Parenthood effects on career outcomes : does fertility timing matter?

Defence date: 15 December 2022Examining Board: Professor Juho Härkönen, (European University Institute, supervisor); Professor Klarita Gërxhani, (European University Institute); Professor Marie Evertsson, (Stockholm University); Professor Zachary Van Winkle, (Sciences Po)Even though gender equality in the labour market has improved in recent decades, parenthood induced income inequalities are still present. Moreover, income disadvantages accumulate over time, leading to income disparities in old age as well. To optimise the direct and indirect income effects associated with parenthood, individuals may wish to postpone having children. However, literature on the monetary effectiveness of parenthood postponement is still relatively limited. This dissertation contributes to the literature by examining (1) whether motherhood postponement moderates the negative wage effects associated with parenthood and whether any such effects vary cross-nationally; and (2) whether fatherhood timing moderates the fatherhood wage effects and whether the effects differ across institutional settings. Furthermore, (3) it predicts gender income inequalities in retirement and investigates stratification by education and family status therein. An analysis of longitudinal survey data from Germany and the United Kingdom revealed that the motherhood penalty increases in the United Kingdom and decreases in East Germany as childbirths are delayed to later career stages. No moderating effect of childbirth timing on the motherhood penalty was discovered in West Germany. Concerning men, in West Germany, the fatherhood premium is higher among men who postpone parenthood, whereas no timing effects have been found among East German and British men. In the third study, predicted pensions for German men and women who will retire by the year 2032 show that the overall gender pension gap will somewhat decline, however, the stratification therein will increase. The gender pension gap will close between all childless individuals irrespective of their educational attainments. In the meantime, the gender pension gap will remain virtually unchanged between the highly educated women and men in East and West Germany and the less educated women and fathers in East Germany. Overall, mothers will remain the most disadvantaged social group

Proxy war strategies in civil wars

Defence date: 01 December 2022Examining Board : Professor Ulrich Krotz, (European University Institute, supervisor); Professor Klarita Gërxhani, (European University Institute); Professor Spyridon N. Litsas, (University of Macedonia); Professor Joachim Schild, (Trier University)This dissertation explores and answers two puzzles about states supporting proxies in civil wars. The first puzzle asked why states external to a civil war decided to provide support to a proxy instead of intervening with their own armed forces? In other words, I examined the foreign policy of proxy war where a state’s support for the government in parallel with a state’s support for the opposing side transforms the civil war. While recent scholarship presented various incentives and constraints specific on proxy war, my theory analyses strategies which explain how in a competitive strategic setting a state’s preference led to supporting a proxy in a civil war. Examining proxy war as a foreign policy choice that states prefer over other policies, this dissertation finds that states use a set of proxy war strategies in civil wars. A central finding of this dissertation is that states use the offensive proxy war strategy, which is based on rivalry, less frequently than other proxy war strategies which are based on security, interest, or revenge. However, when both external warring sides use an offensive proxy war strategy these proxy wars may lead to an inadvertent military escalation. Then, I examined a second puzzle pertained to sponsorship relationships and various types of support handed over to proxies. I observed that the type of a sponsorship relationship does not seem to influence the level of support a state will provide. It is the chosen proxy war strategy which influences the type of support states provide to their proxies. Scholars of conflict rely on the delegation model and the orchestration model of indirect governance to describe the relationships that states forge with their proxies. I claim that proxies bargained the authority a sponsor has over them depending on their vulnerability and their identity. I found that recent sponsorship relationships in proxy wars tend to resemble the orchestration model rather than the delegation model. These findings are based on examining all post-Cold War proxy wars through 2016, using Qualitative Case Analysis. I use the fuzzy set variant to test when states chose a proxy war strategy in a civil war. I combined this approach with Set-Method Multimethod Research to explore the inferential mechanism of typical cases of proxy war, in Syria (2011 – 2015), Burundi (1993 – 2003) and Azerbaijan (1991 – 1992). This dissertation’s original contribution is the presentation a proxy war concept which uses the framework of sponsorship relationships based on bargained authority. The dissertation’s theoretical and empirical results uncover generalizable patterns in proxy war strategies in civil wars that directly address scholarly and policy debates in the foreign policy decisions of intervention in civil wars, limited war, indirect governance during conflict, and concept measurement in international relations

Labour as labour : exploring an employment model of regulation for commercial surrogacy

Defence date: 19 December 2022Examining Board: Prof. Claire Kilpatrick (European University Institute, EUI Supervisor); Prof. Mathias Siems (European University Institute; Prof. Judy Fudge (McMaster University Canada); Prof. Lizzie Barmes (Queen Mary University of London)Commercial surrogacy continues to grow in popularity. Lack of legal provisions at the international and domestic levels, however, has given rise to myriad problems. This has increasingly caused states and academics to consider whether regulation may be the preferable approach. Yet despite the extensive sociological and anthropological literature that has conceptualised contract pregnancy as a form of work, the question of whether and how this might translate into a new legal framework remains underexplored. This thesis seeks to bridge this disciplinary gap by investigating the merit of treating surrogates as the employees of their intended parents, therein regulating contract pregnancy through labour law. To do so, it addresses numerous issues through five substantive Chapters: the controversies with marketizing reproductive labour, the current legal landscape, whether surrogacy could really be regulated as labour, what labour law might have to offer, and finally what the challenges might be with this approach to regulation. It draws on a range of secondary sources to answer these, but also integrates analysis of both Californian surrogacy contracts and interviews with industry actors conducted as part of this research. Overall, I argue that particularly for states which do not currently regulate surrogacy – whether because it is prohibited, ignored, or they ascribe to a Free Market approach – labour law has real potential as a pre-existing solution to help ensure that these arrangements operate as ethically as possible. Certainly, exploring this possibility would help to overcome the exceptionalisation of reproductive labour, which this thesis shows is detrimental not only to gestational carriers, but also the coherency of labour law itself.Chapters 1 'Introduction' and Chapter 4 'Surrogacy: could it really be regulated as labour' draw upon an earlier article: ‘Surrogacy: Time We Recognised it as a Job?’ (2021) published in the Journal of Gender Studies. Chapter 2 'Should surrogacy be marketized?' and Chapter 3 ' The current legal landscape' draw upon ‘Commercial surrogacy : building families outside of family law’, (2022) published in the Hastings Journal of Gender and the Law. Chapters 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 draw upon ‘Labour is labour : what surrogates can learn from the Sex Work Is Work movement' (2022) published in the Journal of law and society

Regulating innovation in the digital age : towards a demand-conscious regulatory paradigm

Defence date: 16 June 2022Examining Board: Prof. Giorgio Monti (Tilburg University, EUI Supervisor); Prof. Peter Drahos (EUI); Prof. Cristie Ford (University of British Columbia); Elisabeth Noble, Senior Policy Expert (European Banking Authority)This thesis contributes to the debate over the role, impact, and limitations of regulation as a tool for shaping innovative markets. This contribution delineates the issues that arise at the intersection of innovation that takes place in the markets and regulatory intervention in such markets prompted by the dual objective of removing existing inefficiencies in the functioning of the markets, and of facilitating further innovation. The specific foci of the thesis are the concerns arising from the demand-side of the market, notably consumer choice and decision-making. This emphasis on the demand-side is prompted by the changing role of consumers within the process of innovation in the realm of digital and data-driven economy, the regulatory implications of which are currently underexplored in the legal scholarship. The premises for the problematics addressed in this thesis are twofold: the first concerns the presumption of markets’ efficiency in delivering welfare-enhancing innovation as the outcome of the supply-side market mechanism, notably market competition; the second stems from the role of regulation as a value-free tool for facilitating innovation by removing supply-side obstacles. Although policy papers, impact assessments and legislative proposals dazzle with references to ‘more and better choice’ for consumers by means of more innovation, no substantive and systematic analysis of the impact of innovation on consumer welfare is undertaken. Welfare-enhancing effects are largely assumed, following ‘the more, the better’ approach as a paragon for market efficiency. However, such approach to regulating innovation is only seemingly value-free and instead diverts the innovation and market shaping function from regulation to market forces. This thesis argues that the current approach is suboptimal in the context of digital innovation and attempts to make the first steps towards a more demand-conscious approach to regulation

Questioning national averages and explaining subnational variation in early childhood education and care provision in Spain : a qualitative comparative analysis

Published online: 09 January 2025This article illustrates that the comparatively high national rate of early childhood education and care provision in Spain masks significant within-country variation. It applies Qualitative Comparative Analysis to test which conditions explain variation in regional coverage rates as the outcome. It finds that there is a socio-economic and a political path to high coverage. Case studies reveal that service expansion has also been motivated by concerns over demographic ageing and population decline. The article contributes to the literatures on early childhood education and care and, more broadly, social investment and welfare state reform

The uncanny valley of computable contracts : analysis of computable contract formalisms with a focus towards controlled natural languages

The possibility of using computable contracts — similar to the smart contracts currently used for blockchain applications — has launched a new era of digital collaboration and experimentation, heralding new practices alongside legal and interdisciplinary challenges. Computable contracts — that is, legal contracts that can be automated but are, according to my definition, ideally also readable by humans — are of primary importance for transposing legal contracts to the digital world in a functional, accessible, and inclusive way. This framing of the issue touches upon law, socio-legal considerations, linguistics, computer science, and userinterface questions. This work chronologically describes the struggles and development process that language inventors, legislators, legal professionals, and computer scientists have encountered in addressing the challenge of computable contracts. For the contractual and law-related struggles, I put current technological research efforts into the context of past and present legislators. Moreover, I present computable contracts as a form of computable law in the context of the contract as a business tool as well as in the context of transnational legal theories that describe the law as an amalgam of international business, public and private interests, and technology, forming a normative but fluid whole. Based on these explorations, I define criteria that useful, accessible, and inclusive computable contracts should respect to be functional, meet the standards of a legal contract and represent its contents, and be accessible and inclusive as a text. Based on these criteria, I then compare several formalisms, specifically a state machine formalism, a blockchain programming language (Solidity), a logic programming language (Prolog), a general controlled natural language (CNL) and my own explorative implementation of one such language. I then analyse how far these formalisms meet the criteria, highlighting common issues and benefits and comparing them to each other and with natural language contracts. Finally, I introduce the term ‘uncanny valley’, originally used in research into the perception of humanoid robots, into work with CNLs. I discovered the possibility for this transposition during my research and hope this term makes the phenomenon of CNLs and their possible uses and limitations more prominent. Along the way, I undertake exercises of categorising computable contract terminology and contracting technology that may be useful for the present work but also the field of computable law in general. As a result, the field of law and technology research may benefit from improved terminology and delineation of categories, and the research into human-readable computable contracts from improved insights and examples of how the analysed languages meet the criteria to create a useful, human-readable (accessible) and inclusive computable contract. These categorisations and comparisons show that our use of and interaction with technology is still severely limited, especially in law and contracts, to the detriment of users, efficiency, quality and comfort. For example, contracts are a tool to create business relationships, and while businesses have adapted to electronic transmission, the way of writing and implementing contracts has not fundamentally changed. Moreover, a core aspect of law is the language of law, and for decades people have researched and laboured to understand both language and the law and the relationship of both to technology. However, while language is of primary importance in law, technology still struggles with understanding language, especially legal language. In this period of ever more complex technologies governed by computer code and law, it is essential to bring code and law together. Specifically, contracts, in this case, should be properly included in digitisation and not only as artefacts transposed from the physical world, such as PDF documents. This work shows which textual artefacts of contracts can be transposed into computable instructions with CNLs and where the limitations are. In conclusion, CNLs are currently a good bet for creating humanreadable but also computable contracts that still use natural language text, excluding alternative custom interfaces such as graphical interfaces. At the same time, CNLs are hard to develop and difficult to use correctly

Elite defection and opposition realignment in Hungary : Respect and Freedom Party (TISZA) in the 2024 European Parliamentary elections

Published online: 24 February 2025The 2024 European Parliamentary elections yielded an opposition landslide in Hungary. Respect and Freedom (TISZA), a genuinely new party led by a Fidesz defector, emerged as Orbán's unequivocal challenger. Drawing on novel post-election survey data, the paper demonstrates the centrist anti-establishment party character of TISZA, which appeals not only to former voters of opposition parties but also to some who previously supported the government or far-right fringe parties. Results also indicate that TISZA voters are markedly pro-European, while possessing high levels of political knowledge and low levels of trust. They tend to have more progressive, integrationist, and pro-Ukraine issue positions than Fidesz voters

Holding the Empire at Bay : the elites of Salvador da Bahia and the Hispanic monarchy in Brazil (1581-1640)

Defence date: 16 November 2022; Examining Board: Jorge Flores, (European University Institute); José Manuel Santos Pérez, (University of Salamanca); Regina Grafe, (European University Institute); Stuart B. Schwartz, (Yale University)This thesis aims to analyze the composition of the elite in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and seeks to understand how their actions shaped the Estado do Brasil's administration during the period when the Portuguese empire belonged to the Hispanic Monarchy (1581- 1640). Focusing on the practices of Bahian elites, this thesis explores the political, institutional, and economic administration of Habsburg Brazil through the dynamics and practices of a colonial city’s elite. In examining Bahian elites as agents caught in between imperial and local agendas, this work uncovers the “collective construction” of the Spanish empire, and labels it as a polity built upon the interactions woven by a wide variety of sociopolitical actors acting at the ground. Elites and networks are presented as the pillars of the empire, and, consequently, their study provide an updated understanding of the construction of early modern empires, like the Hispanic Monarchy, in America and, more specifically, in Brazil

New perspectives on anti-Jewish violence and memory

Defence date: 15 December 2022Examining Board: Professor Elias Dinas, (European University Institute, supervisor); Professor Jeffrey T. Checkel, (European University Institute); Professor Stathis N. Kalyvas, (University of Oxford); Professor Scott Straus, (University of California, Berkeley)This thesis explores the topic of anti-Jewish violence and memory empirically, using three dierent methods of inquiry. The first chapter employs a deductive approach to study how insurgent presence influences survival of genocide targets. I explore the case of the Holocaust in World War Two France using archival collections on Jews’ arrests and La Résistance members’ presence. I employ an instrumental variable method in which I instrument insurgent presence with soldier deaths from World War One. I probe my findings with qualitative analysis of chosen typical cases in order to investigate the mechanisms that govern the relationship. I find that insurgents helped Jews survive by providing them with information, help networks, and sharing the skills they developed to evade their common enemy, the Nazi occupier and collaborating Vichy state. The second chapter employs an exploratory approach and asks whether Wikipedia captures collective memory. Drawing on anthropological and historical literatures, it proposes a way to operationalise collective memory as actor-role associations and measure it with Wikipedia data. Comparing our findings with the qualitative research on Poles’ collective memory of World War Two, we conclude that Wikipedia serves as a unique data source to describe the content of national collective memories. In the third chapter I review literature on anti-Jewish “pogroms” to establish what the term means. I find considerable disagreement about the definition of the term in extant literature and propose to substitute it with other vocabulary from the wider literature on conflict – “mass categorical violence,” “state repression,” and “communal attacks.” I review two recent studies that used the word “pogroms” when seeking to explain their occurrence. I argue that the proposed typology would better capture the main characteristics of the violence typically called “pogroms” and enable better future sample specification and analyses

Eat the rich : a rethinking of the heritage-crime-development nexus

Published online: 23 February 2024Since the late 1990s, criminal law solutions have come to play an increasingly important role in the international policy realms of both cultural heritage protection and sustainable development. At the same time, cultural heritage protection has become a key tool in the realisation of the goals of sustainable development, triggering a result wherein the criminalisation of various practices regarded as inimical to the protection of cultural heritage has come to be seen as serving not only the goals of cultural heritage protection per se, but also those of sustainable development more broadly. In this chapter, we argue that the push towards increasing carceralisation in the name of heritage protection and sustainable development is deeply concerning. In making this argument, we draw on two existing streams of scholarship: first, that of human rights scholars who argue that criminalisation often works to uphold existing social and political hegemonies, thus rendering societies more rather than less unjust, and second, that of critical heritage scholars who invite attention to the neo-colonial, Eurocentric, and exclusionary character of cultural heritage protection norms and interventions. We then set out a proposition for potential conceptual reorientations of the heritage-development-crime nexus. We propose that for sustainable development and cultural heritage policy to work to realize the lofty goals to which they aspire, the focus should be on the systemic factors of economic and epistemic injustice rather than the “immoral” crimes of individual actors