Vor dem Hintergrund der kontrovers geführten Diskussionen um den Bau von Minaretten in der Schweiz sowie im Zusammenhang mit einem Vorstoss aus dem Kantonsrat hat der Regierungsrat des Kantons Zürich eine Studie zur muslimischen Bevölkerung im Kanton Zürich in Auftrag gegeben. Die Studie soll die Thematik ausgehend von staatlichen Tätigkeitsfeldern angehen; eine vertiefte Untersuchung soll in den Feldern Bildung, Gesundheit, Soziales sowie Strafen und Massnahmen erfolgen. Ergänzend werden weitere Themenfelder (Arbeitsmarkt, Lebenssituation im Alter, politische Partizipation etc.) berücksichtigt. Dabei stellen sich Fragen, wie jene nach dem Umfang der muslimischen Bevölkerung, nach der Gewährleistung der Religionsfreiheit, den allenfalls seitens der staatlichen Stellen, der muslimischen Bevölkerung oder anderen Betroffenen auftretenden Problemen und den seitens des Staates getroffenen Vorkehrungen. Die Studie soll die Grundlagen für eine Versachlichung der Diskussion bereitstellen.
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.
Le plurilinguisme de l’administration fédérale repose sur un large consensus et contribue à la paix des langues en Suisse. Sa mise en oeuvre pratique date de la fin des années 90, mais elle n’a pas encore fait l’objet d’une étude scientifique. Les études politologiques réalisées jusqu’ici ont porté sur la représentation des trois, voire quatre groupes linguistiques par rapport à leur poids démographique, leur importance nationale pour l’État multiculturel ainsi que les relations entre les groupes linguistiques. Ce projet se penche sur la représentativité linguistique du personnel fédéral, ainsi que sur les relations, dans la pratique, entre les employés de la Confédération appartenant aux différents groupes linguistiques. Le projet inclut la perception que les cantons des trois régions linguistiques de la Suisse ont de la politique des langues. Il propose également une comparaison avec l’administration canadienne, elle aussi plurilingue. L’étude vise à réunir des informations systématiques sur la mise en oeuvre du plurilinguisme dans l’administration fédérale. Pour ce qui est des critères quantitatifs, elle tiendra compte de l’égalité des chances des minorités linguistiques ainsi que des facteurs culturels apportés par les collaborateurs selon leur appartenance linguistique. Des études de cas qualitatives viendront compléter les données quantitatives récoltées par l’Office fédéral du personnel dans ce domaine et fourniront, combinées aux connaissances réunies sur la pratique des cantons et la comparaison avec l’administration cana dienne, une contribution à la réflexion sur le plurilinguisme dans les administrations. Deutsche Zusammenfassung: Die Mehrsprachigkeit der Bundesverwaltung basiert auf einem breiten Konsens und trägt zum nationalen Sprachfrieden der Schweiz bei. Neue Regelungen bezüglich der Umsetzung der Mehrsprachigkeit in der Bundesverwaltung traten gegen Ende der 90er Jahre in Kraft, wurden aber noch nicht wissenschaftlich untersucht. Die politologischen Untersuchungen galten bisher der linguistischen Vertretung der drei, resp. vier Sprachgruppen im Verhältnis zu ihrem jeweiligen demographischen Gewicht, ihrer nationalen Bedeutung für den multikulturellen Staat sowie den Beziehungen zwischen den Sprachgruppen. Im Rahmen dieses Projekts sollen sowohl die Repräsentativität der verschiedenen Sprachgruppen beim Bundespersonal erhoben als auch die Beziehungen zwischen den Bundesangestellten unterschiedlicher Sprachgruppen in der Praxis untersucht werden. Das Projekt schliesst die sprachpolitische Wahrnehmung aus der Sicht der Kantone in allen drei Sprachregionen mit ein; zusätzlich wird ein Vergleich mit der mehrsprachigen kanadischen Verwaltung vorgenommen. Die Studie soll systematische Kenntnisse zur Umsetzung der Mehrsprachigkeit in der Bundesverwaltung beschaffen. Bei den quantitativen Kriterien werden die Chancengleichheit der sprachlichen Minderheiten berücksichtigt sowie die kulturellen Faktoren, welche die Mitarbeitenden je nach Sprachzugehörigkeit einbringen. Qualitative Fallsutdien ergänzen die quantitativen Daten des Eidgenössischen Personalamtes in diesem Bereich und sollen mit dem gewonnenen Wissen um die Praxis in den Kantonen sowie mit einem Vergleich aus der kanadischen Verwaltung einen Beitrag zur Reflexion über die Mehrsprachigkeit in Verwaltungen leisten.
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.
Despite growing recognition that education has to be effectively interlinked with labor market development and that is not in itself a magic bullet for economic development, it remains a major determinant of the latter. Moreover, basic education is widely considered as a human right and figures predominantly among the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals. However, tight budget constraints still render the delivery of even a few years of education to all children difficult in many sub-Saharan African countries, and even more so if the additional requirement of decent education quality is also taken into account. In this project, we examine the existing constraints to access and quality of education, and evaluate policy developments, such as the engagement of “contract teachers” with respect to these objectives. The links between education and labor market outcomes, specifically occupational choice are analyzed in the context of remittances. The latter being a means to alleviate credit constraints for business creation and a means to substitute labor for leisure, this research examines if and in what way human capital can be a moderator for individual labor market decisions. In a second part, the importance of remittances for education spending and educational attainment will be studied. In another study (jointly with colleagues from Manchester and Delhi), we analyze agricultural labor choices in Malawi. The paper investigates under which conditions people accept labor at other people's farms and potentially neglect their own fields s a consequence. For most of the overall project, the analysis is based on data from large-scale student- and household-surveys such as provided by the “Programme d’analyse des systèmes éducatifs de la CONFEMEN” (PASEC) (see http://www.confemen.org) or the World Bank Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS) (see http://www.worldbank.org/lsms) or the Migration and Remittances Household Survey 2009 (see http://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/534) for Senegal. Moreover, we examine the interests of different political actors influencing educational policy making in Sub-Sahara Africa drawing from the literature of the political economy of reform. This will enable us to derive practical policy recommendations based not only on efficiency considerations, but also on the chances of implementation in a given political and institutional context.
Aid effectiveness has been intensively (and inconclusively) debated ever since the first strong criticism was published in the mid-1980s. Reducing the level of complexity by focusing on the sector level rather than on general economic development, we attempt to add some new insights to this debate. Moreover, we consider that just like decision making in any other field, decision making on development cooperation is not free from vested interest of the different actors involved. We apply the analytical tools of public choice analysis to create some transparency about how exactly these decision making processes work. Providing insight into the different channels of influence and deriving institutional conditions conducive to effective aid may help to allocate aid more efficiently in the future. This research is also related to the analysis of the political economy of international organizations, a topic we started a conference series on (with Axel Dreher, ETH Zurich). For these conferences, see http://www.cis.ethz.ch/events/pastevents/PEIO; http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jrv24/PEIO.html (Our research in this field partially overlaps with research in the framework of our project on --> aid and democratization). Finally, we examine existing evaluation systems within the aid administration in donor countries, with a particular focus on different German aid agencies. Specific institutional characteristics, e.g. the independence of evaluation units, the selection process of evaluators, and the follow-up on evaluation outcomes, are important determinants of the reliability of evaluation results. Looking at different aid agencies, both the effectiveness and the cost of evaluation systems can be compared, and lessons can be drawn to improve overall efficiency. (This part of our research has now been completed, see publications below.)
This project examines the influence of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) on democratization in developing countries. The project focuses on two interrelated topics: (1) the instruments that the IMF and the World Bank can use to effectively encourage democratization in developing countries, and (2) the institutional context that shapes the interactions between domestic and international actors in the area of democratization. More specifically, the project compares the new Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) with previous instruments of IFIs’ intervention. The aim is to define procedural and contextual factors that explain whether, and under which conditions, the IFIs’ influence in general, and the PRS process in particular, can be expected to encourage democratization in developing countries. The main focus will be on African and Asian countries during the third wave of democratization from 1974 to 2007. Theoretically, a political economy perspective is adopted here. According to this logic, the policies of the IFIs can have a positive or negative impact on democratization depending on the incentives thereby created for the involved political actors. On this theoretical basis, an empirical analysis based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods is proposed. As a result, it should become clear whether, and under which conditions, PRSP processes outperform previous instruments of multilateral cooperation in terms of promoting democratization in developing countries. (For related research, see also --> "Aid effectiveness / Political economy of aid".)
In 2001 the Federal government defined a new set of goals for the development of Switzerland’s metropolitan areas (“Agglomerationspolitik”). Due to the rules of Swiss federalism, the Confederation has only few instruments to directly enhance these goals. Hence, cantons and cities bear the main responsibility for the formulation and implementation of strategies to guide metropolitan development. However, they have proven rather hesitant to do so up to now. This study will focus on experiences that have been made in the formulation and implementation of metropolitan strategies in Swiss cantons. The goal is to work out the profiles of cantonal metropolitan strategies in terms of substance and organisation, and shed light on the conditions that frame the elaboration of these strategies. This will be done on the basis of in-depth case studies of five cantons: Aargau, Bern, Graubünden, Neuchâtel, Ticino. Data will be collected and analysed with qualitative methods, drawing on documentary evidence as well as a collective interview in each canton. For validation of data and results, several feedback events will be held with relevant actors of the cantons under scrutiny. In addition, the project is monitored by a an expert panel of representatives drawn from the Confederation, the cantons and the cities. This project is related to the project "Assessing the trend towards new regionalism" of the NCCR-Democracy (see weblink).