Am 15. März 2020 fanden in Bayern die Kommunalwahlen statt – mitten in den Anfangswochen der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland. In etwa einem Fünftel der bayerischen Landkreise gab es zu diesem Zeitpunkt aber noch keinen bestätigten Corona-Fall. Wir vergleichen das Wahlverhalten in diesen Landkreisen mit bayerischen Landkreisen, in denen bereits Corona nachgewiesen wurde. Unsere Ergebnisse deuten nicht darauf hin, dass lokale Corona-Fälle die Wahlbeteiligung negativ beeinflusst haben. Die Wähler haben sich nicht abschrecken lassen.
Government regulation created carbon markets. How can one prevent the occurrence of market abuses in this context? Given that carbon market creators possess ample information able to assist with market monitoring, this project aims to investigate past carbon market abuses, to identify the gaps in oversight frameworks that led to those abuses, and to create new rules and principles for carbon market regulation effective on all levels. The research questions guiding this project are as follows: What principles and rules should guide an effective and feasible multi‐level carbon market regulatory oversight? What were the risks of market abuse in the past, how can they be detected, and what are the potential future risks? To what extent are existing market regulations and enforcement practices addressing the risks identified? How can cooperation be achieved for effective carbon market regulation and oversight at an international level? What are the requirements for a feasible and effective regulation for carbon markets at an international, national, and subnational level? In order to address the complexity of these issues the methodology employed combines several threads. In the first phase researchers will construct an organizational typology of the markets; in a second phase primary data are categorized based on document-based content analyses in conjunction with interview-based information; in the third phase the results of the first two phases are combined.
This research project (starting March 2015) seeks to better understand how the new realities of the global economy are impacting multilateral development outcomes in Africa. How has the fact that a number of developing countries have stronger economies and more borrowing options affected the ability of the World Bank and the regional MDBs to promote development and reduce world poverty through lending and advisory services? If a country has a fiscal surplus, one can imagine that an MDB’s leverage to enforce loan conditionality involving politically difficult policy changes is greatly reduced. As well, a country able to fund major infrastructure projects through well-priced sovereign bond issues or new bilateral financing sources such as China would be able to ignore MDBs’ strict environmental and social requirements and bypass the meticulous project appraisal process. The study proposes to analyze these issues using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, considering the cases of the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), and PTA Bank, as well as key bilateral donors active in Africa such as China. The analysis will focus on two questions: 1. How has the economic rise of many middle-income developing countries in recent years changed the ability of MDBs to effectively utilize policy conditionality on budget support lending operations to promote reform? 2. How are changing economic circumstances and increasing bilateral and private financing alternatives reshaping the types of MDB investment loans taken by developing countries, and with what environmental and social impacts?
Multilateral development banks are facing a rapidly changing context for their activities, driven by the rising economic strength of many low and middle-income countries and a dramatic increase in alternative sources of financial flows to the developing world. For example, public debt among developing countries represented on average only 40% of GDP in 2010 and was expected to decline to 30% by 2015 (IMF 2011), while the non-OECD share of total global foreign exchange reserves rose from below 30% in 1990 to about 65% in 2010 (Reisen, 2013). How has this dramatic shift in global economic conditions affected the development activities of MDBs? This is of considerable importance to effective development cooperation, but as yet has been little analyzed in academia. This proposed research project seeks to better understand how the new realities of the global economy are impacting multilateral development bank (MDB) operations in Africa. As the poorest region of the world (over 47% of population living on less than US$1.25 per day; World Bank, 2012), Africa is of particular interest to international development research and practice. At the same time, the economies of many African countries are growing very quickly, fueled largely by commodity price booms. Sub-Saharan Africa currently has the highest growth rates of any region in the world outside of developing Asian countries (5.6% in 2013; IMF 2013). With low debt levels and major investment plans, many governments are borrowing heavily from new bilaterals flooding into the region (US$75 billion in official Chinese financing between 2000 and 2011 ; Strange et al., 2013)—and raising money on capital markets. Has the fact that a number of developing countries have stronger economies and more borrowing options affected the demand for MDB services in Africa, and if so, in what ways? One can imagine that an MDB’s leverage to impose a particular vision of development policies and activities is greatly reduced in these circumstances. A government with alternative options for finance might prefer to allocate development investment resources within its country for reasons other than strictly poverty reduction criteria, for example. It may also be less inclined to agree to unpleasant policy conditions as part of a budget support loan, or to submit to highly restrictive environmental, social and procurement safeguards required by some MDBs along with infrastructure investment projects. This project intends to explore how these new dynamics are playing out at the level of the continent as a whole and within a sub-set of country cases, across three different multilateral banks: the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (PTA Bank). The overarching hypothesis of the research project is that i) changing economic conditions among borrower governments and ii) differing governance structures of MDBs are two critically important independent variables that can explain variations in aspects of MDB operations.
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.
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.
Over the last decade, non-core multilateral aid (especially trust funds, but also global programs, and joint programming) has increasingly replaced core contributions to multilateral aid institutions (MAIs). Unlike traditional multilateral assistance, this type of aid refers to bilateral donors’ voluntary contributions to specific activities, and makes use of separate funding channels and governance structures outside the MAIs’ executive boards, despite being managed by MAIs. Non-core contributions have recently enjoyed considerable popularity among bilateral donors since they allow them to earmark their contributions for specific development objectives. This in turn allows them to gain more influence over the allocation of multilateral aid, more visibility for their individual contributions, and higher financial flexibility since voluntary contributions are not subject to long-term international contracts. Furthermore, earmarking may help establish clearer objectives and a more transparent principal-agent relationship. However, non-core multilateral aid may pose severe risks for aid effectiveness. It may replace the core contributions to MAIs, complicate the budgeting of these organizations, inflate administrative costs and governance structures due to additional reporting, relinquish the expert knowledge of experienced MAI staff through newly created sub-structures, and attract their attention to shopping for funds. Moreover, donors may create funds to which little additional resources are channeled, causing sunk costs and organizational duplication with existing MAIs. From the perspective of recipients, non-core multilateral aid undermines developing country ownership and tends to make aid flows less predictable. If non-core multilateral aid is not in the interest of major international actors, notably the MAIs themselves, then why has there been such a strong increase over the last decade? Clarifying the concept of non-core multilateral aid and exploring recent trends, the project seeks to better understand the motivations of the key actors from MAIs and bilateral donor ministries, as well as to assess the consequences of non-core funding with respect to aid effectiveness. Interviews within international organizations will feed into comparative case studies across MAIs and provide a basis for the development of a game-theoretic public choice model that can finally be tested econometrically. The project thereby contributes to the existing literature on aid allocation and aid effectiveness, and notably to its recent strand on aid fragmentation. To the best of our knowledge, it will be the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of the new multilateral financing mechanisms. The results should help raise awareness among both international organizations and bilateral donors, of the associated problems and opportunities, and help MAIs to take a strategic approach towards these contributions. In light of the large variety of approaches to the topic suggested by a widely interdisciplinary literature, our project team consists of researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines including political science, economics, law, political philosophy, and anthropology. This ensures due consideration of legal and institutional aspects as well as questions of legitimacy and responsibility, along with the central political and economic analysis. The project team also covers the different institutional and sectoral specializations as required for a comprehensive analysis of such a wide-ranging, but new and largely unexplored phenomenon.
In the international relations literature, a sustained debate exists on whether and how intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) influence national state behaviour. Empirically, while much research has been done on how the European institutions affect member states’ interests and behaviour, research that looks at other IGOs in this context is still very limited, and focuses specifically on analysing whether membership to an organization affects state behaviour. In this research project, we will draw from rationalist and constructivist theories and negotiation research to consider the role of a particular feature of institutional design on future bargaining behaviour within an IGO. We posit that the way in which IGOs are designed affects state interests and behaviour, even if this was not intended in the first place. We will show that such has been the case within the negotiations under the United Nations Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) with the institutionalization of the differentiation of member states into ‘Annex I’ and ‘non-Annex I’ countries as a way of establishing different levels of commitment for different countries. While such differentiation allowed reaching an agreement and starting cooperation in the first place, evidence of the negotiation process under the UNFCCC suggests that by building these two rigid groups of countries (the ‘constructed peer groups’), an unnecessarily deep divide between them has been generated, which has politicized discussion in future negotiation rounds. The project expands on initial theoretical discussions and empirical findings that are summarized in a working paper by the applicants, and seeks to answer four main research questions: 1. What are the reasons that led to the creation of institutionalized country groupings with differential treatment in IGOs, and what are the characteristics of such groupings? Under what circumstances is it possible to agree to objective criteria for defining them? 2. Does the existence of institutionalized country groups affect IGO member states’ negotiation behaviour over time, leading to institutional path dependence? 3. Can rationalist arguments, such as the creation of new incentives for countries within these groups, explain such changed behaviour? 4. Or can constructivist theories of socialization and shared norms explain it? To answer these questions, the project will use a combination of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. After a conceptual phase in which our ‘constructed peer group’ hypothesis is further substantiated with the existing literature, an initial qualitative comparative study across different IGOs will be used to investigate what factors in the negotiation process led to the creation of institutionalized country groups with differential treatment in different IGOs in the first place, and what factors determine the design characteristics of such country groups. Analysis of negotiation reports, secondary literature and interviews with negotiators and experts will inform the research. An econometric analysis based on traditional regression techniques and propensity score matching will elucidate, for the case of the climate change negotiations, whether the initial classification of countries into Annex I and non-Annex I has affected the future negotiation dynamics and what causal mechanisms have led to such effects, based on an own-coded dataset of oral statements during the negotiations under the UNFCCC throughout its lifetime. Qualitative case studies of the negotiation trajectories of individual member countries to the UNFCCC will be used to more deeply investigate the causes of the existing divide between Annex I and non-Annex I countries. The project is intended to result in the publication of a book, and in the preparation of a publicly available dataset of oral statements in the UNFCCC negotiations.
Multilateral development banks are facing a rapidly evolving world economic context that calls into question the assumptions upon which their financial model is built. As more and more middle-income developing countries reduce reliance on multilateral lending, MDBs may find themselves with not enough non-concessional lending to sustain themselves financially. The recent financial crisis relieved the pressure by rapidly increasing financial needs in the developing world, but long-term trends suggest that the respite is only temporary. The MDB model as originally conceived after World War II may be outliving its usefulness, and MDBs themselves may be scrambling to survive by undertaking activities more oriented toward institutional self-preservation rather than their stated goal of promoting development. It is thus essential to improve our knowledge about how different MDBs are impacted by and reacting to these changes. This research project is designed to contribute to that end. In broad terms, the research is intended to investigate two sets of issues: (i) how changing economic circumstances among developing countries are affecting MDB lending and financial stability; and (ii) how and why these impacts may vary among different MDBs. We compare three different “types” of MDBs, the operations of which overlap in several countries in Latin America: the World Bank (controlled by wealthy non-borrowing countries), the Inter-American Development Bank (more evenly split between borrowers and non-borrowers), and the Andean Development Corporation (entirely controlled by the same countries that borrow from it). These different shareholding arrangements, we believe, are one of the main causal factors explaining the behavior of different MDBs. The research will focus on three main questions: - How does lending by MDBs change over time in reaction to different economic conditions among borrowers, and what factors may lead countries to prefer borrowing money from one or another MDB, when they have a choice? - What implications does evolving loan demand have for the financial sustainability of different MDBs? - How are MDBs reacting to evolving loan demand by borrowing countries, and how might this impact their development effectiveness? To answer these questions, the project uses a combination of statistical techniques with data collected from publicly-available sources, as well as qualitative analysis utilizing documents and interviews. We focus on Latin America because it offers a strong contrast over time from very difficult circumstances in the 1980s to a much stronger economic and fiscal situation in recent years. Also, most countries in Latin America are non-concessional MDB borrowers, which more directly impacts MDB finances than concessional borrowing. Lastly, one member of the research team has considerable academic and professional experience in the region. In the aspects of the research that require information from borrowing countries, we will look more closely at the case of Peru, in which all three of the MDBs have operated for a number of years. Peru is useful not only because it allows for direct comparisons among these three MDBs, but it also offers a particularly strong variation over time, from the economic collapse of the late 1980s to the highest growth rates in Latin America over the past several years.
This research project aims to assess the impact of various policy options in the primary education sector in the sub-Saharan country of Senegal. As Senegal faces similar problems as many other developing countries in the region and beyond, the results promise to be relevant on a broader scale. Typical features of sub-Saharan primary schools, especially in francophone Africa, are high repetition and drop-out rates, under-provision of material inputs like textbooks, badly educated teachers, widespread teacher absenteeism and very low performance of students in international student achievement tests. Nevertheless, numerous studies have consistently estimated high returns to primary education in developing countries. To improve quality and quantity of primary education in these countries, it is important to understand which factors influence the features mentioned and which policies in this area are most cost-effective. We will, therefore, focus on the following research questions: - What are the determinants of drop-out, in particular what role plays school quality for the decision to drop out? Which effects does drop-out have on human capital in the medium run? - What is the impact of the wide spread and expensive practice of grade repetition on later achievement and drop-out? What are the determinants of repetition? - Which material inputs, like textbooks, have a positive impact on student achievement and in which grades are they most effective? - What role does teacher education play for student achievement and is it a good idea to let better educated teachers only teach in higher grades or would it be more efficient to let them teach in lower grades as well? Analyses of the effectiveness of various inputs in the education system, especially in developing countries, often face the difficulty of not having any information on initial ability differences between students. Therefore, they cannot properly address the issue of selection bias which arises if initial ability (which affects achievement) is correlated with the other inputs. Time series cross section data can help to solve this problem as it allows controlling for earlier achievement as a proxy for schooling inputs earlier in time and ability differences. We have a panel data set for primary students from Senegal in which students were interviewed and tested from 1995 to 2000. In addition, teachers and directors were interviewed. The student data can be matched with additional information from complementary household surveys carried out by researchers from Cornell University (USA) and INRA (France). This makes our data set unique and allows us to address issues that could not be addressed in this way before. Especially the effects of drop-out and repetition in developing countries have not been studied much as longitudinal data is extremely scarce, especially for Africa. We will use quasi-experimental methods to match students who did and did not repeat/drop out on the basis of achievement before repetition/drop-out and further characteristics and then estimate treatment effects. Regarding inputs to primary education, like textbooks and teacher education, we will focus on the variation of effects over time, i.e., over grades, which allows us to give more precise policy advice on the optimal use of these inputs.