Hertie School Research Repository
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Skill development at the nexus of the French and German educational models: the case of Luxembourg
No full textInstitutional gaps and the governance dilemma in hybrid regimes
No full textAre formal institutions always the rules of the game? In hybrid regimes, the surprising answer is no. Formal institutions regularly fail to shape actor expectations and guide behavior. As a result, gaps between formal rules and their actual implementation or longer term effects are a typical feature of these regimes in the gray area between democracy and authoritarianism. Such gaps occur and persist depending largely on the level of government control, the strength of the institutional environment, and the existence of informal institutions. They affect various actors and can present important governance dilemmas for NGOs and the state. This study draws on extensive field work, semistructured interviews, document retrieval, and participant observation to explain the sources and implications of gaps by comparing the two policy fields of social protection and criminal justice in post-Soviet Armenia and Georgia. The arguments resulting from the systematic analysis of the four in-depth case studies are extended by a comparison of gaps across regime types, and a discussion of gap varieties in hybrid regimes as diverse as Malaysia, Kenya, and Russia. By proposing a middle-range theory on institutional gaps in hybrid regimes, this research advances institutional theory by counterbalancing the empirical emphasis on advanced capitalist democracies with insights from hybrid regimes.
It also contributes to NGO research by suggesting a context-sensitive approach to organizational behavior and extends a nascent research agenda on the day-to-day governance of hybrid regimes
More voice, less exit. Sub-federal Resistance to International Procurement Liberalisation in the European Union, the United States and Canada
No full textVia an agenda of “deep trade”, global trade governance has increasingly intruded into domestic regulatory space. This is all the more relevant in federally-organised polities in which competencies now subjected to international rule-setting are constituent units’ prerogatives. In many federations, the field of public procurement is a case in point. At the same time, sub-federal executives’ resistance to international procurement liberalisation has varied vastly across federations. While EU member states’ resistance has remained low, US states’ resistance has persisted and increased in recent years. The Canadian provinces, in turn, have only recently begun to open their procurement markets to foreign suppliers. In an attempt to explain this puzzling variance in sub-federal resistance, this Dissertation argues that federations’ domestic institutional and procedural foundations bear an influence on policy outcomes in trade liberalisation. Relying on the concepts of “exit” and “voice” (Hirschman 1970), it posits that sub-federal executives’ voice is inversely related to their reliance on exit. The more voice sub-federal executives are equipped with, the less they dispose of an incentive to exit from a system-wide policy or international commitment. Voice hinges, firstly, on a federation’s institutional configuration. Council federalism, providing constituent units with a direct representation in federation-wide policy-making, endows sub-federal executives with more voice than senate federalism which relies on indirect forms of territorial representation. It depends, secondly, on the nature of vertical relations between both orders of government. Constituent units enjoy more voice when their relations with the federal level are collaborative, marked by formalised patterns of joint policy-making, rather than competitive, pursuing a delineation of federal and subfederal spheres of competence. In case studies of the United States, Canada and the European Union, the Dissertation finds that the posited inverse relationship between sub-federal voice and exit holds and that resistance among sub-federal executives has indeed evolved systematically. In the US senate federation, effective means of joint policy-making have not evolved in the noncoercive field of procurement. In the Canadian case, increasing vertical collaboration has compensated provinces for senate federalism’s low voice. In comparison, the EU case proves peculiar for constituent units’ decisive role in its second chamber federalism and the dense regime of trusting vertical collaboration it accommodates. Member states’ low resistance is a manifestation of the EU trade regime’s comparatively effective workings. Eventually, the dissertation’s findings hint at an appropriate institutional and procedural design for international rule-setting in multi-level settings. If federal executives seek to subject sub-federal prerogatives to international constraints, they should allow for constituent units’ continuous, systematic and collaborative inclusion
Health literacy among different age groups in Germany : results of a cross-sectional survey
No full textBACKGROUND:
Health literacy is of increasing importance in public health research. It is a necessary pre-condition for the involvement in decisions about health and health care and related to health outcomes. Knowledge about limited health literacy in different age groups is crucial to better target public health interventions for subgroups of the population. However, little is known about health literacy in Germany. The study therefore assesses the prevalence of limited health literacy and associated factors among different age groups.
METHODS:
The Health Literacy Survey Germany is a cross-sectional study with 2,000 participants aged 15 years or older in private households. Perceived health literacy was assessed via computer-assisted personal interviews using the HLS-EU-Q-47 questionnaire. Descriptive analyses, chi-square tests and odds ratios were performed stratified for different age groups.
RESULTS:
The population affected by limited perceived health literacy increases by age. Of the respondents aged 15-29 years, 47.3 % had limited perceived health literacy and 47.2 % of those aged 30-45 years, whereas 55.2 % of the respondents aged 46-64 years and 66.4 % aged 65 years and older showed limited perceived health literacy. In all age groups, limited perceived health literacy was associated with limited functional health literacy, low social status, and a high frequency of doctor visits.
CONCLUSIONS:
The results suggest a need to further investigate perceived health literacy in all phases of the life-course. Particular attention should be devoted to persons with lower social status, limited functional health literacy and/or a high number of doctor visits in all age groups
Profitable business models and market creation in the context of deep poverty: A strategic view
No full textThe bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in the global distribution of income has been promoted as a significant opportunity for companies to grow profitably. Under the BOP approach, poor people are identified as potential customers who can be served if companies learn to fundamentally rethink their existing strategies and business models. This involves acquiring and building new resources and capabilities and forging a multitude of local partnerships. However, current BOP literature remains relatively silent about how to actually implement such a step into the unknown. We use two BOP cases to illustrate a strategic framework that reduces managerial complexity. In our view, existing capabilities and existing local BOP models can be leveraged to build new markets that include the poor and generate sufficient financial returns for companies to justify investments
How much do middle managers really matter? An Empirical Study on their Impact on Sustained Superior Performance
No full textThe Logics of Supranational Human Rights Litigation, Official Acknowledgment, and Human Rights Reform: The Southeast Turkey Cases before the European Court of Human Rights, 1996-2006
No full textThis article examines the domestic impact of supranational human rights litigation on acknowledgment of state violence in the context of macroprocesses of global governance. The article's argument is that the impact of supranational human rights litigation on the process of acknowledgment must be seen through counternarratives on state violence. The article undertakes a detailed textual analysis of the truth claims and denial strategies that emerged from the European Court of Human Rights proceedings on state violence during Turkey's struggle against the armed group the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It assesses these in the context of the human rights reforms that were created following pressure from European-level governance processes. The article argues that attention must be paid to agency in acknowledgment and truth-telling processes, and points to the limits of technical-bureaucratic forms of human rights reform interventions in the context of state violence
Le Réveil des Démons: la crise de l’euro et comment nous en sortir
No full textOn croyait les démons assagis : à la faveur de la crise financière de 2008, les Etats avaient repris le dessus sur les marchés financiers et les politiques économiques savaient répondre et conjurer la dépression. Mais la tempête qui a ébranlé la zone euro entre 2009 et 2012, au départ crise banale dans une petite économie périphérique, la Grèce, a gagné un pays après l’autre et a menacé d’emporter tout l’édifice monétaire européen. Dans ce brillant essai, Jean Pisani-Ferry retrace les étapes de la crise et analyse les solutions adoptées. Si l’Europe a fait preuve d’un remarquable sens de la survie, elle souffre aujourd’hui d’une dangereuse absence de communauté de projets
Si tacuisses, philosopus mansisses: Why the OMT Controversy is Undecidable
No full textIn this article, the controversy between the European Court of Justice and the German Federal Constitutional Court over the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme remains in the background. Rather than summarising and evaluating all this, the Author focuses his attention on a defence of the message in the title. Firstly, he starts with the ruling of the German Court of January 2014, which, as is well known, is the “first reference ever”. In this the Author focuses his attention on the two dissenting opinions by judges Lübbe-Wolff and Gerhardt. Then, the analysis focuses mainly on to the exercise of discretion by the ECB and the role of the judiciary. Thereafter, the Author examines the responses to these developments in various branches of European studies and concludes with an explanation of title