2013

Flavia Fossati, Activation policies in Western Europe: the multidimensionality of “novel” labour market strategies.

The first part of my PhD contributes to the scholarly debate on the question whether post-industrial economies give rise to novel social needs and how these are politicised at the elite level. Whilst several authors argue theoretically that the economic conflict is becoming multidimensional, I am actually able to demonstrate empirically that the conflict on labour market policy is structured according to two separate conflict lines. These concern generosity and redistribution on the one side and the specific activation type, i.e. human capital investment, work-first and occupational on the other side. In the second part of my PhD I analyse how labour market risks and individual value orientations - egalitarianism and equity in particular – determine attitudes towards active and passive labour market policies. I show that both values and risks, such as direct and indirect unemployment experience, low socioeconomic status and precarious employment, determine preferences for generous labour market instruments. Moreover, the results suggest that people with egalitarian values endorse unconditional activation strategies, whereas people convinced that the unemployed do not deserve help strongly support coercive activation types.

Nicole Greuter, Accountability without Election: The Attribution of Responsibility in the Financial Crisis 2007-2010.

In financial sector politics responsibilities are fragmented across elected and non-elected policy actors like central banks and supervisory agencies. The thesis analyzes if the media plays an essential part in disentangle the responsibilities and how institutional characteristics of policy actors and the political and media system they are embedded in, influences the attribution of responsibilities. The study contributes to the debate how the media handles non-elected policy actors and furthermore, if the media provides a potential accountability forum that offers an additional source of legitimacy for non-elected policy actors. The project develops a content-analysis instrument, in order to capture the responsibility attribution in the public sphere. In a comparative case study analysis the press coverage in Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland is under scrutiny (two newspapers per country, 958 articles, from June 2007 until October 2010). In the second part, the thesis analyzes if and how the elected and non-elected policy actors that are involved in financial market supervision redress a reputational loss by communicating to the public. The communication strategies used in the press releases of the Ministry of Finance, the supervisory agency and the central bank are scrutinized and compared within and across the three countries.

Karin Hasler, Accountability in the Metropolis: A media content analysis across European city regions.

Through the media, policy actors become accountable to the wider public not only in elections, but in the public sphere. By being a forum the media provide public accountability to society and thereby contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the political system. But what determines public accountability and is complex governance a problem to public accountability? Metropolitan areas are an example of such complex governance where citizens are subject to decisions by different political actors from different political orders. That is when the media’s role in pointing out who is to be held accountable and to whom responsibility can be attributed becomes crucial. Taken together I argue that legitimacy through political communication is constructed and that media and political system characteristics shape the way policy actors are held publicly accountable. A quantitative comparative investigation across European city regions based on content analysis of metropolitan newspapers is the framework for the analysis of public accountability.

Seraina Rüegger, Conflict Actors in Motion: Refugees, Rebels and Ethnic Groups.

This dissertation analyzes the mechanisms of how refugees trigger violence and thereby contributes to the knowledge of transnational conflict spread. The existing conflict literature has found a statistically significant correlation between civil conflict diffusion and refugees, but it fails to explain how refugees influence conflict. In contrast to previous research, the new theoretical approach to refugee-related conflict considers ethno-nationalist preferences of refugee groups and the population in the asylum country. I argue that sub-national refugee characteristics, such as ethnicity, are essential to understanding refugee movements. The three quantitative chapters analyze the direction of refugee movements, the relationship between refugees and the population in the receiving state and the relationship between refugees and insurgent groups. Although forced migrants are important actors in conflict diffusion processes, the results suggest that refugees only increase the risk of conflict when there are ethno-political tensions in the host state.

Bianca Sarbu, Control of the Oil Upstream Sector: Explaining Policy Choices across Oil Producing Countries.

Bianca Sarbu’s PhD thesis, “Control of the Oil Upstream Sector. Explaining Policy Choices across Oil Producing Countries”, forthcoming as a book publication with Taylor & Francis Group (May 2014), examines government decisions about how much control to exert over the petroleum industry, focusing on the role of National Oil Companies in the production of crude oil since the nationalizations in the 1970s. By bringing together three strands of literature (namely, the Nationalization/ Expropriation literature, the NOCs literature, and the Resource Curse literature), this dissertation proposes a revised analytical framework to explicate the varied policies pursued by producer states in their oil upstream sector (i.e., exploration and production of crude oil). Empirically, the thesis applies a mixed-method design which combines panel data analysis with two case studies from the Middle East region. This research is one of the first systematic scholarly endeavours to analyse the allocation of upstream control rights in oil producing countries globally.

Livia Schubiger, Repression and Mobilization in Civil War: The Consequences of State Violence for Wartime Collective Action.

My dissertation examines the consequences of indiscriminate state violence against civilians for subsequent patterns of wartime collective action. Challenging the standard conceptualization of civil wars as conflicts between two unitary actors with internally homogeneous and stable preferences, it theorizes how social processes within insurgent organizations as well as within civilian communities are affected by state violence, and how these dynamics relate to the macro level. Drawing on both `macro' and `micro' data and a combination of methodological tools for causal inference, the thesis demonstrates that indiscriminate state violence promotes the fragmentation of insurgent organizations and suggests an empirically supported critical role for insurgent institutions forging internal cohesion in moderating this effect. It further shows that indiscriminate state violence can promote not only pro- but also counterinsurgent mobilization at the local level and provides novel insight into the conditions and mechanisms through which this effect is achieved. Finally, it shows that indiscriminate state violence, while suppressing conflict activity in the short term, is ultimately deeply counterproductive.

Sebastian Schutte, Violence, Geography, and Mobilization: A Theory of Insurgency.

In my PhD research, I have developed an overarching model of how insurgencies unfold as a function of geography and the types of violence the actors apply. The research was guided by three central questions which were analyzed quantitatively. First, I analyzed the determinants of different types of violence applied in civil wars. Analyzing large samples of conflict events from 11 cases of insurgency, I am able to show that a simple distance-decay mechanism explains the types of violence used in civil wars surprisingly well: As the distance to their power centers increases, both insurgents and incumbents tend to apply more indiscriminate violence against enemy combatants and innocent bystanders. Second, I investigated how indiscriminate violence affects civilian loyalties and mobilization in civil wars. Based on an in-depth study of Afghanistan, I find that reactive collaboration with the adversary is the predominant consequence of indiscriminate violence in irregular wars. Third, I modeled how these analyzed micro-mechanisms of civil war scale to the macro-level. Drawing on a geo-referenced dataset that codes global population distributions, I find that population concentrations in either the center of the state or the periphery substantially affect outcomes and casualties in irregular civil wars.

Martin Stadelmann, The effectiveness of international climate finance in enabling low-carbon development: Comparing public finance and carbon markets. 

This thesis analyzes how effectively international climate finance has reduced greenhouse gas emissions in developing and emerging countries in the last 20 years. Empirical data is used from a market-based mechanism and a public finance channel under the climate regime. The study concludes that two interpretations of 'new and additional' climate finance can enable an increase in climate finance without diverting development assistance: 'above pre-defined projection of development assistance and climate finance' and 'from new sources'. Models of renewable energy diffusion suggest that the influence of international climate finance on the diffusion of renewable energy power is overestimated. However, climate finance may increase the likelihood of adopting renewable energy targets and framework policies. Finally, private finance mobilization has a positive influence on cost-effectiveness of climate finance. Still, maximizing private finance is not the most cost-effective strategy, as the public sector is a major investor in developing countries.

Theresa Tribaldos, Conflict and Cooperation over Domestic Water Resources in the Mediterranean, the Sahel Area, and the Middle East: Drivers and Structural Alternatives for Conflict-Reducing Management.

Dr. Theresa Tribaldos defended her PhD in July 2013. In her thesis, she focused on the drivers of domestic water-related conflict and cooperation in 35 Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Sahel countries. In the first part of her thesis, Theresa collaborated with a team of ETH and PRIO researchers within the CLICO project. This part included the setup of a new dataset on domestic water-related conflict and cooperation and an econometric analysis thereof. In the second part, she conducted case studies in Morocco, Portugal, and Israel where she investigated under which conditions institutions can facilitate water-related cooperation.
Theresa found that water-related cooperation prevails over water-related conflict and that violent conflict is extremely rare. Demand-side drivers are more influential in conflict-increasing effects while supply-side drivers are insignificant. Restraint factors have a cooperation-increasing effect and especially institutions which include specific mechanisms are suitable to effectively address conflict and support cooperation.

Manuel Vogt, Ethnic Mobilization, Equality and Conflict in Multi-ethnic States.

What are the effects of ethnic mobilization on ethnic equality and conflict? Most of the existing literature has seen ethnic mobilization as harmful to democracy and peace. In contrast, my dissertation argues that its effect depends on the type of multi-ethnic society at hand, distinguishing between “ranked” and “unranked” ethnic systems. Ranked systems are defined as countries characterized by the dominance of a European(-descendant) group over other groups perceived to be racially distinct. Unranked systems are based on other ethnic cleavages and characterized by more equal ethnic group relations without a historically determined hierarchy. The statistical analyses reveal that ethnic organizations increase the risk of ethnic dominance and violence in unranked systems. In contrast, in ranked systems, they increase the level of peaceful ethnic group protest only, while empowering historically marginalized groups. Four case studies based on field research reconstruct the mechanisms by which ethnic organizations influence equality and conflict.