Two volumes published in 2022 with Oxford University Press: Volume I: The World Politics of Social Investment (Volume II): Welfare States in the Knowledge Economy. Volume II: The World Politics of Social Investment (Volume II): The Politics of Varying Social Investment Strategies. The “World Politics of Social Investment” (WoPSI) is a collaborative research project which has brought together an international research network and aims at explaining variance in social investment agendas and social investment reforms across democratic countries in different regions of the World. Recent research on the development and implementation of social investment (investment in human capital, work-care support policies and active labor market policies) has shown that there is some level of implementation of social investment policies not only in different regions of Europe, but also in Latin America and South East Asia. However, one cannot speak of a general development of a social investment welfare state, as the phase but also-and especially-the specific substance of the social investment agenda varies strongly between these regions. Why have social investment ideas and policies been more developed in some regions and countries than in others? Going beyond different structural pressure, the project aims at theorizing the politics of social investment and testing different explanations empirically. The aim is to assess what are the political conditions for the development of social investment policies. Given that similar governments in different contexts have adopted different strategies with regard to social investment, the project investigates the institutional and socio-structural factors that enable or prevent political support coalitions for social investment. This project will assess the political conditions for the development of social investment policies, investigate the politics of Social Investment in Europe, Latin America and East Asia along the following three questions: What explains the content of the social investment agenda? (empirically: identify framing and the effect of institutional legacies – constraints, economic strategy- on the social investment agenda in different regions of the world) How does political conflict over social investment map onto other conflict lines and cleavages? (empirically: identify actor positions, dimensionality, links between actor positions on different issues). What political coalitions support or prevent a social investment turn ? (empirically: identify reform coalitions and the institutional and structural conditions that produce them)
The euro crisis has turned into the most serious challenge the European Union has ever had to face. Although the causes of the crisis are increasingly well understood, the politics of the crisis are not. This project aims at shedding light on three important puzzles that existing research has not yet been able to resolve. First, why have some governments been able to implement far-reaching reforms, whereas reform progress has been rather spotty in other crisis countries? Second, why have some countries seen serious political turmoil, while others have experienced less public and political opposition? And finally, why have surplus countries been willing to bail out deficit countries, but have varied in their willingness to adjust their own economic policies in an effort the ease the adjustment burden on the South? The project argues that these differences can be explained by the variation in societies’ vulnerabilities to different types of policy responses to the crisis. The argument builds on the insight that the euro crisis is, at its root, a balance-of-payments crisis. The imbalances that underlie such crises can be resolved either through significant economic policy adjustments both in the (peripheral) deficit or the (northern) surplus countries, or be addressed by providing external financing to deficit countries. I argue that the resulting distributive struggles surrounding the politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries are distinct but related, and should therefore be analyzed in a unified framework. The chances for swift and substantial adjustment are enhanced when politically influential interest groups exhibit a low vulnerability to at least one type of adjustment. In contrast, in contexts where significant parts of society are vulnerable to any adjustment, crisis politics is very contentious. Surplus countries with such a vulnerability profile attempt to push most of the adjustment burden onto deficit countries. In return, they are willing to provide external financing to deficit countries, but this generates conflict about on who should bear this financial burden. Since deficit countries are in a weaker position to push adjustment costs onto surplus countries, the distributional conflicts there revolve around how the cost of adjustment is to be distributed among different societal groups. Empirically, the project examines how vulnerability profiles affect domestic crisis politics and policies on two levels of analysis, the interest-group and the national level. It uses a mixed-methods research design that combines two sets of qualitative comparative case studies of the domestic and international politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries, respectively, with a quantitative analysis of national vulnerability profiles and crisis politics in a wider set of countries. The overarching goal of the project is to generate an encompassing picture of the distributional politics of the euro crisis and a better understanding of the constraints under which European policymakers operate in their attempts to solve the crisis.
Although some Latin American economies such as Chile, Peru, and Bolivia have always been strongly shaped by the mining sector, mining activities in Latin America have increased dramatically over the last decades. Dur-ing the 1990s, four of the ten countries with the highest mining investments worldwide were Latin American, and natural resource extraction is one of the region’s main drivers of economic growth. Permissive legal envi-ronments adopted to attract foreign investors often allow for environmentally precarious practices with external-ities affecting the bases of livelihood and human health in many host communities. As a result, mining activities have caused widespread social resistance over the past years. The simultaneous process of democratization in the region, starting in the late 1970s, opened up the necessary political space to effectively express such grievances. In almost every Latin American country, social mobilization has occurred around issues of environmental pro-tection and indigenous territories, often resulting in massive, at times violent protest against mining companies and states’ resource politics. However, patterns of social resistance against mining projects differ considerably in form and intensity, both within and across countries, as well as over time. Political responses by governments in the region, too, vary widely. What explains different levels of mobilization against mining projects? And what kind of institutions and actors help to avoid or mitigate social conflicts over natural resource extraction? Studies on political solutions to mining conflicts are still exceedingly scarce. There is, in particular, a striking lack of cross-country comparative studies on the issue. Building on both grievance and social movement theories, we propose a project that addresses this research gap based on a theoretical framework that combines motivational and structural approaches to explain ethno-environmentalist mobilization. To this end, we construct a new multi-level dataset on mining conflicts in Latin America between 2000 and 2013, using an innovative, semi-automated strategy of news media event coding. To our knowledge, this will be the first comprehensive quantitative study analyzing the social consequences of resource extraction in Latin America and the possibilities to manage its adverse effects.
"Comparative Politics" is an exciting and authoritative introduction to one of the most important fields of political science. International experts explore the methods and theories of comparative politics, as well as the institutions, actors, processes, and policies at the heart of political systems around the world. Alongside discussion of the key themes, students are presented with a wealth of empirical data to demonstrate similarities and differences in practice, and to encourage research. By focussing on industrial and developing countries, together with political bodies and systems above and below the level of the nation state, this textbook provides a fully comprehensive account of the discipline. The third edition is forthcoming in January 2014.
We participate in this project under the lead of University of St. Gallen. The interdisciplinary project, funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies, examines why states have increasingly used informal institutions instead of formal organisations to govern global policy issues. In the realm of this project, Prof. Katharina Michaelowa and Bernhard Reinsberg will investigate the use of trust funds as new informal channels of governance at multilateral development organizations and particularly informal governance in the area of climate change. The wider project is motivated by a key question: Why have states recently started to use informal institutions instead of formal organisations to govern global policy issues? Extant research on the forms of institutionalisation in global governance focuses on formal modes of cooperation, such as intergovernmental organisations and treaties. Formal rules, however, do not exhaust the institutional variety of international and transnational cooperation. They are often inadequate descriptions of the game that actors play in world politics. Recent work in political science, economics, and international law has started to examine informal governance as a mode of international cooperation. Informal governance refers to unwritten - and often vaguely specified - rules and norms that are not enshrined in formally constituted organisations and which modify or substitute legally binding rules. This project examines the factors that lead states and transnational actors to choose between formal intergovernmental organisations, informal intergovernmental organisations and transnational governance networks to structure their interactions and govern global problems. The research team will also investigate the interactions between formal and informal institutions. The project highlights the political dimensions of informal governance and argues that distributional conflict and power asymmetries are critical for the selection and design of informal institutions. States and transnational actors use informal institutions as a means to project power and bias outcomes toward their particularistic interests. This project will fill a gap in research by taking systematic account of the wider spectrum of institutional variation. Furthermore, the accurate knowledge about the factors that shape the emergence and functioning of informal forms of governing will help policy-makers to effectively provide public goods and enhance the legitimacy, equity, and efficiency of global governance institutions.
SNF Grant 100017_146104; CHF 246’958.-, main applicant with Bruno Wüest, Thomas Kurer and Matthias Enggist This project was concerned with the political reactions of European citizens to the financial disaster and the harsh economic consequences that hit them from the late 2008 onwards. Starting from a political economy perspective, we asked how European citizens reacted towards the crisis and what implications these individual reactions had for the variation of protests at the societal level. By integrating previously separate research on social movements, economic voting and social risks, we offered an encompassing analytical argument to explain the variation in protest reactions across Europe.
2008 the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) assigned radio and television frequencies to broadcasters. 42 private radio stations and 13 regional television broadcaster are under the terms of their concession obliged to establish and maintain an editorial quality assurance systems. These quality management systems have to be evaluated by independent experts every two years. Five evaluation offices are currently accredited as evaluation bodies by the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM). An evaluation of the quality of the evaluations will be realised due to the fact that the first half of the concession period is over. All broadcasters have been evaluated at least twice. Therefore a substantial number of evaluation reports can be analysed. In a meta-evaluation the conceptual approach and the procedures established by the OFCOM will be analysed. Further the work done by the evaluation offices and their reporting will be evaluated. Building on the insights conclusions are drawn and guide the development of recommendations for future regulatory measures and future evaluations.
This project investigates the impact of international economic flows on breakdown and survival of autocratic regimes. Research in this area is scarce and remains theoretically and empirically unclear. Using insights from recent research about the politics of authoritarian rule, this thesis proposes an actor-centered model of regime change focusing on the interplay between the autocratic leader and both the popular masses and the regime elite. Building on this, globalization-induced distributional conflicts are introduced. I hypothesize that economic globalization helps autocrats to maintain their power through a legitimacy-enhancing and cooptation-enabling effect. But, this is conditional on the distributional effects of economic globalization. These implications are analyzed with cross-national statistical models as well as in-depth case studies.
Recent research has shown that new labour market divides resulting from the rise of non- standard employment are reflected in the political preferences of the workers affected. Yet, our knowledge of the stance of political parties on the issue is extremely limited even descriptively. Do they address non-standard employment in the context of election campaigns – if so, which parties do? How do they frame non-standard work and what policies do they propose? This project tackles these questions by analysing party programmes in four large Continental and Southern Europe states where non-standard employment is widespread and not well integrated into the systems of social protection. We find that attention to and criticism of non-standard work follows a left-right distribution, but we also find differences within the left: Left-libertarian parties address the issue more specifically, while more traditional left-wing parties often link it to other labour concerns.
Viele wichtige Entscheidungen werden in Ausschüssen getroffen: Parlamentsausschüsse treffen Politikentscheidungen, Zentralbankkomitees treffen geldpolitische Entscheidungen, Auswahlkomitees in Universitäten und anderen Organisationen treffen wichtige Einstellungsentscheidungen. In diesem Forschungsprojekt untersuchen wir die Auswirkung verschiedener Anreize auf Entscheidungs- und Deliberationsverhalten von Ausschussmitgliedern. Zudem untersuchen wir die Rolle von Wahlversprechen im Wettbewerb verschiedener Kandidaten um politische Ämter. Inhalt und Ziel des Forschungsprojekts Viele Ausschüsse setzen sich aus Mitgliedern zusammen, denen es neben den Entscheidungen, die der Ausschuss zu fällen hat, auch darum geht, als kompetent und gut informiert wahrgenommen zu werden, da sich eine solche Wahrnehmung positiv auf ihre Karrierechancen auswirkt. Auf Grund solcher Karriereambitionen spielt es eine Rolle, ob der Ausschuss unter Ausschluss der Öffentlichkeit bzw. des Prinzipals berät und entscheidet, oder unter einem transparenten Regime. Je nach Transparenzniveau, so unsere theoretischen Vorhersagen, wirken sich die Karriereambitionen unterschiedlich auf das individuelle Deliberations- und Entscheidungsverhalten der Ausschussmitglieder aus. Es ist schwierig und in der Regel sogar unmöglich Daten über die genaue Informationsstruktur, die Beratungen und die Entscheidungen eines Ausschusses zu bekommen. Empirische Studien sind deshalb äusserst rar. Im vorliegenden Projekt untersuchen wir die Auswirkungen verschiedener Transparenzniveaus daher mit einem Laborexperiment. Dies erlaubt es uns unsere (spiel)theoretischen Vorhersagen mit hoher interner Validität zu testen. Ein zweiter Aspekt, den wir untersuchen ist äussere Einflussnahme (Bestechung) auf das Entscheidungsverhalten von Ausschussmitgliedern. Auch hier ist es äusserst schwierig geeignete Daten im Feld zu finden. Wir testen die Vorhersagen eines etablierten Lobbyingmodells, sowie einer eigenen Erweiterung desselben, welche eine Einflussnahme auf das Agendasetting erlaubt, erneut mit Hilfe eines Laborexperiments. Das dritte Teilprojekt beschäftigt sich mit der Rolle von Wahlversprechen im Wettbewerb um politische Ämter. Neben rein opportunistischen Kandidaten gibt es in der Realität auch solche, die Wahlversprechen ernst meinen und sich nach der Wahl an diese halten. Insofern ist der Wahrheitsgehalt von Wahlversprechen nicht notwendigerweise Null und Wähler schenken diesen einigen Glauben. Im Rahmen eines weiteren Laborexperiments wollen wir untersuchen inwieweit Wahlversprechen zu einer Konvergenz der Politikversprechen und der implementierten Politik führen. Hierzu untersuchen wir einen einfachen eindimensionalen Politikraum mit polarisierten Politikpräferenzen der Kandidaten (z.B. links-rechts). Sofern Wahlversprechen die Wahlchancen erhöhen und zumindest ein Teil der Kandidaten sich an ihre Versprechen hält, sollte mit der Möglichkeit Wahlversprechen abzugeben weniger Polarisierung zu beobachten sein, als wenn Wahlversprechen nicht möglich sind. Wissenschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Kontext Sowohl der Ruf nach Transparenz, z.B. als Massnahme um Lobbying zu beschränken, als auch Klagen über Polarisierung in der Politik und verlogene Wahlkämpfe, sind immer wiederkehrende Themen. Trotzdem ist die empirische Evidenz zu allen drei Themen - Transparenz, Lobbying und den Effekten von Wahlkämpfen auf Politikpolarisierung – sehr beschränkt. Wir hoffen mit unseren Studien zu einem besseren Verständnis dieser Aspekte und dem Design besserer politischer Institutionen beizutragen.