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Throughout its 40-year history, the Vlaams Belang (VB, Flemish Interest) has established itself as an important player within the Belgian party system, albeit with significant electoral fluctuations. In 2019, it became the second largest party in Flanders. The party developed and maintained a mass-party organisation by investing significantly in local party branches and in a rigid vertically articulated structure. It relies heavily on social media, particularly Facebook, to communicate to supporters beyond the more limited group of party members. Using both modern and traditional tools, VB representatives aim to create communities of supporters bonded to the party, facilitating dissemination of the party’s messages. Despite this investment in a grassroots organisation, the VB’s decision-making remains highly centralised. Social media and local branches allow informal consideration of members’ views, but the party has not created significant mechanisms for internal democracy. While it is often claimed that political parties have moved away from the “mass-party” model, this article demonstrates that the VB still maintains characteristics of the mass party, albeit with a modern twist. New social media tools facilitate attempts to foster communities and disseminate party messages among a wider group of supporters, both formal members and more informal sympathisers.

Communication is a process and part of human identity without which man could not exist today. Intercultural communication is a form of global communication, which refers to intercultural interactions between different cultures that appear in a social group with different religious, social, ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds. North Macedonia and Kosovo are considered multicultural states which have ethnic identities within them, which are part of the mosaic and the promotion of intercultural communication is a test of the democratic development of these states. Therefore, this study aims to research and analyze the role of intercultural communication between local communities in both countries, communication of local government with the community, and community participation in public meetings as part of local decision-making. The methodology applied in this paper is the study of literature and the development of quantitative research with local communities. The results show that even though the participation of local communities is low in both countries, due to various factors, intercultural communication has broken down barriers between communities and has influenced the initiatives for the organization and development of the community itself.

How do authoritarian governments learn? What kind of events and experiences can lead them to adopt more or less restrictive policies towards social actors? And, how are such lessons from others' experiences integrated into new policies? These questions have been addressed and answered quite differently from various disciplinary perspectives, focusing either on international dynamics such as “authoritarian diffusion” or on domestic policy learning. This article seeks to integrate different perspectives on authoritarian learning by proposing a typological framework of positive and negative learning from three distinct sources: authoritarian peers, democratic countries, and subnational policy experiments. I argue that such a comprehensive framework better accounts for both the relative importance and for the interaction of different kinds of learning in national-level policy processes. To illustrate the framework's added analytical value, I use an exemplary case study of recent legislative changes to China's civil society policy, which have been alternatively interpreted as part of an authoritarian “wave” or as another step in incremental domestic learning processes.

This article investigates how municipal governments negotiate far-right contestations through the format of citizens’ dialogues and contemplates to what extent they disrupt established assumptions about participatory urban governance. In doing so, I want to contribute to emerging scholarship on reactionary responses to migration-led societal transformations in cities via scrutinising their effects on institutional change in participatory practices. Building on participatory urban governance literature and studies on the far right in the social sciences, I argue that inviting far-right articulations into the democratic arena of participation serves to normalise authoritarian and racist positions, as the far right’s demand for more direct involvement of ‘the people’ is expressed in reactionary terms. I will show how this applies to two prominent notions of participation in the literature, namely, agonistic and communicative approaches. This argument is developed through an explorative case study of two neighbourhood-based citizens’ dialogues in Cottbus, East Germany, which the municipal government initiated in response to local far-right rallies. While a careful reading of these forums reveals productive potentials when the issue of international migration is untangled from context-specific, socio-spatial problems in the neighbourhoods, my analysis also shows how the municipality’s negotiation of far-right contestations within the citizens’ dialogues serves to legitimise far-right ideology. I find that to negotiate today’s societal polarisation, municipal authorities need to rethink local participatory institutions by disentangling these complex dynamics and reject far-right contestations, while designing dialogues for democratic and emancipatory learning.

Akklamation, Okkupation und Verantwortungsflucht - Ratsreferenden genießen als Top-down-Verfahren in der lokalen Politikforschung einen zweifelhaften Ruf. Der Autor unternimmt nun erstmalig eine empirisch-systematische Erforschung des direktdemokratischen Entscheidungsinstruments: Anhand vergleichender Fallstudien in vier Städten untersucht er die vielfältigen Initiierungsgründe und Akteurskonstellationen von Ratsreferenden. Er hinterfragt dabei ihre im Vergleich zu Bürgerreferenden negative Rezeption und entwickelt eine Analyseheuristik, die auch auf Top-down-Referenden anderer politischer Ebenen übertragbar ist. Acclamation, occupation, escape from responsibility? The view of local political research on council referendums.

Die Energiewende ist ein viel diskutiertes Thema im Bundestag - doch bleibt dabei auch der eigentliche Anspruch eines Transformationsprojekts bestehen? Die Autorin greift diese Frage in ihrer Diskursanalyse der Bundestagsdebatten von 1998 bis 2017 auf. Dazu entwickelt sie ein innovatives Forschungsdesign, das computerbasierte quantitative mit qualitativen Methoden kombiniert und auch für weitere politische Transformationsforschung anwendbar ist. Mit dem Vorsorgenden Wirtschaften erweitert sie ihre Analysen um die politische Ökonomie und verortet sie in der feministischen, sozial-ökologischen Transformationsforschung. Ergebnis: Die Energiewende wurde im Bundestag nach 2011 politisch entleert.

Do citizens' decisions, which are discussed and co-ordinated a priori on online participation platforms, have any policy effects? The article addresses this question in an exploratory study. Taking theoretical concepts of participation and policy effects into account, LiquidFeedback platforms are investigated in four municipalities in Lower Saxony (Germany). A total of 80 cases - i.e., successful citizens’ initiatives that were afterwards considered by local city or district councils - are included in a content analysis. Results show that crucial policies are less often translated into binding policy decisions than other policies. Even though citizens’ decisions can have binding policy effects, large-scale projects, in particular, show rather diffuse policy effects. However, diffuse policy effects are hardly transparent for citizens and could, accordingly, inhibit the willingness to participate altogether. Haben von Bürger*innen auf Online-Bürgerbeteiligungsplattformen getroffene Entscheidungen Auswirkungen auf politische Entscheidungen? Der vorliegende Artikel befasst sich mit dieser Frage in einer explorativen Studie. Unter Berücksichtigung theoretischer Konzepte von Partizipation und politischen Effekten werden LiquidFeedback-Plattformen in vier niedersächsischen Kommunen untersucht. In die Inhaltsanalyse werden 80 Fälle miteinbezogen, die auf der Beteiligungsplattform positiv abgestimmt und später von den örtlichen Stadt- oder Bezirksräten geprüft wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es vor allem in Politikfeldern, die viel Planungszeit erfordern, seltener zu bindenden Policy-Entscheidungen kommt. Unklare politische Entscheidungen sind für die Bürger*innen jedoch schlecht nachvollziehbar. Sind sie überdies noch intransparent, wirken sie sich hemmend auf die Bereitschaft zur (weiteren) Teilnahme aus.

The global threat of the coronavirus pandemic has forced policy makers to react quickly with totally new policy‐making approaches under conditions of uncertainty. This article focuses on such crisis‐driven policy learning, examining how the experiences of China and South Korea as early responder states influenced the subsequent coronavirus crisis management in Germany. The first reaction of the German core executive was the quick concentration of decision‐making power at the top of the political hierarchy. Asserting the prerogatives of the executive included the radical simplification of the relationship between politics, law and science. State actors took emergency measures by recourse to a single piece of legislation—the ‘infection protection law’ (Infektionsschutzgesetz)—overriding other elements of the legal order. They also limited the government’s use of scientific expertise to a small number of advisors, thereby cutting short debates about the appropriateness or otherwise of the government’s crisis measures. Finally, German actors failed to understand that some of the earlier Chinese and Korean responses required a precondition—namely public willingness to sacrifice privacy for public health—that is absent in the German case.

In this article, we aim to disentangle the extent to which citizens’ conceptions of democratic decision-making are shaped by populist attitudes or rather by radical left and right host ideologies. Following recent work by Landwehr and Steiner (2017), we distinguish four modes of decision-making embedded in different conceptions of democracy: trusteeship democracy, anti-pluralism, deliberative proceduralism, and majoritarianism. Drawing on data from Austria and Germany, we show that populism and radical host ideologies tap into different dimensions of democracy. While populism is primarily directed against representative forms of democratic decision-making, preferences for deliberative procedures and majority decisions appear entirely shaped by radical left and right host ideologies. Populism thus views decision-making based on the general will of the people as the only legitimate democratic procedure, whereas radical left and right host ideologies aim at involving the relevant group(s) of citizens. Further analyses of the interactions between populist attitudes and radical host ideologies confirm that the effects of populism remain robust and thus independent of the specific manifestations of radical host ideologies. These findings help to disentangle the causes of democratic discontent and to develop possible responses through democratic reforms that specifically and separately aim to mitigate populism and radical host ideologies.

Policy-specific actor-constellations consisting of party- and group-representatives commonly drive the effective establishment of new policy programmes or changes in existing policies. In the EU multi-level system, the creation of such constellations is complicated because it practically requires consensus on two dimensions: the European public policy at stake and the issue of European integration. This means that, for interest groups with interests in particular policy domains, and with limited interest in the actual issue of European integration, non-Eurosceptic parties must be their main ally in their policy battles. We hypothesise that interest groups with relevant European domain-specific interests will ally with non-Eurosceptic parties, whereas interest groups whose interests are hardly affected by the European policy process will have party-political allies across the full range of positions on European integration. We assess this argument on the basis of an elite-survey of interest group leaders and study group-party dyads in several European countries (i.e., Belgium, Lithuania, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia) in a large number of policy domains. Our dependent variable is the group-party dyad and the main independent variables are the European policy interests of the group and the level of Euroscepticism of the party. We broadly find support for our hypotheses. The findings of our study speak to the debate concerning the implications of the politicisation of European integration and, more specifically, the way in which party-political polarisation of Europe may divide domestic interest group systems and potentially drive group and party systems apart.

The paper evaluates the types of e-democracy initiatives on local level in the Republic of Macedonia. E-democracy initiatives were classified by the elements of the democratic process, which they work to enhance: transparency, accountability and active participation. For the purpose of our research we analysed websites of the units of local self-government in the Republic of Macedonia in the period of 2017, with special emphasis on e-democracy initiatives in order to provide a framework for classification. The research discovered many outstanding local e-democracy initiatives. However, there is a little evidence that these initiatives have done much to ameliorate the problems on local level that Republic of Macedonia is facing, such as: weak democratic institutions and low level of citizen participation in democratic processes using ICT as intermediary. The paper also provides some recommendations for improving e-democracy initiatives on local level and their performance in general.

It is more than twenty years since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child gave governments and states an international mandate to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children and young people and to promote their participation in decisions that affect their lives. Considerable advances have been made since that time that have, in some but not all instances, seen transformations in the status, roles and responsibilities of children and young people and in the ways in which they are perceived and treated. These advances have included greater inclusion of children’s voices in research, policy and practice underpinned by children’s rights to participation and ‘best interests of the child’ decision-making. Bringing together a unique collection of international articles from authors with considerable expertise in researching and working with children and young people, this thematic issue explores some of the ways in which facilitating constructive dialogues with children and young people, and engaging them more directly in consultation about their lives, has led to genuine improvements in the way they are treated and understood. It also considers some of the barriers that exist to prevent children and young people from full participation in public life, some of which occur as a result of structural or systemic factors, while others are the result of the decisions adults make on their behalf.

© 2017 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). According to advocates of direct democracy, it is important to involve citizens more directly in political decision-making processes in order to create a democratic linkage between citizens and the political system. Indeed, some studies have demonstrated that citizens who live in direct democracies have higher levels of trust in political institutions and a higher sense of political efficacy. However, not all empirical evidence confirms this relationship. In a recent article on Switzerland, it was shown that, while the availability of direct democratic rights enhances trust in political institutions, using those rights actually initiates distrust. In this paper I expand the analysis of Bauer and Fatke (2014) and test whether the different effects of availability of direct democratic rights and the frequency of their use also hold for broader measures of trust in political institutions and political efficacy. I find that, even though an increased use of direct democratic measures is associated with lower levels of confidence in authorities on the cantonal level, this relationship is no longer apparent when applying a more comprehensive measurement of trust in political institutions. ispartof: Politics and Governance vol:5 issue:2 pages:16-26 status: published

Der Artikel basiert auf einem Deliberativen Forum zur deutschen Arbeitsmarkt- und Sozialpolitik. Er untersucht Gruppendynamiken und Meinungsänderungen sowie den Einfluss von aktiven Personen auf diese Dynamiken mittels quantitativer Vor- und Nachbefragung der Teilnehmer_innen, um einen Beitrag zur Debatte über einen möglichen Mehrwert von Deliberation in demokratischen Entscheidungsprozessen zu leisten. Die These von durch Deliberationsprozessen angestoßenen Meinungsänderungen kann grundsätzlich bestätigt werden, allerdings deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass die Mehrheit in ihren Positionen weitgehend unverändert aus der Debatte gegangen ist. Auch inhaltlich lässt sich feststellen, dass die in der Demokratietheorie und empirischen Deliberationsforschung getroffenen normativen Erwartungen hinsichtlich Gemeinwohlorientierung, Großzügigkeit und Nachhaltigkeit von getroffenen Entscheidungen nur zu einem geringen Ausmaß erfüllt wurden. Gleichzeitig finden sich kaum Hinweise auf einen systematischen Einfluss aktiver Personen auf die Positionen der übrigen Gruppenmitglieder.

Interest groups are important intermediary organisations that function as a transmission belt between societal interests and political decision-makers. However, while some interest groups survive over decades, others only last a few years. This article argues that the survival of interest groups depends on their ability to mobilise resources which is crucially affected by interest group type and the public salience of an interest group’s policy domain. The theoretical expectations are tested based on a novel dataset mapping the survival of 1699 interest groups registered at the German Bundestag between 1974 and 2012. Using event history analysis, it is shown that interest group type and public salience indeed affect whether interest groups survive. Sectional groups last significantly longer than cause groups, and interest group survival increases with the public salience of their policy area. The results have major implications for our understanding of interest groups and political representation in contemporary democracies.

Previous research on public support for participatory decision-making fails to distinguish between vote-centric (referendums and initiatives) and talk-centric (deliberative-style meetings) instruments, despite a deliberative turn in democratic theory suggesting that political discussion among ordinary citizens improves decision-making. In an online factorial survey experiment conducted among a sample of 960 Americans recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, we compared support for the use of referendums and public meetings, arguing that attitudes towards these instruments depend on whether they are used to inform legislators or take binding decisions. Public meetings were rated considerably lower than referendums and initiatives, especially when the outcomes were binding. Contrary to expectations, we did not find a preference for binding (over advisory) referendums and individuals from referendum and initiative states, where these instruments are legally binding, expressed less support for binding participatory reforms than individuals from non-direct democratic states. Despite the many critiques of direct democracy, public debate in the US has not considered whether advisory outcomes might appease some of these concerns. The results also demonstrated that individuals expressing concerns about the inability of ordinary citizens to understand politics and about the welfare of minority groups were not as negative about participatory decision-making when legislators had the final say.

Power is the essence of politics. Whoever seeks to understand and master it must understand its logic. Drawing on two decades of international experience in political consulting, Dominik Meier and Christian Blum give profound and honest insights into the inner workings of power. Introducing their Power Leadership Approach, the authors provide a conceptual analysis of power and present the tools to successfully exercise it in the political domain. "Power and its Logic" is a guidebook for politicians, business leaders, civil society pioneers, public affairs consultants and for every citizen who wants to understand the unwritten rules of politics.

Dem raketenhaften Aufstieg der Piratenpartei folgte ihr ebenso schneller Niedergang. Ist das mit ihr verbundene Experiment politischer Willensbildung - Liquid Democracy - also ebenso gescheitert? Auf dem originellen Weg der Grounded Theory nähert sich Anja Adler der jüngsten deutschen Politikgeschichte, um sich mit dem ambitionierten Vorschlag zur Entwicklung eines neuen Betriebssystems für die Politik auseinanderzusetzen. Durch zahlreiche Interviews mit den Akteurinnen internet-gestützter Beratungs- und Entscheidungsverfahren zeichnet sie ein lebendiges und durchaus zukunftstaugliches Portrait sowohl der konkreten Verfahren als auch der Einstellungen und Visionen von Demokratieentwicklerinnen. Taking the most recent history of German politics as an example, this first comprehensive study about liquid democracy shows that algorithms of democratic decisions hamper as well as enrich politics.

Data contained in Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) is not only a prerequisite for the vote recommendations they provide but can also be used for estimating party positions in low‐dimensional spaces. Given that VAAs can be designed differently in terms of their number of items and their measurement level, how much can one trust the party positions obtained from this source? We tackle this question by exploiting relevant variation in a real‐world setting: three VAAs offered at the 2017 Lower Saxony election. Despite substantial design differences, the policy spaces extracted through an inductive scaling approach are highly convergent. Simulated random item removal from the pooled dataset of all three VAAs furthermore suggests that about 40 items yield satisfactory reliability of the party positions. Finally, we find that a priori assigning VAA‐items to ideological dimensions is potentially problematic as the interpretation of resulting party spaces may differ from the ones derived inductively.

Academic studies regarding the impact of various forms of gender representation focus largely on quantitative evidence that women in power can make a difference, downplaying qualitative case studies that can establish causal links between women's participation in government and better policies for women. Analyzing policy changes initiated by Germany’s first female Chancellor since 2005, the paper argues that despite her CDU-affiliation, Angela Merkel has contributed more to gender equality in Germany than all previous chancellors, even though she refuses to label herself a feminist. The author explores three factors shaping Merkel's reluctance to embrace the (western dominated) feminist label, e.g., her socialization under a diametrically opposed GDR gender regime, her preference for data-driven policy learning, her aversion towards “ideological” framing, coupled with a tendency to pursue mixed motives, respectively. The paper concludes with recent examples geared towards leveling the global gender playing-field, attesting to her willingness to embrace transformational representation., Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, die sich auf die Wirksamkeit verschiedener Formen der Geschlechter-Repräsentation konzentrieren, sind oft dazu geneigt, die quantitativen Dimensionen zu betonen, auch wenn qualitative Fall-Studien besser dazu geeignet sind, einen kausalen Zusammenhang zwischen Frauen in der Politik und besserer Politik für Frauen zu etablieren. In diesem Aufsatz geht es um Deutschlands erste Bundeskanzlerin. Der Text argumentiert, dass Angela Merkel seit 2005 Jahre - trotz ihrer CDU-Mitgliedschaft und ihrer wiederholten Beteuerung, keine Feministin zu sein - mehr für die Geschlechtergleichheit in Deutschland getan hat als alle ihre Amtsvorgänger. Ihre Nicht-Identifikation mit dem Feminismus führt die Autorin auf drei Faktoren zurück, nämlich, ihre langjährige Sozialisierung im Gender Regime der DDR, ihre Vorliebe für datengetriebenes policy learning und ihre Abneigung gegenüber einem ideologischem Framing zugunsten von "mixed motives". Die Autorin schließt mit konkreten Beispielen, die zeigen, dass sie tatsächlich daran interessiert ist, das globale Geschlechter-Spielfeld im Geist einer transformativen Repräsentation umzugestalten.

The article is devoted to a comparison of different U.S. administrations’ foreign policy in the beginning of the 21st century. This period was chosen because it appears to be a critical moment in American history. The analysis shows that, despite the differences in party adherence and other ideological affiliations, successive administrations tend to follow identical or similar guidelines while implementing foreign policy. The author suggests several possible reasons for this continuity. First, there is the stability of the institutional and decision-making systems and mechanisms, which, in turn, are based on a stable system of interest representation. More broadly, it is the persistent system of values and basic attitudes, political and philosophical traditions, ideology and long-term behavioral patterns - those phenomena forming the core of political culture - that are the most important non-institutional factors driving the continuity of American foreign policy. So, comparison of the foreign policy courses of the Bush and Obama administrations leads to the conclusion that the mechanism of U.S. foreign policy is impersonal to a great extent. The key biographical parameters of the politicians play an only limited role in defining their political course.

This paper examines the claim that democratic decision making is epistemically valuable. Focussing on communication and voting, circumstances are identified under which groups are able to reliably identify the ‘correct alternative.’ Employing formal models from social epistemology, group performance under varying conditions in a simple epistemic task is scrutinized. Simulation results show that larger majority requirements can favour the veto power of closed-minded individuals, but can also increase precision in well-functioning groups. Reasonable scepticism against other people's opinions can provide a useful impediment to overly quick convergence onto a false consensus when independent information acquisition is possible.

How, if at all, does the Commission’s expertise inform intergovernmental decision-making within the EU? In this article, we aim to capture the relationship between the Commission’s expertise and its influence within intergovernmental policy-areas through a study of Commission influence in two least likely sectors: security and defence policies (military mission Atalanta and EU Maritime Security Strategy) and external migration (EU mobility partnerships with third countries). In these cases we observe that the Commission strongly informs policy developments even though it has only limited formal competences. To explore whether and, if so, how this influence is linked to its expertise, we develop and consider two hypotheses: The expert authority hypothesis and the expert arguments hypothesis. To identify possible additional channels of influence, we also consider the relevance of two alternative hypotheses: The strategic coalition hypothesis and the institutional circumvention hypothesis. We find that the Commission’s use of its expertise is indeed key to understanding its de facto influence within policy-areas where its formal competences remain limited. Our findings add to the existing literature by revealing how expertise matters. Specifically, our cases show that the Commission informs intergovernmental decision-making by successfully linking discussions to policy-areas where it holds expert authority. However, the Commission also informs EU policies by circumventing the formal lines of intergovernmental decision-making, and by cooperating with member states that share its preference for further integration.

In vier für die Politik grundlegenden Sphären (Recht, Wahrheit, Gemeinwohl, Gewalt) werden für die Jahre seit 2008 Handlungsmuster der russischen Spitzenelite untersucht und Kontinuitäten aufgezeigt. Ausgehend von den Handlungen werden Grundeinstellungen der Elite in diesen vier Bereichen herausgearbeitet, die sich maßgeblich auf die künftigen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland bzw. der Europäischen Union und Russland auswirken werden. Dabei wird dargelegt, dass die für viele westliche Beobachter überraschenden Handlungen Russlands seit 2014 auf Haltungen beruhen, die sich bereits in früheren Phasen bemerkbar gemacht haben. Insofern lassen sich diese Einstellungen als Teil einer langfristigen politischen Kultur der russischen Elite verstehen. Vor allem die Instrumentalisierung von Recht, Wahrheit und Gewalt in der Innen- und Außenpolitik sowie ein Kontrollbedürfnis, das auf Misstrauen gegenüber externen und internen Akteuren beruht, sind für die heutige russische Spitzenelite charakteristisch. Das Gemeinwohl bzw. das Wohlergehen der russischen Bevölkerung hat keine oder nur eine rein instrumentelle Priorität für die Elite. Bei der Entwicklung eines mittel- bis langfristigen Ansatzes für den Umgang mit Russland sollten deutsche und EU-Akteure diese Grundeinstellungen mitberücksichtigen, weil sie in absehbarer Zukunft die Handlungen zahlreicher Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der russischen Elite prägen werden. (Autorenreferat)

Transnational civil society networks have become increasingly important democratizing actors in global politics. Still, the exploration of democracy in such networks remains conceptually and methodologically challenging. Practice theory provides a framework to study democracy as routinized performances even in contexts of fluid boundaries, temporal relations and a diffuse constituency. The author attempts to understand how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and their structural environments.During recent decades, the arenas of political decision-making have increasingly shifted from national governments to intergovernmental and transnational political forums. At the same time, the number and relevance of non-state actors in international politics is steadily growing. These trends have led political scientists to study and theorize about new forms of democracy beyond the national political arenas (Archibugi 2004, Bexell et al. 2010, Nasström 2010). However, democracy beyond the nation state is difficult to conceptualize with the idea of an institutionalized democracy within the borders of nation-states. Therefore, many political scientists emphasize the role of civil society actors as a cure for the democratic deficit in inter-national politics (Steffek & Nanz 2008). Yet, normative and empirical problems arise over the extent of access, selection and role of civil society actors in international organizations (Tallberg et al. 2013). Furthermore, the normative relevance of transnational civil society actors makes it necessary to study their own democratic legitimacy.While international organizations are mostly institutionalized and hierarchical governing bodies, the ever growing diffuse conglomerate of non-state actors is characterized by fluid structures, blurry boundaries and a multi-level setting of interaction (Keck & Sikkink 1998). Thus, in studying democratic practice in transnational civil society networks, we must ask: How institutionalized does political practice have to be and how flexible can it be, to still be considered democratic? Normative theorists reconceptualized democracy in the light of this changing context (Bohman 2007). Recent concepts of participatory, deliberative and representative democracy attempt to reconfigure existing democratic institutions through procedural elements (Fung & Wright 2003, Dryzek 2006) or innovative forms of representation (Phillips 1998, Mansbridge 2003, Castiglione & Warren 2006). This emerging theoretical framework is well suited to analyze the extent, to which democratic practice exists within transnational civil society networks.By applying the concept of practice (Giddens 1984, Schatzki 2001) as a bridging tool between the empirical reality of fluid, temporary and open transnational civil society networks on the one hand and the institution-oriented democratic theory on the other hand, this study explores the extent to which democratic practice develops in a field that lacks traditional institutions to guarantee formal representation and deliberation as well citizen participation. As innovative transnational actors, civil society networks can bring up new forms of democratic practice (see Polletta 2006) that can potentially inspire the debate about transnational democracy as such. This study, with its innovate approach, hopes to invigorate the debate about transnational democracy and transnational civil society, which has stalled to some degree in recent years.The study is divided into three parts: first, a conceptual part that clarifies the question of how democracy as practice can be theoretically conceptualized in transnational civil society networks, which is followed by an empirical exploration of political practice in the transnational civil society networks. In this second part, the main question is how participation, representation and deliberation practice develops in transnational civil society networks. Two cases of transnational civil society networks, the Clean Clothes Campaign and Friends of the Earth, are analyzed to provide insights into the democratic practice within transnational civil society. In the final part, the empirical findings are evaluated in the light of the outlined concepts of democratic theory in order to explore how democratic the political practice actually is.The study identifies implicit and in-process practice of democratic norms in transnational civil society networks. Political practice in transnational civil society networks can become democratic through empowerment measures and trustful relationships. However, deliberation practice can be impeded by disembodied digital communication and complex decision-making. The study explores how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and the structural environments of actors and networks.

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht lokale Beteiligungsdefizite und hieraus resultierende Proteste von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern insbesondere in ländlichen Räumen anhand eines Konfliktes um Massentierhaltung und Bauvorhaben in diesem Kontext. Sie möchte zu einem verbesserten Verständnis über Beteiligungsdefizite und ihre sozio-politischen Hintergründe beitragen. Ausgehend von der Betrachtung eines Einzelfalls der Ansiedlung eines Schlachthofs mit Erläuterung des Planverfahrens und des dazugehörigen Beteiligungs- und Entscheidungsprozesses wird der lokale Konflikt im Sinne einer politischen Soziologie analysiert, die die praxeologischen Bedingungen der handelnden Akteure und ihre relationalen Bezüge zu anderen Akteuren und sozialen Strukturen in den Blick rückt. Hierdurch können tiefliegende Grundannahmen und Überzeugungen verstanden werden, die sowohl die Protestpraxis als auch politische Erwartungen beeinflussen und jeweils in bestimmten sozialen Kontexten (Milieus) entstanden sind. Die Fallstudie dient als illustratives Beispiel, um zu zeigen, wie individuelle bzw. gruppenspezifische Belange in einem politischen Konflikt entstehen, wie abhängig diese von ihrem sozialen Kontext sind und welche Beteiligungswege (repräsentativ, informell, direkt) möglich sind, um mit ihnen angemessen umzugehen. Hierdurch wird Wissen generiert, um für einen adäquaten politischen Umgang mit diesen Belangen Empfehlungen aussprechen zu können.

This study examines behavioural patterns of the top echelons of Russia’s elite within four fundamental spheres (law, truth, public welfare and violence) since 2008 and discovers certain continuities. It reveals the elite's fundamental attitudes in the four areas as evinced by its actions – attitudes which will have a decisive impact on German-Russian and EU-Russia relations in the future. The study shows that Russia’s actions since 2014 - which have surprised many Western observers - are based on attitudes that were already perceptible before then. These attitudes can thus be considered part of the Russian elite's long-standing political culture. Today, it is the instrumentalisation of law, truth and violence in foreign and domestic politics, and a desire for control derived from mistrust in external and internal actors, that especially characterise Russia’s elite. The common good or well-being of the Russian people is not a priority for the elite, or only in purely instrumental terms. Politicians and policymakers in Germany and the EU need to take these fundamental attitudes into account when developing a medium- to long-term approach to Russia because they will shape the actions of numerous members of the Russian elite for the foreseeable future. (author's abstract)

Der Artikel untersucht, wie BürgerInnen auf lokaler Ebene bei umstrittenen Entscheidungsfindungsprozessen in Österreich eingebunden werden und welche Mitgestaltungsmöglichkeiten sich ihnen bieten. Dazu wurden sechs lokale Entscheidungsfindungsprozesse zu umstrittenen Windkraftprojekten in Niederösterreich untersucht. In den jeweiligen Auseinandersetzungen sind kaum Elemente partizipativer oder deliberativer Ansätze und nur ein direktdemokratisches Instrument, Bürgerbefragungen, vorzufinden. Entscheidungsfindungsprozesse sind somit auf der lokalen Ebene auf Mitentscheidung und nicht auf Mitgestaltung ausgerichtet. So steht der Wunsch nach Akzeptanz der Bevölkerung für bereits im Vorfeld getroffene Entscheidungen im Vordergrund, während die gemeinsame Entwicklung eines Windkraftprojekts in der Regel nicht vorgesehen ist., This article investigates, how citizens are invited to take part in local decision-finding processes in Austria. In order to find out, what type of options are being offered to citizens, we have analyzed six fiercely debated decision-finding processes on wind power projects in Lower Austria. We barely found elements of participatory or deliberative approaches and only one single direct democratic instrument - referendums without mandatory consequences. Decision-finding processes on the local level are therefore mainly directed toward co-decision, and not co-creation. Regularly, decision-makers do not want to develop wind power projects together with citizens, but rather mobilize acceptance for already made decisions.

The 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by planning optimism and major reforms associated with notions of efficiency on the one hand, and a change in political culture on the other. When government bodies in the Federal Republic of Germany initiated in a top-down way a comprehensive territorial reform and intervened into the everyday life of many people this provoked resistance from citizens. Using the example of the municipal territorial reform as carried out in the Federal Republic, the article addresses tensions as well as a governance processes between the representatives of the state, the municipalities and citizens alongside with a fundamental change in political culture during the 1960s and 1970s. The article shows how the local municipalities reacted to territorial and functional reforms elaborated by the federal and state governments and the ministerial bureaucracy of West Germany with a special focus on North Rhine-Westphalia. It sheds light not only on new players in the political arena, municipalities and local citizens’ initiatives that were increasingly trying to take an active role in decision-making, but also a general change in political culture. Claims for political and social participation and political transparency, a “vital civic spirit” which opposed state planning optimist approaches ‒ demands that those responsible for the reform had to react on. The article examines the redefinitions of the relationship between state and municipality, and citizens in the course of reform processes and related political debates, and analyses how far decisions-making processes changed.

In this paper, based on my research about the mutual aids between local govern-ments after the Great East Japan Disaster (3.11), I try to describe the process in which I have collected data based on typical theories and through the interaction with informants belonging to local governments in order to discuss the possible relationship between data and theories. First of all, I evaluate two recent empirical studies both of which reached one similar conclusion on one of the typical theoretical perspective shared by most researchers on Japanese society after 3.11. I name this perspective “divergent theory” because that perspective should generally point out the divergence of two incompatible forms of norm or narratives on political responses to that disaster. Secondly, I describe the data-producing process in which I have collected the data about the decision-making of mutual aid implementation initially through structured questionnaires which were planned based on those static theories and then I modified these data through face-to-face interviews. Consequently, I have come to interpret these political responses to disaster as convergence rather than divergence referring not only to my own process-produced data but to Luhmann’s sociological theory which was produced by comparative observation of interactions within political processes. Finally, I describe reactions of my informants who were introduced to my theoretical interpretation as part of the open-ended process of a reflexive relationship between data and theories in my research, which should be called “action research.”

Is the self-determination of future generations impeded by lasting constitutions, as Thomas Jefferson suggests? In this article it is not only argued that the opposite is true, but also that the question misses the point. It is demonstrated that the very demand for future generations’ full self-determination is self-contradictory, and that it is impossible to achieve. Applying the all-affected principle to future generations, it is shown that we will always affect them, and that we should employ an attitude of “reflective paternalism” towards them. With the help of institutions reviewed in this article, the interests of future generations could be introduced into today’s political decision-making process. The role of constitutions is to provide the prerequisites for democratic self-determination and potentially also to facilitate the institutional empowerment of future generations., Intergenerational Justice Review, Vol 9, No 2 (2016): Constitutions as Intergenerational Contracts: Flexible or fixed?

Was ist der ‚Druck der Öffentlichkeit‘? Was ist der ‚öffentliche Druck‘, unter dem Politiker handeln und entscheiden? Dieser Beitrag enthält das vorläufige Ergebnis grundlegender Überlegungen. Es wird eine Definition öffentlichen Drucks entwickelt, es werden Determinanten und Indikatoren öffentlichen Drucks benannt und es wird bestimmt, was unter der subjektiven Druckwahrnehmung des Politikers zu verstehen ist. Es wird ein Vorschlag gemacht zur Berechnung eines ‚Druckindexes‘ und zur Feststellung des Druckpotenzials der politischen Öffentlichkeit. Anschließend geht es um den spezifischen Druck der politischen Netzöffentlichkeit und wie er – verglichen mit traditionellen politischen Öffentlichkeiten – auf ähnliche oder unterschiedliche Art und Weise zustande kommen kann. Abschließend werden aus der Perspektive des Politikers Grenzen öffentlichen Drucks benannt., What is the 'pressure of the public sphere'? What is the public pressure under which a politician acts and decides? This article contains the preliminary result of some foundational considerations. It develops a definition of public pressure, names determinants and indicators of public pressure and addresses the subjective perception of pressure by a politician. The article proposes the calculation of a 'pressure index' and a way to determine the pressure potential of the political public sphere. In a next step, it focuses on the specific pressure of the political public sphere online and whether online pressure is similar to or different from offline pressure. The article closes with limits of public pressure from the perspective of the politician., Politische Online-Kommunikation: Voraussetzungen und Folgen des strukturellen Wandels der politischen Kommunikation

Ausgehend von der Beobachtung, dass in Debatten um Modelle der Wahlentscheidung zunehmend über meinungsklimaorientiertes Wählen diskutiert wird, stellt der Beitrag Online-Wahlbörsen als Orientierungsmöglichkeit vor. Am Beispiel der Online-Wahlbörse des Handelsblatts zur Bundestagswahl 2013 zeigt der Beitrag darüber hinaus, was die Prognosegüte determiniert. Dafür konzentriert sich die Studie auf die Teilnehmereigenschaften als Determinante. Um mehr als in bisherigen Studien über die Teilnehmer von Online-Wahlbörsen zu erfahren, die durch ihr Handeln die Prognose bilden, wurde der Online-Wahlbörse des Handelsblatts zur Bundestagswahl 2013 zwei Tage vor der Wahl ein Online-Fragebogen zugeschaltet. Wer sind die Teilnehmer der Wahlbörse und welche Erwartungen hatten sie an den Wahlausgang? Das Ergebnis zeigt, die Teilnehmer informierten sich hauptsächlich im Internet, waren überdurchschnittlich politisch interessiert und präferierten sehr stark die AfD, was zu Prognoseverzerrungen führte., Based on discussions about voting decisions orientating on public opinion, the article shows that voters are able to orientate their decisions on online political stock markets. Taking the online polit-ical stock market by the Handelsblatt news-paper ahead of the 2013 German federal election as an example, we ask for the influence of users characteristics on the forecast quality. Two days before the election the users participated in an additional online survey. Who are the users of the online political stock market and what did they expected of the election result? The study discovers that users are both highly politicized as well as biased, which – following the logic of the online political stock markets – can lead to a market failure manifesting in incorrect elective expectations as well as inaccurate forecasts., Politische Online-Kommunikation: Voraussetzungen und Folgen des strukturellen Wandels der politischen Kommunikation

This article provides a fresh perspective on political leadership by demonstrating that government ministers take a deliberative approach to decision making. Getting behind the closed doors of government through 51 elite interviews in the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the article demonstrates that modern political leadership is much more collaborative than we usually see from media and public critique. Politicians are commonly perceived to be powerhungry autocratic, elite figures who once they have won power seek to implement their vision. But as previous research has noted, not only is formal power circumscribed by the media, public opinion, and unpredictability of government, more collaborative approaches to leadership are needed given the rise of wicked problems and citizens increasingly demand more say in government decisions and policy making. This article shows that politicians are responding to their challenging environment by accepting they do not know everything and cannot do everything by themselves, and moving towards a leadership style that incorporates public input. It puts forward a new model of Deliberative Political Leadership, where politicians consider input from inside and outside government from a diverse range of sources, evaluate the relative quality of such input, and integrate it into their deliberations on the best way forward before making their final decision. This rare insight into politician’s perspectives provides a refreshing view of governmental leadership in practice and new model for future research. (author's abstract)

The paper advances a realist analytical model for case studies of national soft power policies. First, it argues that for the purposes of realist analysis, a soft power policy must be considered as a rational strategy pursued under the conditions of competition. Furthermore, it emphasises the importance of taking into account the specificities of the recipient state as well as the fact that a soft power strategy is targeted at both its elite and its public. In addition, the article substantiates the necessity to draw a clear-cut distinction between soft power sources and instruments and shows possible shortcomings that research can have should this distinction fail to be made. Finally, the paper discusses the impact of a competitor’s presence on a soft power strategy and specifies the terms under which disregarding this impact may engender a wrong conclusion.

Following a string of crises that have eroded trust in the European Union, Euro-sceptic parties achieved major gains in the 2014 European elections, and have expanded their share of the vote in almost all regional and national elections held since. Seven national governments now either include or are tolerated by Euro-sceptic parties. In practice, however, their impact on the legislative process in the European Parliament and the Council has been minimal. But the crumbling of the European consensus limits the room for national governments to find compromises at the EU level, above all in relation to the Union's major challenges. The EU therefore needs to secure its future on the basis of its existing level of integration. (Autorenreferat)

An emerging research programme on diffusion across regional international organisations (RIOs) proposes that decisions taken in one RIO affect decision-making in other RIOs. This work has provided a welcome corrective to endogenously-focused accounts of RIOs. Nevertheless, by focusing on the final design of policies and institutional arrangements, it has been conceptually overly narrow. This has led to a truncated understanding of diffusion’s impact and to an unjustified view of convergence as its primary outcome. Drawing on public policy and sociological research, we offer a conceptual framework that seeks to remedy these weaknesses by disaggregating the decision-making process on the ‘receiving’ side. We suggest that policies and institutional arrangements in RIOs result from three decision-making stages:problematisation(identification of something as a political problem),framing(categorisation of the problem and possible solutions), andscripting(design of final solutions). Diffusion can affectanycombination of these stages. Consequently, its effects are more varied and potentially extensive than is currently recognised, and convergence and persistent variation in scripting are both possible outcomes. We illustrate our framework by re-evaluating research on dispute settlement institutions in the EEC, NAFTA, and SADC. We conclude by discussing its theoretical implications and the conditions that likely promote diffusion.

The article describes and analyzes the evolution of Lithuanian political elite’s attitudes towards the European Union (EU) and its governance during the past decade (2004-2016). First, it reviews changes in the composition of Lithuania’s political elite and assesses EU related policy decisions, which reveal the complex interrelations between national and supranational politics in a small but illustrative post-communist state. Second, it presents an analysis of the Lithuanian political elite’s attitudes, which were surveyed in 2007, 2009 and 2014; it examines trends in the elite’s attachment to Europe, their perceptions of threats to EU cohesion, changes in the levels of their trust in EU institutions, their conceptions of European governance, and their stances towards the management of financial and economic crisis. Comparing the three surveys captures evolution of the attitudes of the by and large consensually pro-European Lithuanian political elite. The Europeanness of the Lithuanian political elite also increases, an attitude which appears to be more a response to Russia-induced geopolitical destabilization than to the 2008 financial crisis.

The case of the Philippines provides an interesting example of how post-colonial governments in Southeast Asia are trying to govern multi-ethnic nations. The Philippines, despite being the country in Asia with the most vibrant civil society, is still dealing with a war on the southern island of Mindanao – a war fuelled by, rather than abated by, national dynamics of identity-construction and social practices of democracy. This paper looks into these protracted national dynamics and their influence on the conflict in Mindanao. It further contrasts those with local, predominantly civil-society-based, approaches of identity re-construction and decision-making that have changed the situation for many communities on the ground, but that haven't so far had much impact on the national setting. Therefore, the final part of the paper assesses the impact of local civil-society initiatives and draws conclusions on how those could provide blueprints for national solutions and complement high-level peace talks.

The Internet holds endless opportunities for exchange and dialogue and the promise of developing a better democratic model. Day-to-day politics are largely driven by economic lobbies in the interest of what Habermas calls their "generalised particularism," the threat to take jobs and tax revenues elsewhere. Citizens' influence over politicians is twofold: they are asked for their input in elections, referenda, online consultations and surveys, and citizens can initiate issues where they see political action needed. Yet these "participative forces," including NGOs, street rallies and charities, regularly fail to reach the ears of elected politicians as effectively as those of well-funded corporate lobbies. Also, this type of voluntary engagement often falls short of presenting the kind of reasoned challenges to the incumbents - by the electorate - that Habermas' communicative action aimed at. A more powerful model would therefore organise the efforts of the electorate in a way that both generates those reasoned arguments, which, as Habermas quite correctly pointed out differ from mere opinions, and delivers them to the elected politicians in a manner they can neither refuse nor ignore. This is what the Citizen Lobby intends to do.

There are various instances of local identity in modern Russia. However, vying with it, regional features of national identity must not contradict. At the same time, ethnic, confessional, symbolic, historical markers are being structured in local regional communities in a number of ways. The main actors who are totally legitimate for building local identities in political discourse are regional political elites. By the identity politics of political actors, social space is structured and “typified”, and own strategies are legitimized. “Leader - electorate” relationship still remains as the key factor which can be used to manipulate public opinion. The article raises the issue of the current state of the political identity of the population of Volgograd Region. The results of the empirical analysis of the political identity structure are also presented. The authors conclude that the nature of the political identity of Volgograd Region population is determined mostly by its syntagmatic qualities being developed through the mismatch of ideological, electorate and personified levels of the political identity. Furthermore, key features of the political consciousness are inactivity and supineness of the people. Inhabitants prefer not to take part in policy decisions and take no responsibility. The achievements and the problems on the way of seeking regional political identity originated from the peculiarities of the regional dynamics are also analyzed in the work. Despite the domination of the negative ideologemes in the regional political development, sense and images of historic victories of the country are still the main unifying forces for the separate ways of thinking of Volgograd population., В статье обсуждается вопрос об актуальном состоянии политической идентичности населения Волгоградской области. Анализируются достижения и проблемы на пути поиска региональной политической идентичности, порожденные особенностями динамики регионального пространства. В работе изложены результаты эмпирического ис- следования структуры политической идентичности населения Волгоградской области.

"Wie der Bericht der Griss-Kommission nachweist, ist die Pleite der Hypo Alpe Adria einem Versagen des österreichischen politischen Systems als solchem und nicht dem Fehlverhalten einzelner Personen oder Institutionen geschuldet. Aus dieser Beobachtung heraus beschäftigt sich der Beitrag mit der Frage, wie das österreichische politische System verändert werden muss, um aus Fehlern besser lernen zu können. Es werden mehrere entscheidende Faktoren aus der Forschung zu Politiklernen benannt und damit in Zusammenhang stehende Probleme der österreichischen Politik angesprochen." (Autorenreferat), "The report of the Griss-Commission shows that the fiasco of the Hypo Alpe Adria bank is the result of the Austrian political system's failure rather than the misconduct of single persons or institutions. Therefore the question is dealt with how the Austrian political system can be reformed in order to learn better from failures. Several decisive factors are drawn from the research on policy learning and a number of related problems in Austrian politics are discussed." (author's abstract)

Whereas the delegation of regulatory powers is usually examined from the prin­ cipal's perspective, this article explores the consequences of delegation for the regulatory output. Empirically, it finds that the dissolution of the original German postal authority led to the establishment of a system of divided labour in which different actors, including an (almost) independent regulatory agency, depend on each other's performance of specialized functions. Theoretically, it contributes to the ongoing debate over the role and operation of independent agencies in two main respects. First, based on the modern theory of social systems, it draws attention to the fact that the reform process was characterized by an increased functional differentiation of institutional ized decision-making. Second, drawing on the Habermasian theory of communicative action, it is argued that functional differen­ tiation supports the transformation of interaction from interest-based bargaining to deli­ berative arguing both in the legislative and the administrative arenas. As political actors are made unable to resort to their power resources, reasons become a key source of influence. Independent regulatory agencies are a modern form of market regulation. While they were invented in the United States in the nineteenth century to protect administrative decision-making from partisan politics (Shapiro 1988), they have now spread all over the Western world with the task of regulating the public utilities (Majone 1996; Thatcher & Stone Sweet 2002). They also appear in the form of independent central banks or cartel offices. Even new political systems such as the European Union (Egan 1998) and polities with little experience in delegating functions to 'arm's length' institutions like Germany are increasingly coming to establish largely independent regulatory agencies (Dohler 2002). For a traditional 'Principal-Agent' approach, it is difficult to explain why legislatures establish regulatory agencies and central banks that are more or less independent from their principals because the approach focuses primarily on oversight. Delegation always establishes new actors that may develop and pursue their own interests, rather than those of their principals (Moe 1990: 121). Inevitably, it generates 'agency losses' and requires that efforts be made to ensure that an entrusted agent does that for which it was established.

After the uprising against President Yanukovych, Ukraine’s opposition convened an interim government to pave the way for elections in May 2014. This year also saw interim governments put in place in the Central African Republic and Thailand. Meanwhile, peace talks in South Sudan came to a standstill in October 2014 because parties were unable to agree on the role of the prime minister in an interim government. Interim governments are often installed during peace processes, and policy makers tend to portray them as magic bullets that are capable of resolving all forms of violent conflict and promoting postconflict democracy. Their record, however, is mixed. This is partly because policy makers focus on distributing interim government seats among conflict parties. It is just as vital, though, to ensure that interim governments implement crucial reforms and integrate civil society in decision-making processes. Postconflict interim governments are set up to organize elections, conduct institutional reforms, and facilitate conflict resolution. They are particularly common in sub-Saharan Africa, where they have been installed after over 60 percent of armed conflicts. The record shows that power-sharing interim governments, such as in Liberia, and international interim governments, such as in Kosovo, are most successful in advancing peace and democracy. Among the most vital reforms interim governments need to implement is the integration of the parallel institutions that warring parties maintain during armed conflict. As long as parties retain control over military structures or shadow administrations, they will possess the resources to return to fighting. How interim governments are perceived by the broader public is also important. Including civil society in decision making, such as when drafting a new electoral law, increases the acceptance of reforms.

The consideration of political action by individuals is constrained by what those people consider possible, in terms of not only their immediate actions but also in terms of what changes in the world those individuals believe could occur because of their, or others’, actions. However, there are two major complications to this picture: (a) people are heavily influenced by others they are in social contact with in terms of both goals and assessment of possibility, and (b) since what people do is influenced by what world-changes they consider possible, and people know this, what can change is influenced also by what others think others around them think is possible. Politics thus involves complex processes at several levels, including: the spread of goals and possibility assessments throughout a local social network, and adjustments in what people think about others’ possibility judgments. An implementable cognitive model suitable for building into an agent-based model is proposed, drawing on existing cognitive structures to simulate social contact, goal-directed action choice, negotiation and social norms.

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Voters try to avoid wasting their votes even in PR systems. In this paper we make a case that this type of strategic voting can be observed and predicted even in PR systems. Contrary to the literature we do not see weak institutional incentive structures as indicative of a hopeless endeavor for studying strategic voting. The crucial question for strategic voting is how institutional incentives constrain an individual’s decision-making process. Based on expected utility maximization we put forward a micro-logic of an individual’s expectation formation process driven by institutional and dispositional incentives. All well-known institutional incentives to vote strategically that get channelled through the district magnitude are moderated by dispositional factors in order to become relevant for voting decisions. Employing data from Finland – because of its electoral system a particularly hard testing ground - we find considerable evidence for observable implications of our theory.

In this discussion paper, we introduce and outline in detail an analytical scheme - SCAPE - that has been developed over several years, that has been tested and iteratively refined through application to dozens of case studies, and which is currently in use for a case survey of several hundred case studies of public environmental decision-making. The ‘scheme for the comparative analysis of public environmental decision-making’ (SCAPE) facilitates the systematic comparison of cases of public decision-making and serves to identify causal relationships between the characteristics of a decision-making process and its outcomes. The framework is meant to be applicable to a wide range of public decision-making processes, focused on but not limited to environmental governance processes SCAPE is particularly suited to the analysis of processes in the realm of environmental governance that entail different forms of citizen and interest group involvement or environmental mediation. It develops a clear notion of the ‘decision-making process’ as its core unit of analysis, and provides a coherently structured set of more than 300 items covering: contextual conditions (section B) such as the societal and political environment, the pre-history of a decision-making process, elements of the issue at stake, characteristics of the relevant stakeholder field, and the level of pre-existing conflict; process characteristics (section C) such as who is involved in terms of governmental and non-governmental actors, the configuration of power relations, the role of scientific expertise, communication and information flows between actors, aspects of process facilitation, and process resources; process outputs and outcomes (section D) in terms of social, economic and environmental aspects (with an emphasis on the latter), social learning, trust-building, public acceptance, and conflict resolution, to name but a few.

1\. Introduction 5 2\. The Global Spread of the Freedom of Information 7 3\. The Diffusion of Policy Design 9 3.1 Uncertainty and Emulation 9 3.2 Illustrative Evidence 10 4\. A Quantitative Approach to Policy Design and Policy Similarity 14 4.1 Measuring the Design of FOI Laws 14 4.2 Modeling Policy Similarity among Country-Pairs 15 5\. Model Results 17 5.1 Regional Emulation 17 5.2 Alternative Diffusion Mechanisms 18 6\. Conclusion 23 Bibliography 25, How do countries make policy in an uncertain world? Do policymakers look inward, rationally designing policies to fit domestic interests, ideas, and institutions? Or do they look outward, imitating policy elements from other countries? And if the latter, where do they look? Focusing on the specific policy area of Freedom of Information laws, I argue that regional emulation plays an important role in shaping policy design. Policymakers face substantial uncertainty over the consequences of different design choices, and so emulate other countries as policy models. I further argue that, due to availability bias, countries in the same region serve as the most important such models. After reviewing numerous examples of such emulation, I model the policy similarity between 4,096 pairs of countries, and find that countries in the same region, or more geographically proximate, tend to have more similar laws than other country-pairs. These results are robust to different categorizations of region, fixed effects capturing country-specific features, and testing against alternative forms of emulation as well as alternative diffusion mechanisms of competition, coercion, conditionality, and learning. This approach also highlights the diffusion of policy design, as opposed to adoption, as an important future direction for policy diffusion research.