Hertie School Research Repository
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Remodeling the Competition for Capital: How Domestic Politics Erases the Race to the Bottom
No full textThis paper proposes and tests a new formal model of the competition for capital, using the analogy of a “tournament” as a substitute for the ”race-to-the-bottom” model. Our key insight is that political costs that accompany legislating have both direct and indirect effects on the likelihood and scale of reforms. While countries with higher political costs are less likely themselves to enact reforms, the presence of these costs also reduces competing countries' incentives to reform regardless of their own political costs. Domestic politics therefore mitigates the pressures for downward convergence of tax policy despite increased capital mobility. We examine the capital tax policies in OECD countries during the period from 1980 to 1997 and find that states are sensitive to tax reforms in competitor countries, although their responses to reforms are mediated by their own domestic costs to reform. We define two potential sources of political costs of reform: transaction costs, due to the presence of multiple veto players in the legislative process, and constituency costs, due to ideological opposition to policy changes that benefit capital. Our evidence reveals that a reduction in these costs either domestically or abroad increases the likelihood that a country enacts tax reforms
Theories of Knowledge - Is a Naturalised Epistemology Bound to Leave Unanswered Some Important Epistemological Questions?
No full textPredicting the Decline of Ethnic Conflict: Was Gurr Right and For the Right Reasons?
No full textMany scholars have detected a decrease of political violence, but the causes of this decline remain unclear. As a contribution to this debate, we revisit the controversy over trends in conflict after the end of the Cold War. While many made ominous predictions of surging ethnic warfare, Gurr presented evidence of a pacifying trend since the mid-1990s and predicted a further decline in ethnic conflict in an article on ‘the waning of ethnic war’. Leveraging more recent data on ethnic groups and their participation in ethnic civil wars, this study evaluates if Gurr was right about the decline of ethnic conflict, and if he was right for the right reasons. We assess whether an increase in governments’ accommodative policies toward ethnic groups can plausibly account for a decline in ethnic civil war. Our findings lend considerable support to an account of the pacifying trend that stresses the granting of group rights, regional autonomy, and inclusion in power-sharing, as well as democratization and peacekeeping
Reinvigorating John Rawls on Social Justice
No full textJohn Rawls featured prominently in the philosophical debate on social justice, bringing issues of individual freedom, civil rights and equal opportunity to the forefront. When considering the conceptualisation of social justice in South Africa, one is struck with the wealth of very ‘Rawlsian’ liberal democratic ideals suffused into the country’s constitution, alongside its dream of constitutional transformation. This is juxtaposed to the ideology and policies of the African National Congress, with its proclivities that are an antithesis to a veritable liberal constitutional democracy. Herein is found a dialectic in which the topic of justice is situated and analysed using the philosophy of Rawls as a benchmark. One is then faced with the confusion surrounding social justice in South Africa, what it means and how it is to be achieved. Concomitantly, the role and place of the individual is brought to the fore, begging the question of what citizens owe each other
Die Bedeutung intergenerationaler Bildungsmobilität für die Gesundheit und die Lebenszufriedenheit von Schülerinnen und Schülern in Deutschland
No full textStiftungen in Deutschland 1: Eine Verortung
No full textIm bisher größten Forschungsprojekt zum deutschen Stiftungswesen wurde erstmals auf Grundlage einer umfangreichen Datenbasis eine Einschätzung der Rollen, Positionierungen und Beiträge deutscher Stiftungen vorgenommen. Der Band führt zunächst in den aktuellen Stand der Stiftungs- und Philanthropieforschung und das Vorgehen der Forschungsgruppe um Helmut K. Anheier ein. Es folgt ein umfassendes empirisches Bild des deutschen Stiftungswesens mit Fokus auf die Bereiche Bildung und Erziehung, Wissenschaft und Forschung, Soziales sowie Kunst und Kultur. Im Ergebnis zeichnet sich eine neue, vielfältige Landkarte des deutschen Stiftungswesens ab, die zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement, professionalisierte Philanthropie, wohlfahrtsstaatliche Dienstleistung und gemeinnützige Nischenangebote umfasst und jeweils unterschiedliche Handlungsempfehlungen impliziert
Strategizing in highly institutionalized environments. Social enterprises in Germany
Get PDFThe dissertation focuses on the strategizing activities of new-style social enterprises in the highly institutionalized German social service provision sector. More specifically, it focuses on understanding and highlighting the characteristics of highly institutionalized environments taking the case of Germany, and then examines how smaller new entrants strategize in these environments in order to achieve their goals. This is important because there is more limited understanding of how small new entrants operate in highly institutionalized contexts, which is likely to differ from other types of contexts.
The study is built upon a qualitative research design with three in-depth case studies of social enterprises at its core, which were investigated through semi-structured interviews, organizational observation, and secondary data analysis.
The inductive analytical process resulted in the following findings. Firstly, a highly institutionalized field is characterized by stability and density of institutional conditions that manifest through four characteristics: a high regulatory degree, strongly embedded established social service providers, strong and stable financial resource flows and high stability of cognitive schemes regarding social service provision.
Secondly, the strategizing activities of smaller new entrants highlight the important balance between compliance to, and divergence from, institutional prescriptions and expectations that organizations experience. In order to achieve their organizational goals
in this environment, social enterprises develop four strategizing areas in order to manage divergence: problem specification, interaction with established providers, mobilizing financial resources and mobilizing symbolic resources.
The findings contribute to previous research in three ways. Firstly, they contribute to a better specification of highly institutionalized fields based on the perceptions of organizations operating in these environments. Secondly, the findings contribute to the understanding of simultaneous compliant and divergent organizational behavior and its connection to concrete institutions. Thirdly, the findings provide a more fine-grained understanding of the strategizing areas available to and used by new entrants in highly institutional fields in order to cope with the institutional forces that they encounter. This sheds light on the importance of differentiating between types of organizations and types of fields in order to understand the dynamics and the interplay between institutions and the capacity for action of organizations
