Hertie School Research Repository
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Macroeconomic Adjustment in the Euro Area
No full textMacroeconomic adjustment in the euro area periphery was more recessionary than pre-crisis imbalances would have warranted. To make this claim, this paper uses a Propensity Score Matching Model to produce counterfactuals for the Eurozone crisis countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Spain) based on over 200 past macroeconomic adjustment episodes between 1960-2010 worldwide. At its trough, between 2010 and 2015 per capita GDP had contracted on average 11 percentage points more in the Eurozone periphery than in the standard counterfactual scenario. These results are not dictated by any specific country experience, are robust to a battery of alternative counterfactual definitions, and stand confirmed when using a parametric dynamic panel regression model to account more thoroughly for the business cycle. Zooming in on the potential causes, the lack of an independent monetary policy, while having contributed to a deeper recession, does not fully explain the Eurozone’s specificity, which is instead to be identified in a sharper-than-expected contraction in investment and fiscal austerity due to high funding costs. Reading through the overall findings, there are reasons to believe that an incomplete Eurozone institutional setup contributed to aggravate the crisis through higher uncertainty
Political Control of Coordination? The Roles of Ministerial Advisers in Government Coordination in Den-mark and Sweden.
No full textMinisterial advisers are said to strengthen the political control of bureaucracy. Using a comparative case design, this article investigates this claim by studying the roles of ministerial advisers in government coordination in Denmark and Sweden. The article demonstrates how the roles of advisers differ in coordination: Swedish advisers directly control government coordination through hierarchical authority. The roles of advisers and bureaucrats are functionally differentiated in coordination. In contrast, Danish advisers play a more indirect role in coordination. Rather than controlling coordination, they serve to reproduce the functional politicization of the permanent bureaucracy in government coordination. The findings underline the relevance of including advisers in the future study of government coordination. The analysis is based on 48 interviews with advisers and top civil servants in Denmark and Sweden
Negative Koordination in der Klimapolitik: Die Interministerielle Arbeitsgruppe Anpassungsstrategie
No full textDer Artikel untersucht interministerielle Koordination am Beispiel der Interministeriellen Arbeitsgruppe Anpassungsstrategie (IMA) und nimmt mit der Klimaanpassungspolitik eine Querschnittspolitik mit einem ausgeprägten Koordinationsbedarf in den Blick. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass die Arbeitsweise der IMA überwiegend den Merkmalen negativer Koordination entspricht, da das federführende Ressort eine inhaltlich gestaltende Rolle wahrnimmt, Informationen überwiegend gesammelt, Konsens per Veto hergestellt wird und der durch die IMA erarbeitete „Aktionsplan Anpassung“ (APA) weder eine ressortübergreifende Zielvorstellung noch ressortübergreifende Maßnahmen repräsentiert. Vielmehr sind der Koordinationsprozess sowie der APA durch selektive Perzeptionen sowie singuläre Ressortinteressen geprägt. Diese zeigen sich in einer auf den Schutz des eigenen Zuständigkeitsbereichs ausgerichteten Haltung der Ressortvertreter, dem auf dem Ressortprinzip basierenden Veto als Entscheidungsmodus sowie in der Dominanz einzelner Ressortprojekte im APA. Der Beitrag basiert auf Experteninterviews und einer Dokumentenauswertung
Instrumental or procedural democrats? The evolution of procedural preferences after democratization
No full textThis paper addresses instrumentalist attitudes to democracy – attitudes according to which democracy is not valued for itself, but accepted only as a means to specific policy goals. Pippa Norris has argued that in the process of democratic consolidation, such instrumentalist conceptions of democracy are replaced with proceduralist ones, leading to an enlightened understanding of democracy. We use the unique case of German reunification to show that this process takes at least a generation to complete. Based on data from a novel battery of items fielded via the German GESIS panel, we show an East–West divide in democratic instrumentalism, which, however, is smaller among younger generations. While our findings do confirm Norris’ thesis that growing democratic experience leads to a shift from instrumental to procedural understandings of democracy, we also show that instrumental democrats still make up a sizeable portion of the citizenry that might withdraw support if dissatisfied
How to Increase Turnout in Low-Salience Elections: Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Concurrent Second-Order Elections on Political Participation
No full textVoter turnout in second-order elections is on a dramatic decline in many modern democracies. This article investigates how electoral participation can be substantially increased by holding multiple of these less important elections simultaneously. Leading to a relative decrease in voting costs, concurrent elections theoretically have economies of scale to the individual voter and thus should see turnout levels larger than those obtained in any stand-alone election. Leveraging as-if-random variation of local election timing in Germany, we estimate the causal effect of concurrent mayoral elections on European election turnout at around 10 percentage points. Exploiting variation in treatment intensity, we show that the magnitude of the concurrency effect is contingent upon district size and the competitiveness of the local race
The Europeanisation of the Higher Courts in Ireland and Scotland: A Methodology
No full textThe discussion paper below sets out the preliminary stages of a project we are working on examining EU Law in the Irish courts. The first stage of the project is an analysis of the cases over the last 10 years (1.1.2009 - 31.12.2018) with an expectation over the medium term of more substantive and doctrinal analysis of how EU Law is applied by the courts
Can we directly survey adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions? Evidence from a list experiment conducted in Germany during the early Corona pandemic.
No full textSelf-reports of adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions in surveys may be subject to social desirability bias. Existing questioning techniques to reduce bias are rarely used to monitor adherence. We conducted a list experiment to elicit truthful answers to the question whether respondents met friends or acquaintances and thus disregarded the social distancing norm. Our empirical findings are mixed. Using the list experiment, we estimate the prevalence of non-compliant behavior at 28%, whereas the estimate from a direct question is 22%. However, a more permissively phrased direct question included later in the survey yields an estimate of 47%. All three estimates vary consistently across social groups. Interestingly, only the list experiment reveals somewhat higher non-compliance rates among the highly educated compared to those with lower education, yet the variance of the list estimates is considerably higher. We conclude that the list experiment compared unfavorably to simpler direct measurements in our case
Responsive withdrawal? The politics of EU agenda-setting
No full textThis contribution asks whether and why the newly political environment of EU law-making impacts on the European Commission's choice (not) to announce the withdrawal of legislative proposals. We argue that the Commission uses ‘responsive withdrawal’ in response to bottom-up pressure, so as to signal self-restraint or policy-determination to different audiences. Bottom-up pressures are driven by (1) the national contestation of ‘Europe’; (2) visible controversy about optimal (crisis) governance; and (3) the domestic salience of EU legislation. Our hypotheses are tested on a new dataset of all codecision files concluded, withdrawn, rejected or ongoing between 2006 and 2018. We show that the Commission reacts to bottom-up pressure by either politicising or depoliticising the EU's legislative agenda: ‘withdrawal announcements’ are more likely when Euroscepticism is high and when legislation touches core state powers, but less likely when legislation is domestically salient. We also demonstrate the continued importance of cyclical and technical reasons. Our analysis complements extant explanations of withdrawal as the upshot of functional factors or of uncertainty, and contributes to the nascent debate about whether, why and how supranational actors respond when the systems in which they operate – and the policies they produce – come under attack