Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (18)
- Public lecture (16)
- Part of a Book (5)
- Report (2)
- Working Paper (2)
- Review (1)
Language
- English (44) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (44)
The German Environment Agency has developed a guide in English to provide a concise introduction to the German environmental administration for an international readership. The guide is divided into five sections: After the introduction in Section 1, Section 2 introduces the wide range of subjects related to environmental protection in Germany. This is followed by Section 3, which describes the array of instruments the German environmental administration uses in pursuing its goals. The administrative structure in the Federal Republic of Germany, especially the division of tasks between the federal level, the level of the (Bundes-)Länder (federal states) and the local-level are explained in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 provides examples of important procedures and instruments in administrative environmental protection.
This article asks how and why United Nations organizations reform their administrative structure and processes over time. It explores whether we can observe a convergence towards a coherent administrative model in the United Nations system. Like in most nation states, reform discussions according to models like New Public Management or post-New Public Management have permeated international public administrations. Against this background, the question of administrative convergence discussed for national administra-tive systems also arises for United Nations international public administrations. On the one hand, similar challenges, common reform ‘fashions’ and an increasing exchange within the United Nations system make convergence likely. Yet, on the other hand, distinct tasks, administrative styles and path dependencies might support divergent reform trajectories. This question of convergence is addressed by measuring the frequency, direction and rationales for reforms, using a sample of four international public administrations from the United Nations’ specialized agencies (the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank). We find that conver-gence depends on the area of reform (human resources or organizational matters are more harmonized than others) and time (some international public administrations are faster or earlier than others).
Public officials have been shown to discriminate against citizens based on race and gender. We suggest that bureaucrats also discriminate based on political beliefs that citizens reveal to them. We support this argument with evidence from the application of freedom of assembly rights in the context of gay marriage. We confront German city administrations with requests about the organization of a political rally and randomize the underlying political belief and cause: the promotion of or opposition to same-sex marriage. We find that none of these causes receives discriminatory treatment per se. Instead, further explorative, yet theory-guided, analysis indicates that the cultural and political environment within which bureaucracies are embedded determines which of the two requests receives worse and less helpful answers. I.e. the treatment effect seems to be moderated by the local prevalence of Catholicism and the strength of sexually conservative political parties that oppose same-sex marriage.
Academia and practitioners agree that the local level is crucial for EU cohesion. However, further conceptual and empirical development is needed. The paper introduces an under-standing of European cohesion consisting of a horizontal and a vertical dimension, covering individuals' relationships with each other and the polity. We review the predominantly nation-state-focused, interdisciplinary literature on support for the European Union (vertical dimension) and societal Europeanization (horizontal dimension) through a 'local lens', arguing in favour of combining the two dimensions in one framework of cohesion. We derive empirical expectations about the role of local agency for European cohesion and operationa-lise European cohesion, thus designing a coherent framework for analysing the local foundations of European cohesion.