Klimaanpassung im Mehr-Ebenen-System des Rechts

Natur und Recht - Im Zentrum der Rechtsentwicklung im Klimaschutzrecht steht aktuell die Mitigation, also die Verringerung der Treibhausgasemissionen zur Stabilisierung der Erdatmosphäre. Es...     

Public Opinion and Representation of Women in National Legislatures: An Analysis of Cause and Effect

Studies of female representation in national legislatures have claimed that the gender attitudes of a country's population have an effect on female representation in that country's parliament. This claim is based on the assumption that there is a unidirectional effect of public attitudes on female representation. This article tests that assumption, and hypothesises that in countries with multi-member electoral districts the effect is likely to flow in the opposite direction. When women are nominated, and to some extent elected to parliament, their presence in national politics affects public attitudes towards women in that role. Granger tests of causality in eight European countries and in the United States generally support these hypotheses. The effect flows from public attitudes to female representation in countries with single-seat districts, and in the opposite direction in countries with multi-member districts.     

Do Religious Factors Impact Armed Conflict? Empirical Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa

Theoretically, the “mobilization hypothesis” establishes a link between religion and conflict by arguing that particular religious structures are prone to mobilization; once politicized, escalation to violent conflict becomes more likely. Yet, despite the religious diversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the religious overtones in a number of African conflicts, this assumption has not yet been backed by systematic empirical research on the religion–conflict nexus in the region. The following questions thus remain: Do religious factors significantly impact the onset of (religious) armed conflict? If so, do they follow the logic of the mobilization hypothesis and, if so, in which way? To answer these questions, this article draws on a unique data inventory of all sub-Saharan countries for the period 1990–2008, particularly including data on mobilization-prone religious structures (e.g., demographic changes, parallel ethno-religious identities) as well as religious factors indicating actual politicization of religion (e.g., inter-religious tensions, religious discrimination, incitement by religious leaders). Logit regressions suggest that religion indeed plays a significant role in African armed conflicts. These findings are compatible with the mobilization hypothesis, and stress the impact of conflict-prone religious structures, and particularly, the fact that overlaps of religious and ethnic identities are conflict-prone. Future research should investigate the religion-ethnicity-nexus in more detail.     

Policy reform and the decline of corporatism in Sweden

This article describes the development of corporatism in Sweden from the 1970s onwards. We demonstrate that the Swedish case differs a great deal from other small European countries, such as the Netherlands and Sweden's neighbour Denmark, where corporatism is alive and well and often credited with providing for economic success in recent years. We study corporatism indirectly rather than directly, in the sense that we start from public policy changes in labour market policy, pensions, and immigrant policy, and follow the policy-making chain backwards in order to identify the norms, institutions, and actors that have mattered for policy choices, and how they mattered. Our conclusion is that Sweden has not only experienced decorporatisation in terms of formal institutional changes, but also in terms of a decline in the norms regarding social partnership that previously guided policy making and the interaction of interest organisations.     

Technology investment, bargaining, and international environmental agreements

If countries are to engage in international environmental cooperation, they must bargain over the distribution of gains. When future bargaining over pollution abatement is expected, how should a country decide on public technology investments to reduce the domestic cost of pollution abatement? I find that while countries tend to underinvest because they fail to internalize the global benefits of new technology, the magnitude of the problem depends on a country’s bargaining power. Powerful countries underinvest less frequently, because they expect to reap most of the global benefits from new technology in the international negotiations. I also investigate the effectiveness of a simple reciprocal technology agreement. I find that it can help solve the underinvestment problem, and this beneficial effect is particularly pronounced in the case of powerful countries. These findings imply that changing the bargaining protocol on climate change to the benefit of powerful countries may help secure the necessary technology investments.     

Disentangling the Value of a Ministry: Party Leaders’ Evaluations of German State Ministries

While the role played by ministries in the process of coalition government has been investigated from multiple angles, there is a clear lack of knowledge about which specific ministry features party leaders actually value as they assess different government posts. This paper aims at discovering whether, next to office considerations, the policy influence resting with a ministry does affect its value. A new survey of party leaders in the German states enables us to estimate the relative importance of specific office (e.g. public standing) and policy considerations (e.g. influence via legislation) for ministries’ values as well as to directly investigate differences between parties. The results show that both office and policy considerations matter for ministry evaluation generally, but also that different aspects have different weights. Furthermore, while all parties value the policy influence of a ministry, there is variation as to which type of policy influence (cross-sectional vs. within-jurisdictional) parties emphasise.     

Choosing international organizations: When do states and the World Bank collaborate on environmental projects?

While international cooperation research emphasizes institutional design, states mostly interact with existing organizations. How do states choose organizations for cooperation? We develop a theory of agency choice for development projects, emphasizing the importance of domestic institutions, the scope of cooperation, and the resources of the implementing agency. If states are to cooperate with funding agencies that have abundant resources, such as the World Bank, they must accept more stringent conditions on project implementation. We argue states accept the stringent conditions that resourceful organizations demand if the public goods from project implementation are highly valuable. Empirically, this is the case for democratic states, large projects, and projects that produce national instead of global public goods. We test this theory using data on 2,882 Global Environment Facility (GEF) projects, 1991–2011. The GEF offers an ideal case because various implementing agencies are responsible for the actual projects. States implement projects in collaboration with the World Bank, which has the most expertise and resources among the GEF’s implementing agencies, if their regime type is democracy, the project size is large, and the benefits are primarily national. Qualitative evidence sheds light on causal mechanisms.