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Exploring and explaining diversity and patterns of stateness is crucial for understanding causes of efficiency, duration, or the collapse of a state. The new Stateness Index (StIx) contributes to the conceptual and analytical debate on stateness and state fragility. StIx is a tool for measuring stateness and state quality since 1950 that includes country-ranking through aggregated and disaggregated data to advance performance comparison and policy analysis. This article first sums up the main theoretical aspects, followed by descriptive results.
For decades autonomy has been utilised as a concept in various social sciences, like sociology, political science, law and philosophy. Certain concepts of autonomy have always reflected the needs of the respective disciplines that made use of the term, but also ever infringed on the interpretation of autonomy in other disciplines. Most notably, conceptualisations of international and constitutional law have found their way into bordering sciences, like political science. The result: a legal positivist view prevailing in the conceptualisations of autonomy within political and administrative sciences. As this working paper points out, this perspective does not do justice to the complex phenomenon autonomy is or may be in social and political reality. Hence, the paper argues for a differentiated concept of autonomy, splitting it into autonomy claims, actors, process, rights and powers, regimes, and their institutions. The empirical world suggests a salience of formally and informally lived types of autonomy, especially in Latin America, due to the region’s indigenous population often living outside of, or within the limited reach of the state. Therefore, the paper aims to incorporate the dimension of informality – lacking in previous legal positivist approaches. Autonomy regimes could be entrenched in international, constitutional, or secondary law, or they could be tolerated by the state or seized by autonomy claimants by force. From a theoretical or conceptual perspective, the dimension of (in)formality facilitates the incorporation of autonomy into the discussion on governance and government, mostly on the local or regional level. Thus, the paper establishes autonomy regimes as a concept located at the verges of (self-)government and (self-)governance.
Civil society organizations only started to be considered a sector in the 1970s in the United States. Amitai Etzioni pioneered the use of the expression third sector, which became common in academic and political literature. However, in the United States, the non-profit sector concept gradually became more robust and was spread internationally based on the studies conducted by Lester Salomon and associated researchers.
The theory built on the concept of the non-profit sector is strongly related to the North American cultural context, marked by the tradition of philanthropy and volunteerism, but with little importance given to associative and cooperative organizations.
The non-profit sector is implicitly or explicitly conceived as part of the private sphere. In contrast, theoretical currents such as liberal communitarianism, the theories of cooperation, common goods, social capital, European social economy, and the Latin American solidarity economy highlight the primacy of cooperation in solving collective problems. These theories underpin the associative approach of the third sector and link it to the community, not to the market.
This paper argues that the associative approach is more appropriate for international studies on the third sector and the relevance of self-organization. The third sector, i.e., the set of organizations created and maintained by civil society, is the inheritor of the millennial associative tradition, including both entities whose values are compatible with the common good and those with particularistic values, authoritarian and contrary to human rights. The third sector is not entirely virtuous, but it is a vital sector for solving great human problems.
The Vacaciones en Paz programme (VeP) started in 1979 shortly after Morocco illegally occupied Western Sahara, which since 1975 has been a disputed territory pending a referendum for self-determination. The programme consists of Sahrawi children being hosted during summer by Spanish families who try to raise awareness for the Sahrawi cause and temporarily alleviate the children’s living conditions. Meanwhile, approximately 170,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps near Tindouf (Algeria) heavily dependent on humanitarian aid for their survival.
This study aimed to determine the impact of the VeP programme on the promotion of children’s rights based on the perspective of Sahrawi children. Research has shown that it serves as a temporary platform to implement some of those rights. This qualitative study is based on a literature review of the principles of the VeP programme, alongside a thematic analysis of the field data provided by Sahrawi children and teenagers. Analysis of the VeP programme demonstrated that the Convention of the Rights of the Child is not mentioned in its discourse. Notwithstanding, the results indicate an impact on the promotion of Sahrawi children’s rights. On this basis, it is recommended to implement a children’s rights-based discourse within the principles of the VeP programme, since the theoretical knowledge of their rights may be a key factor for strategic empowerment of Sahrawi children and teenagers in their representation of the Sahrawi cause.
The notions self-organisation and self-regulation are at least implicitly loaded with a positive democratic connotation. The main corresponding debates on social movements, governance and civil society mostly refer to the Global North with a well-functioning state and democratic political systems. One consequence is that the less democratic and less liberal hidden side of self-organisation, seen by some critics, does not gain much attention.
After a short discussion of the main theoretical approaches, the paper presents a selection of self-organised groups depicting their different values, norms, and structural features. These examples reach from democratic groups marked by solidarity to racist violent groups that are a threat to differently minded people. The analysis of these examples leads to a set of criteria for the comparative analysis of the internal structure of self-organised groups including potential membership, in- and outward orientation, underlying basic principles of social order and types of trust with related types of decision-making. These basic elements help to understand the constitution and functioning of self-organisation, which are open to a wide range of value orientation.
The nucleus of statehood is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community, beyond the level of the family, first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. But usually this is not the only level of governance at play. Above it, there are supralocal formations of power, varying in scope from regional networks to empires, which supplement the local orders or compete with them. The premise of this Research Unit is that local forms of self-governance are especially heterogeneous and prominent, wherever supralocal statehood exists in the mode of weak permeation. The central question of our approach is how local forms of self-governance work in this context. We will examine the relations to the state level as well as to other local groups as they develop over time; the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; their legitimization and the interdependency with the organization and collective identity of those groups which carry them out; finally, we will turn our attention to the significance of self-governance for the configuration of weak statehood. The empirical focus will be at the local level, which has so far been largely neglected in the research on governance beyond the state. In order to achieve this, we will work with case studies that are structured by categories and situated in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of modern Europe with its particular development of statehood since the Late Middle Ages: in Antiquity, and in the Global South of the present. By incorporating these different time frames, we hope to contribute to overcoming the dichotomy between the modern and pre-modern era, which is often given canonical status. Our goal is to create a comparative analysis of different configurations of order as well as the development of a typology of patterns of local governance. The structure of the empirical comparison itself promises methodological insights, since it will entail recognizing, dealing with, and overcoming disciplinary limitations. Starting with the identification of typical patterns and processes, we hope to gain a better grasp of the mechanisms by which local configurations of order succeed, while at the same time advancing the theoretical debate. This will allow us to make an interdisciplinary contribution to the understanding of fundamental elements of statehood and local governance that are of central importance, especially in the context of weak statehood. The insights we hope to gain by adopting this historical perspective will contribute to understanding a present that is not based exclusively on its own, seemingly completely new preconditions, and will thus significantly sharpen the political analysis of various forms of governance.
Previous research has shown that female doctoral graduates earn less than male doctoral graduates; how-ever, the determinants of this gender pay gap remain largely unexplored. Therefore, this paper investigates the determinants of the early career gender pay gap among doctoral graduates in Germany. By relying on effects on the supply and demand sides and feedback between them, I theoretically derive determinants of the gender pay gap that comprise doctoral and occupational characteristics. Using data from a representative German panel study of the 2014 doctoral graduation cohort, I analyse the gender pay gap two years after graduation. I apply linear regression on the logarithmic gross monthly earnings and Oaxaca-Blinder de-composition to examine the explanatory contribution of the determinants to the gender pay gap. The anal-yses reveal that female graduates earn 27.2 % less than male graduates two years after graduation. Male graduates being paid a premium outside academia partly drives this gender pay gap. The considered deter-minants largely explain the overall gender pay gap, the most important determinants being working hours, doctoral subject, industry, professional experience gained after graduation, company size, and academic employment. The results offer new insights on the determinants of the early career gender pay gap among doctoral graduates and thereby shed light on one dimension of gender inequalities in post-doctoral careers.
The refugee crisis has developed as one of the major challenges for EU governance in recent years. From 2013 onwards, the crisis determined the political agenda and public discourse within European politics. During that time, the numbers of asylum seekers reaching Europe increased dramatically, with more than one million people applying for asylum at the crisis peak in 2015. This paper deals with the efforts taken by the EU and its member states to mitigate and overcome the refugee crisis. How exactly has the EU reacted to the refugee crisis and how and to what extend have the EU and its governance changed throughout the crisis? These research questions are approached through a reconstructive analysis of the whole period of crisis. This approach provides for a comprehensive examination of the refugee crisis that includes all issues, measures and processes of the EU’s policy reaction at the same time.
It will be argued that due to severe shortcomings of the Dublin regulation and the Common European Asylum System, a crisis in the EU’s refugee policy was already predestined. This was the case from 2013 onwards. The EU approached the crisis in three stages – neglect and non-solidarity leading to unilateral approaches by affected states, supranational short-term emergency measures during the peak of crisis and enhanced cooperation with third countries, especially with Turkey, the Western Balkans states and African states – until the crisis lost traction in 2017. Yet, the asylum system’s shortcomings are still not eliminated as the lasting measures of the EU’s crisis management between 2013 and 2018 mainly focused on border security and externalisation. EU governance changed towards more intergovernmental, informal and regional action. Further, the crisis led to serious rows between member states, leading to the fragmentation of the EU into two blocs. With decreasing numbers of asylum seeker in the last few years, what remains is an incomplete asylum system and a political crisis among member states.
The article presents a proposal for the assessment of the quality of democracy. After elaborating on the methodological strategy, a definition of democracy is proposed, which entails the construction of the matrix of democracy based on three dimensions (political freedom, political equality, and political and judicial control) and five institutions. The methodological application of this measuring tool is then explained. This conception guarantees an appropriate measurement in different cultural contexts, enables the characterization of democratic profiles, and allows for the identification of deficiencies in democracies. Before the conclusion, three examples of the measurement (USA, Russia, and Italy) illustrate how the matrix works.
India's economic rise since the 1990s has been followed by a more prominent global role for the country. Despite economic setbacks in recent years and huge domestic challenges like poverty, caste issues, and gender inequality, India today is almost universally characterised as an “emerging power”. At the same time, the country continues to show an enormous diversity. Thus, exploring emerging India can surely not be confined to economic analysis only. Instead, it is vital to take current developments in domestic and international politics, society, culture, religion, and political thinking into consideration as well. Following an interdisciplinary approach, contributions from Political Science, International Relations, Indology, Political Theory, and Economics are fundamental in order to grasp the country's diversity. This collection assembles eight essays which, individually, serve as working papers reflecting the authors' various research focuses, while collectively composing a multifaceted and multidis-ciplinary picture of emerging India. It thereby reflects the approach the University of Würz-burg’s Centre for Modern India and the Institute for Political Science and Sociology’s India Forum are committed to: bringing together different academic disciplines in order to generate nuanced insights into India’s manifold diversity.
The analysis of the 2014 elections to Lok Sabha in India describes the results and their enormous extent with a differentiate regard to social group voting. Considering the election campaign’s performativity and issues of contestation the landslide victory of BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) will be illuminated. Through a closer examination of party coalitions, the electoral system, and the leadership factor the BJP’s clear victory over Congress Party will be explained. Besides the opportunity for significant economic and political reforms, the author conjectures a potential for dangerous tendencies to Indian democracy owing to such a resourceful government, which are compared with the government constraints, especially by federal arrangements.
The second part of the article argues that civil society in India is composed of several layers that are distinct and overlap at the same time. Five versions of the same are significant: 1) institutions avowing secular nationalism that upholds inclusive citizenship, equality of treatment, and non-discrimination; 2) a phalanx of institutions inspired by the Gandhian idea of swaraj that are deeply vary of the state and its apparatus and envisage a life of freedom constituted around self-determining associations built from below; 3) such orientations and impulses which stress on religiously inspired values and traditions with its archetypal representation in Hindu nationalism; 4) those who highlight difference and diversity as central to Indian society and stress this fact as foundational to Indian nationalism; 5) and those who are in favour of a right-based approach to citizenship and rule of law in India. Alluding to these distinctive domains constitutive of civil society in India the paper argues that the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the coalition that it led, in the General elections of 2014 rested on its ability in tapping resources from different layers of civil society while making institutions woven around Hindu identity as its anchor.