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.
Since 2005 IFES (Institut für externe Schulevaluation auf der Sekundarstufe II; see www.ifes.ch) conducts external school evaluations of secondary schools in the Canton of Zurich in order to promote School development, to support steering of the secondary schools by cantonal authorities and to hold accountable the school system on the secondary II level. Goal of the present study is to evaluate the quality and the effects of IFES school evaluations. With a multi-method evaluation design including literature reviews, documentary analyses, guideline based interviews and a standardized online survey, the current study produces findings assessing the current state of affairs and providing recommendations for future improvements of the evaluation system.
This project employs comparative history to analyze two critical junctures that have shaped South American party systems. It then develops a quantitative measurement of party system responsiveness to test the historical predictions and to chart diverging party system trajectories during Latin America's “Left Turn”. In terms of their responsiveness to voter preferences, South American party systems that experienced prolonged periods of ideological conflict in the first half of the 20th Century continue to differ starkly from those in which elites avoided or where military coups ended polarization. The duration in historical polarization constitutes a critical juncture that sets Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina apart from the rest of South America. While not fully determining the paths party systems have taken at later critical junctures, this basic distinction between two types of party systems has survived the authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s, the “neoliberal critical juncture” of the 1980s, and for the most part also the subsequent “left turn”. In a first step, the project studies critical junctures and historical legacies that set countries apart by adopting a comparative historical cleavage perspective. It then uses data on party positions and voter preferences to show how autocratic-democratic regime divides in the aftermath of authoritarianism have nurtured new programmatic alignments in Brazil, Bolivia, and Mexico. Levels of responsiveness prior to the “left turn” then predict quite well which type of left party succeeded. Furthermore, I show that the nature of the populist left is radically different in Bolivia and Venezuela, in that it helped to realign the party system in the first case, but failed to do so in the second. Project publications: Bornschier, S. (2019). Historical Polarization and Representation in South American Party Systems, 1900–1990. British Journal of Political Science, 49(1), 153–179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123416000387 Bornschier, S. (2020). Combining deductive and inductive elements to measure party system responsiveness in challenging contexts: An approach with evidence from Latin America. European Political Science, 19(4), 540–549. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-020-00272-z Bornschier, S. (2013). Trayectorias históricas y responsiveness del sistema de partidos en siete países de América Latina. América Latina Hoy, 65(diciembre), 45–77. https://doi.org/10.14201/alh2013654577
This research project investigates some of the most critical political questions related to climate change policymaking in an innovative and systematic manner. Specifically, we ask how the politics of climate change have evolved (or decreased) at the international political level since 2001, and in how far these international developments determine domestic policy? Linked to these questions, we investigate what options do national governments – in particular also from so-called smaller and geopolitically less powerful nations such as Switzerland – have to support and successfully adopt effective climate change protection measures? The research project combines innovative data collecting and analytical techniques such as event data analysis, social network analysis, textual analysis and discourse network analysis together with expert interviews and document analysis to study political processes over time in a systematic way. Theoretically, the research project is located at the intersection of domestic politics and international relations. On the one hand, it looks for domestic political determinants in selected key countries that help to understand the international climate change policy process. On the other hand, it analyzes to what degree political dynamics at the international level open or restrict opportunities for acting on climate change policy issues at the national level. The project is embedded in and closely coordinated with the international research program on Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (COMPON, see http://www.compon.org) that aims at finding broad principles to explain cross-national variation in the success of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to foster the diffusion of innovative and successful policy solutions across national boundaries.
The point of departure of this project are the vast differences in the degree to which party systems reflect voter preferences in contemporary Latin America. These differences are of vital interest for researchers seeking to explain the formation of party systems and how they adapt to changes in social structure, economic conditions, and the international context after the end of the cold war. Explaining differences in party system responsiveness is also central, however, for those interested in the quality of democracy: The responsiveness of representatives to voters preferences is an integral component of a high-quality democracy (e.g., Dahl 1971; Diamond and Morlino 2005; Bühlmann et al. 2008, 2012; Przeworski 2010; Kitschelt et al. 2010a). And there is growing evidence that party systems impinge on other dimensions of the quality of democracy as well (e.g., Chavez 2003, Ríos-Figueroa and Pozas-Loyo 2010). In a prior project, we studied two routes that result in responsive party systems, one historical and one open even to those countries that lack the favorable historical preconditions of the forerunners in terms of responsiveness. Along the historical route, left-wing parties with strong ideological credentials challenged the established political forces in some countries in the early 20th century. Gradually, this crowded out the clientelistic linkages between voters and political patrons that represent the main impediment to programmatic responsiveness. In the current project, we look at a similar process observable since the process of re-democratization swept Latin America in the 1980s. Although tentatively addressed in the prior project, this process is complicated by the fact that two very different types of left parties have emerged in contemporary Latin America. Theorizing the distinction between the “moderate” and the “populist” or “radical” left has become a major research topic in recent years (Castañeda 2006; Castañeda and Morales 2008; Weyland 2009; Weyland, Madrid, and Hunter 2010, Levitsky and Roberts 2011, Remmer 2012). These authors have hypothesized that policy-based appeals are much more important in the mobilization of the moderate left, while a mixture of charismatic and clientelistic strategies is employed by the populist left. To date, however, this claim rests on shallow empirical foundations. Even more importantly, no empirical research has been conducted on the impact these two types of new leftist parties have on the party system as a whole, and more specifically on the levels of responsiveness it exhibits. This project contributes to these issues in three ways: It develops the difference between the moderate and the populist left in theoretical terms, expands our prior empirical analyses in temporal terms, and explores the dualism of programmatic (responsiveness-enhancing) and clientelistic (responsiveness-blurring) mobilization strategies. This project thus contributes to two related, but still distinct literatures. On the one hand, there has been growing interest in explaining variations in party system formation (e.g., Kitschelt et al. 2010). On the other hand, the study of the two lefts has strongly grown as well, as outlined above. Combining the first perspective, on which our prior research project was based, with the distinction between the two types of left parties both refines our prior argument, and contributes to the literature on the Latin American left.