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Political Economy Determinants of Carbon Pricing
No full textCarbon pricing is widely considered a key policy instrument for achieving substantial climate change mitigation. However, implementation remains patchy and price levels vary significantly across countries and regions. In this article, we analyze the structural social, political, and economic conditions under which carbon prices have been implemented so far. We estimate a Tobit regression model to investigate variations in explicit carbon prices over 262 national and subnational jurisdictions. Our results highlight well-governed institutions and public attitudes as the most important conditions for carbon pricing and characterize fossil fuel consumption as a barrier to the implementation of carbon prices. The results suggest that governance and public attitude need to be integrated into political economy analysis. Policy makers should take regulatory capacities and public attitudes seriously when designing carbon pricing policies
Loyal to the Game? Strategic Policy Representation in Mixed Electoral Systems
No full textIn Germany's compensatory mixed electoral system, alternative electoral routes lead into parliament. We study the relationship between candidates' electoral situations across both tiers and policy representation, fully accounting for candidate, party and district preferences in a multi-actor constellation and the exact electoral incentives for candidates to represent either the party or the district. The results (2009 Bundestag election data) yield evidence of an interactive effect of closeness of the district race and list safety on candidates' positioning between their party and constituency
Voter overrepresentation, vote misreporting, and turnout bias in postelection surveys
No full textFigures from postelection surveys often grossly overestimate election turnout. Two distinct phenomena are responsible for this gap: overrepresentation of actual voters and vote misreporting by actual nonvoters among survey respondents. Previous accounts of turnout bias are inconclusive in that they either focus on a single component, or fail to separate between the two. In this paper, we formally decompose turnout bias in election surveys into its constituent parts, assess their empirical prevalence and heterogeneity using an extensive collection of 49 vote validation studies from six countries, and employ Bayesian meta regression techniques to account for cross-study differences. Our results indicate that both election and survey characteristics such as actual voter turnout and survey response rates differentially affect the components of turnout bias. We conclude with a discussion of the threats and potentials of our findings for survey-based comparative electoral research
More integration, less federation: the European integration of core state powers
No full textWe map the pattern and extent of the European integration of core state powers (coercive force, public finance and public administration) and analyse causes and consequences. We highlight two findings: First, in contrast to historical examples of federal state-building, where the nationalization of core state powers precipitated the institutional, territorial and political consolidation of the emerging state, the European integration of core state powers is associated with the institutional, territorial and political fragmentation of the European Union. Second, in contrast to European market integration, state élites and mass publics, not organized business interests, are the prime drivers of integration
Multiplex communities and the emergence of international conflict
No full textAdvances in community detection reveal new insights into multiplex and multilayer networks. Less work, however, investigates the relationship between these communities and outcomes in social systems. We leverage these advances to shed light on the relationship between the cooperative mesostructure of the international system and the onset of interstate conflict. We detect communities based upon weaker signals of affinity expressed in United Nations votes and speeches, as well as stronger signals observed across multiple layers of bilateral cooperation. Communities of diplomatic affinity display an expected negative relationship with conflict onset. Ties in communities based upon observed cooperation, however, display no effect under a standard model specification and a positive relationship with conflict under an alternative specification. These results align with some extant hypotheses but also point to a paucity in our understanding of the relationship between community structure and behavioral outcomes in networks
Workers' Voice in the 100 largest European companies
No full text-Workers Voice is widely present among the largest 100 firms in Europe. 90 % of the largest firms participate in collective bargaining (CBA), 73 % have a European Works Council (EWC) and 44 % have Board-Level Employee Representation (BLER). 27 % have a European Company Agreement (ECA), and 23 % an International Framework Agreement (IFA). The data set allows three broad conclusions: - First, Workers Voice is mostly cumulative. Companieswith BLER always participate in collective bargaining and generally have a higher percentage of other forms of Workers Voice in place than companies without BLER. Companies with BLER and CBA in place also almost always have at least one European Works Council in place and, in 40.9 % of the firms, also at least one European Company Agreement.- Second, Board-Level Employee Representation and collective bargaining seem to strengthen good corporate governance. Companies with BLER offered considerably lower remuneration packages within the company than companies without BLER. Companies without BLER as well as companies without CBA spent, on average, significantly more money on the highest remuneration packages than companies with BLER andCBA present and companies with only CBA present. Companies with BLER are associated with a lower influence of a single biggest owner.- Third, companies with strong Workers Voice show better performance compared to those without. Companies with both BLER and CBA have higher market value as well as higher net sales
The Erosion of the German System of Industrial Relations
No full textThe paper assesses current trajectories of change in the German system of industrial relations by analysing the co‐determination and collective bargaining systems. It argues that two parallel developments undermine the institutional stability of the German model. First, the institutional base of the German industrial relations system, which has served as the pre‐condition of its past success, has been shrinking during the last two decades. This is due to a decline in coverage by the two major industrial relations institutions: the works council system and wage agreements. Today fewer than 15 per cent of German plants are covered by both a valid collective agreement and a works council. Second, increasing decentralization pressures within collective bargaining tend to undermine the division of labour between co‐determination and collective bargaining. The dynamics of an institutional erosion of the German industrial relations institutions and the decentralization of collective bargaining disturbs the fine‐tuning of the mediating process between macroeconomic steering capacity and co‐operative workplace industrial relations. This tendency has been aggravated by the effects of German unification. The current institutional developments of the German industrial relations system leave serious doubts about the future of a successful model of co‐operative modernization
Expectations of Fairness and Trust Co-Evolve in Environments of Partial Information
No full textWhen playing one-shot economic games, individuals often blindly trust others, accepting partnerships without any information regarding the trustworthiness of their partner. Consequently, they risk deleterious pacts. Oddly, when individuals do have information about another, they reject partnerships that are not fair, despite the fact that such offers are profitable—individuals costly punish. Why would one reject profitable partnerships on the one hand, but risk unknown offers on the other? Significant research has gone into explaining the contexts where blind trust or costly punishment provides an evolutionary advantage; however, both behaviours are rarely considered in tandem. Here we demonstrate that both behaviours can simultaneously be revenue maximizing. Further, given the plausible condition of partially obscured information and partner choice, trust mediates the generation of costly punishment. This result is important because it demonstrates that the evolutionary viability of trust, fairness, and costly punishment may be linked. The adaptive nature of fairness expectations can best be explained in concert with trust
Big Data, 5G and AI. How Europol could help von der Leyen achieve her goals
Get PDFCommission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to make Europe ‘fit for the digital age’, including in the areas of big data, 5G and artificial intelligence. On March 9, her first 100 days in office will be over and measured against her agenda for the legislative period 2019–2024. While the course has been set for an innovative and competitive EU as regards digitalisation and cyber, the Commission’s approach has so far lacked a security perspective. This Policy Paper explains why the inclusion of a security dimension is crucial and how Europol, the EU’s agency for police cooperation, could help von der Leyen to this end