Analysing change in international politics: a semiotic method of structural connotation

Processes such as internationalisation and privatisation bring along new challenges both for the conceptualisation and for the measurement of transformations of the state. This paper outlines a semiotic Method of Structural Connotation, which combines content- and network analysis, thus to model change in international politics. After an investigation of the methodical and epistemological chances and pitfalls a 5-step-toolbox is presented and illustrated with a current application: The Bologna-Process for a European Higher Education Area. -- Angesichts neuerer Entwicklungen wie Internationalisierung und Privatisierung stellen sich auch neue Herausforderungen für die Konzeptualisierung und Messung von Staatlichkeit im Wandel. In diesem Arbeitspapier wird eine semiotische Methode Struktureller Konnotation vorgestellt, die inhaltsanalytische und netzwerkanalytische Elemente zusammenführt, um den Wandel internationaler politischer Prozesse und Akteursfigurationen zu erfassen. Nach einer Betrachtung der methodischen und epistemologischen Herausforderungen und Chancen folgt ein konkreter Verfahrensvorschlag nach dem Baukastenprinzip. Am Beispiel des Bologna-Prozesses für einen Europäischen Hochschulraum wird das methodische Vorgehen Schritt für Schritt erläutert.

Education policy networks in a comparative perspective: Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and New Zealand

International initiatives in education, such as PISA and the Bologna Process, have distinctly changed conditions framing domestic policy-making. This paper sheds light on the territorial and modal dispersion of national education policy networks by means of a systematic network analytical description. The focus is on changing patterns of interactions and coalitions between international and national as well as private and public actors. Therefore, we analyse four countries, i.e. Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and New Zealand, in a comparative perspective. The findings show that in most countries there is indeed an internationalization of education politics taking place in the sense of an increasing participation of international actors. These actors apply a more and more diversified portfolio of governance instruments. At the same time, however, domestic veto players develop a rich set of strategies to cope, compete or collaborate with international actors. -- Internationale Initiativen, wie z.B. der Bologna Prozess oder die PISA-Studien, haben die Rahmenbedingungen nationaler Bildungspolitik grundlegend verändert. In diesem Arbeitspapier wird die Internationalisierung von Bildungspolitik aus netzwerkanalytischer Perspektive beleuchtet. Ziel ist es, den Wandel von Formen politischer Interaktion und Koalitionen zwischen internationalen und nationalen sowie privaten und öffentlichen Akteuren zu beschreiben. Dazu werden Politiknetzwerke in vier Ländern - Deutschland, Schweiz, Großbritannien und Neuseeland - vergleichend analysiert. Anhand der Befunde lässt sich eine Internationalisierung des Politikfelds Bildung erkennen, d.h. internationale Akteure treten im Kontext nationaler politischer Interaktion zunehmend in Erscheinung. Gleichzeitig zeigt sich, dass auch nationale Vetospieler Strategien entwickeln, um dieser neuen Konstellation in der Bildungspolitik zu begegnen.

Mobility traces and spreading of COVID-19

We use human mobility models, for which we are experts, and attach a virus infection dynamics to it, for which we are not experts but have taken it from the literature, including recent publications. This results in a virus spreading dynamics model. The results should be verified, but because of the current time pressure, we publish them in their current state. Recommendations for improvement are welcome. We come to the following conclusions: 1. Complete lockdown works. About 10 days after lockdown, the infection dynamics dies down. This assumes that lockdown is complete, which can be guaranteed in the simulation, but not in reality. Still, it gives strong support to the argument that it is never too late for complete lockdown. 2. As a rule of thumb, we would suggest complete lockdown no later than once 10% of hospital capacities available for COVID-19 are in use, and possibly much earlier. This is based on the following insights: a. Even after lockdown, the infection dynamics continues at home, leading to another tripling of the cases before the dynamics is slowed. b. There will be many critical cases coming from people who were infected before lockdown. Because of the exponential growth dynamics, their number will be large. c. Researchers with more detailed disease progression models should improve upon these statements. 3. Our simulations say that complete removal of infections at child care, primary schools, workplaces and during leisure activities will not be enough to sufficiently slow down the infection dynamics. It would have been better, but still not sufficient, if initiated earlier. 4. Infections in public transport play an important role. In the simulations shown later, removing infections in the public transport system reduces the infection speed and the height of the peak by approximately 20%. Evidently, this depends on the infection parameters, which are not well known. – This does not point to reducing public transport capacities as a reaction to the reduced demand, but rather use it for lower densities of passengers and thus reduced infection rates. 5. In our simulations, removal of infections at child care, primary schools, workplaces, leisure activities, and in public transport may barely have been sufficient to control the infection dynamics if implemented early on. Now according to our simulations it is too late for this, and (even) harsher measures will have to be initiated until possibly a return to such a restrictive, but still somewhat functional regime will again be possible. Evidently, all of these results have to be taken with care. They are based on preliminary infection parameters taken from the literature, used inside a model that has more transport/movement details than all others that we are aware of but still not enough to describe all aspects of reality, and suffer from having to write computer code under time pressure. Optimally, they should be confirmed independently. Short of that, given current knowledge we believe that they provide justification for “complete lockdown” at the latest when about 10% of available hospital capacities for COVID-19 are in use (and possibly earlier; we are no experts of hospital capabilities). What was not investigated in detail in our simulations was contact tracing, i.e. tracking down the infection chains and moving all people along infection chains into quarantine. The case of Singapore has so far shown that this may be successful. Preliminary simulation of that tactic shows that it is difficult to implement for COVID-19, since the incubation time is rather long, people are contagious before they feel sick, or maybe never feel sufficiently sick at all. We will investigate in future work if and how contact tracing can be used together with a restrictive, but not totally locked down regime. When opening up after lockdown, it would be important to know the true fraction of people who are already immune, since that would slow down the infection dynamics by itself. For Wuhan, the currently available numbers report that only about 0.1% of the population was infected, which would be very far away from “herd immunity”. However, there have been and still may be many unknown infections (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH 2020)

Electrification of Urban Freight Transport - a Case Study of the Food Retailing Industry

Decarbonisation is a major challenge for the coming decades, for all industries, including the transport sector. Battery electric vehicles are a potential solution for the transport sector to reduce its carbon impact. Asides from the question whether there is sufficient supply of electric vehicles for freight transport, it is also unclear whether battery-powered trucks meet the practical requirements, especially in terms of their driving range. To investigate this, synthetic tours were generated by solving a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). This also generates the fleet size and composition depending on a set of different vehicle types. The network with underlying traffic conditions comes from an publicly available transport model. The generated tours are then simulated with an open-source transport simulation (MATSim), for both diesel and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In a sensitivity study, two different purchase prices were considered for calculating vehicle costs. The case study uses a model of the food retailing industry for the city of Berlin. 56% of the tours can be driven without recharging. When recharged one time, 90% of the tours are suitable for BEVs. The costs for transporting the goods will increase by 17 to 23% depending on the assumption for the purchase prices for the BEVs. Using a well-to-wheel calculation, the electrification of all tours leads to a reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 26 to 96% depending on the assumed electricity production.DFG, 398051144, Analyse von Strategien zur vollständigen Dekarbonisierung des urbanen Verkehr

Duemmler, Kerstin; Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth: Governing Religious Diversity: Top-down and bottom-up initiatives in Germany and Switzerland

In recent years religious pluralization has become a significant policy issue in Western societies as a result of a new awareness of religion and of religious minorities articulating themselves and becoming more visible. The article explores the variety of social and political reactions to religious diversity in urban areas and in doing so it brings together theoretical concepts of political and cultural sociology. The notion of diversity governance as joint endeavour of state and societal actors managing societies is linked to the notion of boundary work as interplay of state and/or societal actors maintaining or modifying boundaries between religious traditions. Based on two case studies the article illustrates two idealtypical settings of diversity governance: The first case from the German Ruhr Area stands for a bottom-up approach which is based on civic self-organization of interreligious activities whereas the second case from the Swiss canton of Lucerne exhibits a model of top-down governance based on state interventions in religious instruction at schools. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and participant observation the authors show how different governance settings shape the construction and blurring of boundaries in the religious field. Both approaches operate differently when incorporating religious diversity and rendering former homogenous notions of we-groups more heterogeneous. Despite of the approaches initial aim of inclusion, patterns of exclusion are equally reproduced since the idea of ‘legitimate religion' rooted in Christian majority culture is presen