COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in eight European countries: prevalence, determinants and heterogeneity

We examine heterogeneity in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy across eight European countries. We reveal striking differences across countries, ranging from 6.4% of adults in Spain to 61.8% in Bulgaria reporting being hesitant. We experimentally assess the effectiveness of different messages designed to reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Receiving messages emphasizing either the medical benefits or the hedonistic benefits of vaccination significantly increases COVID-19 vaccination willingness in Germany, whereas highlighting privileges contingent on holding a vaccination certificate increases vaccination willingness in both Germany and the United Kingdom. No message has significant positive effects in any other country. Machine learning-based heterogeneity analyses reveal that treatment effects are smaller or even negative in settings marked by high conspiracy beliefs and low health literacy. In contrast, trust in government increases treatment effects in some groups. The heterogeneity in vaccine hesitancy and responses to different messages suggests that health authorities should avoid one-size-fits-all vaccination campaigns

Assessing the perceived effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions on SARS-Cov-2 transmission risk: an experimental study in Europe

We conduct a large (N = 6567) online experiment to measure the features of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that citizens of six European countries perceive to lower the risk of transmission of SARS-Cov-2 the most. We collected data in Bulgaria (n = 1069), France (n = 1108), Poland (n = 1104), Italy (n = 1087), Spain (n = 1102) and Sweden (n = 1097). Based on the features of the most widely adopted public health guidelines to reduce SARS-Cov-2 transmission (mask wearing vs not, outdoor vs indoor contact, short vs 90 min meetings, few vs many people present, and physical distancing of 1 or 2 m), we conducted a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to estimate the public’s perceived risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in scenarios that presented mutually exclusive constellations of these features. Our findings indicate that participants’ perception of transmission risk was most influenced by the NPI attributes of mask-wearing and outdoor meetings and the least by NPI attributes that focus on physical distancing, meeting duration, and meeting size. Differentiating by country, gender, age, cognitive style (reflective or intuitive), and perceived freight of COVID-19 moreover allowed us to identify important differences between subgroups. Our findings highlight the importance of improving health policy communication and citizens’ health literacy about the design of NPIs and the transmission risk of SARS-Cov-2 and potentially future viruses

Engineering Uncontestedness? The Origins and Institutional Development of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)

Private regulation often entails competition among multiple rule-makers, but private rules and regulators do not always compete. For substantial parts of the global economy, a single private body (per issue) is recognized as the focal point for global rule-making. The selection of the institutional setting here effectively takes place prior to drawing up the specific rules, with important consequences for the politics of regulating global markets. In this paper, I develop a theoretical explanation for how a private transnational organization may attain such preeminencehow it can become the focal point for rule-makingin its area of expertise. I emphasize the transnational body's capacity to pursue its organizational self-interest, as well as timing and sequence. I then examine empirically a particularly important body of this kind, which today is essentially uncontested as the focal point for private regulation in its area, even though its standards often have substantial distributive implications: the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). I analyze the persistence and changes in the IEC's formal rules or procedures and informal norms, as well as the broadening scope of its regulatory authority and membership over more than a century.

Elucidating concepts: Introduction to the symposium

Concepts are the central building blocks of all theoretical work. Reflecting this centrality, conceptual analyses and debates have a long and prominent tradition in the social sciences, even if empirical research often moves very quickly from concepts to observations that are assumed to be empirical manifestations of those concepts. Consider, for example, the large literatures about concepts such as power, democracy, and the state; as well as analyses of important concepts in specific subfields of political science, such as the conceptualization of anarchy in International Relations theory or the (ab)use of the concepts of supply and demand in regulatory governance

Global Private Politics: A Research Agenda

In this concluding essay to the special issue on Private Regulation in the Global Economy, I review the main findings, focused on the answers that the papers in this issue jointly suggest to the three sets of core questions noted in the introductory essay: (1) How do private bodies attain regulatory authority? Why do private regulators provide governance and why do the targets of these rules comply? (2) Who governs? Who are the key actors in private regulation and what are their motivations? (3) What is the effect of the rise of private regulation on public regulatory authority and capacity? I then identify and discuss several key issues to develop a research agenda for what I call global private politics.