Publikationsliste KOPS

We characterize intergenerational mobility in Germany using census data on educational attainment and parental income for 526,000 children. Motivated by Germany’s tracking system in secondary education, our measure of opportunity is the A-Level degree, a requirement for access to university. A 10 percentile increase in parental income rank is associated with a 5.2 percentage point increase in the A-Level share. This gradient remained unchanged for the birth cohorts 1980–1996, despite a large-scale expansion of upper secondary education. At the regional level, there exists substantial variation in mobility estimates. Local characteristics, rather than sorting patterns, account for most of these differences.

Most states publicly support the recognition of Indigenous rights. Nevertheless, their domestic policies to address Indigenous rights issues vary considerably across countries. So far, research has not committed itself to investigating the consequences of different Indigenous policies on the peoples concerned and their social status. Do policy contexts that accommodate Indigenous rights firmly contribute to status equality between Indigenous people and the ethnic majority? I study this question in the case of Norway and Sweden. These countries host one Indigenous people – the Sámi – but pursue diverging Indigenous policies. Using new survey data, I show that, despite the absence of material inequalities, there is a clear gap in the social status perceptions between Indigenous and majority respondents in Sweden. In Norway, I do not find that Sámi’s perception of their social position is lower than the majority's. The results suggest that the Swedish policies governing the recognition of Sámi rights are less effective in resolving unequal status perceptions.

Asylum recognition rates in advanced democracies differ not only across states but also vary within them, translating into fluctuating individual chances to obtain protection. Existing studies on the determinants of these regional inequities typically rely on aggregate data. Utilizing a German refugee survey and leveraging a quasi-natural experiment arising from state-based allocation rules tied to national dispersal policies, we test two explanations for the perplexing regional differences. Drawing on principal–agent models of administrative decision-making, we test whether asylum decision-makers consciously or unconsciously comply with regional political preferences between 2015 and 2017 in Germany, one of the major European destination countries for refugee migration. We furthermore explore whether such biased decision-making amplifies in times of organizational stress as suggested by the statistical discrimination theory. Using mixed-effects logistic regressions, our analyses confirm a lower approval probability in regions with more immigration-averse residents or governments. We cannot confirm, however, that this association is mediated by high workloads or large knowledge gaps. Our results thus suggest that regional political biases affect the individual chance of asylum-seekers to obtain protection irrespective of temporal administrative conditions.

he reality of street-level discretion can entail discrimination against people based on their identifiable characteristics. However, there has been surprisingly little systematic assessment of empirical evidence about what can be done to tackle the problem. This paper systematically reviews empirical behavioural research studies (N = 53) on the effects of interventions to reduce bureaucratic discrimination. Evidence shows that three types of interventions are reliably effective: outreach to and engagement with clients, anti-bias training, and passive representation. Inclusive practices can also reduce discrimination. These effects are however context-dependent, and causal mechanisms linking interventions with effects remain a ‘black box’.

Trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) relations between developing and developed countries can lead to ratcheting-up of labor standards. Past research, however, has relegated developing countries to a passive role in the global economy while simultaneously largely ignoring variation between developed countries’ degree of protection of labor rights. In this study, we consider FDI by developing countries into Europe and how it can lead to labor upgrading. We argue that the obligations to upgrade implied by Europe’s regulatory environment will pressure developing country firms with strategic asset-seeking FDI to upgrade their practices which can subsequently diffuse in their home countries. We tease out this specific mechanism from others through a comparative research design juxtaposing FDI into high standard social Europe and the relatively low standard United States for a panel of 122 developing countries in the period 2001–2010. Our analysis compares how FDI into each location affects both collective and individual labor rights, finding that FDI into “Social Europe" leads to the improvement of labor standards, particularly trade union rights and substantive rights relating to working conditions, while there is no such upgrading effect for FDI into the United States. These findings are robust to multiple specifications, including an innovative application of the measurement strategy in studies on trading-/investing-up effects. This research helps us to understand two underappreciated facets of this latest phase of globalization: the rise of developing countries as agents of global integration and how regulatory disparities between potential economic partners can affect labor upgrading in those same developing countries. Any weakening of the European social model should consider its external consequences.

This literature review investigates the effects of public opinion on political outcomes in democracies, focusing on Comparative Political Economy (CPE) research. Many CPE researchers expect that parties and governments respond to public policy preferences that are exogenous to the political process. This review first formalizes the common CPE argument and then derives an alternative theoretical perspective from political psychology and political communication research. The contrasting theory highlights the impreciseness and endogeneity of public opinion, wherein political elites actively shape public sentiment. Through a comparative analysis of these contrasting theoretical approaches, the review extracts insights that promise to enrich future CPE research. It also develops the fundamentals of a theory on the impact of public opinion on political outcomes, which suggests that public opinion can be seen as an “elastic corridor” that constrains the opportunity space of parties.

This paper studies how distributional and electoral concerns shape sovereign default incentives within a quantitative model of sovereign debt with heterogeneous agents and non-linear income taxation. The small open economy is characterized by a two-party system in which the left-wing party has a larger preference for redistribution than the right-wing party. Political turnover is the endogenous outcome of the electoral process. Fiscal policy faces a tradeoff: On the one hand, the government has incentives to finance its spending via external debt to avoid distortionary income taxation. On the other hand, the accumulation of external debt raises the cost of borrowing. Quantitative findings suggest that the left-wing party implements a more progressive income tax, is more prone to default, and has a lower electoral support than the right-wing party due to worse borrowing conditions and the distortionary effects of income taxation. In equilibrium, electoral uncertainty raises sovereign default risk.

In the present research we examine, first, the extent to which the Israeli public endorse wage-gaps between immigrants and comparable non-immigrant workers (employed in. identical low-wage jobs), and second, whether the endorsement of wage discrimination against immigrants is associated with immigrants’ characteristics. Data for the analysis were obtained from a representative sample of the Jewish population in Israel (N=600). We implemented a multifactorial survey experiment design including immigrants’ characteristics such as continent of origin, education, religion, and reason for migration. The experimental setup contained 252 vignettes. Vignette decks were randomly assigned to the respondents for evaluation of the fairness of the wage-gaps between immigrants and comparable non-immigrant workers. Analysis of the data leads to a twofold conclusion. First, justification of wage discrimination against immigrants is widespread. Second, justification of wage discrimination is influenced by immigrants’ characteristics, being most pronounced (even extreme) in the case of clearly defined “outgroup” populations (Muslims and Christians, asylum seekers and labor migrants) and least pronounced in the case of immigrants belonging to the dominant “in-group” population (Jews and repatriates). In addition, endorsement of discrimination tends to increase with respondents’ levels of prejudice, fear of cultural change, and economic threat. The findings and their meaning are discussed in light of theories on economic discrimination.

In the fight against climate change, the European Union has developed a new growth strategy to transform Europe into the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. To support EU member states in their transition towards greener economies, climate change mitigation policies are being implemented at the EU-level. However, such policies can be designed in different ways, and gaining citizens’ support is crucial for the political feasibility of the European green transition. Drawing on data from an original conjoint experiment conducted in Germany (N = 5,796), this article investigates how policy design shapes public support for EU climate change mitigation. To this end, the study theoretically and empirically distinguishes four policy dimensions that address the distributive politics of the European green transition: sectoral scope, social spending, financing structure and cross-country distribution. The results confirm that all four policy dimensions significantly impact public support. Specifically, the study reveals that support is greatest for EU policy packages that target financial support at the renewable energy sector, include social investment policies, are financed by increasing taxes on the rich, and distribute resources across EU member states based on population size. Furthermore, citizens’ sensitivity to the policy design varies slightly by income position, left-right ideology and climate attitudes.

In response to changing climatic conditions, people are increasingly likely to migrate. However, individual-level survey data reveal that people mainly state economic, social, or political reasons as the main drivers for their relocation decision–not environmental motives or climate change specifically. To shed light on this discrepancy, we distinguish between sudden-onset (e.g., floods and storms) and slow-onset (e.g., droughts and salinity) climatic changes and argue that the salience of environmental conditions in individuals’ migration decisions is shaped by the type of climate event experienced. Empirically, we combine individual-level surveys with geographic information on objective climatic changes in Vietnam and Kenya. The empirical evidence suggests that sudden-onset climate events make individuals more likely to link environmental conditions to their migration decision and, hence, to identify themselves as “environmental migrants.” Regression analyses support these results and are consistent with the view that slow-onset events tend to be linked with migration decisions that are more economically motivated.

Most states acknowledge the significance of Indigenous rights to rectify past injustices. Yet, on the domestic level, the realization of these rights depends on national policies. For democratic societies, questions about public opinion toward Indigenous policies are thus of great interest but remain largely unstudied. To what extent does the ethnic majority support policies conducive to Indigenous rights realization? And how different are the Indigenous population’s policy preferences? I use original experimental data from a vignette study to investigate these questions in the case of the Sámi people in Norway and Sweden. I hypothesize that groups’ attitudes are shaped by policies’ potential to alter the social status hierarchy between the majority and Indigenous populations. The results provide a nuanced picture. The ethnic majority shows significantly less support for policies facilitating Sámi linguistic, self-governance, and territorial rights. While the Sámi have, in general, more positive attitudes toward such policies, their support seems to be less pronounced than the majority’s resistance. Moreover, as attitudes are surprisingly similar when compared between Norway and Sweden, a country’s existing policy context does not appear to be crucial in the formation of these preferences.

Literatures on institutional, ideational and policy change have made great strides in dynamically conceptualizing agency within structure. What continues to be insufficiently understood, however, is how actors actually work with ideas, that is, how broad policy ideas become concrete and implementable. One concept that has gained some traction in understanding actors' application of ideas is bricolage, understood as the stabilization or changing of institutions through a creative recombination of existing ideational and institutional resources. We theorize bricolage as a process of working with ideas by testing their cognitive, normative and strategic capacity. In contrast to much of the existing literature, we theorize this ideational policy entrepreneurship as collective agency. This gives greater analytical weight to how different bricoleurs work together—simultaneously and across time—to develop the ideas that come to shape policy. The empirical relevance of the theoretical argument is corroborated with an analysis of the work of bricoleurs in the paradigm shift of German pension policy.

In this article, we analyze how European Union Politics has evolved over the last 25 years. Our analysis demonstrates that the goals the editorial team has pursued over this quarter century have only partly been reached. While the journal has helped to consolidate EU studies as a field of research in its own rights, several problems of representation persist in the journal and the social sciences in general. We identify besides the well-known gender gap that especially authors from the (European) South and East continue to be underrepresented in submitted and published articles. While less represented and successful at the submission stage, our results show that female scholars are more likely than male author teams to publish high-impact articles. Our findings indicate that studies of political behavior, broadly conceived, and articles using quantitative methods are well-represented. The article concludes with some remarks on how the journal might help to further professionalize the study of the EU in the coming years.