Constellation Of Institutions Research Articles

Apples and oranges? A multi-level approach explaining social acceptance of renewable energy in Germany and Australia

Existing research in renewable energy transitions largely seeks to identify success factors needed to improve planning, formulate policy transfer options and enhance the social acceptance of renewable energy, yet lacks in context specificity and assumes static institutional settings. In this paper, we explore institutional factors that promote or hinder energy transitions, employing an institutionalist approach to connect changes in formal and informal institutions at state, regional and local levels. In doing so we intend to create an understanding of the impact of specific institutional constellations that set the framework for defining social acceptance. The analysis of the diffusion of photovoltaic systems in two municipalities in Germany and Australia points to the different energy paths taken by the two countries. By contrasting two differing energy systems, we are able to deduce the evolution of institutional settings (market-based or government-funded mechanisms) that help explain social acceptance. Furthermore, the findings of the multi-level approach offer insight into how changes can have an impact locally but also how the local setting is affected by national policies and market dynamics.

Does local ownership bring about effectiveness? The case of a transnational advocacy network

In international development, shared ownership is assumed to be a condition for effectiveness. Academic studies question this relation, claiming shared ownership can instead lead to ineffectiveness. This study analysed the interplay between ownership and effectiveness in a transnational advocacy network for conflict prevention observed 2012–2015. Building on recent discussions about balancing unity and diversity in networks, this article unpacks the ownership/effectiveness relationship into three dimensions: collective identity, accountability processes and a shared advocacy message. We find that the question is not about more or less effectiveness, but about the processes shaping the meaning of effectiveness in particular institutional constellations.

Hegel's social and political philosophy: Recent debates

AbstractThis article discusses three topics that have been the subject of debate in recent scholarship on Hegel's social and political philosophy: first, the relevance of Hegel's systematic metaphysics for interpreting Hegel's social and political writings; second, the relation between recognition (Anerkennung), social institutions, and rational agency; and third, the connection between the constellation of institutions and norms that Hegel calls “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit) and Hegel's theory of freedom. This article provides a critical overview of the positions in these three debates. In the case of the first debate, I clarify the conceptual terrain by distinguishing between several kinds of systematicity that are at issue. In the case of the second debate, I argue that the views of two of the major participants, Axel Honneth and Robert Pippin, are in fact compatible. In the case of the third debate, I seek to clarify the connection in Hegel between two different ideas of freedom in ethical life, each of which has been emphasized by different interpreters of Hegel: the idea of freedom as non‐alienation and the idea of freedom as social freedom. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which ethical life, for Hegel, enables the freedom of individuals.

Attori, spazi e saperi della riforma sociale durante la Grande guerra

Provides a prosopographical analysis of the Italian government Committee for the study of the social and welfare legislation («Commissione Rava» 1918). In particular, this research highlights the historical significance of Administrative Science as a kind of knowledge on social reform and underlines the level of cooperation between profoundly diverse political cultures in their attempt to tackle the «social question». Furthermore, it focuses on the constellation of political elites, scholars, journals, cities and State institutions that, between the 1880s and the First World War, created a space for reform entangled with a network of relationships.

Formal versus traditional institutions: evidence from Ghana

ABSTRACTCitizens in Ghana have a host of options when it comes to local governance provision as a result of the government’s decentralization policies. We undertake to explore and understand how Ghanaians navigate the constellation of local institutions, both formal and traditional, to solve an array of common problems. A four-constituency survey was administered during the summer of 2009 and asked respondents about their experiences interacting with four formal institutions and one traditional institution. We find that formal institutions are by and large working effectively and are enhanced by the presence of a traditional institution. We consider the implications of our results with respect to both democratization and decentralization.

Rechtswissenschaft, Geschichte und die institutionelle Natur des Rechts

Abstract In this paper, I argue that history deserves a more central place in jurisprudential thinking. The argument rests on an understanding of law as having a fundamental institutional dimension, as well as being a product of social power and interests. Since law realises itself in terms of intersecting institutional arrangements and since these change over time, institutional history is central to the very idea of law which jurisprudence aspires to illuminate. The argument is pursued through a case study in special jurisprudence: an analysis of the trajectory of ideas of criminal responsibility in English law since the 18th century. While a broad family resemblance among ideas of responsibility in different eras can be identified, the variations on those ideas, and their relative importance and impact, depend fundamentally on historically contingent constellations of ideas, institutions and interests.

Persuasion and Coercion: Therapeutic Landscapes of the Early National Period

Philadelphia’s first insane asylums offer a useful starting point for considering the relationships among theory and practice among a vast constellation of penal, educational, and social-welfare institutions. Each institutional type was created for a very specific regimen of treatment and a specific population, but they shared common architectural forms and a common spatial imagination, or sense of the relationships among people and their environments. The juxtaposition of insane asylums to their relatives in recovery reveals that despite their relatively simple plans and theoretical rationales, these spaces engendered complexities and contradictions that were not evident at first view. Moreover, the same spatial imagination that shaped these familiar institutions also underpinned disparate kinds of spaces that might equally well be called “therapeutic.” Most striking among them was the evangelical camp meeting, a spatial and religious type introduced to the United States at the same time as the insane asylum. Here a spatial imagination similar to the one that shaped formal institutions produced a very different landscape, but one, like the therapeutic institutions, devoted to destroying an older, faulty self and generating a new one.

Sweet and Bitter: Sugarcane Expansion in Northern Luzon, The Philippines, and Aceh, Indonesia, 2006–13

This chapter aims to understand the complex process of investment and land deal making through the in-depth study of three cases of sugar cane investment in the Philippines and Indonesia. It focuses on three different trajectories of sugar cane schemes—one in northern Luzon, the Philippines, and two in Aceh, Indonesia. By means of a processual approach, the chapter identifies critical junctures—defined as crucial moments of dealmaking and interactions in which relations among actors are renegotiated—at which the investments took decisive turns. These are the collaboration of investors and bureaucratic cooperation between different levels of government; control of the development agenda; land deal making and control over land; control of labour; and curbing resistance. The chapter thus shows that investments in sugar cane and bioethanol—which often involve land deals—usually turn out differently than originally envisaged. Implementation problems arise due to the competing strategies and interests of investors, government departments, workers, landowners, and brokers, and due to specific historical and institutional constellations. Therefore, it can be argued that the implementation of investment schemes cannot simply be understood as the implementation of a contract or an already-planned programme; it should rather be understood as a constant process of negotiation and adaptation. In such a context, the identification of critical junctures is crucial for the conduct of monitoring activities and the adoption of adaptive policies during land deal processes.

Republicanism and the political economy of democracy

Europe is experiencing rapidly accelerating poverty and social exclusion, following half a decade of financial crisis and austerity politics. The key problem behind Europe's malaise, in our view, is the economic disenfranchisement of large parts of its population in the winner-takes-all-society. This article proposes that we examine the contribution of republican political theory as a distinctive approach that provides us with the conceptual and normative resources to reclaim what we call the political economy of democracy, the constellation of political and economic institutions aimed at promoting broad economic sovereignty and individuals’ capacities to govern their own lives. This article identifies three key ideas that together constitute a distinctively republican approach to political economy: (1) establish an economic floor; (2) impose an economic ceiling to counter excess economic inequality; and (3) democratize the governance and regulation of the main economic institutions.

Oberthür, Sebastian, and G. Kristin Rosendal, eds. 2014. Global Governance of Genetic Resources: Access and Benefit Sharing after the Nagoya Protocol. New York and London: Routledge.

Oberthür, Sebastian, and G. Kristin Rosendal, eds. 2014. Global Governance of Genetic Resources: Access and Benefit Sharing after the Nagoya Protocol. New York and London: Routledge.

Tradespace investigation of strategic design factors for large space telescopes

Future large telescope arrays require careful balancing of satisfaction across the stakeholders’ community. Development programs usually cannot afford to explicitly address all stakeholder tradeoffs during the conceptual design stage, but rather confine the analysis to performance, cost, and schedule discussions, treating policy and budget as constraints defining the envelope of the investigation. Thus, it is of interest to develop an integrated stakeholder analysis approach to explicitly address the impact of all stakeholder interactions on the design of large telescope arrays to address future science and exploration needs. This paper offers a quantitative approach for modeling some of the stakeholder influences relevant to large telescope array designs—the linkages between a given mission and the wider NASA community. The main goal of the analysis is to explore the tradespace of large telescope designs and understand the effects of different design decisions in the stakeholders’ network. Proposed architectures that offer benefits to existing constellations of systems, institutions, and mission plans are expected to yield political and engineering benefits for NASA stakeholders’ wider objectives. If such synergistic architectures are privileged in subsequent analysis, regions of the tradespace that better meet the needs of the wider NASA community can be selected for further development.

Mapping and Measuring Fragmentation in Global Governance Architectures: A Framework for Analysis

Over the past 20 years, world politics has become increasingly complex due to a proliferation of institutions, actors, norms, and discourses in global affairs. Lacking overarching organization and hierarchy, governance architectures, i.e. the “overarching system of public and private institutions that are valid or active in a given issue area of world politics” (Biermann et al. 2009, 15), have turned into a patchwork of institutions marked by diversity in terms of character, constituencies, scope, and subject matter resulting in institutional overlaps and gaps, contestation and synergy, integration and fragmentation. While scholars have started to study the dyadic relations among international institutions (Oberthur and Stokke 2011; Oberthur and Gehring 2006) as well as the complex interactions that occur within what Keohane and Victor (2011) have termed “regime complexes”, we currently lack a detailed understanding of the degree of fragmentation across different policy domains. Hence, to understand the contemporary architecture of global governance, improved mappings of governance structures and appropriate indicators and metrics for measuring degrees of fragmentation are urgently needed. This paper outlines a conceptual and methodological framework for mapping and measuring fragmentation in global governance architectures based on a 2-step approach. First, global governance architectures are mapped to include the key governance arrangements of an issue area. Criteria for inclusion/exclusion of governance arrangements are (a) international and transnational scope, (b) intentionality to steer the behaviour of members, (c) explicit mentioning of governance goal, and (d) identifiable governance functions. Second, four indicators are applied to measure fragmentation: institutional constellations, actor constellations, norm constellations and discourse constellations. The framework can be used to examine the structural properties of global governance architectures and thereby aid further studies on the fundamental drivers and explanatory factors underlying fragmentation of governance.

Ambitious development on fragile foundations: Criticalities of current large dam construction in Afghanistan

High social, environmental and financial costs of dam construction during the past century provide valuable lessons for improving large infrastructure governance and enhancing dam safety. The Italian Vajont dam tragedy in 1963, for example, where the urgency to boost post-war economic development overruled cautionary site selection and reservoir filling, led to improved safety regulations. Today, Afghanistan is facing similar pressure to spur economic development. Revisiting Afghanistan’s own dam history may inform decision-making over large scale dam development. For this, we refer to dam development in Afghanistan during the Cold War institutional constellation, which combined with the discourse on the role of dams in state formation, modernisation and development, profoundly shaped Afghanistan’s landscape. Current dam development shows little evidence that any historic reflection is taking place; instead the discourse of infrastructure-as-prerequisite-for-development is consistently repeated. We argue that four factors compromise dam development in Afghanistan today: (1) lack of security; (2) an institutional context under transition; (3) absence of transboundary dialogue and agreements and (4) uncertain and fragmented aid provision. The complexity of dam development and operation is exacerbated by the extended temporal and spatial scale of their impact, thus placing a heavy burden on management- and planning capacity. Given these conditions, these dam development plans are built on fragile institutional foundations. To address their feasibility under such circumstances this paper links lessons from the past with the criticalities in future Afghan dam development.

The Other Triangle in European Space Governance: The European Union, the European Space Agency and the United Nations

In European space governance, the term ‘governance triangle’ usually refers to the cohabitation in space matters of the European Union, the European Space Agency and their respective member states. This contribution explores another, less well-known and less clearly structured space governance triangle: that between the EU, ESA and the UN. Its specific focus is on their respective regulatory activities in guaranteeing the sustainability of space activities. Initiatives with this objective have been taken by each of the organisations mentioned. The contribution examines the institutional preconditions for their coherence and complementarity. With the on-going debate surrounding the future institutional arrangements between ESA and the EU and the EU’s emerging actorness in space law matters (cf. the EUchampioned International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities), the question arises as to the future institutional constellation between these three players for regulatory activities pertaining to space.

The Other Triangle in European Space Governance: The European Union, the European Space Agency and the United Nations

In European space governance, the term ‘governance triangle’ usually refers to the cohabitation in space matters of the European Union, the European Space Agency and their respective member states. This contribution explores another, less well-known and less clearly structured space governance triangle: that between the EU, ESA and the UN. Its specific focus is on their respective regulatory activities in guaranteeing the sustainability of space activities. Initiatives with this objective have been taken by each of the organisations mentioned. The contribution examines the institutional preconditions for their coherence and complementarity. With the on-going debate surrounding the future institutional arrangements between ESA and the EU and the EU’s emerging actorness in space law matters (cf. the EU-championed International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities), the question arises as to the future institutional constellation between these three players for regulatory activities pertaining to space.

"A taste in pictures"

Institutional cinema did not arrive fully formed to the city of Cork, Ireland, but was constituted there in the 1910s through the actions of picture-house proprietors, city councillors, clergy and the many ordinary people who make up the audience. Although this transformation in the city's popular culture formed part of the internationally occurring 'second birth' of cinema after 1910, cinema became an institution in Cork by integrating into the local culture defined by Cork's unique institutional constellation. An account of the processes involved in the institutionalisation of cinema in Cork illuminates the growth of audiences and venues, how other entertainments were altered or displaced, and both local and regional conditions that encouraged, regulated and offered resistance to the new medium.

In defense of endogenous, spontaneously ordered development: institutional functionalism and Chinese property rights

Neo-liberal observers have frequently raised the red alert over insecure property rights in developing and emerging economies. Development would be at a crossroads: either institutional structure needs changing or it risks a full-fledged collapse. Yet, instead of focusing on the enigma between economic growth versus ‘perverse’ institutions, this contribution posits a functionalist argument that the persistence of institutions points to their credibility. In other words, once institutions persist they fulfill a function for actors. Chinese institutions have been frequently criticized for lack of security, formality and transparency, yet paradoxically, these apparently ‘perverse’, inefficient institutions have sustained since the late 1970s throughout the entire economic boom. Key to understanding this might be the realization that institutional constellation stems from an endogenous, spontaneously ordered development in which the state is merely one of many actors that ultimately shape institutions into a highly complicated and intertwined whole. The argument is substantiated by reviewing the case of China's rural-urban land rights structure with particular reference to its markets, history and rights of ownership and use.

Internet Content Regulation in France and Germany: Regulatory Paths, Actor Constellations, and Policies

ABSTRACT The article focuses on online content regulation in France and Germany. We examine institutional characteristics and actor constellations that led to different policy choices and situate these in the broader discussion on Internet content regulation. While in the early 1990s courts were settling disputes regarding problematic content by applying existing regulation to the digital realm, both countries have since chosen separate regulatory paths. France opted for legislative control, while Germany developed a system of “regulated self-regulation,” in which private actors self-regulate with limited state supervision. Both cases provide insights into the possibilities and limits of state intervention on the Internet.

‘In what language do you like to sing best?’ Placing popular music in broadcasting in post-war Europe

The longest-running and best-known Europe-wide broadcast, the Eurovision Song Contest, is devoted to popular music, but it is not on radio, the medium that would seem most suited to music, but television. By contrast, it has now mostly been forgotten that a similar show featuring pop records, called European Pop Jury ran for nearly two decades starting in the mid-1960s. This article compares, contrasts and above all contextualises these two programmes as it traces the paths of popular music through European broadcasting. In so doing, it highlights the technical, institutional and discursive constellations that have allowed, but also limited, the circulation of popular music over European borders. It thus maps not just the creation, but also the fragmentation of technological and cultural spaces in Europe. It points ultimately to both top-down and bottom-up formations of ‘Europeanisation’ understood as acts of appropriation and translation of music over borders.

Spain's Catch up with the EU Core: The Implausible Quest of a ‘Flying Pig’?

In contemporary times, Spain offers a good example of a very compressed transition to post-industrial socioeconomic structures, passing from peripheral to core status within the European Union (EU) and the international economic order. The present article reviews developments and outcomes in Spain since 2000 by paying attention to the impact of the EU on Spain's welfare political economy. The adoption of EU recommendations in labour activation policies and the increase in female participation in the formal labour market are singled out as highly relevant for policy change. The explanatory account of welfare development focuses on continuity and change by considering the analytical constellation of ideas, interests and institutions.