie internationaler Verwaltungsstäbe angemessen konzeptualisiert werden kann. In einem zweiten Schritt wird dann die Verwaltungsautonomie für 20 internationalen Organisationen operationalisiert und präsentiert, sowie anhand der Autonomiewerte zweier Verwaltungen illustriert, inwieweit die Ergebnisse geeignet sind, um Aussagen über die konkreten administrativen Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten internationaler Verwaltungen zu machen.

The forecasting literature has come to mistrust the predictions made by experts who forecast political events in mass media. Distinguishing between judgements made by one or few individuals (‘oracles’) and assessments made by larger groups (‘crowds’), we contrast journalistic predictions with forecasts stemming from the financial industry. These two competing views were evaluated in a quantitative analysis of the ex ante success of 24 ceasefire agreements in various conflicts which took place in the Levant from 1993 to 2014. Our analysis compares the forecasts appearing in press commentaries (Haaretz, Jerusalem Post and New York Times) with the expectations that the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange had about the stability of these cooperative efforts. To evaluate the predictions of these very dissimilar sources, the effectiveness of the ceasefires was analysed through the number of violent events following the official start of the truce. The analysis shows that the financial industry performs better than the media industry in the comparative evaluation of ceasefire forecasts, but that neither source provides sufficiently accurate predictions. The partial support for the crowd thesis is discussed in light of recent literature that resuscitates the usage of well-trained experts for forecasting purposes, but warns against the dramatizing predictions of media pundits.