Patrick Theiner

The Gulf region has been a pioneer of regional integration, from its participation in the creation of the League of Arab States (AL) to today's cooperation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The paper looks at the AL and GCC as regional venues for cooperation, and shows how these two organization's agendas and governance have changed over time, and how the distance between their approaches has increased or decreased. In comparing the two, it shows that their story is not one of strict convergence or divergence, but can only be understood through their often co-dependent pathways: the GCC's institutional design can be attributed to the lessons learned from the AL, while the League's recent push for renewed relevance is a direct answer to the GCC's continued success. Lastly, the paper shows how diffusion as a theoretical framework highlights the importance of institutional innovation, and can help untangle how path dependencies and institutional choices can create positive outcomes, or lock in negative ones. It presents some preliminary observations about the explanatory power of two particular diffusion mechanisms – learning and legitimacy-driven mimicry – for the institutional design choices of both regional organizations.

Internet blocking is no longer a tool wielded only by authoritarian regimes, but one also commonly employed by liberal democracies. In the last decade, access restrictions have become the go-to policy solution where enforcing content regulation is difficult such as child pornography, copyright infringement, or online gambling. In liberal democracies, Internet blocking takes the shape of self-, co-, or state regulation, as well as combinations of these forms. Content restrictions lie at the intersection of various constitutional rights and principles, and honoring this delicate balance seems easiest through the democratic accountability inherent in formal legislation. However, many other regulatory schemes have emerged from completely private self-regulation by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as the UK’s Cleanfeed system, to hybrid public–private partnerships in the shape of co-regulatory arrangements used in Germany or Scandinavia. As of 2015, most liberal democracies have introduced access restrictions through one or more of these three regulatory modes. But what explains their diversity and their systematic variation across countries? This chapter builds on insights generated in a larger research project on “Net Blocking in Liberal Democracies.” Its first part provides an empirical introduction to the topic by looking at Internet blocking in 21 liberal democracies. Next, we provide an analysis of factors influencing whether democracies erect access impediments. We point out some common driving forces and obstacles, partially building on Lijphart’s typology of democracies. Lastly, we discuss the results with a special view towards topics of democratic theory such as “embedded democracy” and “crisis of democracy.”

This paper analyses internet blocking regulations in established liberal democracies. We present evidence about the varying extent to which such regulations have been implemented across 21 countries, differentiate between types of regulations and attempt to explain the variation both of the extent and of the dominant type of regulation across countries. We do so by constructing and analysing a dataset comprising internet content regulation for the years from 2004 to 2012. Focusing on political-institutional variables, we ask which of them are driving or hindering the adoption of internet content regulation in the countries in question. Our results should be seen as a first attempt to bring more evidence and clarity to an area that has seen little work so far rather than as definitive answers to the questions raised. ∗Draft! Please do not cite or quote without authors’ permission. Please address queries to andreas.busch@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

Was kann die Politikwissenschaft aus der Architektur deutscher Parlamente lernen? Wie die Kapitel zeigen, verbergen sich hinter Barockfassaden, Renovierungsprojekten und Neubauten in der Tat grose Fragen nach Macht, Legitimitat und Reprasentation. Die Zusammenfassung arbeitet erstens heraus, welche Gemeinsamkeiten als auch Unterschiede zwischen den Fallstudien bestehen. Wie ist der „typische“ deutsche Landtag architektonisch gestaltet, und welche Bundeslander stellen Ausnahmen von der Regel dar? Zweitens fragen wir, was sich aus der Architektur der Landtage uber die demokratische Teilhabe und Reprasentation der BurgerInnen auf Landerebene lernen lasst, uber deutsche Landespolitik, und uber das foderale System dessen Teil sie sind. Drittens verbinden wir die gesammelten Eindrucke mit den fundamentalen Fragen uber Demokratiequalitat, die in den theoretischen Beitragen aufgeworfen werden: was lasst sich an der Architektur deutscher Landtage tatsachlich uber das Verhaltnis zwischen Repr...

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF) is an international institution that has approved over US $21 billion in grants since 2002, yet there is great variation in which applications are recommended for funding, and in the size of these recommended applications. The GF has approved grants ranging in total size from under one million US dollars to over $435 million, and when calculated per infection per year, grants have spent from as little as $350 per sufferer to almost $36,003 This variation is a result of the principal-agent structure of GF decision-making, in which political representatives of states and other stakeholders approve funding recommendations made by a body of health experts. I utilize a purpose-built database containing 899 recommended and non-recommended GF grant applications from 2002 to 2010 to evaluate the relative impact of the preferences of principal and agent on grant distribution. I find that experts mainly act as 'gatekeepers' ...

Theories of Globalization makes a welcome addition to the bookshelves of those interested in globality, globalism, and globalization, writes Patrick Theiner. Barrie Axford offers students and scholars a comprehensive and critical introduction to the concept of globalization, and draws out the common threads between competing theories, as well as pinpointing the problems that challenge our understanding of globalization.

The SIPRI Yearbook remains the authoritative source of data, analysis, and prognosis for researchers of peace and conflict, and this 44th edition analyses developments in 2012 in security and conflicts, military spending and armaments, and arms control and disarmament. Patrick Theiner finds that academics, policy makers, and journalists will undoubtedly find its information about arms and conflict to be both exceptionally well-researched and clearly presented.

Architektur ist stets eingebettet in die zeithistorische Epoche ihrer Entstehung. Wie, wofur, und warum ein Gebaude auf eine bestimmte Art gestaltet ist und (nach Jahrzehnten oder Jahrhunderten noch, auch weiterhin, ganz anders oder nicht mehr) genutzt wird, lasst sich je nach Perspektive und Fachdisziplin auf vielfaltige Weise ergrunden. Mit diesem Kapitel leiten wir in einen politikwissenschaftlichen Sammelband ein, der sich mit dem Zusammenhang von Architektur und Politik im Allgemeinen und Parlamenten und Demokratie im Besonderen befasst. Basal ist dafur die Erkenntnis, dass die grosen Fragen der Politikwissenschaft nach Phanomenen wie Macht, Herrschaft und Legitimitat gut mit der Befassung mit politischen Akteuren und Institutionen beantwortet werden konnen, aber zur vollstandigen Erklarung politischer Realitat auch die Darstellung von Politik (in Handlungen und Bauwerken) gehort. Wir entwickeln entsprechend die Leitfrage des Bandes – Wie wird Politik im foderalen System der Bu...

How do national parliaments use the Internet and digital media tools? Despite a number of studies on the online presence of individual representatives, this question has rarely been asked of parliaments themselves, and comparative analyses are practically nonexistent. This is not only puzzling in an empirical sense, but also from the normative perspective of democratic theory. Parliaments as institutions can potentially serve as an important neutral information provider for citizens, especially those disenchanted by the competitive side of party politics. Digital and social media can play a strategic role in enhancing communication between citizens and the institutions of representative democracy from livestreaming parliamentary debates, to answering citizens’ questions via email, to humanizing decision-making processes and decision-makers through Facebook posts and photos. Given that these tools are universally available to national parliaments in the European Union, are they actua...

How similar are the institutional designs of regional organizations (ROs)? Is there a trend toward particular designs such as the European Union's, or is there greater institutional variety as more regions have created an increasing number of ROs? Which designs have spread through the system, and which remain idiosyncratic? To answer these questions, the Comparative Regional Organizations Project has assembled the most detailed dataset on ROs to date, with more than 80 organizations and their 276 founding and amending treaties being coded on more than 300 institutional design features. From these data, the project has generated the Regional Organizations Similarity Index (ROSI), a dyadic measure of the similarity between any two ROs at various points during their existence. We outline the rationale for ROSI and detail its construction, and show that it captures previously unstudied patterns of variation in the RO universe across time and space. In addition to generalizations abo...

The SIPRI Yearbook remains the authoritative source of data, analysis, and prognosis for researchers of peace and conflict, and this 44th edition analyses developments in 2012 in security and conflicts, military spending and armaments, and arms control and disarmament. Patrick Theiner finds that academics, policy makers, and journalists will undoubtedly find its information about arms and conflict to be both exceptionally well-researched and clearly presented.

Why are there clones of the European Union (EU) in Africa and the Caribbean, i.e. regional organizations that are very similar to the institutional design of the EU? Why do regional organizations (RO) in general develop similar goals such as common markets or mechanisms of intervention within and across regions? Are such similarities the outcome of random co-evolution, functional adaptation, or are they the outcome of outside coercion? Questioning the standard explanations for the design of international institutions, the Comparative Regional Organizations Project (CROP) investigates the extent to which institutional designs are determined by processes of diffusion between regional organizations. This is motivated by two observations: First, a number of regional organizations are quite similar in their institutional design. Second, the emergence of regional organizations occurs in waves. Over the last five decades, states have decided at specific points in time to either establish regional organizations or to amend them. Both observations indicate that regional organizations and their member states take their decisions in dependence on the decisions of other regional organizations the similarity might be a consequence of diffusion. The project has begun to systematically survey the characteristics and content of the founding and/or amending documents of more than 100 regional organizations, and developed an index of similarity between texts, and therefore institutions. The paper presents CROPs methodological approach and first substantive insights, such as a quantitative evaluation of the argument that some regional organizations develop a model character for other regional organizations.

Abstract: What explains the substantial variation in grants awarded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria? The Global Fund is an international institution that has disbursed over US $19 billion in grants for programs combating infectious diseases since its creation in 2002. Yet the size of these grants varies by several orders of magnitude across countries. When calculated as spending per capita of those living with the disease, the Global Fund has approved individual grants spending as little as US $0.73 per HIV- ...

Abstract: Why do states decide to apply for funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria? The Fund is an international institution that has approved over US $21 billion in grants since 2002. All countries meeting certain basic eligibility criteria are free to apply for funding once per disease per year. While it seems rational for states to le as many applications as possible, a country only applies in an average of 29% of the cases it is eligible for, and even particularly active states only apply around half the time. What can ...

Abstract: Donors of development aid for health face an increasingly complex decision when distributing their contributions. While a signi cant portion of aid continues to be given bilaterally, donors also have the choice of an expanding number of multilateral institutions involved in global public health. How donors choose bilateral aid recipients has received considerable attention in the literature. But how do the same donors allocate their multilateral budgets between a range of institutions? I argue that when donor states ...

The paper explores the analytical potential of a theoretical model explaining inclusive international institutions by combining resource exchange theory (RET) and collective goods theory (CGT). The first part of the paper outlines key concepts of the two theoretical strands and identifies factors determining membership rights and membership structure in a given policy area. The paper argues that the probability for the formation of Inclusive International Institutions in an issue area is high if the relevant actors' goals are ...

Abstract: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF) is an international institution that has approved over US $21 billion in grants since 2002, yet there is great variation in which applications are recommended for funding, and in the size of these recommended applications. The GF has approved grants ranging in total size from under one million US dollars to over $435 million, and when calculated per infection per year, grants have spent from as little as $350 per sufferer to almost $36,003 This variation is a ...

What affects a country's decision to apply for funding from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria? This paper empirically examines determinants of state requests for financial grants from the Global Fund between 2002 and 2010. The Global Fund is an international institution that has approved over US $21 billion in grants since its inception in 2002, and all countries meeting certain basic eligibility criteria are free to apply for funding once per disease per year. Although it would seem rational for eligible states to ...

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is an international institution that approved over US $22 billion in grants between 2002 and 2010, making it the world's single largest source of funding against these diseases. Yet there is great variation in three key measures of institutional output: which applications are approved for funding; the amount of money awarded to approved grants; and the discrepancy between requested and approved grant amounts. Global Fund decision-making processes provide a role for both ...

The question of the significance of ASEAN is an important one. Stubbs' observation that different standards have been used to assess the organization is right to the point. This article critically discusses the merits of Stubbs approach and his findings. Our response argues that the binary discussion about ASEAN’s relevance should be replaced by more productive and progressive lines of scientific inquiry, since these questions hardly ever produce the knock-out evidence needed to discard one theory. The more interesting research takes place within paradigms. In the case of institutionalism, this is for example the research program of the design of international institutions. It is here that better data has recently become available, and that some questions that have triggered lively debates on ASEAN can now be answered. We then present select results of a large-N project comparing regional organizations with a view of what we have learned about ASEAN.

How has the digital transformation under way across society affected parlia-ments? This chapter looks at the communication function with a particular view on social media use and draws for its analysis on two surveys of parliamentary websites across 28 EU member states conducted in 2015 and 2016. After pre-senting and describing the survey results, the chapter discusses the substantial variation  across  countries  as  well  as  the  apparently  dynamic  development  in  overall parliamentary digital media use before offering an attempt at explanation focusing on social and political variables.

Internet blocking is no longer a tool wielded only by authoritarian regimes, but one also commonly employed by liberal democracies. In the last decade, access restrictions have become the go-to policy solution where enforcing content regulation is difficult such as child pornography, copyright infringement, or online gambling. In liberal democracies, Internet blocking takes the shape of self-, co-, or state regulation, as well as combinations of these forms. Content restrictions lie at the intersection of various constitutional rights and principles, and honoring this delicate balance seems easiest through the democratic accountability inherent in formal legislation. However, many other regulatory schemes have emerged from completely private self-regulation by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as the UK’s Cleanfeed system, to hybrid public–private partnerships in the shape of co-regulatory arrangements used in Germany or Scandinavia. As of 2015, most liberal democracies have introduced access restrictions through one or more of these three regulatory modes. But what explains their diversity and their systematic variation across countries? This chapter builds on insights generated in a larger research project on “Net Blocking in Liberal Democracies.” Its first part provides an empirical introduction to the topic by looking at Internet blocking in 21 liberal democracies. Next, we provide an analysis of factors influencing whether democracies erect access impediments. We point out some common driving forces and obstacles, partially building on Lijphart’s typology of democracies. Lastly, we discuss the results with a special view towards topics of democratic theory such as “embedded democracy” and “crisis of democracy.”

How do national parliaments use the Internet and digital media tools? Despite a number of studies on the online presence of individual representatives, this question has rarely been asked of parliaments themselves, and comparative analyses are practically nonexistent. This is not only puzzling in an empirical sense, but also from the normative perspective of democratic theory. Parliaments as institutions can potentially serve as an important neutral information provider for citizens, especially those disenchanted by the competitive side of party politics. Digital and social media can play a strategic role in enhancing communication between citizens and the institutions of representative democracy from livestreaming parliamentary debates, to answering citizens’ questions via email, to humanizing decision-making processes and decision-makers through Facebook posts and photos. Given that these tools are universally available to national parliaments in the European Union, are they actually being used? We find significant variation between member states: the United Kingdom leads in its multidimensional digital and social media strategy, using all tools at its disposal. The parliaments of Western Europe and the Baltic states are active, but to a lesser extent as observed in the United Kingdom. Eastern and Southern Europe are least engaged with citizens online, with Malta, Slovenia, and Croatia bringing up the rear. We briefly discuss explanatory factors for this variation, and avenues for further research.

Donors of development aid for health face increasingly complex decisions when distributing their budgets. A significant portion of aid is still given bilaterally, but donors also have the choice of an expanding number of multilateral institutions. How do donors decide how large a share of their multilateral budget each available institution receives? I argue that donor states prefer to delegate and contribute to institutions with aid distribution preferences similar to their own. This similarity consists of two components: First, donors evaluate preference similarity by looking at their general political alignment with other member states of the institution. Second, donors weigh the overlap between their bilateral aid portfolios and the institution's multilateral aid portfolio. Donors should dedicate larger shares of their overall multilateral budgets to institutions with similarly aligned members and portfolios. Using global public health institutions as a case study, the paper presents a set of empirical tests of these hypotheses based on time-series cross-sectional data on multilateral health aid given in the first decade of the 2000s. The analysis shows that greater alignment with member states does indeed lead to significantly increased contributions from donors but that the similarity of aid portfolios has no such effect. In delegating multilaterally, donors care more about who they share an institution with rather than how that institution spends its money. Introduction In the first decade of the 2000s, developed countries channeled an average of more than 30 percent of their development aid through multilateral institutions and allocated over $40 billion in total to global public health programs and agencies. At the same time as donor states are increasingly relying on multilateral institutions to distribute aid, the number of such institutions has been rising. Faced with greater institutional choice and domestic budgetary pressures, donor states must make a complex decision about how to split their aid budgets between bilateral and multilateral aid and how much to allocate to which organization. How do donors make this choice? While a donor state has complete control over its bilateral aid allocation, delegation to a multilateral institution presents the dual problem of finding common ground with other principals and the potential interference of the institution itself as an agent. Donors nevertheless have incentives to contribute to multilateral institutions, since aid "depoliticized" in such a way-at least partially insulated from the political, strategic, and economic preferences of individual donors-is thought to be more effective at promoting development. Donor states seem to face a dilemma: give aid bilaterally and retain control (yet lose effectiveness) or give aid to multilateral institutions with more effective results but reduced control over outcomes. All donors respond to this with a mix-and-match approach of bilateral and multilateral aid, and there is a substantial body of literature that examines why donor states choose one of these channels over the other. Still, how do donors choose between multilateral institutions?