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Full speed ahead, stormy weather, and a sea too calm to be good: The year 2014 was a busy one for Green parties in South-Eastern Europe, and the results could not be more different. Sustainable Development of Croatia celebrated a remarkable success in the elections for the European Parliament, winning 9.4% of all votes and securing one seat in Strasbourg. As part of a party platform, the Serbian Greens too entered parliament in the 2014 general elections, but break-away movements and conflicts about strategy threaten the future of the party. Bosnia and Herzegowina, finally, remains a challenging environment for the Greens, as the results of the 2014 general elections show.

Diese Arbeit behandelt den Entwurf energiebasierter Lage- und Positionsfolgeregler für einen Quadrocopter. Es werden neue Lösungen für das vollständige und das reduzierte Lageregelungsproblem eines Starrkörpers präsentiert, welche auf die spezifischen Anforderungen des Quadrocopters zugeschnitten sind. Die entworfenen Regler priorisieren die Schubrichtung, führen durch gezielte Stellgrößensättigung zu schnellem Einschwingverhalten und garantieren fast global asymptotische Stabilität. Zur Lösung des Positionsfolgeproblems wird eine Kaskade aus übergeordneter Positions- und untergeordneter Lageregelung vorgeschlagen. In diesem Zusammenhang wird ein Stabilitätskriterium für eine Klasse nichtautonomer nichtlinearer Kaskadensysteme entwickelt. Simulationen und Flugversuche illustrieren die Leistungsfähigkeit der Ansätze. This thesis deals with the design of energy based attitude and position tracking controllers for a quadrotor. New solutions to the complete and the reduced attitude control problem of a rigid body are presented, which are tailored to the specific requirements of the quadrotor. The developed controllers prioritize the thrust direction, lead to a fast transient response by purposefully saturating the controls and guarantee almost global asymptotic stability. To solve the position tracking problem a cascade consisting of an outer loop position controller and an inner loop attitude controller is proposed. In this context a stability result for a class of nonautonomous nonlinear cascade systems is developed. Simulations and flight experiments illustrate the performance of the approaches.

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

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.

"Zu den wünschenswerten Ergebnissen von Partizipation gibt es eine reichhaltige Fülle an theoretischer Literatur.In Zeiten hoher umweltpolitischer Komplexität und 'Multi-level governance' erhofft man sich von zivilgesellschaftlicher Beteiligung an Entscheidungsprozessen eine Verbesserung der Ergebnisse und eine zügige und breit akzeptierte Umsetzung der beschlossenen Umweltmaßnahmen. Es klafft aber eine große Forschungslücke zwischen theoretischem Wunsch und empirischer Wirklichkeit,da die unzähligen, bislang insbesondere in Nordamerika durchgeführten partizipativen Verfahren noch nicht systematisch und vergleichend auf ihre konkreten umweltpolitischen Effekte untersucht wurden. Eine Meta-Analyse von Fallstudien soll dazu beitragen, diese Lücke zu schließen." (Autorenreferat) "Current political trends and scholarly research increasingly promote collaborative and participatory governance in multi-level systems as a pathway to more sustainable and effective environmental policy. Such decision making, so the hopes, could yield better results and a swifter, more broadly accepted implementation of measures. Nonetheless, the research gap between desire and reality is large. Countless case studies on (participatory) environmental governance have been published, but never systematically reviewed. A meta-analysis of 47 case studies from North America and Western Europe is designed to close this gap and shed light on the hopes placed on participation." (author's abstract)

"Zu den wünschenswerten Ergebnissen von Partizipation gibt es eine reichhaltige Fülle an theoretischer Literatur.In Zeiten hoher umweltpolitischer Komplexität und 'Multi-level governance' erhofft man sich von zivilgesellschaftlicher Beteiligung an Entscheidungsprozessen eine Verbesserung der Ergebnisse und eine zügige und breit akzeptierte Umsetzung der beschlossenen Umweltmaßnahmen. Es klafft aber eine große Forschungslücke zwischen theoretischem Wunsch und empirischer Wirklichkeit,da die unzähligen, bislang insbesondere in Nordamerika durchgeführten partizipativen Verfahren noch nicht systematisch und vergleichend auf ihre konkreten umweltpolitischen Effekte untersucht wurden. Eine Meta-Analyse von Fallstudien soll dazu beitragen, diese Lücke zu schließen." "Current political trends and scholarly research increasingly promote collaborative and participatory governance in multi-level systems as a pathway to more sustainable and effective environmental policy. Such decision making, so the hopes, could yield better results and a swifter, more broadly accepted implementation of measures. Nonetheless, the research gap between desire and reality is large. Countless case studies on (participatory) environmental governance have been published, but never systematically reviewed. A meta-analysis of 47 case studies from North America and Western Europe is designed to close this gap and shed light on the hopes placed on participation."

The ever-growing body of empirical insights in political science constitutes a major challenge for scholars in almost all areas of research. Meta-analytic techniques, the “case survey” method in particular, allow to systematically and rigorously synthesize previous case-based research by drawing on the richness of the case material, on different researchers and research designs, and at the same time allowing for a much wider generalization than from single cases. We review existing applications of case-based meta-analytic methods in political science and related fields and critically assesses strengths and limitations of the approach for political science. Placing case study meta-analysis in the broader context of methods of secondary analysis that synthesize previous research, we develop a typology of methods according to the respective source of data as well as the method of integration. We review previous applications of the case survey method in political research and related fields and discuss the relevance of these findings as well as methodological innovations and flaws. We portray the case survey method (case-based meta-analysis) in more detail, drawing on experiences from our own research. From these, we draw conclusions for the applicability of case meta-analysis, discussing strengths and weaknesses of the method specifically related to political research and conclude with an outlook for further methodological improvements in the field of meta-analytical and other evidence-based methods.

Die besondere Konjunktur des Themas Zivilgesellschaft, so wurde jüngst vermutet, kann als Antwort „von oben“ auf die fortwährenden staatlichen Steuerungsdefizite gesehen werden (Gosewinkel et al. 2004). So erhofft man sich von der Einbindung zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteure in Governance-Prozesse effektivere und effizientere Politiken (Schuppert 2004; Weidner 2004). Diese Entwicklung reflektiert eine qualitative Veränderung auch des Partizipationsdiskurses: Noch in den 1960er und 70er Jahren standen in der bundesdeutschen Debatte emanzipatorische und legitimatorische Motive wie die Möglichkeit zur Mitbestimmung, die Öffnung von Entscheidungsprozessen und die Demokratisierung der Gesellschaft im Mittelpunkt (von Alemann 1975). Diese spielen in der jüngeren politikwissenschaftlichen Partizipationsdebatte nach wie vor eine wichtige Rolle (Renn et al. 1995; Feindt 2001; Fisahn 2002). Jedoch tritt demgegenüber vor allem im Kontext der jüngsten europarechtlichen Verankerung von Öffentlichkeitsbeteiligung der instrumentelle Wert von Partizipation in den Vordergrund.

Current international and European Union environmental policies increasingly promote collaborative and participatory decision-making on appropriate and multiple governance levels as a means to attain more sustainable policies and a more effective and lasting policy implementation. The entailed shifts of geographical scale of governance can be exemplified by the EU Water Framework Directive in that higher-level policies are devolved not only to the member states but to local collaborative decision-making bodies on natural as opposed to territorial scales. To date, empirical evidence and theoretical considerations have remained ambiguous about the environmental outcomes of such modes of governance. At the same time, the relationship between multi-level governance and non-state actor involvement remains a largely uncharted terrain ... Current international and European Union environmental policies increasingly promote collaborative and participatory decision-making on appropriate and multiple governance levels as a means to attain more sustainable policies and a more effective and lasting policy implementation. The entailed shifts of geographical scale of governance can be exemplified by the EU Water Framework Directive in that higher-level policies are devolved not only to the member states but to local collaborative decision-making bodies on natural as opposed to territorial scales. To date, empirical evidence and theoretical considerations have remained ambiguous about the environmental outcomes of such modes of governance. At the same time, the relationship between multi-level governance and non-state actor involvement remains a largely uncharted terrain ...

Current international and European Union environmental policies increasingly promote collaborative and participatory decision-making on appropriate and multiple governance levels as a means to attain more sustainable policies and a more effective and lasting policy implementation. The entailed shifts of geographical scale of governance can be exemplified by the EU Water Framework Directive in that higher-level policies are devolved not only to the member states but to local collaborative decision-making bodies on natural as opposed to territorial scales. To date, empirical evidence and theoretical considerations have remained ambiguous about the environmental outcomes of such modes of governance. At the same time, the relationship between multi-level governance and non-state actor involvement remains a largely uncharted terrain. Accordingly, a twofold research agenda is mapped out: How does public participation work in different governance contexts? And what potential do multi-level governance environments have to foster the effectiveness of participatory governance? Drawing on scholarly literature on multi-level governance, policy implementation, public participation and complex systems, we develop five sets of hypotheses on how the number of policy levels and geographical rescaling affect citizen participation, actor interests and policy outcomes. We present empirical results based on a comparative meta-analysis of 47 case studies in environmental governance in North America and the EU, combining qualitative and quantitative methods.