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Childbearing across partnerships in Finland and Germany
No full textThis chapter examines gender differences in “multipartner fertility” – i.e., having children with several partners – in Germany and Finland. The analyses focus on women and men born around 1970 who are followed until age 41. We show that multipartner fertility is more common in Finland than in Germany. However, there are large East-West differences within Germany. East Germans are less likely to have a second or third child than West Germans, but those East Germans who progress to a higher order birth often have this child with a new partner. We also find some gender differences in behaviour. Men display lower transition rates than women of having a second child with a new partner. Further, having a first child at an early age is strongly and positively associated with multipartner fertility. No consistent relationship between education and multipartner fertility was found for Germany. In Finland, however, low education is associated with elevated risks of having children with different partners
Strategic rebels: a spatial econometric approach to rebel fighting durations in civil wars
No full textRecent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives to remain mobilized until the end of a conflict to maintain their power to negotiate, power to spoil, power to enforce, and power to protect. This induces strategic complements that dominate duration dynamics in multi-actor conflicts. Based on a network game-theoretic model, we derive a spatial econometric framework that allows for a direct test of strategic interdependence. We find that the estimated duration interdependence is positive but partially offset in secessionist conflicts where the public goods nature of the incompatibility also induces strategic substitution effects
Politikberatung durch die Ministerialverwaltung: Funktionale Differenzierung oder Integration unterschiedlicher Wissensformen
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How Common Is the East African Community’s Common External Tariff Really? The Influence of Interest Groups on the EAC’s Tariff Negotiations
No full textKenya, Tanzania, and Uganda founded a Customs Union in 2004 and apply a Common External Tariff (CET) on imports to the region. However, the CET has been increasingly destabilized by countries using unilateral exemptions on a wide range of strongly traded goods. This instability undermines progress in regional integration and creates an uneven playing field for business. The article discusses evidence for the influence of interest groups on the observed instability. This study takes a political economy perspective and tracks lobbying behavior from the domestic to the regional level. It looks at the influence of business membership organizations and other interest groups on CET negotiations. The article applies an exploratory, qualitative approach predominantly drawing on data gathered by the author in 25 interviews with experts in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda in January 2016
Borrowing Welfare: Credit Access and Support for Redistribution
No full textPrevious scholarship has noted the incentives that governments face to promote private access to credit to substitute for reductions in publicly-provided welfare. While this research offers theoretical arguments and empirical evidence linking political decisions to credit growth (supply side of credit expansion), it is not obvious that voters see credit as a perfect substitute for welfare policies (demand side). We look into the demand side of credit expansion and test whether individuals with better access to credit indeed express lower demand for redistribution, which would be consistent with this view. Based on data from five waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2010) for 23 European countries, and controlling for unquestionable confounders (e.g. income), we find evidence that expanded access to credit attenuates demands for redistribution, but we also see that the size of this effect varies considerably, and is even null in some countries. We find that the effect size largely depends on both the country-year’s level and structure of inequality, a set of findings that we attribute to differential incentives that middle-class individuals face. Hence, voters do not always see credit as a substitute for welfare; the economic and social context in which they live matters
Electoral Cycles in Bank Lending Explained: The Role of Political Representation in Governing Bodies
No full textDo politicians direct bank credit for their political benefit? We know that public-sector banks often increase lending in election years and that politicians benefit electorally from bank connections. The mechanisms and the conditions that facilitate politically motivated bank lending are however not yet explored. We study the case of German savings banks and use original bank-level data, including information on bank loans and politicians’ “de facto” representation in banks’ governing bodies for 294 savings banks in eight German states between 2006–2016 to estimate a difference-in-difference model. We find that savings banks with political chairmen, with a high share of political board members, and with a high partisan concentration in the supervisory board are particularly likely to systematically adjust lending before county elections. This effect is driven by savings banks with county-level chairpersons from the conservative party and robust to various specifications
Governance in Social Enterprises
No full textSocial enterprises are organisations that pursue a social mission using market mechanisms. From a policy perspective, they are promising vehicles to create both social and economic value for society in times when public funds are shrinking and the financial viability of charities and non-profit organisations (NPOs) is increasingly at stake. From a civil society perspective, they are an important organisational form to ensure longevity, financial viability, and sustainability of mission-driven organisations. Social enterprises are neither typical charities nor typical businesses but combine aspects of both, using commercial activities as means toward social ends. They are often small or medium-sized1 and do not draw on highly elaborated governance arrangements as do larger for- or non-profit organisations. Governance often resembles a grey zone for these organisations, and the approach social enterprises adopt ranges from formal, legally binding arrangements to more flexible and context-based ones
Who is a PRC user? Comparing Chinese social media user agreements
No full textSocial media companies rely on user agreements as one means to manage content produced by users. While much has been written on user agreements and community standards of U.S.-based social media, surprisingly little is known about Chinese user agreements and their implications. We compare terms of services as well as privacy policies of WeChat and Weibo between 2014 and 2019 using their U.S. counterparts WhatsApp and Twitter as a benchmark. We find that Chinese user agreements reveal a territorial-based understanding of content management differentiating between PRC and non-PRC users based on language, IP address and country of citizenship. Second, Chinese social media companies are surprisingly transparent about what content can be published, which has implications for self-censorship among users. Third, changes in PRC user agreements reflect Xi Jinping’s tightening control of the Internet. Finally, U.S.-based platforms have moved towards content management that differs by region, thus becoming more similar to the Chinese approach over time