Aktuelle Publikationen

International solidarity is indispensable for coping with global crises; however, solidarity is frequently constrained by public opinion. Past research has examined who, on the donor side, is willing to support European and international aid. However, we know less about who, on the recipient side, is perceived to deserve solidarity. The article argues that potential donors consider situational circumstances and those relational features that link them to the recipients. Using factorial survey experiments, we analyse public support for international medical and financial aid in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show that recipient countries' situational need and control, as well as political community criteria, namely, group membership, adherence to shared values and reciprocity, played a crucial role in explaining public support for aid. Important policy implications result: on the donor side, fault-attribution frames matter; on the recipient side, honouring community norms is key to receiving aid.

According to social theorists of time, the way societies structure and value different aspects of time plays an important role in people’s perception and evaluation of economic, political, and cultural change. I explore if two dimensions of social time—social acceleration and long-term orientation—have an effect on the public evaluation of the speed of European integration. Combining Eurobarometer data for 27 societies with measures for social acceleration and time horizons, the results show distinct patterns for the perception and preferences of European integration. Whereas I find no connection between dimensions of social time and the perceived speed of integration, more social acceleration and cultural long-term orientation lead to a desire for a slower speed of European integration. Even when controlled for other economic and political macro-factors, temporal structures can play a key role in the evaluation of political change in European societies.

If European Union (EU) member states realise differentiations in EU Treaties, what effect do we see on public and political support for future integration? We argue on the basis of a two-tier integration theory and postfunctionalism that differentiations of member states do lead to a preference for slower future integration by its citizens and parties. Once citizens and parties are used to opting out, they demand more of the same in the future. We test our arguments with time-series cross-sectional data for 1994–2018 on all voluntary primary law opt-outs in the EU. Our panel matching estimates demonstrate that opt-outs decrease integration support. After a differentiation, parties become more Eurosceptic on average and publics express a lower preference for future integration. This suggests that differentiated integration is not a cure against Euroscepticism that leads to a unified EU in the future but rather reinforces two-tier integration.

Despite intense public and policy debates about the termination (and re-instatement) of sanctions in cases such as Iran, Cuba and Russia, research has hitherto focused on sanctions imposition and effectiveness, directing little attention towards their removal. Existing work has been constrained by a lack of adequate data. In response, we introduce a novel dataset that contains information on the termination of all EU, UN, US and regional sanctions between 1990 and 2018. In contrast to previous datasets, which rely on media reports, the International Sanctions Termination (IST) dataset systematically codes official governmental and intergovernmental documents. It contains information on the design of sanctions – including expiry dates, review provisions and termination requirements – and captures the gradual process of adapting and ending sanctions. The article describes the data collection process, considers IST’s complementarity to and compatibility with existing datasets, and discusses the newly captured variables, exploring how they affect the termination of sanctions. The results indicate that changes in the sender’s goals and investments in monitoring devices lead to significantly longer sanctions spells. By contrast, clearly stipulated termination requirements decrease the expected duration of sanctions.

Interest groups play a key role in the political economy of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Their support for or opposition to a planned PTA tends to be crucial in determining the fate of PTAs. But which PTAs receive support from (which) interest groups? Clearly, the design of a PTA, that is, which types of provisions are (not) included in the agreement, is essential in that respect. We argue that trade and trade-related provisions, such as those that regulate services trade or the protection of intellectual property rights, mainly increase support for PTAs among export-oriented business groups. In contrast, the inclusion of non-trade provisions, namely clauses aimed at the protection of environmental and labour standards, makes citizen groups, labour unions, and import-competing business groups more supportive of trade agreements. Relying on original data from a survey of interest groups across the globe, including a conjoint experiment, we find support for the argument that different types of interest groups value the inclusion of trade and non-trade provisions in PTAs differently. Interestingly, however, we find little difference between export-oriented and import-competing business interests. Our study speaks to research on interest groups and trade policy.

The wealth of text data generated by social media has enabled new kinds of analysis of emotions with language models. These models are often trained on small and costly datasets of text annotations produced by readers who guess the emotions expressed by others in social media posts. This affects the quality of emotion identification methods due to training data size limitations and noise in the production of labels used in model development. We present LEIA, a model for emotion identification in text that has been trained on a dataset of more than 6 million posts with self-annotated emotion labels for happiness, affection, sadness, anger, and fear. LEIA is based on a word masking method that enhances the learning of emotion words during model pre-training. LEIA achieves macro-F1 values of approximately 73 on three in-domain test datasets, outperforming other supervised and unsupervised methods in a strong benchmark that shows that LEIA generalizes across posts, users, and time periods. We further perform an out-of-domain evaluation on five different datasets of social media and other sources, showing LEIA’s robust performance across media, data collection methods, and annotation schemes. Our results show that LEIA generalizes its classification of anger, happiness, and sadness beyond the domain it was trained on. LEIA can be applied in future research to provide better identification of emotions in text from the perspective of the writer.

Since the Eurozone crisis, intense political debate has resurfaced about deservingness judgements in European solidarity. To contribute to this debate, this article proposes a refined concept of ‘multi-level blame attribution’. It postulates that public support for EU-level welfare policies crucially depends on how citizens attribute responsibility for economic outcomes across different levels of agency. Results from an original public opinion survey conducted in 10 European Union member states demonstrate that attributing blame to individuals decreases citizens’ willingness to show solidarity with needy Europeans, whereas attributing blame to the EU increases support. The role of attributing blame to national governments is dependent on the country context; beliefs that worse economic outcomes are caused by national governments’ policy decisions tend to dampen support for EU targeted welfare policies only in the Nordic welfare states. The article concludes by discussing the implications of multi-level blame attribution for the formation of public attitudes towards European solidarity.

Rising international migration, paired with increasing public support for far-right political parties, poses a growing challenge to the countries tasked with successfully integrating immigrants into their society. Further complicating this matter is the fact that the acculturation process which immigrants undergo to fully integrate into their host society can be long, difficult, and taxing to their mental health, physical health, and sense of belonging. A better understanding of how the unique burdens faced by immigrants might be alleviated or more easily processed is therefore vital for the success of both immigrants and their host countries. Drawing on initial findings suggesting that classic psychedelics can help individuals process incidents of discrimination, make healthier decisions, and experience deeper feelings of connectedness to others, this literature review presents a roadmap for determining what classic psychedelics may offer immigrants, a large and rapidly growing international minority group.

Background
Interpersonal violence damages mental health and frequently leads to aggressive defence strategies. If survivors are subsequently blamed for the events, both consequences worsen. Stigma flourishes, especially when survivors are silenced so that details of the trauma remain unknown. Breaking the secrecy both at the individual and collective level is key to enable the healing and reconciliation of individuals and communities living under continuous threat.

Method
The NETfacts health system is a stepped care model with three components: (1) Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), an evidence-based trauma therapy that includes survivor testimony (2) NET for Forensic Offender Rehabilitation (FORNET) acknowledges that perpetrators are frequently also victims and assists in reducing aggression and the attraction to violence, and (3) a community intervention disseminating and discussing Facts derived from NET treatment (NETfacts) to challenge the collective avoidance of atrocities and other traumatic material. The intervention was piloted in a community with 497 adult residents in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The willingness of clients to consent to sharing their anonymised testimonies (with a focus on sexual violence survivors and ex-combatants) was investigated, together with other components of feasibility including security and clinical safety, extent of support of respected local authorities and participation rates. As secondary outcomes, clinical and social measures were assessed before and post NETfacts among 200 village residents of whom 160 self-enrolled and 40 had not participated in any form of treatment.

Results
Implementation was feasible with 248 clients from a partner project giving consent to use their testimonies and high support of respected local authorities and participation rates (56% of residents self-enrolled in NETfacts). Immediate beneficial effects were shown for posttraumatic stress and rejection of rape myths among NETfacts participants who experienced multiple traumatic events in their own past. Attitudes towards ex-combatants improved and the perceived lack of social acknowledgement after trauma increased independent from participation. No significant change was observed for depressive symptoms.

Conclusion
NETfacts is a feasible and promising approach to challenge the culture of secrecy surrounding trauma, suppression and social exclusion. Long term effectiveness requires further evaluation.

Since the end of the Cold War, the EU aims to advance to a relevant and autonomous actor in international politics—especially concerning security and defense politics. Scholars interested in whether the EU member states actually converge in their security and defense preferences often analyze strategy papers qualitatively, focusing on selected countries at specific points in time. In this article, we propose a dictionary approach for analyzing the development of security and defense preferences within the EU over the last three decades using quantitative text analysis. We make use of 163 strategy papers, published by all EU member states and the EU itself since 1994. The findings show that EU member states react similarly to international events, but do not converge substantially in their preferences. Furthermore, there is no substantial convergence to the position of the EU itself. We finally discuss usefulness and validity of quantitative text analysis in comparative research more broadly.

Energy Communities are playing an ever greater role in the European renewable energy transition. As an instrument for citizen-led transformation, they are associated not only with economic and environmental, but also with social benefits. However, it is unclear whether Energy Communities in Europe deliver on the positive social impact they promise. In this paper, we analyze the conceptual background of the social impact associated with Energy Communities and clarify the underlying constructs of community empowerment, social capital, energy democracy and energy justice. We conduct a systematic literature review and develop an overview of studies which measured social impact. Through classifying evidence along methods and constructs measured in an evidence gap map, we demonstrate where rigorous evidence is missing: from quantitative and experimental studies, and longitudinal and counterfactual designs, which should guide future research. We conclude with recommendations for both research and policy to promote the collection of robust evidence on the social impact of Energy Communities in Europe.

In light of secluded decision-making and early agreements, a binding mandate for the European Parliament’s negotiation team is essential to prevent agency loss in trilogue negotiations. In this article, I investigate the influence of the often-overlooked shadow rapporteurs on this mandate. Shadow rapporteurs are their party group’s representatives and act as checks on the rapporteur. Drawing on novel insights from network analysis, I expect shadow rapporteurs and their stance on EU integration to affect the success of amendments they are sponsoring. I draw on a novel dataset of 1524 committee amendments and employ three-level multinomial logistic regression to test these expectations. I find shadow rapporteurs to be influential policy leaders who successfully shape the committee report and, therefore, mitigate the risk of agency loss in potential trilogues. Shadow rapporteurs can successfully check the rapporteur and thereby influence the content of EU legislation.

A common finding in the literature is that social investment policies are broadly popular among citizens but still politically difficult to implement. This article provides a partial answer to this puzzle by exploring the fiscal trade-offs associated with such a recalibration. Based on survey data from eight Western European countries, it first explores citizens’ fiscal policy preferences with regard to the preferred size of the public sector and the distribution of spending across different subsectors. These preferences are then shown to be significantly associated with attitudes towards fiscal trade-offs regarding the expansion of social investment policies. The results reveal a political dilemma for policy-makers keen on expanding social investment: People who traditionally support a large public sector and more welfare state spending tend to oppose redistributing spending towards social investment, whereas support for such a recalibration is higher among those who have a sceptical view on public spending.