In face of the rapidly increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries, international transfer of low-carbon technologies to these countries is undoubtedly the key to combating global climate change. Focusing on private-sector transfer of wind energy technologies, this research aims to examine how the processes of international technology transfer can be made more effective. Guiding research questions are: 1) to what extent does the competitiveness of the wind energy industry in developing countries depend on the localized accumulation of innovation capacity and on the transfer of foreign sources of innovation?; 2) how do technology-push and demand-pull policies influence technology acquisition strategies of the wind energy industry in developing countries?; and 3) what is the impact of various technology acquisition strategies on the development of technological capability of the wind energy industry in the developing world? In answering these questions, this research draws on theories of organizational learning, innovation systems and public policies or technological change, and uses a combination of statistical analysis and interview-based case studies. The results of this research will contribute to an improved understanding of where to locate innovation activities for enhancing the competitiveness of the wind energy industry in developing countries, what policies are necessary for the effective acquisition of foreign technologies by these industries, and how to facilitate the development of local technological capability through technology acquisitions. A better understanding on these issues helps developing countries formulate strategies for pursuing more sustainable, low-carbon development paths.
Recent waves of mass demonstrations in the Arab world have attracted renewed scholarly and political attention to the question of the role of grass-root movements in political change. In explaining political transition processes, the democratization literature usually attributes a prominent role to elite actors. Influential scholars like O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) depict the transition process as a process of negotiation and pact-building between key elite actors. By contrast, mass movements are seen as a rather passive element in the process that can be mobilized and de-mobilized by the elite. The present study challenges the democratization literature’s narrow focus on the political elite and aims at combining it with insights from the social movement literature. The experience of newly democratized countries in East and Southeast Asia provides an interesting empirical basis to study how key stages in the democratization process are related to mass mobilization. Relying on a newly constructed dataset of protest events (1986–2005), the study analyzes similarities and differences between mass mobilization and respective actions and responses by elite actors in three countries in the region, namely Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. The parameters of comparison with regard to protest mobilization are the intensity of protests, the composition of actor groups participating in the protest activities, their aims and targets, as well as the forms of protests chosen. It is shown that social movement actors are active actors in the course of transition that have their own means and goals in influencing the democratization process. Coalition-building between protest actors, as well as the timing of their actions, have been found to be particularly important factors in shaping the sequence and the outcome of the process as a whole.
The project “Negotiating Climate Change” investigates the power resources and the choice of bargaining strategies by member states in the current UNFCCC negotiations leading to the Post-Kyoto process. While several studies have described the functioning of negotiations at the UNFCCC, so far there is no systematic analysis of power resources of negotiating member delegations, of their bargaining strategies and of the factors which influence their choice of these bargaining strategies. While power resources are defined as assets which enable an actor to achieve goals, e.g. voting power, economic power, and negotiation skills (i.e. exogenous determinants of success which are difficult or even impossible to change at least in the short run), bargaining strategies cover the different ways of interaction with other players. In this context, we are particularly interested in (A) the determinants of successful negotiation (including specific characteristics and behavioural attributes of the negotiators) and (B) the determinants of the choice of any particular negotiation strategy (and position) by these negotiators. In the face of new scientific developments on the climate issue and increasing public pressure on politicians concerning the environment, knowledge about power resources and the choice of bargaining strategies as well as their effect are of great importance. Further, negotiations about climate change may also lend themselves to a reconsideration of the potential role of developing countries in the negotiation process. As opposed to what we observe in other international negotiations, some economically extremely weak developing states such as Tuvalu are treated as serious negotiation partners. This may be related to their intelligent choice of coalition partners like NGOs, and to the fact that their existence is at stake if emission reduction fails. In order to systematically measure positions and strategies at the beginning of the negotiations and the success of negotiators at the end of the negotiation process, we will conduct interviews with negotiators, UNFCCC officials, and negotiation observers both before and after the Copenhagen COP in December 2009. This will allow us to control for a possible change of negotiation strategies of the most crucial negotiators as well as to gather any missing data from the first round of interviews. Since the UNFCCC negotiations are very well documented, the interview information will also be supplemented with text analysis of negotiation documents. The number of negotiation participants and negotiation issues will allow us to test whether and under which conditions power resources on the one hand, and the use of specific negotiation strategies on the other hand, are more effective in achieving negotiation goals, by using multivariate statistical analyses. A second step of our study will investigate which domestic variables can explain the choice of strategies and negotiation positions using case studies. In particular partisan orientation or domestic interest groups are possible explanatory factors. If evidence from our observation of past climate negotiation rounds is substantiated in the first part of our analysis, particularly interesting countries for our case studies could be Tuvalu, Russia and India. Tuvalu is a very small country, but with strong salience, and it is generally recognized as an unusually relevant player as compared to its size. India is one of the two major emerging economies strongly under pressure to accept targets due to its increasingly large emissions (along with China). Being a poor country in terms of per capita income, they strongly oppose this pressure so that its negotiation strategy will be of high interest. Its position may even influence overall targets for post 2012 emission reductions. Finally, Russia has played a crucial role for the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, with an important influence from domestic factors. This is expected to continue in the post 2012 negotiation process. Given the strong salience of climate change for many developing countries, we specifically aim at deriving the determinants of successful negotiation strategies for these countries. While they are traditionally looked at as weaker players given that their power resources are limited, climate change negotiations provide evidence for a number of exceptions to this rule. Analysing regularities behind successful bargaining strategies in this context should thus allow us to derive some more general policy advice for developing country negotiators. These potential gains are possible due to a collaboration of economists, political scientists, psychologists, and policy experts on climate change and development in order to cover all aspects of climate change negotiations. Our project team at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS): Stefanie Bailer, Paula Castro, Axel and Katharina Michaelowa, Florian Weiler (for contact addresses of project coordinators, see below). Cooperation with researchers / practicioners outside the CIS is listed below. ******************************************************************** (For related research activities, see also our project --> "International Climate Policy".)
During the last decade, the microfinance movement has considerably changed the financial landscape around the world. It has inspired new banking concepts that have given hope to the poor households for the betterment of their livelihoods through their own efforts and labour. The project aims to shed light on the effect that the stakeholders actions and interests have on the success (or failure) of microfinance institutions worldwide. Such interests; being as diverse in nature as are the institutes or organisations that present or signify them; there is a significant need to systematically differentiate the different tiers and levels of the complex environment in which they normally operate. In particular, the institutional infrastructure of the country of operation (comprising of the bureaucracy, the law keeping agencies and the politicians), the informal societal structures (comprising of the form of society be it feudal, patriarchal or traditional, in addition local money lenders and or local commercial banks etc.) and also external agencies like the NGOs and the donor aid agencies, both at the local and at the national level need to be taken into account. It is the objective of this Ph.D. project to shed some light on this aspect. The project encompasses an econometric cross-country analysis complemented by two case studies both in South Asia, namely Pakistan and India. The research project is financed by the University priority research program (URPP) “Asia and Europe” (Research Group “Norms and Social Orders”).
Reaching internationally agreed climate targets such as the limitation of global warming to 2 degrees will require substantial mitigation actions not only by industrialized but also by rapidly developing countries. Given their development status, developing countries’ actions have been supported financially by industrialized countries for over 20 years now. This project analyzes the effectiveness of past international support for climate change mitigation in developing countries and aims to draw conclusions for future support programs. In particular, the project compares the effectiveness of public finance (example: Global Environment Facility, GEF) and carbon markets (example: Clean Development Mechanism, CDM). The analysis is carried out in four steps. First, we estimate the effectiveness of the two financing channels in driving deployment of renewable energies, which are seen as key technologies for climate change mitigation. For this purpose, we use a panel data model covering twenty years and more than hundred countries. The main aim of this step is to test whether micro-level effectiveness claims by international institutions correspond to real observable changes in technology adoption. In a second step, we analyze the influence of international climate finance on adoption of national renewable energy policies, using an event history model that controls for other domestic and international drivers of policy adoption. In a third step, we examine micro level data on GEF and CDM mitigation projects to see whether we find a correlation between the mobilization of private investment and the projects’ effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gases. A low or non-significant correlation would challenge international calls to target those programs where most private finance is mobilized. In a fourth step, we analyze the overall financial input into international climate change programs, which is also a major determinant of ultimate effectiveness. The overall financial input will depend on how legal texts on international finance commitments are understood. We particularly focus on the question how the commitment to “new and additional” climate finance is understood and which types of private financial flows are part of international commitments.
This research project examines the impact of ethnicity on primary education. In particular, the project seeks to identify the role of politicization of ethnicity and as well to provide empirical evidence for its relevance. Moreover, it will present detailed information on important theoretical considerations and incorporate them into a comprehensive theory of ethnicity. There is considerable interest in the theoretical literature as of how ethnicity influences development. Much research has been conducted on the effect of ethnicity on civil conflicts, economic growth and public goods. Education, as one important public good, has, however, received little attention. The few studies on the impact of ethnicity on education produced a fragmentary theory and ambiguous empirical results. The two most prominent theories explaining the role of ethnicity are clientelism (Chandra 2004; Posner 2005) and sanctioning (Miguel2004; Miguel and Gugerty 2005; Kimenyi 2006). While the clientelism theory focuses on the state distribution of resources for primary education, the sanctioning theory highlights the role of village funding for primary education. Although both theories seem important to explain the role of ethnicity, researchers have so far failed to incorporate them into a comprehensive theory. Besides these theoretical studies, there exists little empirical evidence of the relationship between ethnicity and education (Easterly and Levine 1997; Alesina et al. 1999; Keefer 2005; Habyarimana et al. 2006). Moreover, evidence from the few empirical studies is rather ambiguous. This might be explained by the studies’ failure to account for the political importance of ethnicity, the politicization of ethnicity. The research project addresses these limitations by providing unique evidence from two case studies conducted in Kenya and Tanzania. Due to their unique characteristics, these two countries enable the researcher to study the role of politicization of ethnicity. In addition, the case studies will be used to reassess the clientelism and sanctioning theory. More precisely, a comprehensive data base on resource distribution for primary education will be generated, and interviews with heads of primary schools will be conducted. These results will then be used to examine the relevance of the theoretical considerations and to incorporate these considerations into a comprehensive theory of ethnicity.
To reduce the cost of meeting their greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries may rely on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a market instrument that allows them to count emission reductions from projects in developing countries as their own (offsetting). This project analyses whether and how the CDM – and some existing proposals for its reform – creates incentives or disincentives for developing country action towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Based on the environmental economics, political economy and public policy literatures, we develop a typology of positive and negative incentives for mitigation that the CDM may generate. In summary, we expect that the CDM can generate positive incentives for climate change mitigation in developing countries if: (i) it prevents a lock-in to more emissions intensive technologies in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) by capitalizing on the current window of opportunity to promote low-carbon investment there; (ii) it creates incentives for a transition towards non-offset mitigation instruments in advanced developing countries; and (iii) it incentivizes investment in expensive and immature low-carbon technologies, contributing to learning effects and cost reductions through technology diffusion. An empirical analysis of whether these three incentives effectively take place in the CDM follows. First, we address the CDM’s potential contribution to promoting low-carbon development in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) by looking into the discussion about how to improve its geographical distribution. Empirically, we analyse whether introducing preferential access measures for LDCs or discount factors for more advanced developing countries could improve the competitiveness of LDCs in the CDM, relying on a quantitative comparison of future CDM supply and demand scenarios and on the creation of CDM-specific marginal abatement cost curves for four developing country regions. Using a self-compiled dataset of CDM project costs and derived marginal abatement cost curves, we also examine the frequently cited fear of developing country experts that the CDM is exhausting the cheapest emission reduction opportunities in their countries, therefore making it more expensive for them to comply with future emission reduction commitments. Finally, we look into the question of whether the CDM is contributing to the diffusion of more expensive emission reduction technologies, thus inducing learning effects and cost reductions, particularly in combination with domestic support policies. We hypothesize that domestic climate-friendly policies might be adding a further financial incentive to these expensive technologies, which, coupled with the CDM subsidy, makes them attractive. This hypothesis is tested econometrically on the example of policies supporting the investment in renewable energy. The results from these individual analyses are then brought together to conclude on the general role that the CDM is playing – or may in the future play – for creating incentives for own mitigation in developing countries.
Ever since the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio 1992 there has been a growing recognition of the severe consequences of climate change for many developing countries. Accordingly, DAC donors tend to stress that development assistance has increasingly been oriented towards climate friendly interventions supporting climate change mitigation (i.e., renewable energy and energy efficiency) and adaptation to climate change. We use a new project-level aid database (AidData, http://www.aiddata.org/) of over 750,000 aid activities for 21 OECD DAC donor countries to assess whether such a reorientation has indeed taken place. Based on extensive keyword search and hand-coding on the basis of individual project descriptions, we generate a specific coding system for the relevant categories of aid activities. After aggregation to a donor-year panel, we obtain a dataset that allows us to empirically test the effect of the international climate negotiation process and of variables related to the political economy in individual donor countries on aid allocated to adaptation and mitigation respectively. We find that aid allocation to climate change mitigation is quite independent from the global climate negotiation process, from related public awareness in donor countries, and from changed environmental preferences within donor countries. The single most important driver of aid projects in renewable energy and energy efficiency is (and has always been) the oil price. This is different from what donors officially pretend. In fact, according to our calculations, only about 25% of all projects reported to the DAC as relevant for climate change mitigation, meet the corresponding coding criteria. Moreover, as opposed to donors’ actual mitigation aid, their reporting is influenced systematically by political factors. When people’s awareness of climate change related issues or the strength of environmental preferences increases, aid agencies tend to react in words (and adjusted statistics), rather than in deeds. While this is true for mitigation, it is not true for adaptation. Adaptation aid is significantly influenced by these political factors. For adaptation, we thus observe some increase over time, along with recent international policy trends. Despite a remarkable word-deeds gap, the overall outcome appears well in line with a development-oriented focus of bilateral aid. It leaves the provision of global public goods such as mitigation to other areas of public policy making, and concentrates aid flows on activities such as adaptation, which are directly relevant for specific recipient countries. However, this may change with the move from the Milennium Development Goals (MDGs) to "Sustainable Development Goals" (SDGs) in 2015. Generally, global public goods will take over a more prominent role within development cooperation. In a new study, we analyze what this implies for aid allocation and aid effectiveness, and for the usefulness of traditional models of donor motivation. In more recent work, we use a novel dataset on agreements and disagreements between country pairs in the climate change negotiations to assess whether climate-related aid is used strategically to influence these consensus-based negotiations, as has been shown to be the case for voting under the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council.
There are workers who intrinsically care about the goals or missions of organizations like NGOs. If these workers choose to work in firms or organizations with the right mission, their care for the organization’s mission helps to solve the problem of worker motivation all organizations face. Moreover, many organizational missions are altruistic and might, therefore, be especially attractive for workers with certain social preferences. A growing number of behavioral economics studies has demonstrated the importance of social preferences for organizational aspects, such as contract choice. Sorting processes of workers between mission-oriented and other employers might thus be important for organizations beyond the issue of motivation. This project takes these ideas as a starting point and, making use of field surveys and lab experiments, goes on to investigate sorting processes in the labor market and contract choice in different settings. The main finding of the project is that worker motivation by employer missions is important. It influences the choice of employer and, at least in the case of NGO missions, positively correlates with trustworthiness.
Developing countries play an increasingly important role in international climate negotiations. We assess determinants and implications of negotiation positions of various country groups. This research is closely related to our projects "Negotiating Climate Change" and "Institutional design and 'constructed peer groups' in international organizations: The case of the international climate change regime" for which we have provided separate, detailed research descriptions. Mitigation of greenhouse gases and adaptation to climate change have become key drivers of international public finance flows, including development assistance. We discuss whether and to what extent such assistance can effectively contribute to reaching the Millennium Development Goals, how funds for adaptation and mitigation can be allocated efficiently, whether reporting of public climate flows is accurate or driven by political interests, and how private sector investments can be mobilized. Developing countries have been playing a key role in the international greenhouse gas market, as projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) were developed in surprisingly high numbers until late 2012. We assess the various aspects of the CDM such its political economy, costs of generation of CDM credits, as well as CDM reform options such as discounting of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) for advanced developing countries, standardizing baselines, strengthening of the additionality test and improvements of the rules for programmatic CDM. On the basis of the CDM’s shortcomings, and of the mounting pressure on rapidly developing countries to accept emission reduction commitments in the period after 2012, we analyze how problematic the transition from being a host of CDM projects to engaging in sectoral mechanisms or, eventually, own emission reduction targets will be, and what measures could be taken to reduce these potential problems. Given the political interest in the design of sectoral or policy-based crediting, we analyze their advantages and disadvantages regarding incentive structures, data collection needs, and the mobilization of emission reduction potential. In cooperation with Mark-Daniel Jäger (Chair Prof. Andreas Wenger / ETH Zurich) we also investigate how the issues of climate change and development play a role in the energy governance between industrialized and developing countries. As part of the research programme “Challenges of European External Energy Governance with Emerging Powers”, led by Prof. Michèle Knodt at TU Darmstadt (see http://www.politikwissenschaft.tu-darmstadt.de/index.php?id=3129), we examine the energy dialogues between the European Union and China, India, Brazil and South Africa, including the role of non-state actors, their interests and incentives. We also assess determinants of technology transfer for renewable energy technologies in India and China. National and international climate policy increasingly interact with each other. We contribute as a third party to the EU FP7 project "Mobilizing and transferring knowledge on post-2012 climate policy implications" (see http://www.polimp.eu), which aims at identifying what future international climate policy directions may look like and what these imply for policy and decision makers internationally and within the EU. The overarching motivation of POLIMP is to facilitate exchange and transfer of information about climate policy and its implications among the policymakers, market actors and general society within the EU. We participate in INOGOV, an EU COST network of excellence dedicated to understanding the sources, patterns and effects of policy and governance innovations for climate change. In this framework we focus on the diffusion of renewable energy support policies in developing and emerging countries, and the role that international climate policy plays in this context. Project team: Chandreyee Bagchi, Paula Castro, Daisuke Hayashi, Axel and Katharina Michaelowa For project coordinators / project leadership and contact addresses see below.