Die Lasten der Verteidigung: eine vergleichende Untersuchung

Vor dem Hintergrund weltweit steigender Rüstungsausgaben untersucht der Verfasser, welche Wirtschaftssektoren die Lasten der Verteidigungsausgaben zu tragen haben und ob es stabile trade-offs zwischen einzelnen Sektoren und dem Verteidigungshaushalt gibt. Diese Frage wurde bisher in der Literatur nur ungenügend geklärt, teils wegen der fehlenden Unterscheidung in kurzfristige und langfristige trade-offs, teils wegen der Verwendung eines zu restriktiven trade-off-Modells. Die Unzulänglichkeiten dieses traditionellen Modells erweist sich auch in der vom Verfasser vorgenommenen Analyse kurzfristiger trade-offs. Bei langfristigen trade-offs wird jedoch deutlich, daß die Ausweitung des Anteils der Rüstungsausgaben am Sozialprodukt zu Lasten der zivilen Staatsausgaben und des privaten Verbrauchs erfolgt, während von einem Züruckgehen dieses Anteils die zivilen Staatsausgaben und die Investitionen profitieren. Dieses Muster läßt vor allem in den armen Ländern ein Absinken der Lebensqualität erwarten. (IB

Representative decision making: constituency constraints on collective action

This chapter focuses on the role of group and national identity in various types of collective actions. It features the decision to take action and asks about factors that influence that decision. Thus, our perspective is from the standpoint of the decision-maker who usually represents a collectivity (group, organization, nation). The interest is less about those decision-makers’ own identities and attachments than about various drivers and constraints on their decisions to act

Enforcing order: Territorial reach and maritime piracy

Existing studies of piracy focus attention on the institutional determinants of maritime piracy, but neglect variation in governments’ reach over territory. We argue that the effect of state capacity on piracy is a function of states’ ability to extend authority over the country’s entire territory. We expect that government reach—a function of geographic factors such as the distance between a country’s capital and its coastline—mediates the effect of state capacity on piracy. Weak governments allow for the planning and implementation of attacks and reduce the risk of capture, but particularly so if sufficient distance separates pirates from political authority. An empirical analysis of country-year data on maritime piracy collected by the International Maritime Bureau for the 1995-2013 period shows that capital-coastline distance mediates the effect of institutional fragility on piracy as hypothesized. These results remain robust for alternative operationalizations of state capacity and reach. In addition, the models perform well in terms of predictive power, forecasting piracy quite accurately for 2013. The expectations and evidence presented in this paper help explain why states with intermediate levels of state capacity but low levels of reach—such as Indonesia, Tanzania or Venezuela—struggle with substantial incidence of piracy

Squaring the circle? Collective and distributive effects of United Nations Security Council reform

United Nations Security Council, United Nations General Assembly, Decision-making, Distribution of votes, Coalition-formation,