Hertie School Research Repository
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The European Court of Human Rights and Accountability for Neoliberal State Conduct: Never the Twain Shall Meet?
No full textResponses to the recent (and ongoing) debt and austerity crises in Europe reveal multiple techniques through which the rule and role of law operate in these times of neoliberal capitalism. From international law, to human rights law, to European Union law, and constitutional law the deployment and orientation of law in the past few years point up ways in which law co-constitutes neoliberal values and structures, legitimating and hardening those values and foreclosing alternatives. Framing market interests, capital accumulation and profit as the common interest, advancing conditions for competition, favouring the private over the public and over the commons, and situating social justice as derivative of those goals are just some of the neoliberal values that have been reflected through the instrumentalism of law. The contributors to this collective working paper offer short ‘think pieces’ exploring the legal trajectory of neoliberalism in particular fields of law. Some of them take a general perspective on the evolving role of law, whereas others focus on select but representative examples. The authors may not all concur in their assessment of the role of law, but they all engage with the role of law in the recent evolution of European politics and society
Psychological factors influencing laypersons’ acceptance of climate engineering, climate change mitigation and business as usual scenarios
No full textIn the past two decades, research on so-called climate engineering approaches has increased. These technologies are considered to be potential substitutes for mitigation strategies in combating climate change. The ongoing process of layperson acceptance and resultant opinion formation can be expected to play a crucial role in future public debate about field experiments or the actual deployment of climate engineering.
In July 2017, we assessed public reactions from the German population in a representative online survey. Participants were given a brief text informing them about climate change and one of four different scenarios in a between-subject design (N = 678). Two of the scenarios described the use of climate engineering technologies - stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) - one of them covered conventional mitigation strategies and the fourth group was given an outline of the business-as-usual (BAU) approach.
The mitigation scenario (willingness for individual behaviour changes) showed the highest acceptance rate (M = 74.23), which was significantly higher than acceptance of the other scenarios (p < .001). Acceptance of BECCS (M = 53.15) was higher than acceptance of SAI (M = 46.25, p = .043) and BAU (M = 42.94; p = .006). We undertook a relative-importance analysis to investigate the influence of multiple predictor variables on acceptance formation for each scenario; the variance thus explained ranged from 80.3% to 86.8%. The results point up the influence of perceived risks, subjective norms and affective responses on the acceptance of climate engineering technologies. By contrast, person-specific and relatively stable variables, such as environmental attitudes and wishful thinking, are particularly relevant in the evaluation of the mitigation scenario
Euro-Austritt: Ein Notausgang für die Währungsunion?
No full textDer Euro sieht für seine Mitglieder keine Austrittsoption vor. Einerseits schützt das die gemeinsame Währung vor spekulativen Angriffen. Andererseits hat die Eurokrise gezeigt, wie schwer es den Euroländern fällt, wirtschafts- und finanzpolitische Konflikte konstruktiv untereinander zu lösen. Warum wurde der Euro als Einbahnstraße entworfen? Was wären die Folgen einer Austrittsoption? Und welche Alternativen gibt es zu einem Austritt
A European approach to regulating AI - The Commission’s AI strategy
No full textThe European Commission’s AI strategy was released just a few short weeks before the global pandemic hit Europe. In her policy brief, Maarja Kask argues that AI can only be expected to help us through this pandemic and on a path of economic recovery if the upcoming legislation resolves the issues evident
in the white paper. Not only does the Commission need to explain what it means when it talks about AI, but also be clear about its investment plan. The member states will also need to pull their weight when it comes to funding for the strategy to succeed
Skill formation in cross-border contexts: The case of the trinational Upper Rhine region
No full textCross-border regions display significant economic, political, and cultural cooperation and represent a central feature of Europe — not least as innovation labs for the European integration project. A key example is the trinational French-German-Swiss Upper Rhine region. Each of the respective bordering countries displays a specific mode of regulation in VET. How do actors govern vocational education and training (VET) in this dynamic industry cluster in which distinct national political-administrative units do not overlap with the functional needs of employers and (future) employees? Relying on expert interviews and document analysis, this chapter offers a novel comparison of the respective subnational units within each cross-border region. The institutional study finds a key pattern through which skill formation is institutionalised within the cross-border context: the leveraging of complementarities between distinct educational institutions. In combining the specific strengths of different national skills regimes, VET stakeholders in cross-border regions are in a position to enlarge the scope and capacities of their skill regime far beyond national borders
From procedural disagreement to joint scrutiny? The Interparliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance
No full textThe provision of Article 13 TSCG to create an Interparliamentary Conference was the starting point for long discussions after which national parliaments and the European Parliament eventually reached a compromise. This article pursues a two-fold objective: It first examines the different phases of interparliamentary negotiations from 2012 to 2015. On the basis of a distinction between three competing models for interparliamentary cooperation, the article shows that the two models of EP-led scrutiny and creating a collective parliamentary counterweight did not prevail: Parliaments agreed that the new Interparliamentary Conference on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance (SECG) would follow the ‘standard’ interparliamentary conference (COSAC model). In terms of national parliaments’ actual participation, the lowest common denominator compromise has not changed the numbers of participating MPs: Attendance records are stable over time, the size of national delegations continues to vary and participating MPs are still twice as likely to be members of Budget or Finance committees than to be members of European affairs committees
Digitising the Anti-Corruption Sphere: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead
No full textIn 2018, the number of global internet users surpassed four billion, with almost 3.2 billion users using social media. Anti-corruption agendas across actors increasingly reflect these developments. National agencies and donors are including information and communication technology (ICT) in their anti-corruption strategies. Civil society actors are embracing digital tools and using them for advocacy and citizen mobilisation. Open data makes governments more transparent and make data accessible to both investigative journalists and activists. Encryption-based whistleblowing tools promise less harm to potential whistleblowers. Crowdsourcing tools gather citizen feedback on public services. Social media help spread news and coordinate citizen action against corruption. Most recently, blockchain technology promises a more accountable and secure data infrastructure. While the potential of digital technologies in anti-corruption is great, the evidence is less clear cut. Like many anti- corruption tools before, ICT holds a promise it cannot necessarily keep.
This paper establishes a state of the art on what we know about ICT in anti-corruption. It links theoretical literature to the limited empirical findings on this specific issue and considers academic literature, as well as research published as reports. It will provide a review of quantitative studies, as well as comparative studies and single case studies focussing on context-specific ICT uses. In doing so, the paper will not only establish what we know so far, but also identify gaps in literature to establish a call for a future research agenda. It will call for continued efforts to assess the effectiveness of ICT tools in anti-corruption
Germany: Smooth and silent emergence of advisory roles
No full textThese days leadership staff units in German federal ministries perform a distinct advisory role. Over time the former small assistance units have developed into fully fledged staff units, the heads of which, in particular, serve as close and confidant advisers to ministers. That is, although not appointed under special conditions or introduced by a formal reform process, they serve as the functional equivalents to the special or ministerial advisers found elsewhere. This chapter explores the emergence, contribution and role of the staff units and argues that the institutionalization of the relationship between politics and administration accounts for the smooth and silent emergence of the advisory role
The Politics of Data Access in Studying Violence across Methodological Boundaries: What We Can Learn from Each Other?
No full textIn this article, we investigate where the ethics of data collection and access of two widely disparate methodological approaches studying violence intersect, and we explore how these respective intellectual communities can learn from each other. We compare and contrast the research strategies and dilemmas confronted by researchers using quantitative methods to collect and analyze “big data” and those by researchers conducting interpretivist ethnography grounded in the method of participant observation. The shared context of participant vulnerability produces overlapping concerns about our work. With shifts in quantitative conflict research to examine the microdynamics of violence, quandaries of confidentiality and the ethics of exposure have become increasingly salient. At the same time, ethical dilemmas that arise in the large-scale collection of data offer important points of reflection regarding the ethics of participant observation as it is performed in ethnographic research. Instead of focusing on areas of disagreement, we suggest that interpretivist fieldworkers and quantitative researchers can learn from how the politics of information materialize across divergent research methods
Managing expectations - The German Council presidency
No full textOn 1 July 2020 Germany will take over the presidency of the Council of the EU. Major European issues such as the Commission’s proposal for a Recovery Instrument, the EU multiannual financial framework, or the negotiations on the future UK-EU relationship will fall within its term. If expectations were high before corona that a member state with the political weight and capacities of Germany would be able to significantly advance the political agenda at EU level, such expectations are even more prevalent now. At the same time, the institution of Council presidency has lost much of its bite under the Treaty of Lisbon. Germany does not only find itself wedged between different institutional actors with a limited time frame to achieve political results. It is also faced with an overcrowded agenda and many practical limitations caused by the pandemic. This policy brief analyses and assesses the expectations as regards the German Council presidency, in particular by considering the institutional context in which it operates and the limitations imposed by the pandemic