Suchergebnisse

"Häufig ist bei internationalen Krisen, Konflikten und Friedenseinsätzen die Erfahrung zu machen, dass für die Bevölkerung vor Ort die eigene Sicherheit an erster Stelle steht. Ohne sie kann es keine wirtschaftliche Betätigung und langfristige Entwicklung geben, regieren Unsicherheit und Angst. Deshalb setzen die Vereinten Nationen und andere internationale Organisationen schon seit den sechziger Jahren auch Polizeikräfte in ihren Friedensmissionen ein. Nach einem anfänglich guten Engagement ist die Beteiligung aus Deutschland dabei seit dem Jahr 2000 rückläufig. Der Beitrag untersucht die Gründe für die deutsche Zurückhaltung bei internationalen Polizeimissionen und welche bürokratischen und ideologischen Hindernisse überwunden werden müssten, um dem eigenen Anspruch nach mehr außenpolitischer Verantwortung gerecht zu werden." (Autorenreferat)

The article combines research on postconflict management with public administration research by presenting a single case study on the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo. To investigate the reasons for the UN mission's failure to implement its policies on minority relations, the study turns toward local municipal bureaucracies and offers a two-part causal argument that derives from principal–agent theory and bureaucratic representation theory. First, due to a lack of political and administrative oversight by Kosovar institutions and the UN peacebuilding mission, local municipal authorities experienced a high degree of autonomy. Second, those units within municipal administrations that were responsible for minority policy implementation did not include minority bureaucrats who could have acted as their communities' advocates. In the absence of such active representation and a lack of top-down supervision, the municipal civil service departed from its mandate to implement affirmative policies serving the Serb and Roma community in Kosovo. The article finds that this ethnic bureaucratic drift constitutes a central explanation for the lack of minority policy implementation in Kosovo between 2001 and 2008.

Evaluation has become a key tool in assessing the performance of international organizations, in fostering learning, and in demonstrating accountability. Within the United Nations (UN) system, thousands of evaluators and consultants produce hundreds of evaluation reports worth millions of dollars every year. But does evaluation really deliver on its promise of objective evidence and functional use? By unravelling the internal machinery of evaluation systems in international organizations, this book challenges the conventional understanding of evaluation as a value-free activity. Vytautas Jankauskas and Steffen Eckhard show how a seemingly neutral technocratic tool can serve as an instrument for power in global governance; they demonstrate and explain how deeply politics are entrenched in the interests of evaluation stakeholders, in the control and design of IO evaluation systems, and to a lesser extent also in the content of evaluation reports. The analysis draws on 120 research interviews with evaluators, member state representatives, and IO secretariat officials as well as on textual analysis of over 200 evaluation reports. The investigation covers 21 UN system organizations, including detailed case studies of the ILO, IMF, UNDP, UN WOMEN, IOM, UNHCR, FAO, WHO, and UNESCO. Shedding light on the (in-)effectiveness of evidence-based policymaking, the authors propose possible ways of better reconciling the observed evaluation politics with the need to gather reliable evidence that is used to improve the functioning of the United Nations. The answer to evaluation politics is not to abandon evaluation or isolate it from the stakeholders but to acknowledge surrounding political interests and design evaluation systems accordingly.

Abstract
Spoken administrative language is a critical element in the relationship between citizens and the state, especially when it comes to face-to-face interactions between officials and citizens during the delivery of public services. But preceding work offers little insights into the verbal features of street-level bureaucracy. Drawing on communication studies, we argue that administrative language differs along both a relational and an informational linguistic component. To test the consequentiality of this theory, we design a factorial survey experiment with a representative sample of 1,402 German citizens. Participants evaluated audio recordings of a hypothetical service encounter where we systematically varied the language used by the official and the service decision, measuring participants' service satisfaction as the main outcome. Based on regression analysis, we find that relational elements of administrative language improve citizen satisfaction, independent of the service outcome, but that the effect does not hold for the informational component. These findings emphasize the importance of relational communication in citizen-state interactions, which tends to be neglected in public administration theory and practice.

AbstractFlexibility in administrative crisis management is a frequently reported determinant for a successful crisis response. But there is little agreement about how to conceptualize, measure, and explain flexibility. We use a three-dimensional measure of administrative flexibility, capturing employees' decision leeway, staff mobility, and organizational innovation in a crisis response. We then develop and test an explanation of variation in flexibility, focusing on the refugee crisis of 2015/16 in Germany and analyzing survey and socioeconomic data from 235 districts using linear regression analysis. The main finding is that differences in flexibility cannot be explained by the scope of the crisis in a district, but by organizational factors: Agencies with politically unconstrained leadership, with higher financial resources and more crisis-related experience, respond more flexible. These findings contribute to theorizing and explaining administrative flexibility in and beyond crisis management and have practical implications for crisis learning and preparation.

In the past decades, Germany was hit – in equal measure to other countries in Europe and beyond – by multiple transboundary and societal crises. We take stock of the ability of the German state to cope with the ensuing complexity in managing these exceptional situations. Conceptually, we apply a systemic perspective that asks about the resilience of the German state in the subsystems of policymaking in crises, implementation of administrative crisis management, as well as societal responses to crises. The paper draws on findings from a range of empirical studies assembled in this special issue, that focus either on the so-called refugee crisis of 2015/16 or the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020. Strikingly, the overall impression emerging from this research is generally favorable of the ability of the German politico-administrative system to master challenging crises – its resilience. But there are also areas for improvement.

In the past decades, Germany was hit - in equal measure to other countries in Europe and beyond - by multiple transboundary and societal crises. We take stock of the ability of the German state to cope with the ensuing complexity in managing these exceptional situations. Conceptually, we apply a systemic perspective that asks about the resilience of the German state in the subsystems of policymaking in crises, implementation of administrative crisis management, as well as societal responses to crises. The paper draws on findings from a range of empirical studies assembled in this special issue, that focus either on the so-called refugee crisis of 2015/16 or the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020. Strikingly, the overall impression emerging from this research is generally favorable of the ability of the German politico-administrative system to master challenging crises - its resilience. But there are also areas for improvement.