Publikationsliste KOPS

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dc.contributor.author: Manatschal, Anita; Wisthaler, Verena

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Using the Panel of Social Inequalities in Catalonia, Spain (PaD 2001–2012), this article investigates the relationship between perceptions of economic conditions and subjective well-being in times of prosperity and economic crisis. It also analyses how this relationship plays out across different social backgrounds. Periods of economic crisis and prosperity serve as a proxy for objective macroeconomic conditions. The Spanish region of Catalonia is a relevant setting because it faced one of the highest increases in inequality and unemployment in Europe as a result of the 2008 Economic Crisis. Our results show that perceived economic conditions matter beyond objective micro and macroeconomic realm and become a strong determinant of subjective well-being during a crisis, particularly for the middle class. However, contrary to our initial expectations, our results also show the existence of a close correlation between perceptions of economic conditions and subjective well-being for low social background individuals in times of economic prosperity, and an even stronger relationship in times of economic crisis. The article stipulates several potential explanations for these results.

The quantitative evidence on whether extractive industries generate economic wealth at the local level is far from conclusive. In line with recent studies highlighting the moderating role of institutions and governance structures in the resource–development nexus, we argue that the effect of mining on local economic well-being is largely driven by different control rights regimes. We claim that domestic mineral production stimulates local income more than internationally controlled extraction, since national mining companies promote more backward economic linkages and have higher incentives to engage in local capacity building. To test our micro-level arguments, we combine information on districts’ economic well-being as well as individual's assessments of their personal economic situation with our own dataset on the control rights of copper, gold, and diamond mines. Relying on these data, we perform district- and individual-level analyses of sub-Saharan Africa covering the period from 1997 to 2015. Our instrumental variable estimations and fixed effects models show that the presence of domestic mining companies is associated with increased local wealth. Multinational firms, by contrast, are linked to increased regional unemployment. They largely fail to promote subnational economic well-being.

This article studies local processes of policy feedback by analysing citizens’ fairness perceptions of public childcare fees in a German town. Employing an experimental vignette study, we uncover complex feedback effects: first, citizens in the study regard a fee level as fair that is close to the actual fee level in the city, suggesting self-reinforcing feedback effects. Second, citizens strongly support a fee structure in which fees vary according to parental income. As this preferred fee structure differs from the local fee structure in the town itself, we interpret the citizens’ preference as evidence for self-undermining policy feedback. Finally, the actual characteristics of the respondents matter less than the fictitious characteristics of the parents in the vignettes, which points to the importance of interpretive rather than resource-based feedback effects. In concluding, we highlight the relevance of these findings for broader debates about policy feedback.

There is a difference between who brings in income, who spends and manages money, and who finally benefits. All these aspects are important in determining how satisfied spouses are with their individual financial situation. Relying on Swiss Household Panel (SHP) data from 2004 to 2013 (N = 1,810 couples), this assumption is tested by analyzing how women’s relative income and the management of economic resources within couples affect women’s and men’s financial satisfaction in the household. Results show that a change in the composition of total income in favor of women directly increases their financial satisfaction and net of household income, while men’s financial satisfaction increases up to the point at which women earn more than one third of the total income. Money management regimes serve as an important additional tool in creating and compensating for (dis) advantage between partners. The results are discussed in the context of traditional gender norms in the Swiss Society.

A growing body of research has studied how autocratic regimes interfere with internet communication to contain challenges to their rule. In this review article, we survey the literature and identify the most important directions and challenges for future research. We structure our review along different network layers, each of which provides particular ways of governmental influence and control. While current research has made much progress in understanding individual digital tactics, we argue that there is still a need for theoretical development and empirical progress. First, we need a more comprehensive understanding of how particular tactics fit into an overall digital strategy, but also how they interact with traditional, “offline” means of autocratic politics, such as cooptation or repression. Second, we discuss a number of challenges that empirical research needs to address, such as the effectiveness of digital tactics, the problem of attribution, and the tool dependence of existing research.

Referendums and initiatives have long been described as deliberatively deficient and unfit to implement deliberative democracy. Categorized as aggregative mechanisms, they would undermine quality deliberation by setting predefined policy options to potentially polarizing mass votes, with no room for face-to-face exchange nor opportunities for citizens to develop informed judgments. Recent developments in deliberative democratic theory increasingly challenge this view. This article builds on this literature to argue that referendums and initiatives can serve deliberative systems by incentivising representatives to engage in recursive representation – namely, conversation-like exchange at the mass level with the represented deemed essential to deliberative systems. They do so by modifying the formal opportunity structure of representative actors, which impacts them in popular vote campaigns – but also over the long term. Acknowledging these long-term effects of systems including referendums and initiatives opens new questions that can guide further research on these processes’ value for deliberative democracy.

Sollten die Ausgaben der gesetzlichen Kranken- und der sozialen Pflegeversicherung langfristig stark steigen, werden sowohl die jüngere Generation durch höhere Beiträge als auch die Älteren durch mögliche Leistungseinschränkungen belastet. Auf Grundlage einer neueren nichtparametrischen Schätzung wird eine Simulation der zukünftigen Entwicklung der Beitragssätze in den beiden Zweigen der deutschen Sozialversicherung vorgestellt. Abhängig von verschiedenen Annahmen über das künftige Wachstum des BIP pro Arbeitnehmer ergibt sich dabei ein Gesamtsozialversicherungsbeitragssatz bis 2040 von nahe 50 %. Damit ist die Tragfähigkeit des deutschen Sozialversicherungssystems stark gefährdet.

Recent years have seen a revival of debates about the role of business and the sources of business power in postindustrial political economies. Scholarly accounts commonly distinguish between structural sources of business power, connected to its privileged position in capitalist economies, and instrumental sources, related to direct forms of lobbying by business actors. The authors argue that this distinction overlooks an important third source of business power, which they conceptualize as institutional business power. Institutional business power results when state actors delegate public functions to private business actors. Over time, through policy feedback and lock-in effects, institutional business power contributes to an asymmetrical dependence of the state on the continued commitment of private business actors. This article elaborates the theoretical argument behind this claim, providing empirical examples of growing institutional business power in education in Germany, Sweden, and the United States.

The handling of the 2008 financial crisis has reinforced the conviction that the European Union (EU) is undemocratic and that member states are forced to delegate overwhelming power to a supranational technocracy. However, European countries have engaged with this alleged power drift differently, with only a few member states demanding more parliamentary scrutiny of EU institutions. This article develops a political economy explanation for why only some states have enforced mechanisms to monitor the EU more closely. Our theory focuses on the role of the crisis and the impact of fiscal autonomy in countries outside and inside currency arrangements such as the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). We argue that, in the aftermath of a severe economic shock, member states outside the EMU possess more monetary and fiscal resources to handle the crisis. These would then demand oversight of EU decision-making if their fiscal sustainability depends on the Union. By contrast, Eurozone states that need policy changes cannot address the crisis independently or initiate reforms to scrutinize the EU. Hence, we argue that during the heated moments of severe economic downturns, parliaments in Eurozone countries discuss supranational supervision rarely. As these legislatures have nevertheless to give in to the popular demand for EU control, they express support for more EU supervision in the infrequent times of debate. We provide evidence for our theory with a cross-national analysis of EU oversight institutions, and a new original dataset of parliamentary debates during the Eurozone crisis. Our findings highlight the political consequences that financial nosedives have across the diverse membership of a supranational organization.

The past and arguably the future of the European Union (EU) are characterized by Differentiated Integration (DI). Whereas a number of studies examine country variance in the realization of DI due to state-level characteristics, scholars have rarely addressed sector-specific differentiation. We select Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for such an analysis – the policy domain with the largest budget, most contestation in the Council of Ministers, most redistribution, and most differentiated legal acts. Building on liberal intergovernmentalism, we develop a demand and supply model to explain the number of opt-outs a country realizes in CAP legislation. We hypothesize that the member states’ demand for differentiation is driven by agricultural lobbyism and by the political receptiveness of governments; the supply-side is driven by member states’ voting or bargaining power; and the realized differentiations are a consequence of the interaction of demand and supply. Using all differentiations in new CAP legal acts from 1993 to 2012, we test these hypotheses in a time-series cross-section design. We find that the domestic level of agricultural protectionism, conservative parties in government and voting power are robust predictors of the realization of differentiation in CAP. Our results support the general claim of liberal intergovernmentalism, that domestic societal and economic interests and political bargaining power shape the course of (differentiated) integration.