Aktuelle Publikationen

Theoretische und empirische Untersuchungen des Zusammenhangs zwischen Gender Diversity in Führungsteams und Unternehmensperformanz weisen inkonsistente Befunde auf. Vor diesem Hintergrund präsentiert der vorliegende Beitrag die Ergebnisse einer Metaanalyse zu der Frage, wie und in Abhängigkeit von welchen Randbedingungen eine gemischt-geschlechtliche Zusammensetzung von Führungsteams mit Unternehmensperformanz verbunden ist. Basierend auf 38 Einzelstudien kann kein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen Gender Diversity und Unternehmensperformanz insgesamt identifiziert werden. Zudem erweisen sich auch die untersuchten Moderatoren (Größe des Führungsteams, Branche, kultureller Kontext und Performanzkriterium) als nicht signifikant.

This study explores the reasons behind sexual violence. In doing so, we focus on structured information given by 224 former combatants from different Congolese armed groups. Unlike other studies on sexual violence, we have controlled for the combatant's experience with sexual violence: we have self-reports on whether they have witnessed, experienced, or perpetrated sexual assault themselves. Ultimately, by asking the former combatants themselves to react on particular statements on the reasons behind sexual violence, we can glimpse the logic behind this phenomenon. The results of the comparative analysis show that perpetrators differ from nonperpetrators by emphasizing that sexual violence occurs out of frustration or as revenge. Victims, however, emphasize the lack of punishment and the fact that perpetrators want to prove their strength. All in all, we found high levels of agreement surrounding the opportunity argument behind sexual violence during warfare, i.e. it occurs because war provides the perpetrator with an opportunity for this kind of behavior.

Past research on the relationship between power-sharing arrangements and the recurrence of civil conflict has primarily analyzed the promises of power-sharing stipulated in peace agreements. What happens afterwards, however, has not yet been sufficiently explored. This represents a major research gap, as the actual practices of power-sharing in post-conflict countries are likely to be influential in the possibility of civil conflict recurring. To address this shortcoming, we present a new global dataset on the promises and practices of power-sharing between the government of a state and former rebels in post-conflict countries. The collected data captures if, when and how power-sharing institutions have been promised and/or put into place, and whether they have subsequently been modified or abolished. The dataset encompasses every peace agreement signed after the cessation of a civil conflict in the years between 1989 and 2006, and covers a five-year period after the signature of each of these agreements (unless violence recurred earlier). The unit of analysis is the government–rebel dyad during the post-conflict period and data is recorded in an event data format. A first analysis of the Power-Sharing Event Dataset (PSED) reveals that the effects of the promises of power-sharing on civil conflict recurrence follow a different logic than the effects of their practices. This finding emphasizes the necessity for in-depth analyses of post-conflict situations for which the PSED provides the necessary data.

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How can we explain institutional reforms that redistribute institutional power between the parliamentary majority and minority? This paper proposes an informal theoretical model to explain such reforms in European parliaments based on congressional literature and inductive explanations from case studies. The article argues that political parties as the relevant actors pursue institutional reforms based on their substantive goals, their current and expected future government status, transaction and audience costs of reforms, second-order institutions that regulate the relative influence of actors in changing parliamentary rules, and the institutional status quo. Hypotheses derived from this model are tested with a qualitative case study of all standing order reforms in the Austrian parliament from 1945 to 2014. The empirical analysis finds support for various hypotheses and their underlying causal mechanisms. As Austria constitutes a least-likely case, the evidence provides strong support for the theoretical model.

The article offers a first comprehensive overview of the workings of enhanced cooperation in the European Union (EU). Although this form of secondary law differentiation exists since the Amsterdam Treaty, it has only rarely been used so far. In the article, we formulate a theory of when and why enhanced cooperation is used in EU decision-making. Our theory builds on rationalist institutionalism focussing on institutions, preference constellations and the externality structure of policies. We test the plausibility of our theoretical claims by combining comparative and within-case analyses of nine cases. The empirical findings underline that the usage of enhanced cooperation depends to large degrees on the externality structure of the goods under consideration. The article ends with a short normative evaluation of the enhanced cooperation procedure.

This paper tests whether local religious institutions have a dampening effect on the probability of communal violence. It argues that a dense layer of institutions strengthens horizontal and vertical contacts and networks within religious communities. Horizontal linkages help to bridge social, economic, and ethnic divisions. Vertical contacts enable religious leaders to stay informed about communal grievances among their followers and to coordinate conflict resolution attempts. In our analysis of more than 60,000 villages in Indonesia, we are able to document a statistically significant and substantively meaningful negative effect of the density of local religious institutions on the probability of mass fighting. This effect is robust to the inclusion of an exhaustive list of confounding variables and alternative measures of violence. We present additional evidence that this pacifying effect of religious institutions is weaker or absent in conflicts that evolve along explicitly religious cleavages.

Despite ample anecdotal evidence, previous research on violent conflict has found little evidence that religion is an important factor in organized violence. Quantitative work in this area has been largely confined to the interreligious character of conflict and measures of religious diversity, and has strongly neglected the peace aspect of religion. The Religion and Conflict in Developing Countries (RCDC) dataset helps to fill this gap with innovative and fine-grained data for 130 developing countries between 1990 and 2010. RCDC includes four types of religious violence (assaults on religious targets, attacks by religious actors, clashes between religious communities, and clashes with the state). In addition, RCDC contains data on interreligious networks and peace initiatives. This article demonstrates the usefulness of RCDC by applying our data to a preliminary analysis. The results indicate that interreligious networks are a reaction to identity overlaps and previous interreligious conflict.

The present paper introduces and compares two alternative perspectives on hybridity. One is the perspective of hybrids being located at the interface of dominant ‘sectors’ such as the private for-profit sector, the public sector and the civil society or nonprofit sector. The alternative perspective focuses on a combination of sector-specific governance mechanisms. The paper discusses the characteristics as well as the advantages and disadvantages of those two perspectives and what a combination of both implies for further research with an emphasis on the analysis of organizational pathologies and managerial coping.

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Deutschland gehörte zu den ersten Staaten, die das Übereinkommen der Vereinten Nationen gegen Korruption unterzeichneten. Doch es dauerte mehr als zehn Jahre, bis es im November 2014 in Deutschland in Kraft treten konnte. Der vorliegende Beitrag nennt die Gründe für die späte Ratifizierung, bewertet die Weiterentwicklung des Übereinkommens, insbesondere den umfassenden Überwachungsmechanismus, und gibt einen Ausblick auf künftige Herausforderungen.

This contribution conceptualizes the European Union (EU) as a system of differentiated integration characterized by both variation in levels of centralization (vertical differentiation) and variation in territorial extension (horizontal differentiation) across policy areas. Differentiation has been a concomitant of deepening and widening and has increased and consolidated as the EU's powers, policy scope and membership have grown. Turning to explanation, the contribution attributes the pattern of differentiated integration in the EU to the interaction of interdependence and politicization. Differentiation among the member states (internal differentiation) results from supranational integration under conditions of high interdependence and politicization. By contrast, external differentiation (the selective policy integration of non-member states) occurs in highly interdependent but weakly politicized policy areas. These constellations are illustrated in case studies of differentiation in the internal market, monetary union and defence.