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Institute
- Lehrstuhl für Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Wirtschafts- und Verkehrspolitik (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Andreas Knorr) (16)
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- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, insbesondere Europarecht und Völkerrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Weiß) (7)
- Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftliche Staatswissenschaften, insbesondere Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre und Finanzwissenschaft (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Gisela Färber) (5)
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- Lehrstuhl für vergleichende Verwaltungswissenschaft und Policy-Analyse (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Michael Bauer) (4)
- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, Staatslehre und Rechtsvergleichung (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Karl-Peter Sommermann) (4)
- Lehrstuhl für Öffentliches Recht, insbesondere deutsches und europäisches Verwaltungsrecht (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulrich Stelkens) (4)
- Seniorprofessur für Verwaltungswissenschaft, Politik und Recht im Bereich von Umwelt und Energie (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Eberhard Bohne) (4)
Legal acts performed by EU Member States applying Union law come within the scope of the Convention and can give rise to adjudication by the ECtHR. A long series of judgments illus-trate the ECtHR’s approach regarding the application of Union law by the courts of EU Mem-ber States. The Convention and Union law are not two autonomous systems separated by a watertight fence. Both European Courts should therefore adopt a wholistic approach in this area, because only a wholistic view takes full account of the legal reality which is one of inter-action and intertwining. The ECtHR makes abundant use of EU law sources, thereby always explicitly referring to them. Three different categories of cases can be identified in how the CJEU goes about the Convention in its case-law.
Persons who have been forced to leave their country of origin due of urgent threats to life and limb have a right to protection by their country of residence. This protection necessarily has to include social benefits ensuring an adequate standard of living. This article shows how the social rights of refugees and other forced migrants are regulated in European Union law.
Administrative justice and the rule of law have often been in tension. However, they have converged over time as the scope of administrative justice and the conceptions of the rule of law have shifted. This chapter starts with the historical connections between administrative justice and the rule of law. It then maps ways in which the rule of law is expressed when ad-ministrative justice is embedded within administrative organization and when it is organized as a system external to the administration. This approach highlights the diversity of technical solutions to recurring questions across three major administrative systems (namely England, France, and the United States). This analysis also leads to highlighting two new challenges for the rule of law: first, how the rule of law responds to various forms of increasing administra-tive repression, and second, how the rule of law responds to globalization at a time when no coherent global administrative justice system exists.
The Competence Centre Youth-Check’s brought together different actors in the field of Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) for young people in Berlin on 09 May 2022 in the International Conference “Regulatory Impact Assessment for the Young Generation”. In this documentation the ComYC presents the results of the conference.
This thesis explores the principles of administrative punishment under the European Con-vention of Human Rights (ECHR). Administrative punishment, for its part, is gaining popularity across European legal systems because it is a flexible, speedy and cost-efficient option. More precisely, it allows public authorities to inflict punishment without having to undergo a judi-cial action. The procedural safeguards that the concerned individual can expect are accor-dingly lower. However, whilst at the national and European Union levels the academic atten-tion grew in line with the gradual expansion of the use of administrative punishment, the same cannot be said regarding the legal framework of the Council of Europe (‘CoE’). Compre-hensive scholarly works on the subject matter are still missing and only a few authors are researching administrative sanctions within this framework more profoundly, i.e., in a cross-cutting manner.
This is regrettable because nowadays, one can speak of a rich and congruent body of admini-strative punishment under the CoE’s law. Not only has the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) admitted administrative sanctions within its remit since the famous Engel case in 1976, but it also interprets all relevant terms found in the letter of ECHR such as ‘criminal charge’, ‘penal procedure’, and ‘penalty’ autonomously and in harmony with one another. Autonomous interpretation of these key terms by using Engel criteria means that administra-tive sanctions can, and often are, put under scrutiny (as long as they bear ‘punitive’ and ‘de-terrent’ hallmarks). All in all, the following normative sources can be said to comprise the ius puniendi administrativus within the legal framework of the CoE: First, Article 6 ECHR, which ensures the procedural protection for administrative sanctioning by enshrining the right to a fair trial and its various components, i.e., by laying down a range of participatory and defence rights, as well as the possibility to have access to judicial review and the presumption of inno-cence. Secondly, Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 to the ECHR, which stipulates ne bis in idem prin-ciple precluding double jeopardy. Thirdly, Article 7 ECHR is essential in giving substantive pro-tection to the subject-matter, and lays down the requirement of legality including regulatory quality, non-retroactive application of administrative sanctions, and no punishment without personal liability. Finally, Recommendation No. R (91) 1 of the Committee of Ministers to the Members States on administrative sanctions of 13 February 1991 as a ‘soft’ yet authoritative legal act creates boundaries for acceptable administrative sanctioning. All of these normative sources form the backbone of the research.
This thesis intends to fill the aforementioned academic gap and contribute to the legal scho-larship. It furthermore aspires to be a useful source for practitioners working within the field of public law who are empowered to regulate on or impose administrative sanctions. For this reason, the following research questions are tackled: What is a sanction? What purposes does it serve in a legal system? What is an administrative sanction in particular? What are its role and idiosyncratic features? What aims does it follow? How can it be differentiated from other types of public admonition, i.e., from criminal law measures? How do the CoE and the ECtHR conceptualize an administrative sanction? What guarantees stipulated by the ECHR are applicable to these sanctions? To what extent do they apply? Are there any limitations? If so, then what are the implications thereof on the individual rights? Is the current level of pro-tection in the field of administrative punishment regarding fundamental rights sufficient?
The thesis has furthermore sought to verify the following hypothesis: “The ECtHR acknowled-ges certain minimum requirements stemming from the ECHR from which the administrative authorities imposing a punitive administrative measure upon the individual, cannot deviate”. The hypothesis was drafted similarly to the wording of Article 6 (3) ECHR, which, together with other paragraphs of this Article, enlists fundamental individual guarantees for (any kind of) punishment (“Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights […]”).
Two different States licensed exports of intrusion tools and related items to a third State. That State then used it to spy on human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, activists, opposition politicians, and dissidents. While one of the licensing States is a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement, the other is not but had declared to follow it unilaterally. The legal analysis considers the attribution of the relevant acts and omissions by the States and examines possible breaches of international export control law and international human rights law.
This chapter analyses the impact of the Internet and the shift in communication processes on the States’ obligations emerging from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It claims that the environment created by the Internet is different from the traditional one; that is, it substantially empowers a range of private actors such as social media and other Internet platforms. That is why in the light of the actual development of the ECHR’s standards, both the strict distinction between positive and negative State’s obligations, and an overall prefe-rence for the latter are anachronistic. This chapter claims that it is crucial to keep developing European minimal safeguards in horizontal online relations when human rights violation is a result of a State’s non-compliance with the positive duty. Against this backdrop, this chapter centers around the influence of the Internet on the exercise and protection of selected human rights and the changing nature of communication processes, as well as the game-changing shift caused by the growing power of private actors. It also includes a detailed analysis of the scope and content of positive State’s obligations emerging from the use of the Internet, focusing on substantive obligations (i.e., the legal framework and the allocation of responsibilities), as well as on the issue of the public guarantees for online pluralism and procedural obligations (the duty to provide responses to allegations concerning online ill-treatment inflicted by private individuals).
To contribute to the laudable objectives regarding Export Controls the EU – US Trade and Technology Council has set, a multi-disciplinary network of independent experts from research institutes, think tanks, and policy advisory bodies, has joined forces and drafted the following priorities for action.
A further elaboration of the actions recommended below will be performed by the members of this international network in the weeks and months to come, as Working Group 7 of the EU – US Trade and Technology Council will proceed in its work.
The landmark judgment in the case of Bivolaru and Moldovan v. France, which concerned the execution of a European arrest warrant, provides a good illustration of the effects of the Con-vention liability of EU Member States for their implementation of EU law. These effects touch on such notions as cooperation, trust, complementarity, autonomy and responsibility. The two European courts have been cooperating towards some convergence of the standards applicable to the handling of EAWs. The Bosphorus presumption and its application in Bivo-laru and Moldovan show the amount of trust placed by the Strasbourg Court in the EU pro-tection of fundamental rights in this area. To the extent that their standards of protection coincide, the Luxembourg and Strasbourg jurisdictions are complementary. However, the two protection systems remain autonomous, notably as regards the methodology applied to fundamental rights. Ultimately, the EU Member States engage their Convention responsibility for the execution by their domestic courts of any EAWs.
The picture regarding the protection of fundamental rights in Europe today increasingly looks like a patchwork, due to a lack of coordination at different levels. Developments reinforcing that picture include the emergence of different methodologies for the application of funda-mental rights, Constitution-based challenges to European law by national Supreme Courts, codifications of existing case-law and the creation of so-called « hybrid » institutions. The resulting complexity is a challenge for domestic courts, a threat to the confidence of citizens and detrimental to the fundamental rights themselves, their special role and authority being gradually eroded by a general relativism. EU-accession could have an anti-patchwork effect and represent a chance for a general coordination of fundamental rights in Europe. Beyond making the Convention binding upon the EU, it would also have a pan-European (re)structu-ring effect by confirming the Convention as the minimum benchmark providing both the bedrock and the framework for any other national or European fundamental rights as well as for the necessary judicial dialogue on the latter. Good progress has been achieved since the resumption of negotiations for EU-accession, justifying cautious optimism as to the possibility to find adequate solutions to the outstanding issues.
The notion of civil service in Europe: establishing an analytical framework for comparative study
(2022)
The aim of this paper is to create an analytical framework for comparative study (FÖV project “The Transformation of the Civil Service in Europe”). It explores the scope and denotation of the terms “civil service” and “civil servant”. Its main argument is that a comparative legal ana-lysis should distinguish the notions of public service and civil service. Public service concerns a type of professional activity related to the exercise of all public power (legislative, executive and judicial). Civil servants are officials employed by the executive; they have special duties and responsibilities and are often subject to specific requirements. The employment regime is not decisive for the status of civil servant, due to the fact that government officials in Europe are employed both under public or private (labour) law. Nonetheless, they should enjoy stability of employment and exercise their competencies on a regular basis, not ad hoc.
On the way to the customer
(2021)
The notices of Deutsche Rentenversicherung are changing their face. In order to ensure that everybody insured as well as pensioners can better understand the decisions of Deutsche Rentenversicherung, the notices are becoming more comprehensible, clearer and more personal. The poster presentation describes the journey of an interdisciplinary team of Deutsche Rentenversicherung and the most important milestones along the way.
For centuries, export control regulations have accompanied the development of new weapon technologies. The revelations of the ‘Pegasus Project’ have put the question of whether and how to regulate the export of the new technology ‘cyberweapons’ in the limelight: Is the current international export control law up to the challenge of sufficiently regulating the proliferation of ‘cyberweapons’ or does it need an update? To answer this question, the blog post will, first, turn to the definition and relevance of ‘cyberweapons’. Secondly, international export control law is introduced as a possible measure to mitigate the risks posed by ‘cyberweapons’ against the backdrop of regulating the use of ‘cyberweapons’ or establishing a moratorium on its trade. Third, the blog post will assess the export of ‘cyberweapons’ in general and the export of Pegasus in particular within the current international export control framework. The current framework seems to touch upon partial aspects of the trade with ‘cyberweapons’. However, it stands to fear that it is not up to the task of sufficiently curtailing the proliferation of ‘cyberweapons’ and the associated risks, as it especially leaves the underlying problem of the trade with zero-day vulnerabilities untouched.
It has become a truism that the Internet gives a range of private actors, such as social media, substantial power. They are thus able to control the communication processes, hold considerable authority over shaping opinions, and become the arbiters of free speech. That is why legal scholars and policymakers are searching for legal tools that would ensure a fair balance between the conflicting rights of these two groups of private actors (platforms and their users).
The aim of this presentation would be to reconsider the relationship between individuals and online platforms, analyze how horizontal online conflicts may be resolved (giving examples of some national legislation and EU proposal concerning digital services), and answer the question if the discretion of the platforms can be limited in order to protect rights and freedoms. The theoretical framework of the analysis would be the doctrine of the State’s positive obligations, as established in the current European Court of Human Rights case law.
The main argument would be that it is necessary to strengthen the public supervision over Internet platforms, in particular the way they resolve horizontal conflicts. The possibility of limiting their discretion, in order to provide individual protection, does not mean however creating the unlimited right of access to the platform in order to express any opinion or view (freedom of forum).
The hybrid EPPO structure is operating under a hybrid set of fundamental rights, thus calling into question the well-established principle of the single set of norms applicable throughout criminal proceedings. Moreover, the system is characterized by a distortion of the commonly applied logical link between liability for violations of fundamental rights and control over the actions entailing those violations. EU Member States risk being held accountable under the Convention for actions on behalf of the EPPO which they did not fully control and which were subject to a different corpus of fundamental rights. The EU, for its part, takes the risk of seeing EPPO prosecutions being invalidated by domestic courts applying a Convention protection level which may be higher than the Union level. The only way to minimize the impact of these distortions is for the EU to become a Contracting Party to the Convention, along with its own Member States. This would do away with the ambivalence of the legal framework characterizing the protection of fundamental rights under the EPPO Regulation. It would also contribute to a better implementation of the principles of the rule of law and procedural fairness, advocated by the Regulation itself. Such a move would seem all the more important in light of the fact that if the EPPO proves successful, its competence might be extended in the future to other areas.
Electoral disinformation has become one of the most challenging problems for democratic states. All of them are facing the phenomenon of - both online and offline - dissemination of false information during pre-electoral period, which is harmful for individual and collective rights. As a consequence, some European countries adopted special measures, including summary judicial proceedings in order to declare that information or materials used in elec-tioneering are false and to prohibit its further dissemination. There are already three rulings of the ECtHR concerning this expeditious judicial examination provided in the Polish law. In December 2018 France passed complex regulation against manipulation of information that include similar mechanisms. This article, basing on the ECtHR’s case law and some national experiences, attempts to define the minimal European standard for measures targeted at electoral disinformation, especially judicial summary proceeding. It contains the analysis of the notion of electoral disinformation, defines the state’s positive obligations in this sphere, and indicates mayor challenges for the legal framework. The principal argument is that summary judicial proceedings – if adequately designed – cannot be questioned from the Convention standpoint and provide a partial solution to the problem of electoral dis-information.
The lecture explains how some of the well-established institutions of constitutional law are being questioned. It explains also how the experience of the XX-century atrocities and the emergence of the authoritarian regimes in Europe impacted on the State Theory, Political Science and Constitutionalism.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and its consequences constitute a veritable capacity test for the European Union, challenging not only the single Member States, but also the European Union’s ability to provide policy responses that address pandemic control as a union-wide “public good” in different dimensions related to inter alia public health, but also the freedom of movement or the single market.
Against this backdrop, this article attempts to take stock of the Union’s early reactions to the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. After a brief introduction, we reflect on crisis manage-ment theories, power distribution in the EU, and the EU’s institutionalised crisis reaction capacity. Subsequently, crisis reaction in selected policy areas in the European Union is analysed, before we finish with a concluding section. We find some evidence for the pace-making function of the Franco-German tandem in the form of informal, decentralised action, as well as for a relative weak performance of institutionalised crisis management mecha-nisms on the EU level, but instead a centralisation towards the centre in the form of the European Commission.
After the invocation of security exceptions became more common, the first panel report ever on how to apply them has recently been issued in the Russia – Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit case. While this panel addressed the application of the security exception in a situation of threat to international peace and security, the question must be raised whether its approach also applies to the invocation of security exceptions for economic reasons. In this context, the present chapter focuses on the methodical preliminaries to applying security exceptions: Its application in WTO dispute settlement does not only prompt the question of the jurisdiction of WTO panels and the Appellate Body, but also pertains to the issues of standard of proof and standard of review. A related methodical issue concerns the feasibility of the expansive interpretive approach applied to the general exceptions to the security exception. Reading it in the same tune runs the risk of nullifying the concept of multilateral trade regulation altogether, even more so as the security exceptions miss the usual safeguard against abuse, i.e. the requirements of the general exceptions´ chapeau. The lack of such safety valve confirms that security exceptions are of a different character compared to other exceptions. This difference, however, may be difficult to maintain if security exceptions are also used to defend economic security interests. Finally, the application of security exceptions may - as debated with regard to other WTO exceptions - be subject to an inherent limitation against exterritorial application, which would restrain its scope of application in cases in which security measures against a third country intend to affect also the trade of WTO members, and could become relevant in assessing US sanctions against Iran.
This chapter identifies the most pressing challenges for the EU multilaterally oriented trade policy due to the changing global context for international trade and investment, caused by the shift of the US towards unilateralism and protectionism and by the re-orientation of China´s exceptionalism towards becoming a more influential actor. It explores and assesses how EU trade policy copes with the new polarities and finally formulates proposals for the way forward for the EU multilateral trade policy. It will be shown that the current challenges are more fundamental in character and may last longer than currently anticipated. It will also highlight that maintaining unity in the EU determination of trade policy is of pivotal importance for addressing the challenges, which however might become more difficult.
Mixed agreements have been a preferred form of entering into international treaties chosen by the EU and its Member States, despite the complexities their usage implies. Recent attempts of the EU institutions to prefer the conclusion of EU only agreements to mixed agreements, as a consequence of the broad interpretation of EU exclusive trade competences by the CJEU in Opinion 2/15 are motivated by the hope for increased efficiency in EU treaty making. They, however, provoke criticism with regard to democratic legitimacy and the EU principle of conferral, which constrain the EU to adopt only those legal acts for which it is competent. As this criticism is particularly strong in Germany and led to constitutional challenges of EU only acts, the present contribution will explain the treatment of mixed agreements in the constitutional order of Germany and explore the constitutional challenges that EU only agreements pose to the German constitutional order. This discussion will thus show the German legal order’s continued preference for mixed agreements, in view of the jurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). Those constitutional challenges are particularly topical in view of the most recent case law of the CJEU that stressed the political leeway of the EU Council to choose, when it comes to the negotiation and conclusion of EU agreements based on shard competences, between either an EU only agreement or a mixed agreement. This political leeway turns mixity into a facultative endeavour in the hands of the Council. Under the constitutional perceptions of the FCC, such type of facultative mixity meets with considerable constitutional concerns because it replaces what was formerly held obligatory mixity.
The present contribution analyses the Opinion 1/17 of the CJEU on CETA, which, in a surprisingly uncritical view of conceivable conflicts between the competences of the CETA Investment Tribunal on the one hand and those of the CJEU on the other hand, did not raise any objections. In first reactions, this opinion was welcomed as an extension of the EU's room for manoeuvre in investment protection. The investment court system under CETA, however, is only compatible with EU law to a certain extent, which the Court made clear in the text of the opinion, and the restrictions are likely to confine the leeway for EU external contractual relations. Due to their fundamental importance, these restrictions, derived by the CJEU from the autonomy of the Union legal order form the core subject of this contribution. In what follows, the new emphasis in the CETA opinion on the external autonomy of Union law will be analyzed first (II). Subsequently, the considerations of the CJEU on the delimitation of its competences from those of the CETA Tribunal will be critically examined. The rather superficial analysis of the CJEU in the CETA opinion is in contrast to its approach in earlier decisions as it misjudges problems and therefore only superficially leads to a clear delimitation of competences (III.). An exploration of the last part of the CJEU's autonomy analysis will follow, in which the CJEU tries to respond to the criticism of regulatory chill (IV). Here, by referring to the unhindered operation of the EU institutions in accordance with their constitutional framework, the CJEU identifies the new restrictions for investment protection mechanisms just mentioned, which takes back the previous comprehensive affirmation of jurisdiction of the CETA Tribunal in one point and which raises many questions about its concrete significance, consequence, and scope of application.
As WTO members increasingly invoke security exceptions and the first panel report insofar was issued in Russia-Traffic in Transit, the methodical and procedural preliminaries of their adjudication must be reassessed. The preliminaries pertain to justiciability and to the proper interpretive approach for their vague terms that seemingly imply considerable discretion to WTO members, all the more as general exceptions are subject to expansive interpretation. Reading security exceptions expansively appears not viable as they miss the usual safeguard against abuse (i.e. the chapeau of Arts XX GATT/XIV GATS). This lack of safeguards rather suggests caution in conceptualising them expansively, as do the systemic consequences of recent attempts to re-politicise security exceptions which run the risk of nullifying the concept of multilateral trade regulation altogether. Furthermore, the appropriate standards of review and proof must be explored which have to strike a balance between control and deference in national security.
Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) is already being employed to make critical legal decisions in many countries all over the world. The use of AI in decision-making is a widely debated issue due to allegations of bias, opacity, and lack of accountability. For many, algorithmic decision-making seems obscure, inscrutable, or virtually dystopic. Like in Kafka’s The Trial, the decision-makers are anonymous and cannot be challenged in a discursive manner. This article addresses the question of how AI technology can be used for legal decisionmaking and decision-support without appearing Kafkaesque.
First, two types of machine learning algorithms are outlined: both Decision Trees and Artificial Neural Networks are commonly used in decision-making software. The real-world use of those technologies is shown on a few examples. Three types of use-cases are identified, depending on how directly humans are influenced by the decision. To establish criteria for evaluating the use of AI in decision-making, machine ethics, the theory of procedural justice, the rule of law, and the principles of due process are consulted. Subsequently, transparency, fairness, accountability, the right to be heard and the right to notice, as well as dignity and respect are discussed. Furthermore, possible safeguards and potential solutions to tackle existing problems are presented. In conclusion, AI rendering decisions on humans does not have to be Kafkaesque. Many solutions and approaches offer possibilities to not only ameliorate the downsides of current AI technologies, but to enrich and enhance the legal system.
The article focuses on the legal aspects of intergenerational solidarity in the German statutory pension system. Organised on a pay-as-you-go basis, it relies on a balance of those obliged to pay contributions vs. those who receive benefits. The footing of this system, however, becomes fragile in times of rising life expectancy and declining birth rates: fewer employees will have to finance the pension rights of a growing number of pensioners. These developments do not only lead to lower acceptance of the “intergenerational contract” by the economically active who have to invest a large share of their income in the financing of current pensions while facing the risk of receiving low payments in the future. It also raises questions of intergenerational justice.
Water Management and Modernization of the Water Sector in Syria, Considering the German Experience
(2019)
Water plays an essential role in human life as well as in various sectors of the economy, it is a strategic and crucial factor for achieving social and economic development and supporting ecological systems. However, the world's water resources are exposed to considerable and continuing pressure since the water use rate has increased twice as quickly as the rate of population growth during the 20th century, which led to malfunctions in the balance between renewable and available water resources and the growing demand for water.
Therefore, the issue of water is the main challenge to humans in the 21st century. Particularly affected by water scarcity is the Middle East, where the availability of water is less than 1,700 m3 per capita per year. This dissertation focuses on the Syrian water sector, considering both aspects of administrative modernization and stakeholder approaches for ensuring the creation of an enabling environment capable of improving water management in Syria. The central goal of this research is to introduce a set of institutional, legislative and economic measures that can be used to rationalize and maintain the water resources in Syria to apply Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Quantitative and qualitative data and methods were scrutinized to provide an overview of the status and problems of the water sector, as well as perspectives for innovative water management and corresponding modernization policies in Syria.
The thesis tackled the research questions defining the main challenges of the Syrian water sector and examining its existing enabling environment as well as its suitability for achieving sustainable water resources management. Furthermore, the study evaluated the existing
governance regime and the institutional framework of the Syrian water sector, checked the availability, and estimated the degree of application of its management instruments. The research also examined the ongoing process of development and financing of waterinfrastructure and finally estimated the overall impact of water resources management in Syria on economic, social, and environmental aspects. Finally, the study provides optimized recommendations and potential solutions for the development of the Syrian water sector according to the IWRM paradigm.
National immigration policies increasingly meet with fierce political resistance from lower levels of government, in particular municipalities. Amongst industrialized countries, the USA and Germany are probably the most extreme examples. In the USA, a growing numbers of subnational entities, including some of the country’s largest cities, openly refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. In retaliation, the Trump administrations has threatened several of these so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ to claim back past and to withdraw further federal funding from a number of jointly funded programs. Several court cases in this matter are pending. In stark contrast, an increasing number of German municipalities – labelled by the author as ‘non-sanctuary cities’ - have sought from their respective state governments a formal limitation of migration inflows into their territory, citing an overload on critical local administrative and not least housing resources. This paper contributes to the pertinent literature on multi-level governance in the area of immigration, first, by applying the economic theory of fiscal federalism to identify the theoretically appropriate level of government for defining and enforcing immigration policy. Second, the phenomenon of ‘sanctuary cities’ vs. ‘non-sanctuary cities’ and their potential impact on the design and enforcement of national immigration policies will be analyzed.
Administrative sanctions can be said to dwell in the periphery of punishment because they do not require setting the wheels of criminal procedure in motion. This allows States to save public resources as well as helps them to escape closer scrutiny at the judicial level. At the same time, the imposition of administrative sanctions usually curtails individual guarantees. Against this background, this article examines where the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) draws the line between measures belonging to the ‘hard core of criminal law’ and the periphery. After a presentation of gradual broadening of the ‘criminal limb’ guarantees of Article 6 European Convention on Human Rights to administrative measure of a punitive nature, it explores where do these guarantees meet their limits by taking the approach adopted in the landmark Jussila judgment as a point of departure. Subsequently, a structured analysis of the selected ECtHR case law in which this approach has been applied or – at least – invoked is provided. The article is finished with a reflection on the current interpretation of the said penumbra of punishment, which, among other things, identifies the possible gaps of individual protection, and the outlook for the future.
Felicity Thomas (ed.), Handbook of Migration and Health. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016
(2018)
Since the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ with its enormous increase in the number of persons seeking asylum in EU Member States in 2015, migration law has left its niche and gained broader attention in the scientific community and brought about a wide range of new literature on many aspects of migration...
The European Commission presented, in its White Paper on the Future of Europe, scenarios on the future of the EU in 2025, which prompt the question as to their meaning for the future of EU administrative law. This article explores the implications of the scenarios for the future of EU executive rulemaking and its constitutional consequences. As some scenarios imply a more powerful political role of the Commission, and almost all expand the scope and usage of executive rulemaking, the executive power gains induce the need for more distinct constitutional guidelines for executive rulemaking and for strengthened parliamentary control, to preserve the institutional power balance between legislative and executive rulemaking. The analysis develops proposals insofar and demands respect for constitutional barriers already enshrined in EU primary law but not sufficiently addressed yet in institutional practice.
Forming Civil Servants
(2018)
In recent years, partner countries of German development cooperation have voiced a growing interest in German public administration education. Against this background, we provide a systematic assessment of the system of public administration education – covering the vocational education and training (VET) program for the intermediate civil service, and the (dual) study program for the higher intermediate civil service. We identify elements of success within the German system and evaluate their relevance for an idea transfer to partner countries. Thereby, we identify four promising elements for partner countries: recruitment, „dualizing“ civil service training, institutionalizing fitness for transformation, and introducing a modularized concept. For each element we specify components and describe their potential benefits, basic conditions, and core ideas for exporting the element.
Article 6(2) TEU provides that the EU shall accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the EU accession project has been significantly delayed by Opinion 2/13 of the ECJ. At the same time, there appears to be some harmony in the case law of the two European Courts, which could lead to the status quo being considered as a valid alternative to EU accession. It might therefore be tempting to remove Article 6(2) altogether from the TEU at the next revision of the Treaties. This paper argues that Article 6(2) should stay in the TEU, because a closer look reveals that the current status quo is not satisfactory: it does not allow an adequate representation of the EU in the procedure before the European Court of Human Rights, nor is it capable of ensuring in the long-term comprehensive and stable consistency between EU law and the Convention. Moreover, removing Article 6(2) TEU would undermine the very idea of a collective understanding and enforcement of fundamental rights. This could initiate a process leading to the current European architecture of fundamental rights protection being unravelled altogether. Hence, there is no return from Article 6(2) TEU. Neither is there from actually implementing it.
Swissair's Collapse
(2003)
This paper proposes a theoretical concept that is appropriate to analyse and understand the role of the government bureaucracy in transposing European Union law. The theoretical concept is based on the assumption that both formal and informal structures of bureaucratic organisations have an impact on public decision making behaviour. On the basis of two recent theoretical approaches that will enable us to analyse both structural and informal features of government bureaucracies, namely the policy capacity concept and the administrative styles concept, I will propose a theoretical concept that combines elements of both
approaches within one concept. The concept enables us ta analyse and understand the role of public administrations at the stage of implementation of public policies and derive hypotheses on the influence of administrative patterns of policy-making on transposing European Union law at the Member State level.
The paper is part of my PhD-project "Financial Regulation and the Implementation of EU directives in the European Union Member States", which examines the administrative procedures at the Member State level in the transposition of directives. The theoretical concept presented is supposed to help us analyse and
understand the impact of the government bureaucracy on the transposition of EU directives, especially with regard to the customisation of EU directives.
Higher education in both Germany and the UK has undergone numerous changes in the last two decades. It seems worthwhile to examine how varying forms of HE governance and pan-European influences have played out upon these two national systems. Of note in particular are Bologna, European Standards and Guidelines in Quality Assurance, and various accreditation regulations. In this article we postulate to what extent these two systems may or may not be able to move forward in the imminent future. Is German higher education, for example, becoming more autonomous if it can display its own systems of quality control are working well (system-accreditation)? Has British higher education relinquished autonomy, as both research and teaching domains are subject to external review (REF/TEF)? What can we learn about the transformational impact any of these mechanisms are having? This chapter adresses these issues and asks which benefits or disadvantages are to be gained by different systems in article.
From today's viewpoint it seems almost inconceivable that there once was a time where academia functioned without peer review processes, which are now so much part and parcel of the academic environment. Peer review is mainly taken for granted and we assume that it generally works well in estimating the worth of academic outputs of differents kinds (publications, grant proposals etc.) However, the process itself is not free of criticism and much can still be done to improve review quality. In this paper I explore and question the purpose and function of peer review, engage with various problems that can occur in the process, and make suggestions for ways in which peer review might be improved. It is based on empirical research, participation in various peer review forms and observation of accreditation practice.
Research question For the past decades, significant changes have been observed in Higher Education policy across Europe affecting the role and organizational culture of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This resulted in a change of relationships and responsibilities among academics and university managers. The purpose of the research is to study organizational transformation of universities, examine similarities and differences of organizational „archetypes“ of universities, describe and compare internal quality assessment at universities and determine its impact on organizational development. The research will also explore how current university governance models ensure university autonomy and academic freedom and put forward the interests of key stakeholders. The main research question is: What is the impact of internal quality assessment on organizational transformation of university? The study will provide a comparative analysis of cases studies at German and Georgian universities. Theoretical framework The research will look at the theoretical framework of constructing university as an organization and its implementation in practice describing the shift from state-centered governance to self-governance, autonomy and academic freedom. As part of the theoretical framework three main aspects regarding construction of organizations: identity, hierarchy and rationality will be taken into account. (Brunsson and Sahlin-Anderson, 2000, De Boer, Enders and Leisyte, 2007). While analyzing transformation in universities as in organizations, it is important to consider the concept of an ‘organizational saga,’ which is interpreted as „a collective understanding of unique accomplishment in a formally established group” (Clark, 1972, p. 178). The study will also take into account Clark’s triangle of coordination initiated in 1983 describing three modes of coordinating „or controlling behavior in academic institutions: state regulation; professional self-regulation, which Clark termed ‚the academic oligarchy;’ and market forces.” (Dill, 2007). The research will rely on EUA’s definition of “quality culture” as “referring to an organisational culture characterised by a cultural/psychological element on the one hand, and a structural/managerial element on the other.” (Loukkola & Zhang, 2010, p. 9). The literature offers wide interpretation of quality assurance, the project will mainly consider Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) that define standards and procedures for external and internal quality assurance. The study will also look to what extent quality culture as part of the organizational culture shares elements and values such as leadership, communication, participation and commitment. It will consider the extensive place of the role of communication in organizational transformation and in establishing effective organizational culture. Methods The study will offer a comparative analysis of university transformation in Germany and Georgia drawing on literature analysis on the topic, interviews with key actors in four selected case study higher education institutions as well as document analysis. Literature Review, theoretical framework and a first pilot case study results will be presented for the conference. Results In the study I will argue that there is a close interdependence between organizational transformation and quality assessment/quality culture. Internal quality assurance has a significant impact on development of conceptual framework and key aspects of a university as an organization.
After 25 years of transformations of higher education systems in Post-Soviet countries, the single Soviet model of higher education has evolved into fifteen unique national systems, shaped by economic, cultural, and political forces, both national and global (Johnstone and Bain 2002). International agencies such as the World Bank and the OECD have lobbied for certain policies, while the Bologna Process has created isomorphic pressures, many post-soviet countries have yielded to albeit with different motivations and unclear outcomes (Tomusk, 2011). Comparative research on these developments, however, is scarce and has primarily discussed them in terms of decentralization, marketization and institutional autonomy (Heyneman 2010; Silova, 2011). My PhD thesis conducted between 2014 and 2017 at the University of Leipzig and the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), has reconstructed the developments in terms of driving forces and path dependencies at national, regional and global level have promoted convergence and divergence in the governance of higher education in post-Soviet higher education space, studying in detail the three Post-Soviet, non-EU Bologna signatory states Russia, Moldova and Kazakhstan. Drawing on work by Becher & Kogan (1992), Clark (1983), Jongbloed (2003), Paradeise (2009); Hood (2004); Dill (2010) and Dobbins et al. (2011), the research has conceptualized and analyzed the governance of higher education systems by analyzing change actor roles, power, structures and processes in four areas: 1. Educational Standards, quality assessment, and information provision; 2. Regulation of admissions to higher education; 3. Institutional structures, decision-making and autonomy; 4. Higher education financing and incentive structures. Explanatory approaches draw upon perspectives of path dependence and models of institutional change drawing on work by North (1990), Steinmo (1992), Weick (1976), Pierson (2000) and Witte (2006). The study rests on the one hand on extensive literature analysis of previous academic publications, reports by international organizations such as the World Bank, OECD, and the EU, national strategy papers. Furthermore, over 60 semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with representatives of State organizations, HEIs and other stakeholder groups engaged in the governance of higher education. The outcomes of interviews were used to situate developments in the particular social-political and societal contexts and to triangulate policy documents with various stakeholder perspectives, in order to reconstruct how and why certain policy changes came about, were implemented or abandoned. The results show a differentiated picture: Powerful ministerial control over HEIs remains everywhere, but the means are changing. While in Moldova the political volatility and underfunding have all but made substantial reforms impossible, Russia and Kazakhstan have adopted governance and management practices from New Public Management in idiosyncratic ways. While Kazakhstan has embarked on an authoritarian-driven decentralization program, Russia has created a two-tier system of state steering through financial incentivization and evaluation on the one hand, and tight oversight, control and intervention on the other.
Learning from history?
(2018)
Hochschulen sind geschichtsbewusste Institutionen. Doch anders als noch im 19. Jahrhundert kann die akademische Erinnerungskultur heute keine ungebrochene Feier von Kontinuität, des Stolzes auf große Wissenschaftler oder der Idee einer selbstbewussten Korporation mehr sein. Diese Form der Erinnerung setzte primär auf Traditionspflege. Sie ist unter Druck geraten, zum einen durch die Desaster des 20. Jahrhunderts und die Verstrickung der Hochschulen darin, zum anderen durch eine erhebliche Professionalisierung der Hochschulgeschichtsschreibung. Infolgedessen ist die deutsche Hochschulgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts oft in besonders geringer Weise dazu geeignet, hochschulische Institutionengeschichte als Erzählung eines fortwährenden Aufstiegs der jeweiligen Einrichtung zu konstruieren. Damit müssen Hochschulen heute umgehen können, was ihnen jedoch recht uneinheitlich gelingt – erkennbar z.B. an der unterschiedlich ausgeprägten Souveränität, mit der auf zeitgeschichtsbezogene Skandalisierungen hochschulgeschichtlicher Tatbestände reagiert wird. Zugrunde liegt dem eine eher erratische Beschäftigung mit der je eigenen Zeitgeschichte. Für diese gibt es Gründe: • Hochschulen lassen zwar organisationspolitisch eine intensive Befassung mit ihrer Zeitgeschichte erwarten: Auf diesem Wege ist Legitimation zu gewinnen, können Jubiläen aufgewertet werden und kann Havarien in der Kommunikation mit der Öffentlichkeit vorgebeugt werden. • Doch organisationspraktisch überwiegen die Gründe dafür, dass intensivere Befassungen mit der eigenen Zeitgeschichte eher unerwartbar sinWissenschaftsfreiheit, individuelle Autonomie, mangelnde Durchgriffsmöglichkeiten von Hochschulleitungen, Konflikte um Ressourcen, Planungsresistenz und unsystematisches Entscheidungsverhalten – all das steht dem entgegen. Dies lässt sich auf Basis einer empirischen Untersuchung aller 54 ostdeutschen Hochschulen – eben jenen Hochschulen, die aufgrund ihrer DDR-Geschichte unter besonderer Beobachtung des Umgangs mit ihrer Zeitgeschichte stehen – nachvollziehbar machen. Dabei erfolgt hier eine Konzentration auf die Hochschulanlagen, also die Gebäude und Campusensembles, da in und auf diesen im alltäglichen Vollzug von Forschung und Lehre die Geschichte im wörtlichen Sinne präsent ist. Das betrifft zum einen die architektonischen Zeugnisse der DDR in Gestalt von Hochschulgebäuden und -anlagen, die zum großen Teil auch als Repräsentationsobjekte angelegt waren, sowie deren überkommene künstlerische Beschriftungen durch Wandbilder und -mosaike, Plastiken und Installationen. Zum anderen betrifft es nach 1989 errichtete oder angebrachte Denkmale und Gedenkzeichen als Zeugnisse der oder/und Aufforderungen zur historischen Reflexion. In der pflegenden Erhaltung überkommener Zeugnisse, der Abwahl von als unwürdig Bewertetem und der Errichtung neuer zeichenhafter Artefakte konstruieren die Hochschulen ihr Gedächtnis, indem sie aus den objektiven Abläufen der Vergangenheit Gedächtniswürdiges auswählen. Die vorzustellende Bestandsaufnahme zeigt, wie sich die ostdeutschen Hochschulen mit ihrer DDR-Geschichte im Raum auseinandersetzen, illustriert dies an diesbezüglichen exemplarischen Konflikten und setzt dies ins Verhältnis zum Umgang mit Zeugnissen aus der NS-Periode. Die empirischen Grundlagen ermöglichen hierbei sowohl quantitativ gestützte Begründungen als auch qualitative Deutungen. Sie führen zur Identifikation von drei Zugangsweisen, die Hochschulen im Umgang mit ihrer Zeitgeschichte wählen: • Geschichtsabstinenz • Geschichte als Tradition und Geschichtspolitik als Hochschulmarketing • Geschichte als Aufarbeitung und Selbstaufklärung Anhand dessen lassen sich zum einen die spezifische Vorstellung von der Institution Hochschule, die – gegen überwältigende empirische Befunde – spezifische demokratische Widerstandspotenziale in der akademischen Kultur und Organisation vermutet, und zum anderen der Topos vom „Lernen aus der Geschichte“ prüfen.
Student Space Control
(2018)
The role of the city changed within the knowledge economy. Knowledge has become the most important resource of urban prosperity and universities are considered the hope of city development (Van Winden 2009). Previous research has elaborated various dimensions in which universities interact with their home cities (or regions). They refer to economic impacts (e.g. Behr 2004; Florida 2006; Van Winden 2007; Gabe 2012), differ between forms of the spatial and structural integration of the university into the area (e.g. Larkham 2000; Kunzmann 2004; Gerhard 2012) or focus on social impacts of universities in the urban environment (e.g. Chatterton 1999; Sage et al. 2011; Smith 2004; Smith/Hubbard 2014; Gerhard, Hoelscher & Wilson 2017). All of these rely on a specific concept of space. However, they are lacking the neutral consideration of a fundamental factor of city development in university towns: students as urban agents (Russo/Tatjer 2007). Students constitute a considerable part of the population in university cities. As such, they need to play a key role in the analysis of the urban space. Drawing on a systematic literature review (Machi & McEvoy 2016), it is shown within this presentation that whenever students are subject to urban studies, either their role is conceptualized with a negative connotation (‘Studentification’: most important Smith 2004, 2008) or mainly depicted as leading to urban devaluation. As a counter draft to the prevailing approaches, the concept of ‘Student Urbanity’ (Steinmueller 2015) is introduced as an unbiased approach to the analysis of students as a source of urban processes of change. Using official (urban) statistics as well as observations and maps, the presentation highlights the results of a comparative case study, which exploratively tested this model in the cities of Heidelberg (Germany) and Montpellier (France) (Steinmüller 2015). Starting with the identification of distribution patterns of students’ residences, urban areas with a significantly high share of them are analysed with regard to the following research questions: - Which (social-)structural and spatial characteristics can be observed in these areas? - How do the students shape the urban space and infrastructure within the detected areas? - Which tendencies of revaluation respectively devaluation emerge from this influence? The presentation makes an empirical case for ‘Student Urbanity’ showing the relations between urban space and university with regard to students as agents of the development. It concludes with the discussion of this new student role as potential sources of reurbanisation as well as urban inequalities.
Campus design and estate management: concepts and challenges from an international perspective
(2018)
The university is an ancient and successful concept which, until very recently, has usually been associated with a particular locus, e. g. at a single, fairly homogenous site, or as a collection of buildings in a town or city built over time. Some institutions have been planned in their entirety from predominantly one architectural drawing board (e.g. University of Lausanne at Dorigny), others have started out as a small idea (e.g. the first college quadrangle in Oxford) and have since grown to become something quite different from the original, e.g.in Oxford there are now over 40 colleges, Science Park, university hospitals etc. Architectural trends have also played their part in university construction e.g. neo-Gothic (19th century), Brutalist (20th century) or the German Marburg University building system of the 1960s, which was emulated by many other institutions. Irrespective of style, university buildings are loaded with meaning and yet we frequently take them for granted and do not consider how they might impact on our capacity to learn and teach. It is only when we are disturbed by construction work that we are irritated into taking any real notice of our physical environment. Yet subliminally we are undoubtedly affected by our surroundings, which are not fixed, but change to become objects of “(re)interpretation, narration and representation […]” (Gieryn, 2002, p.35). This is a sense-making process as we negotiate how to act within them (Weick, 1995). Buildings impact on our well-being and how we thrive, which should be of key importance to the academic world in which creativity and innovation are of such importance (Marmot, in Temple (ed.) 2014). When higher education estate fails, and there are many examples of this, it is as much “a failure of psychology as of design” (de Botton, 2006/2014, p. 248). However, we do not have much data on the processes and ideas behind the creation (or adaptation) of higher education estate (cf. Bligh, in Temple (ed.) 2014). This research therefore asks the following questions: How do those who make decisions about higher education buildings take psychological well-being, or learning capability into account? Do they make compromises on the quality of materials? How do different countries and their university leaders address and govern the processes behind the creation and management of higher education estate of various types and age? What are current trends and challenges to higher education estate? Employing a constructivist perspective, this ongoing international research examines notions of value, care and identity (Tse et al, 2015) and analyses how an institution’s strategic capacity and organisational capability impacts on how estate is managed (cf. Thoenig & Paradeise, 2016). It uses case studies (Yin, 6th ed., 2018) from different institutional types in Great Britain, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and China which have been selected according to a strategic capacity model. Alongside documentary research and online data-gathering, interviews onsite have been conducted with a range of stakeholders, including leaders, planners, faculty and students. The research aims to theorise how an important and costly part of university administration is being managed in the context of today’s teaching and learning needs.
Although the Council of Europe has been working in the area of administrative law for decades, the body of pan-European general principles of good administration developed by this organisation remains mostly uncharted. This paper attempts to help fill this academic gap by examining the scope and content of the pan-European principles of administrative law stemming from the Council of Europe, with a special emphasis on the principle of good administration. In doing so, the sources of administrative law of the Council of Europe are considered together with the mechanisms by which they penetrate and permeate domestic legal systems. This paper concludes that the work done by the Council of Europe in the administrative field has contributed to a process of harmonisation in its Member States’ domestic law, but that the exact scope thereof has yet to be uncovered and requires further research.
Provided for under the Treaty of Lisbon, the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights is destined to be a landmark in European
legal history because it will finally make it possible for individuals and undertakings
to apply to the European Court of Human Rights for review of the acts of European
Union institutions. After nearly three years of negotiations, a draft agreement on European
Union accession was adopted on 5 April 2013. In the light of the draft agreement,
this publication offers a concise analysis of the reasons for European Union accession to the Convention, the means by which this is to be achieved and the effects it will have.
Protocol No. 16 and EU Law
(2015)
Protocol No. 16 will allow the highest courts of the Contracting States to the European Convention on Human Rights Convention to request an advisory opinion from the European Court of Human Rights on "questions of principle relating to the interpretation or application of the rights and freedoms defined in the
Convention or the protocols thereto". However, in its Opinion 2/13, the Court of Justice of the European Union expressed reservations in respect of that Protocol. The article analyses those reservations and looks for ways to dispell them.
This article offers an in-depth analysis of the relationship between European law and the
case-law born of the European Convention. The author addresses the tension between
the drive for legal certainty and the need to expand fundamental rights. By offering an
overview of the legal reality that this tension has created, the author seeks to find the balance
between needless plurality and rigid certainty. Through this overview, the author argues
that the promotion of fundamental rights must be organised along lines of harmony and
not of uniformity. To do this, he offers a detailed analysis of the respective approaches
to the detention of asylum seekers and to the privilege against self-incrimination. The
article thus traces the increasingly inter-referential nature of Strasbourg and Luxembourg
jurisprudence, arguing that this trend has the potential to promote fundamental rights, as
long as the jurisdiction of human rights’ legislation is significantly expanded. The author
goes on to discuss the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, looking at the ways in which
it grew out of jurisprudence from both legal systems and how this cross-pollination may
change the expansion of fundamental rights in a wider sense.
untitled document
(2012)
National Report Germany
(2009)
This book has a collection of 30 pieces of research results of Chinese and German experts, scholars and government officials. They are catego-rized into four sections:
1. Introduction and analysis of the current situation of Sino-German ad-ministrative systems, such as experimental units of counties directly under the management of provincial governments in the progress of China's urbanization, comparison of the Sino-German intergovernmen-tal jurisdiction division, history of the German administrative regions and local finance of Germany etc.;
2. Sino-German challenges faced by the administrative systems, such as challenges of reform of counties directly under the management of provincial governments in China, urban-rural imbalance in the progress of modernization of Germany and impacts of population change on lo-cal administration management.;
3. Sino-German exploration and experience in administrative reform, such as experience and inspiration of the administrative hierarchy reform of Hainan, China, efficiency and expectation of strategies of “urban-rural integration” in Chengdu, China, inter-municipal cooperation in Germa-ny – design and limits of shared service, multilevel function refor-mation of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany;
4. Sino-German strategies of administrative reforms under the financial crisis, such as influences of economic and financial crisis on German administration, strategies of China's urban-rural integration and opti-mization of longitudinal administrative levels under financial crisis, promotion of equivalence of public services with fiscal balance.
Party Time in Brussels
(2005)
Vortrag auf einer Konferenz des American Institute for Contemporary German Studies am 24.6.1996 in Washington, D.C.
This article outlines the his tory of several attempts to increase salaries and pensions of members of the German Bundestag in the early I990s. It shows the unethical tactics used by parliamentarians and the way in which public information was in part consciously designed to mislead. It is argued that Bundestag members tend to form a political cartel when decisions concerning their salaries and pensions are made. Similiar tendencies can be observed in all parliamentary decisions involving party finance, providing support for Katz and Mairs thesis that 'catch-all' parties are generally being replaced by 'cartel parties'. Having analysed the issues involved, the article calls for greater accountability and responsibility on the part of German politicians when their own personal advantage is at issue.
This Paper examines three case studies of “reform excellence” by analysing an online-survey conducted amongst the key actors from three nominee cities of the European Public Sector Award in 2009 and 2011, namely Bilbao (Spain), Mannheim (Germany), and Tampere (Finland). The focus of the survey was the city reform ap-proach as a whole and especially HRM reform approaches.
The methodology of experiments has been slow to garner a following in public administration (PA), a scientific discipline that exhibits a high degree of methodological conservatism over time (Perry 2012). Our re-view takes stock of the experimental research agenda so far. Examining all articles that appeared between 1990 and 2013 in the fifteen most cited journals in the field of ‘Public Administration’, we analyze the range of experimental PA research with regards to their coverage of ex-perimental methods and research designs applied, but also with a view to their contribution to the development of an experimental research agenda. Based on the finding that PA not only experiences a general dearth of experimental research, but also a limited scope with regard to the variety of experimental designs and research questions tackled, we assess the potential benefits from that methodological advancement and outline approaches for prospective research.
This paper constitutes a first didactic foray into the research project 'Property Tax as Financing Instrument of Megacities in BRICS states'. It assesses the property tax system of the BRICS states with consideration for how property taxes should be designed and used. In addition, a model to assess the efficiency with whi the property tax is appleid will be developed. This model will later be used to conduct an assessment of the property taces of the BRICS states' megacities.
The present paper examines the implications of the crisis in Italy by focusing on the reform of the labour marked adopted in June 2012. The aim is to analyse the reform as a particular step in the (re-)production fo hegemony in the Italian context. Drawing on the Cultural Political Economy approach, the paper investigates the interplay of discursive an material factors at the basis fo the economic imaginaries put forward by the reform. Main prelimanary findings point out some major discrepancies between the declared economic imaginaries with their attached objects of interventions and the effective changes introduced by the reform. As a result, despite the large hegemonic consensus achieved on the principles and priorities of the reform, both the interests of the capital and the labour fraction turn out to be disappointed by its outcome.
Population ageing is likely to have a long-lasting negative impact on
the financial sustainability of European pension systems. As a reaction
to this, some European nations have adopted automatic adjustment
mechanisms that connect the amount of starting pensions to the development
of demographic and economic factors, such as life expectancy
and the old-age dependency ratio. Lacking such measures,
other countries account for the financial problems of their public payas-
you-go pension schemes by ad hoc amendments to their national
legislation.
This paper provides empirical evidence that national legislation
linking life expectancy at retirement age and the level of old-age pensions
attenuates opposition against reforms seeking increases to the
statutory retirement age. Using multinomial logit models fitted on individual-
level survey data, I analyze the probability that individuals accept
a potential increase in retirement age among respondents in the Czech
Republic, Poland and Slovakia. The results show that national institutional
contexts explicitly binding pensions to the development of life
expectancy attenuate opposition against a potential increase in the
statutory retirement age.
The implications of the study are of particular importance for policy-
makers looking to resolve the problem of constantly increasing oldage
dependency ratios in Europe. This requires the application of an
incentive structure that increases the acceptability of later withdrawal
from the labour market. Analyzing survey data from the late 2000s,
this study demonstrates that an explicit attachment between the level
of starting pensions and life expectancy at retirement age is particularly
useful in motivating longer working careers when life expectancy
is on the rise.
For several decades public entereprises have been criticised for their poor economic performance. Many economists take it as "conventional wisdom" that publicly owned enterprises are inefficient by their very nature. This seemed to be proved by what is probably the most cited survey worldwide, that was written by Megginson and Netter (2001). They claim: "Research now supports the proposition that privately owned firms are more efficient and more profitable than otherwise-comparable state-owned Firms" (p. 380). The objective of this paper is to question the proposition that public enterprises ar necessarily less efficient as their private counterparts. In doing so, we argue that profits are not a reasonable performance measure for public enterprises. However, our main focus is to present a much more comprehensive review of the empirical evidence than was provided by Megginson and Netter. The evidence indicates that theses authors' conclusions were biased in favour of privatization despite the evidence indicating that the true pictures is much more differentiated.