Suchergebnisse

AbstractInstitutional overlap emerges not only as an unintended by-product of purposive state action but also as its deliberate result. In two ways, this article expands existing research on the causes and consequences of institutional overlap. First, we establish that three different types of dissatisfaction may lead states to deliberately create institutional overlap: dissatisfaction with substantive norms and rules, dissatisfaction with decision-making rules and dissatisfaction with the institutional fit of an existing governance arrangement for a given cooperation problem. Each type of dissatisfaction triggers a distinct motivation for the creation of institutional overlap: to induce policy change, to increase influence on collective decision-making or to enhance governance effectiveness. Second, we demonstrate that whereas the motivation to induce policy change leads to interface conflicts, the motivations to increase influence on collective decision-making and to enhance governance effectiveness give rise to inter-institutional coordination. Three empirical case studies on global energy governance, the governance of global development banking and global environmental governance probe these analytical claims.

Gender equality-oriented policy-making adopts a complex attitude toward the role of fathers. While some branches of the legislative branches see the potential in engaging fathers in the household for promoting gender equality, others see the risk in men appropriating women's few sources of power. In this article, the subject positions given to men in the legislative process of the birth leave for fathers programme in Israel are examined. I show how, in accordance with this division, fathers are given two subject positions – that of the enemy and that of the ally. However, policy-makers fail to put fathers in the role of citizens, seeing them as entitled to rights based on their own status. This situation mirrors the citizenship of Israeli women, who are, in turn, limited to their motherhood. While the claim that fathers are not seen as citizens, and that their rights are not protected enough, might sound absurd, I claim that such a position is required in order to promote a radical change in the division of labour within the household.

Anti-refugee violence often accompanies refugee migration, but the factors that fuel or mitigate that violence remain poorly understood, including the common policy response in such settings of humanitarian aid. Existing theory and policy debates predict that aid to refugees exacerbates anti-refugee violence by increasing hosts' resentment toward refugees. In contrast, however, aid may reduce violence in ways such as increasing host communities' well-being through more demand for local goods and services and refugees sharing aid. We test for the sign and mechanisms of this relationship. Evidence from original survey data and a regression discontinuity design suggests that cash transfers to Syrian refugees in Lebanon did not increase anti-refugee violence, and if anything they reduced violence. Exploring why aid does not increase hostility, we find evidence that aid allows recipients to indirectly compensate locals through higher demand for local goods and services, directly benefit locals by offering help and sharing aid, and reduce contact with potential aggressors.

Abstract The Paris Agreement put adaptation prominently on the global climate action agenda. Despite a surge in research and praxis-based knowledge on adaptation, a critical policy roadblock is synthesizing and assessing this burgeoning evidence. We develop an approach to assess the multidimensional feasibility of adaptation options in a robust and transparent manner, providing direction for global climate policy and identifying knowledge gaps to further future climate research. The approach, which was tested in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C (SR1.5) to assess 23 adaptation options, is underpinned by a systematic review of recent literature, expert elicitation, and iterative peer review. It responds to the challenge of limited agreement on adaptation indicators, lack of fine-scale adaptation data, and challenges of assessing synergies and trade-offs with mitigation. The findings offer methodological insights into how future assessments such as the IPCC Assessment Report (AR) six and regional, national, and sectoral assessment exercises could assess adaptation feasibility and synthesize the growing body of knowledge on climate change adaptation.

Resolving Legal and Administrative Obstacles in the EU
Cross‑border Policy In the face of the crises in the European Union, it has become necessary to review the EU cohesion policy. This new approach can be seen in the recently introduced solutions, which are aimed at the development of cross‑border regions and the elimination of disproportions between them. However, they are not effective enough. Therefore, it is proposed to use further instruments in order to enforce changes in the legal and institutional environment in the regions. This idea is extended in the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in a cross‑border context, which enables a direct application of law of one member state in a cross‑border region of the neighbouring country. The functioning of such mechanism will be a test of the durability of European integration and at the same time will verify if the Polish legal and political system belongs to modern Europe.

This paper explores how the everyday practices of a workfare policy (the Public Work Scheme) are influenced by the concept of "normal life" and "normal labour" among the inhabitants of the small Hungarian former industrial town where I conducted my ethnographic fieldwork. The paper studies the changing roles and functions of the Public Work Scheme during and after the economic crisis. It presents how a typical workfarepolicy – in our case, the Public Work Scheme – shapes the life strategies of those people who live in precarity. I will argue that the public work scheme can be interpreted as a policy that aims to sustain the norm of stable and permanent wage labour during times when fulfilling these norms is very difficult. The article explores the role that the PWS has played in sustaining the norm of permanent wage labour, during and after the 2008 economic crisis, and how this process affects classed-based ethnic distinctions and the gender division of labour within the nuclear family.

This article presents a novel conceptual framework that uses the notion of knowledge sourcing to explain how firms realize benefits from R&D subsidies in terms of innovations. The study considers two dimensions of the firm's knowledge sourcing: its R&D effort and level of openness to technology markets. This article proposes that the policy-induced effects of R&D subsidies on the knowledge-sourcing process increase firms' innovation outcomes, thus making this policy intervention effective in promoting innovation. By using panel data from Spanish manufacturing firms, this article presents evidence consistent with the hypothesis that by changing the knowledge sourcing of firms, National R&D subsidy programs in Spain also favor more firm innovation, measured by patent applications and new product launches. It is also documented that the granting of R&D subsidies does not affect firm innovation directly but rather through inducing changes in the firm's R&D effort and openness to technology markets. JEL CLASSIFICATION: O32, O36, O38

The concept of vulnerability serves to focus protection on those most in need. While prominent in human rights law, protection of vulnerable groups is also increasingly invoked by international economic/financial actors such as the International Monetary Fund (imf). The present article explores how vulnerability enters imf policymaking. The article looks for points of contact of imf practice, with a human rights-based conception of vulnerability. The aim of the article is not to revisit the discussion on human rights accountability of the imf. Instead, the article seeks to identify and analyse the function of vulnerability in the policy-making of the Fund. The protection of vulnerable groups, the article claims, is gradually constituted as part of the law of the imf. For this reason alone, it is of importance to know how vulnerability enters imf policy-making and whom the imf considers vulnerable. Moreover, the imf also becomes a source for the identification of vulnerable groups.

AbstractThis article examines the extent to which short supply chains affect the structuration of agri‐food sectors economically and politically. To do so, it first presents a theoretical framework drawing on regulationist economics and constructivist political science which guides research to examine the entire range of actors, processes, institutions and power relations which structure agri‐food sectors. It then applies this framework to the case of foie gras in South‐West France to target the relationship between 'short' and 'long' supply chains. Based on thirty interviews with farmers and public officials, it finds that a commonly heard discourse that both chains 'complement each other' masks the political domination of 'the long' over 'the short'. Through tracing this domination across two policy issues, namely product labelling and 'biosecurity' hygiene measures, and the way actors have worked politically to deal with them, the article demonstrates that this power asymmetry has been the principal cause of policy outcomes and, therefore, institutional reproduction.

This article demonstrates how the Group of Twenty (G20) constituted a new G20 politics following the 2008–09 global financial crisis through practices of networked global economic governance. This increased the influence of actors other than officials from leading wealthy states, especially developing- and non-state actors, thus augmenting global governance inclusivity and decentralizing authority. The G20 became the principal hub of global economic governance by influencing and engaging with diverse stakeholders on its broad policy agenda. These networked-governance processes expanded aspects of multilateral cooperation, including transversal approaches to policy issues such as sustainable development. This analysis builds on recent literature on transnational actors, governance networks, and the G20; contributes to emerging constructivist literature on the normative significance of practices and social-relational processes in international relations; and includes a significant discourse-analytic focus on repoliticization and legitimizing discourses. This study indicates, in particular, the political and normative consequences of G20 inclusivity practices for integrating global governance networks.

AbstractThis article provides critical and analytical views on legal regulation to achieve a balance between FinTech innovation, risk prevention, and financial stability, by focusing on the trend of FinTech firms entering the financial-services industry and the associated regulatory and legal challenges that are already arising in China. It adopts a balanced approach as a theoretical-analysis perspective, weighing various considerations, and proposes the policy option of FinTech regulation under the principle of interest balance. The analysis aims to contribute new insights to an ongoing debate in China on the relationship between legal and regulatory reform, FinTech innovation, and risk prevention. This article argues that legal challenges, rather than technical problems, remain the key obstacles to effective FinTech regulation. Our proposed hypothesis seeks to explain how a legal regulation achieves balancing the competing interests between FinTech innovation, risk prevention, and financial stability in the booming of China's FinTech. Finally, this article proposes the implementation of goal-oriented responsive regulation by improving the legal framework of FinTech regulatory regimes through policy option.

This paper looks at the role of sociotechnical imaginaries surrounding the governance of the sharing economy in two different locations: Canada and United States. Policy makers are trying to tackle the sharing economy without potentially creating negative impact on innovation. While much of the recent discourse around the sharing economy portrays it negatively, early peer-to-peer digital platforms were envisioned as new pathways toward grassroots, inclusive, fair and low-impact economies (Schor, 2016). However Jasanoff & Kim argue that the evaluation of the positive and negative aspects of technological change have always been influenced by specific tacit or explicit political imaginations of nations in terms of how to power modern social life (Jasanoff & Kim, 2013, p. 190). Using a comparative approach, this paper analyzes these imaginations as they are expressed through policy reports and recommendations. The study shows that the sharing economy appears to be seeking a set of diverse imaginaries including new economic freedom, sustainable consumption, decentralized society, demise of social hierarchies and regulatory freedom.

In divided societies and new democracies, clientelism (in the form of pork barrel) and ethno-politics appear to go hand in hand. It is apparent that politicians are incentivized to compete for support within their own ethnic groups, but does an ethnic link between voters and decision-makers influence how voters perceive and evaluate pork barrel practices? To address this question, we conducted a survey experiment (n = 1200) in ethnically heterogeneous Slovakia. The aim was to examine whether pork barrel politics implemented by a Slovak decision-maker and a Hungarian decision-maker are evaluated differently by Slovaks and Hungarians. The findings suggest that when individuals and decision-makers share the same ethnicity, individuals tend to maintain an equally positive level of trust and willingness to vote for the responsible decision-maker, even when the decision-maker implements a policy decision that does not benefit them. Nonetheless, shared ethnicity does not prevent individuals from being critical of the implemented policy decision itself.

Abstract
The diplomatic history of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (dprk) is intrinsically tied to Cold War politics, often in the context of the Communist versus capitalist paradigm regarding competition with the Republic of Korea (rok). However, North Korea's actions outside of this scope were significant to understanding the full spectrum of its foreign policy of the Cold War era. This article explores the dprk's relationship with the Non-Aligned Movement in an attempt to shed light on this largely under-studied aspect. As arguably the most important institution for the Global South during the Cold War, North Korea hoped to influence its members into isolating the rok politically and diplomatically. However, while it remains a member to this day, North Korea's relevancy within the organization lasted for only a few short years. The following examination explores this phenomenon and argues that despite built-in advantages, North Korea's own policy decisions led to its demise among significant voices in the organization and failure to achieve even any part of its overall goal.

ABSTRACTHistorical research has turned in the last years more intensively toward entangled and transnational histories of biopolitics, the family, and the welfare state, but without renewed interest in aging and pension policy, a sphere of human experience that is often interrogated in parochial terms, if at all. An analysis of the culture and policies of old age in East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s shows the importance of a transnational history of this subject. The GDR, the Communist state with the greatest proportion of elderly citizens, needed to create a socialist model of aging. Neither the Communist tradition in Weimar Germany, nor the experience of the other states in the Communist bloc provided substantial guidance. East Germans looked instead for inspiration to West Germany, which was itself engaged in a debate about aging and pension policy. By grappling with the Western experience, including its perceived and real limitations, the GDR in the Ulbricht developed a vision of what it meant to age as a socialist.