Aktuelle Publikationen

Self-reports of adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions in surveys may be subject to social desirability bias. Existing questioning techniques to reduce bias are rarely used to monitor adherence. We conducted a list experiment to elicit truthful answers to the question whether respondents met friends or acquaintances and thus disregarded the social distancing norm. Our empirical findings are mixed. Using the list experiment, we estimate the prevalence of non-compliant behavior at 28%, whereas the estimate from a direct question is 22%. However, a more permissively phrased direct question included later in the survey yields an estimate of 47%. All three estimates vary consistently across social groups. Interestingly, only the list experiment reveals somewhat higher non-compliance rates among the highly educated compared to those with lower education, yet the variance of the list estimates is considerably higher. We conclude that the list experiment compared unfavorably to simpler direct measurements in our case.

The article investigates the role of social grievances, emotions and group solidarity in the spontaneous mobilization of unemployed university graduates in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Using a mixed method approach, I rely on interviews with political and civil actors conducted during fieldwork in 2018, protest event data from the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, Facebook posts, and secondary literature including additional media reports. My findings indicate that in January 2016, unemployed citizens organized autonomously in response to perceived social grievances and increasing levels of corruption among established trade unions and unemployed organizations. In the case of Tunisia, shared feelings of relative deprivation, compared to the coastal regions, strengthened in-group solidarity among the unemployed in the interior and south and resulted in their collective mobilization.

Are self-interest or presumably stable value orientations and other predispositions the main drivers behind social policy attitudes? This article contributes to this debate by moving away from its binary discussion. It differentiates between attitude changes driven by self-interest that are in line with pre-existing predispositions and those that are not. Empirically, this article focuses on changes of labour market policy attitudes after employment transitions and job insecurity changes. More precisely, this article differentiates between attitude changes within three subgroups. (A) People whose self-interest after the employment transitions reinforces their prior predispositions. (B) People without strong prior predispositions, who are thus unconstrained by them. And (C) people whose self-interest after the employment transitions contradicts their prior predispositions. Panel analyses with fixed effects use German SOEP waves from 1997 and 2002. Main effects suggest an important role for self-interest as they show significant attitudinal reactions after most of the transitions and perception changes. However, subgroup analyses result in a somewhat mixed picture. They show attitude changes within different subgroups after different transitions and perception changes. This mixed empirical picture suggests caution when interpreting attitudinal change or stability after changing material circumstances as a sign for the relative importance of self-interest or predispositions.

Innovation-oriented firms encourage their staff to generate ideas, but lack the resources to sponsor them all. Entrepreneurially minded employees may respond to this discrepancy with creative deviance, i.e., pursue ideas despite managerial orders to stop. We elucidate this understudied flipside of corporate entrepreneurship by theorising and testing organisational and individual antecedents to creative deviance. Strain theory leads us to hypothesise that organisational support for innovation reduces creative deviance. Based on achievement goal theory, we conjecture that mastery goals foster creative deviance. These predictors are expected to interact in their impact on creative deviance. Data from 659 employees support our hypotheses. Our study contributes to corporate entrepreneurship theory by expounding an important, but so far understudied form of innovative behaviour, extends strain theory by showing how individual traits can reinforce or mitigate the structural strain created by organisations, and advances research on achievement goals by connecting mastery achievement orientation to deviant behaviour. In terms of practical implications, our study indicates how leaders may promote compliant innovation through organisational support and how they can increase person-job fit by screening candidates’ achievement goals during recruitment.

Why did Argentina risk seizing the Malvinas/Falkland Islands by force in 1982, provoking a war against Great Britain, and what are the larger implications of this case? We revisit this influential episode using counterfactual analysis to interpret newly declassified declarations of high-ranking state officials involved in the decision to occupy the islands. These sources cast doubt on the diversionary-war and miscalculation theses of the Malvinas/Falklands War, among other extant interpretations. Evidence suggests long-term power dynamics and prospect theory better explain Argentine foreign policy behavior leading to the war. Due to aversion to tangible losses, the leadership of waning states like Argentina might favor risky military strategies despite their low expected utility. These biases may provoke a war if decision-making groups are small and isolated from de-biasing influences. Our explanation illustrates the value of prospect theory to understand why certain declining states behave aggressively and more plausibly explains the Malvinas/Falklands War when confronted to set-theoretic counterfactual analysis.

Parties and politicians want their messages to generate media coverage and thereby reach voters. This article examines how attributes related to content and sender affect whether party messages are likely to get media attention. Based on content analyses of 1,613 party press releases and 6,512 media reports in a parliamentary, multiparty context, we suggest that party messages are more likely to make it into the news if they address concerns that are already important to the media or other parties. Discussing these issues may particularly help opposition parties and lower-profile politicians get media attention. These results confirm the importance of agenda setting and gatekeeping, shed light on the potential success of party strategies, and have implications for political fairness and representation.

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Are levels of criminal violence lower where emigrants collaborate with the state authorities in the funding and provision of public goods and services? In this article, I examine the causal effect on violence levels in the municipalities participating in Mexico's Three‐for‐One (3×1) Programme for Migrants. Using municipal‐level data for the period between 2001 and 2010, the analysis shows that the implementation of this programme led to an increase in violence in the municipalities in question, and that this effect is driven by the ‘war on drugs’ initiated by the Mexican government in 2006. Because cartels splinter when kingpins are captured, they look for sources of revenue other than drug smuggling. The budgetary gains obtained via the 3×1 Programme inadvertently increased the returns of extortion and directed the attention of organized criminals to the participant municipalities. The evidence highlights some of the unintended effects that the leveraging of emigrants' money may have in home countries where governments make the so‐called ‘kingpin strategy’ a centrepiece of their security strategy.

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.