Aktuelle Publikationen

Many studies describe how globalisation—the global integration of the economic, political, and cultural domains of society—transforms party competition in Western Europe. At the citizen level, however, our knowledge about globalisation attitudes and their electoral consequences remains limited. Using data from a large-scale panel survey of the German public, we show that, first, citizens hold stable rather than fluid attitudes towards the concept of globalisation. Second, these attitudes are rather closely related to positions on specific economic, cultural, and political issues that social scientists understand as facets of globalisation but unrelated to positions on traditional redistribution issues. Third, attitudes towards globalisation are systematically associated with voting decisions even when controlling for specific issue attitudes. We conclude that individuals hold integrated belief systems concerning globalisation and that globalisation matters as a contentious political symbol. We discuss the implications of these findings for the politics of globalisation in Germany and beyond.

Various studies have expressed concerns about the decline of religious freedom in Indonesia. These studies suffer from three limitations. First, they inadequately differentiate between various aspects of state–religion relations. Second, they are largely inward looking, overlooking how Indonesia compares with other countries in the world, especially other Muslim countries. Third, they do not explicitly test whether this decline in religious freedom was triggered by the downfall of Soeharto and the more open political and social space that ensued. Applying a synthetic control method to a global data set, the present study shows that Indonesia’s level of state discrimination against religious minorities has not changed much since 1998. The country’s levels of social discrimination and religious legislation, on the other hand, have increased significantly. This suggests that efforts to improve religious freedom in Indonesia should focus on tackling the proliferation of religious bylaws and discrimination by social groups. Berbagai studi telah mengemukakan keprihatinan akan menurunnya kebebasan beragama di Indonesia. Namun, studi-studi ini memiliki tiga keterbatasan. Pertama, mereka tidak cukup melakukan differensiasi atas berbagai aspek hubungan negara-agama. Kedua, mereka berorientasi internal, mengabaikan perbandingan Indonesia dengan negara-negara lain di dunia, khususnya negeri berpenduduk Muslim lainnya. Ketiga, mereka tidak secara eksplisit menguji apakah penurunan pada kebebasan beragama dipicu oleh jatuhnya Soeharto dan semakin terbukanya ruang sosial dan politis yang mengikutinya. Dengan menerapkan metode kendali sintetis pada set data global, studi ini menunjukkan bahwa tingkat diskriminasi oleh negara atas kaum agama minoritas di Indonesia sesungguhnya tidak berubah sejak 1998. Sebaliknya, tingkat diskriminasi sosial dan legislasi agama naik secara signifikan. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa upaya-upaya untuk meningkatkan kebebasan beragama seharusnya berfokus pada penanganan penyebaran aturan-aturan setempat dan diskriminasi oleh kelompok sosial.

The ability to produce desired outcomes represents an important basis of the legitimacy of social policies. Nonetheless, policy outcomes have not systematically figured in the analysis of childcare regimes despite growing political interest in issues such as female employment, gender wage gap, and men's involvement in childcare. In this article, we use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the relationship between the configuration of policy instruments, attitudes toward childcare and outcomes in 21 European countries. Our results show that there is only one mix of policy instruments consistently linked with positive gender equality outcomes and this route has the quality of the universal caregiver model. It also demonstrates that both a combination of policy instruments and favorable attitudinal factors are necessary to produce desirable outcomes in the gender division of paid work and unpaid childcare.

Since the last review of public opinion on European defense policy and NATO concluded that Europeans wanted both European defense integration and a continuing commitment to NATO, the EU has almost doubled in size and new initiatives have been launched to develop a Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). We reexamine these issues and trace public opinion trends in all 28 EU member states from 2000 to 2019. With little variation across countries, general support for CSDP and NATO remains substantial. While Europeans, especially in continental Western Europe, believe that the EU should take a more independent approach from the United States in security and diplomatic affairs, large segments of the publics show no clear opinion on whether European defense should mean a transfer of decision-making power from the state to the EU level and the end of NATO. Cross-country differences are more pronounced when it comes to the creation of an EU army and its deployment.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have implemented a wide range of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). Monitoring and documenting government strategies during the COVID-19 crisis is crucial to understand the progression of the epidemic. Following a content analysis strategy of existing public information sources, we developed a specific hierarchical coding scheme for NPIs. We generated a comprehensive structured dataset of government interventions and their respective timelines of implementation. To improve transparency and motivate collaborative validation process, information sources are shared via an open library. We also provide codes that enable users to visualise the dataset. Standardization and structure of the dataset facilitate inter-country comparison and the assessment of the impacts of different NPI categories on the epidemic parameters, population health indicators, the economy, and human rights, among others. This dataset provides an in-depth insight of the government strategies and can be a valuable tool for developing relevant preparedness plans for pandemic. We intend to further develop and update this dataset until the end of December 2020.

We provide an agent-based model to explain the emergence of collective opinions not based on feedback between different opinions, but based on emotional interactions between agents. The driving variable is the emotional state of agents, characterized by their valence, quantifying the emotion from unpleasant to pleasant, and their arousal, quantifying the degree of activity associated with the emotion. Both determine their emotional expression, from which collective emotional information is generated. This information feeds back on the dynamics of emotional states and individual opinions in a nonlinear manner. We derive the critical conditions for emotional interactions to obtain either consensus or polarization of opinions. Stochastic agent-based simulations and formal analyses of the model explain our results. Possible ways to validate the model are discussed.

We sometimes dismiss Agile methods too easily, demeaning them as nothing but colorful post-its and hype. How can we help public managers understand how Agile concepts can—and should—be part of their standard toolbox of teams and managers working at all levels of government? Two points are critical: First, Agile fits well with the core values of modern government. Second, practical applications can help project teams become Agile.

Im Rahmen der Regionalpolitik kann der Bund Steuererleichterungen für industrielle Unternehmen gewähren, die Arbeitsplätze in strukturschwachen Gebieten schaffen oder neu ausrichten. Die Wirksamkeit des Instruments war bisher umstritten. In einer neuen Studie im Auftrag des Staatssekretariats für Wirtschaft (Seco) wurde ein spezielles statistisches Verfahren angewendet, um die Wirksamkeit der Steuererleichterungen zu untersuchen. Die Analyse mit dem sogenannten Regressions-Diskontinuitäts- Design (RDD) zeigt, dass die Einführung des Instruments zwar bescheidene, aber doch signifikant positive Effekte auf die regionale Arbeitsmarktentwicklung in den untersuchten Gebieten hat. Generell gingen die Arbeitsplätze im Industriesektor in den wirtschaftlich benachteiligten Gebieten zwischen 2008 und 2016 zwar zurück. Der allgemeine Rückgang konnte innerhalb der anspruchsberechtigten Regionen aber leicht abgeschwächt werden.

Forschungsfrage: Die wissenschaftliche Managementforschung zeigt deutlich, dass Mitarbeiterengagement eine wichtige Rolle für den Erfolg von organisationalem Wandel spielt. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich daher mit der Frage, wie Mitarbeiterengagement in Zeiten organisationalen Wandels gefördert werden kann.

Methodik: Der vorliegende Artikel fasst die empirische Studienlage zu den Treibern von Mitarbeiterengagement in Zeiten organisationalen Wandels zusammen.

Praktische Implikationen: Zentrale Interventionen zur Förderung von Mitarbeiterengagement in Zeiten organisationalen Wandels sind "Job Crafting" und transformationale Führung.

How do sub-state regions respond to immigration and what drives their policy choices? Combining the cross-national literature on citizenship and integration policy with the literature on immigration federalism, it is hypothesized that sub-state nationalism and multilevel party politics explain why some regions formulate more restrictive immigrant integration policies than others. Analyzing integration laws of German, Italian and Spanish regions demonstrates that socioeconomically inclusive measures dominate, regardless of national context. Where restrictive provisions occur at all, they are associated with minority nationalism and the strength of anti-immigrant parties, while leftist regions facing right-wing national governments tend to adopt a more inclusive policies.

Almost all regulatory policy stops at the national border. Thus, when conducting business abroad, the behaviour of firms is regulated by their host, not their home country. Yet, international institutions have issued (non-binding) codes of conduct on social/environmental aspects of firm behaviour, and various high-income countries discuss how to improve extraterritorial firm behaviour – with high political contestation over the appropriate mix of state intervention and corporate self-regulation. Exploiting a unique national referendum on this issue in Switzerland, we investigate how these interact from a public opinion standpoint. Based on a nationally representative survey experiment (N=1564), we find that while baseline support for state intervention is high (approx. 60%), corporate self-regulation decreases such support. However, only credible voluntary business initiatives lead to substantial reductions. Our results speak to a broad policy debate in European countries and the EU on how to ensure compliance of firms with human rights and environmental standards.

Deutschland gehört zu den zehn Staaten, die sich in den letzten 25 Jahren am häufigsten im UN-Sicherheitsrat mit Redebeiträgen zu Wort meldeten - und zwar nicht nur dann, wenn die Bundesrepublik Mitglied war. Anhand neuer Methoden der Textanalyse lässt sich zeigen, welche thematischen Schwerpunkte Deutschland setzt und mit welchen Koalitionen.

Policy scholars typically assume that implementing actors should follow democratically decided rules in linear, predictable ways. However, this assumption does not factor in the operational challenges and multiple accountability relations facing policy implementers in contemporary, hybrid policy implementation settings. Shifting the focus to throughput (governance process) and output legitimacy (results), this paper explores how throughput dimensions affect the implementation of policy outputs. We study a hybrid policy—the Swiss Forest Policy 2020—in a federalist, multi-level implementation context. We find that accountability dilemmas have negative consequences for output implementation, particularly when professionalism clashes with rules. Accountability dilemmas are exacerbated by policy incoherence and interact with policy ambiguity. However, high issue salience can partially compensate for the negative effects of these factors. In sum, we highlight how the role of implementing actors in democratic countries goes beyond rule-following: accountability relations and other throughput dimensions crucially affect output legitimacy.

This article addresses the question of to what extent conventional theories of high reliability organizations and normal accidents theory are applicable to public bureaucracy. Empirical evidence suggests precisely this. Relevant cases are, for instance, collapsing buildings and bridges due to insufficient supervision of engineering by the relevant authorities, infants dying at the hands of their own parents due to misperceptions and neglect on the part of child protection agencies, uninterrupted serial killings due to a lack of coordination among police services, or improper planning and risk assessment in the preparation of mass events such as soccer games or street parades. The basic argument is that conceptualizing distinct and differentiated causal mechanisms is useful for developing more fine-grained variants of both normal accident theory and high reliability organization theory that take into account standard pathologies of public bureaucracies and inevitable trade-offs connected to their political embeddedness in democratic and rule-of-law-based systems to which belong the tensions between responsiveness and responsibility and between goal attainment and system maintenance. This, the article argues, makes it possible to identify distinct points of intervention at which permissive conditions with the potential to trigger risk-generating human action can be neutralized while the threshold that separates risk-generating human action from actual disaster can be raised to a level that makes disastrous outcomes less probable.

Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of “democratic backsliding” attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several policy recommendations are offered to help (re)stabilize current systems of representative democracy.