Autocracies and economic development: theory and evidence from 20th century Mexico

'Der Artikel untersucht die Auswirkungen unterschiedlicher Formen autokratischer Herrschaft auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung von Gesellschaften. Während zunehmend empirische Evidenz für eine ökonomische Dividende demokratischer Herrschaft vorliegt, so ist bislang nur unzureichend geklärt, warum einige Autokratien beachtliche ökonomische Modernisierungserfolge vorweisen konnten. Der Autor greift auf die Überlegungen der Neuen Institutionenökonomik zurück und diskutiert zunächst die Frage, inwiefern unterschiedliche politisch-institutionelle Arrangements die ökonomische Entwicklung von Gesellschaften beeinflussen. Hierbei unterscheidet er nicht nur zwischen den grundlegenden Unterschieden der ökonomischen Anreizsysteme in Demokratie und Autokratie sondern differenziert darüber hinaus auch zwischen unterschiedlichen autokratischen Herrschaftsformen. Anhand einer Aufteilung Mexikos in unterschiedliche Phasen politischer Ordnung wird gezeigt, wie von unterschiedlichen Formen autokratischer Herrschaft im Mexiko des 20sten Jahrhunderts unterschiedliche ökonomische Entwicklungsdynamiken ausgegangen sind.' (Autorenreferat)'On average, higher levels of democracy positively effect economic performance. Still, many autocratic regimes experienced remarkable economic growth. Thus, one should differentiate between autocracies to identify the sources of varying economic success under autocratic rule. Mexico's history during the last century provides fruitful empirical evidence on how different kinds of autocracies impact on economic development. Dividing political order in twentieth century Mexico into several periods of autocratic rule shows that economically successful autocratic regimes were partly able to mimic core institutional features of democracies. The variance of autocratic order in Mexico suggests that autocratic regimes characterized by relatively broad societal coalitions and the existence of institutional arrangements that regulate political succession outperform other arrangements of autocratic rule.' (author's abstract

Foreign aid and the domestic politics of European budget support

We analyse domestic factors within European donor countries that have influenced their provision of budget support. Budget support has been one of the most promising, and at the same time, controversial aid instruments aimed at improving aid effectiveness as well as donor harmonisation. Based on theoretical considerations, our econometric analysis for the 2002–2012 period shows that government ideology, the economic context in donor countries, as well as the structure of their aid systems have been important determinants of budget support provision. A comparison of Germany and the United Kingdom sustains these findings with qualitative evidence. Our findings also indicate that these ideological, economic and bureaucratic factors have worked as important barriers to improved donor harmonisation within Europe

Europe's new security strategy - challenges for development policy

"The security strategy adopted by the European Council in late 2003 underlines the importance of conflict prevention and civil, but also - wherever necessary - military intervention in weak or failing states. The new European Security Strategy (ESS) recommends that foreign and security policy should more closely dovetail with development policy. In view of the fact, that development cooperation (DC) has specific operational experiences, particularly in relation to weak states, development policy needs to assume a proactive stance towards the ESS. In order to become an important player in European security policy, development policy needs to confront the task of aggregating its large operational experiences into strategic concepts on how development policy can contribute explicitly in erasing the socioeconomic foundations of the existing transnational threats to European security. Furthermore, development policy's aim of providing significant contributions to Europe's new security policy calls implicitly for huge efforts in personnel, conceptual, and financial terms. This in turn must be predicated on new forms of division between bilateral, European, and multilateral development policy." (author's abstract)Die vom Europarat Ende 2003 verabschiedete Sicherheitsstrategie unterstreicht die Bedeutung von Konfliktprävention und ziviler, aber auch - wenn nötig - militärischer Intervention in schwachen oder zerfallenden Staaten. Die neue Europäische Sicherheitsstrategie empfiehlt, dass die Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik enger mit der Entwicklungspolitik verknüpft werden sollte. Angesichts der Erfahrungen auf dem Gebiet der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit mit schwachen Staaten sollte die Entwicklungspolitik in diesem Zusammenhang eine aktive Rolle spielen. Um ein wichtiger sicherheitspolitischer Akteur in Europa zu werden, muss die Entwicklungspolitik sich der Aufgabe stellen, auf der Basis ihrer operationalen Erfahrungen Strategien zu formulieren, wie Entwicklungspolitik zur Beseitigung der sozioökonomischen Grundlagen bestehender internationaler Bedrohungen der europäischen Sicherheit beitragen kann. Der Anspruch der Entwicklungspolitik, einen signifikanten Beitrag zur neuen europäischen Sicherheitspolitik zu leisten, erfordert zudem große Anstrengungen auf personellem, konzeptionellem und finanziellem Gebiet sowie eine neue Arbeitsteilung zwischen bilateraler, europäischer und multilateraler Entwicklungshilfepolitik. (ICEÜbers

Microwave cavity-enhanced transduction for plug and play nanomechanics at room temperature

Nanomechanical resonators with increasingly high quality factors are enabled following recent insights into energy storage and loss mechanisms in nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). Consequently, efficient, non-dissipative transduction schemes are required to avoid the dominating influence of coupling losses. We present an integrated NEMS transducer based on a microwave cavity dielectrically coupled to an array of doubly-clamped pre-stressed silicon nitride beam resonators. This cavity-enhanced detection scheme allows resolving the resonators' Brownian motion at room temperature while preserving their high mechanical quality factor of 290,000 at 6.6 MHz. Furthermore, our approach constitutes an "opto"mechanical system in which backaction effects of the microwave field are employed to alter the effective damping of the resonators. In particular, cavity-pumped self-oscillation yields a linewidth of only 5 Hz. Thereby, an adjustement-free, all-integrated and self-driven nanoelectromechanical resonator array interfaced by just two microwave connectors is realised, potentially useful for applications in sensing and signal processing

Rigorose Wirkungsevaluierung - Genese, Debatte und Nutzung in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit

Der Aufstieg rigoroser Wirkungsevaluierungen (RIE) in der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (EZ) geht einher mit einer anhaltenden Kontroverse um experimentelle und quasiexperimentelle Methoden. Vor diesem Hintergrund und auf Basis eines empirisch-analytischen Wissenschaftsverständnis leistet der vorliegende Aufsatz Beiträge zur Erklärung der Genese von RIE im Politikfeld, zu einer konstruktiven Auseinandersetzung mit den Vorteilen und Begrenzungen von RIE aus evaluatorischer Perspektive sowie zur Analyse ihrer Anwendung und Nutzung in der Praxis der internationalen EZ. Im Ergebnis erfolgt ein Plädoyer für eine breite Anwendung und Nutzung von RIE in der EZ, ohne diese aufgrund ihrer Begrenzungen jedoch zum Königsweg der Evaluierung oder gar der empirischen Sozialforschung zu erheben. Vielmehr sollte die Anwendung gegenstandsangemessen, theoriebasiert und um qualitative Methoden ergänzt erfolgen und andere Evaluationsverfahren dort eingesetzt werden, wo RIE nicht geeignet sind.The rise of rigorous impact evaluation (RIE) in international development cooperation has been accompanied by a controversy around experimental and quasi-experimental approaches. Against this backdrop and from an empirical-analytical perspective, this paper contributes to the ongoing debate in three ways: first, it explains the emergence of RIE in foreign aid from the particularities of the aid effectiveness debate; second, it contributes to an enlightened debate by sketching the advantages and limitations of RIE from an evaluation perspective. Finally, it sketches the current use of RIE in the practical realm of development cooperation. Overall, the paper argues in favour of a broader and more systematic use of RIE in development cooperation without disregarding the methodological, empirical and practical limitations of the approach

Coherent control of a nanomechanical two-level system

The Bloch sphere is a generic picture describing a coupled two-level system and the coherent dynamics of its superposition states under control of electromagnetic fields. It is commonly employed to visualise a broad variety of phenomena ranging from spin ensembles and atoms to quantum dots and superconducting circuits. The underlying Bloch equations describe the state evolution of the two-level system and allow characterising both energy and phase relaxation processes in a simple yet powerful manner. Here we demonstrate the realisation of a nanomechanical two-level system which is driven by radio frequency signals. It allows to extend the above Bloch sphere formalism to nanoelectromechanical systems. Our realisation is based on the two orthogonal fundamental flexural modes of a high quality factor nanostring resonator which are strongly coupled by a dielectric gradient field. Full Bloch sphere control is demonstrated via Rabi, Ramsey and Hahn echo experiments. This allows manipulating the classical superposition state of the coupled modes in amplitude and phase and enables deep insight into the decoherence mechanisms of nanomechanical systems. We have determined the energy relaxation time T1 and phase relaxation times T2 and T2*, and find them all to be equal. This not only indicates that energy relaxation is the dominating source of decoherence, but also demonstrates that reversible dephasing processes are negligible in such collective mechanical modes. We thus conclude that not only T1 but also T2 can be increased by engineering larger mechanical quality factors. After a series of ground-breaking experiments on ground state cooling and non-classical signatures of nanomechanical resonators in recent years, this is of particular interest in the context of quantum information processing

Signatures of two-level defects in the temperature-dependent damping of nanomechanical silicon nitride resonators

The damping rates of high quality factor nanomechanical resonators are well beyond intrinsic limits. Here, we explore the underlying microscopic loss mechanisms by investigating the temperature-dependent damping of the fundamental and third harmonic transverse flexural mode of a doubly clamped silicon nitride string. It exhibits characteristic maxima reminiscent of two-level defects typical for amorphous materials. Coupling to those defects relaxes the momentum selection rules, allowing energy transfer from discrete long wavelength resonator modes to the high frequency phonon environment