The fragmented and disrupted electricity infrastructures of Benin restrict service provision in health centers and are insofar co-responsible for healthcare shortcomings. Off-grid PV systems are regarded as state-of-the-art technology to complement conventional structures of electricity provision and hence ‘develop’ the apparent insufficiencies. This thesis aims to go beyond these ostensible claims and explore the complexities and contradictions that arise from the integration of such technologies in public institutions. To achieve this distinct perception, the systems were conceptualized as fluid actors whose impacts in the dimensions of ‘nation building’, ‘community constitution’, and ‘provision of clean electricity’ were examined and compared to other fluid actors. Data was collected through qualitative interviews with members of (inter-) national organizations, technicians, and healthcare professionals. The analysis demonstrates that off-grid PV systems play a crucial role in the hybridization of electricity provision as they appear in differing quantities, sizes, and scopes in most of the visited health centers. Nevertheless, it was found that this integration does not inherently facilitate stable nation-building processes, nor does it equate to the satisfaction of health professionals. Consequently, the thesis concludes in defining interdependent identities of off-grid PV systems as envisioned, visible, and invisible actor that allow to portray the ambivalent characteristics of the technology.

In light of the climate crisis, the discovery of Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth elements, known as Per Geijer and located in Kiruna, Northern Sweden, has been celebrated as a key to the EU’s green transition. At the same time, however, the planned extraction risks making traditional reindeer herding in the area impossible, thereby jeopardizing Sami culture, which is deeply rooted in the land and reindeer herding. Drawing on literature and fieldwork, this study explores how the mining project would affect local Sami reindeer herders’ experiences of environmental justice, focusing on the three dimensions of distribution, recognition and participation. The analysis combines environmental justice theory with a capabilities approach to assess not only the social, economic and cultural impacts but also the effects on reindeer herders’ well being and autonomy. This study reveals that the state positions the erosion of Sami culture and livelihood as a necessary cost for the greater good. While Sami reindeer herders suffer environmental, economic, social and cultural consequences, they are largely excluded from profits and decision-making. In light of the green transition and rising mineral demands, this thesis adds to the discussion on the impacts of extraction on Indigenous groups and highlights the need for a just transition that does not reproduce colonial injustices.

What does justice imply – and for whom? This question is relevant with regard to various topics and needs to be considered, for example in the context of the environment. The concept of environmental justice (EJ) provides an approach to answering this question. In the context of this thesis, EJ is therefore applied to a specific case, the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. The focus on the expansion of this fossil fuel infrastructure is a fairly new phenomenon in Germany, as is the protest against it. Similarly new is the qualitative, scientific examination of local struggles in the German research landscape with regard to LNG. In order to expand this state of research and analyze the new energy policy developments and their local implications, the following paper asks to what extent the three dimensions of EJ - distributive, recognition and procedural justice - are reflected in the motives and arguments of the opponents of the LNG terminal off Rügen. Through interviews with opponents of the LNG terminal, the qualitative research design enabled a detailed examination of the predominant motives of EJ in the context of the construction of fossil infrastructure. Local and external groups, as well as non-human entities, are mentioned in the motives for distributional injustices. In addition, complex procedural injustices in the context of the approval process or the dialogue formats between politics and the population were addressed. There was some recognition of certain local groups, but other non-local groups were given less consideration, similar to various local demands or scientific findings.

Die Arbeit entwickelt eine Architektur für einen EHDS-konformen Datenraum, der sektorübergreifende Forschungsdatenkooperationen im Gesundheitswesen unterstützt. Ausgangspunkt ist die Analyse rechtlicher, organisatorischer und technischer Anforderungen an Datennutzung und -austausch, die im Kontext fragmentierter IT-Landschaften, heterogener Prozesse und datenschutzrechtlicher Unsicherheiten besondere Bedeutung haben. Methodisch folgt die Arbeit dem Ansatz des Action Design Research und verbindet theoretische Meta- Anforderungen mit empirischen Erkenntnissen aus Interviews und Workshops im Projekt CaringS. Ergebnis ist ein Wegweiser, der Konsortien in fünf Phasen von der gemeinsamen Vision über die Identifikation relevanter Datenquellen und Fragen der Data-Governance bis zur technischen Architektur und langfristigen Nutzung begleitet. Wissenschaftlich leistet die Arbeit einen Beitrag zur Entwicklung von Gestaltungsprinzipien für Datenräume, die Zielkonflikte zwischen Generalisierbarkeit und Praxistauglichkeit sichtbar machen. Praktisch stellt sie ein anwendbares Instrument bereit, das EHDS-Vorgaben in konkrete Arbeitsschritte übersetzt und so Forschung und Versorgung verbindet.

This paper investigates how the ECB’s monetary policy affects consumers’ perceptions about the credibility of the inflation target. Monetary policy is assessed by the gap between the actual policy rate and a Taylor rate to approximate the interest rate expected by the public. Drawing on survey data for German consumers from 2019 to 2024, we find that the ECB’s interest rate policy contributes significantly to the credibility of the inflation target. In particular, the massive dent in inflation target credibility observed from 2021 to the end of 2023 could have been ameliorated by an earlier and more decisive tightening of monetary policy. This suggests that simple outcome-based Taylor rules may deserve more attention in the communication of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy.

Difference-in-differences (DiD) is one of the most popular approaches for empirical research in economics, political science, and beyond. Identification in these models is based on the conditional parallel trends assumption: In the absence of treatment, the average outcome of the treated and untreated group are assumed to evolve in parallel over time, conditional on pre-treatment covariates. We introduce a novel approach to sensitivity analysis for DiD models that assesses the robustness of DiD estimates to violations of this assumption due to unobservable confounders, allowing researchers to transparently assess and communicate the credibility of their causal estimation results. Our method focuses on estimation by Double Machine Learning and extends previous work on sensitivity analysis based on Riesz Representation in cross-sectional settings. We establish asymptotic bounds for point estimates and confidence intervals in the canonical 2 × 2 setting and group-time causal parameters in settings with staggered treatment adoption. Our approach makes it possible to relate the formulation of parallel trends violation to empirical evidence from (1) pre-testing, (2) covariate benchmarking and (3) standard reporting statistics and visualizations. We provide extensive simulation experiments demonstrating the validity of our sensitivity approach and diagnostics and apply our approach to two empirical applications.

This study examines how scholars in Germany working on the Middle East have experienced the discussion of Israel and Palestine in research, teaching, and public debate since October 7, 2023. Drawing on a systematic online survey, it investigates across disciplines the perception of restrictions, practices of self-censorship, and perceived forms of institutional pressure. The findings indicate a marked intensification of political sensitivities shaping academic work and shifting boundaries of academic freedom. What becomes visible is a tension between respondents’ normative ideal of open debate and their actual experience of narrowing discourse, contestation, and sanctioning. Self-censorship and experiences of threat are widespread. In this context, respondents emphasize the protection of plural expression as a central task of academic institutions. The results correspond to U.S. surveys conducted by the Middle East Scholar Barometer and, for the first time, provide systematic evidence for the German context.

This paper examines whether giant oil and gas discoveries hinder the green transformation in post-Soviet space. Post-Soviet countries share a similar historical background but have pursued drastically different energy strategies, providing an ideal field to observe the influence of resource discoveries by minimizing the unobservable variables. Treating giant resource discoveries as natural experiments, it evaluates both short-term and long-term causal effects on the green transformation measured in four dimensions: total energy supply (TES), energy mix, energy efficiency, and international investment in renewables. The findings reveal that giant discoveries lead to a short-term decline in TES, fossil energy supply, and renewable energy supply; better (political) institutions deepen this short-term decline, while stronger economic institutions increase TES and renewable energy (excluding biofuels). However, these effects are short-lived. In the long term, discoveries result in increased TES and fossil energy supply, reduced renewable energy supply, and worsening energy efficiency. These results support the resource curse theory, showing that institutional quality moderates short-term disruptions but cannot prevent long-term fossil fuel dependence. The thesis contributes to the limited literature on the direct impact of resource discoveries on energy transition in post-Soviet countries and highlights the need for institutional strengthening and targeted international support in renewables in countries with recent resource shocks.

Nearly 2,000 forgotten letters from Hungarian Jews, sent to a Jewish aid organization in Stockholm during the summer of 1943, were uncovered in the Swedish National Archive by Elena Medvedev during her initial research into the personal micro-archive of historian Paul A. Levine. The discovered artefacts sought information about Jewish men conscripted into Hungary’s Jewish labor battalions under an increasingly repressive regime. The survival and decades-long neglect of this correspondence is both astonishing and revealing. Now housed for starting scholarly examination at the Osteuropa-Institut at Freie Universität Berlin, the letters will be studied through both quantitative and qualitative methods—initially analyzing socio- demographic variables and narrative content to explore patterns of assumed selective repression. Were intellectuals and cosmopolitan figures especially targeted? What mechanisms allowed these letters to bypass censorship? More than historical documents, the letters supposed to display logic that guided the regime’s repressive choices; they challenge us to claim the Holocaust details left in silence.

The Kyrgyz Republic forms a dynamic political context characterized by various shifts in its domestic and foreign political sphere. Thereby, informal cross-border trade has developed as a crucial pillar of the Kyrgyz economy and has become an essential source of income and stability for its citizens. Despite its relevance for society and the state, only limited research has set out to draw a connection between political shifts and informal cross-border trade, and the hidden nature of this trade has made it somewhat difficult to quantify its actual dimensions. Acknowledging the importance of informal cross-border trade, this paper analyses how shifts in the political sphere impact the informal cross-border trade of the Kyrgyz Republic between 2010 and 2022, focusing on its trade relationships with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. This process-tracing case study presents a theorized causal mechanism of how political shifts have increased informal cross-border trade founded in institutionalist theory and the everyday governance framework. The empirical analysis then tests the presence of the causal mechanism. The findings suggest that the causal mechanism is partially validated. Shifts in the political sphere of the Kyrgyz Republic did not consistently lead to an increase in informal cross-border trade during all the years under examination.

Lukashenka and his rule over Belarus are a striking example of how external autocracy support helps maintain authoritarian regimes. Still, little attention has been paid to the responses of anti- regime activists to autocracy support. Building on political opportunity literature and strategic interactionism approaches, this paper analyses qualitative interviews to study anti-regime activists’ perceptions of external autocracy support and with which strategies they respond to it. In the case of Belarus after 2020, this paper finds that anti-regime activists perceive the support by Russian president Putin to Lukashenka as a fundamental constraint to democratic change in Belarus. They respond strategically by engaging in reflection, advocacy, and support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia in the hope that Putin’s ability to support Lukashenka will be weakened. These findings show how autocracy support functions through the perception of domestic contentious actors. Also, finding that activists might decide to (support the) fight against a third player that provides autocracy support adds nuance to the variety of contentious players’ interactions in contexts of internationalized authoritarianism.

The main focus of the scholarly literature on authoritarian regimes is on the dynamics of political control and power preservation and hence tools the incumbents use against potential opposition. This paper argues that another, and a highly important, challenge for many authoritarian regimes is the behavior of actors loyal to the regime, i.e., trying to act in line with the regime goals. These actors, while incorrectly guessing the objectives of the regime, or overshooting in terms of implementation of the regime goals, could cause actual harm to the regime. We offer a sketch of the theory of this phenomenon, which we refer to as ‘excessive loyalism’, as well as test a number of hypotheses concerning the origins of excessive loyalism using the example of the reaction of Russian regional governors to the highly unpopular pension reform of 2018.

The paper offers an actor-centered perspective on the democratic backsliding, focusing in particular on the interplay of internal and international actors in preventing (or accelerating) the backsliding processes. Its main argument is without acknowledging the variation in actors’ constellations, it is also impossible to explain the variation in the outcomes of the backsliding processes. The paper is based on a mixed methods design: after the initial large-N investigation, it focuses on two empirical cases (Poland and Romania) to identify the role of actors and their interconnections in the backsliding processes.

The paper investigates how the Russian authoritarian regime managed two disastrous forest fires episodes Russia experienced in 2010 and 2021. It identifies key characteristics of the authoritarian forest fires management, as well as performs content analysis in order to identify the common features and the peculiarities of the forest fires management in both cases. It covers both response to disasters and the subsequent recovery. The paper both identifies the key characteristics of the official communication regarding forest fire management and looks at the general discourse about two forest fires episodes in the Russian media, including the role of different levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy in combatting forest fires and organizing recovery.

Die Studie widmet sich der Frage, wie Wissenschaftler*innen in Deutschland mit Arbeitsbe-zug zum Nahen Osten die Thematisierung von Israel und Palästina in Forschung, Lehre und öffentlicher Debatte seit dem 7. Oktober 2023 erfahren. Auf Grundlage einer systematischen Online-Erhebung untersucht sie disziplinübergeifend die Wahrnehmung von Einschränkun-gen, Praktiken der Selbstzensur sowie perzipierte Formen institutionellen Drucks. Die Be-funde deuten auf eine deutliche Intensivierung der politischen Sensibilitäten hin, die die wis-senschaftliche Arbeit in einschlägigen Disziplinen prägen und die Grenzen akademischer Freiheit neu verhandeln. Sichtbar wird dabei ein Spannungsfeld zwischen dem normativen Anspruch offener Debatten und der faktischen Erfahrung von Diskursverengung, Anfechtun-gen und Sanktionierung. Zugleich wird der Schutz pluraler Meinungsäußerung von den Be-fragten als zentrale Aufgabe akademischer Institutionen hervorgehoben. Die Ergebnisse kor-respondieren mit US-Erhebungen des Middle East Scholar Barometer und liefern erstmals systematische Evidenz für den deutschen Kontext.

The reduction of weekly working hours can lead to more gender equality on household level. In mixed-sex, two-adult households, the working hours of each household member have a significant effect on gender equality relevant variables. This was elaborated with a cross- sectional analysis of 2019 German Socio-Economic Panel data using OLS regressions with instrumental variables. Working hours have a strong negative effect on one’s own household- and care time. Men or women having a reduced full-time work contract (32-36 hours per week stipulated in the work contract) creates more symmetry of paid- and unpaid work per sex. A partner’s work time has a significantly negative effect on an individual’s work time but a woman’s work time is more influenced by her male partner’s working hours than the other way around. The thesis finds evidence that if a man has a reduced full-time work contract, this encourages women to work more paid hours per week; for men it is the other way around. The effect of a partner’s working time on an individual’s labor force participation is in all cases very small but significantly negative. The partner working under a reduced full-time work contract creates opposite results for men and women: It increases women’s likelihood to participate in the labor market whereas it decreases men’s probability to participate in the labor market.