Neueste Publikationen

Beyond the wage channel: climate-smart public works programmes and household resilience in Malawi

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:43:44 +0100

One of the main arguments for implementing public works programmes (PWPs) instead of other social protection schemes such as cash transfers is that the assets created through these programmes themselves can generate medium- to long-term benefits. This is particularly important as the costs for supervision and the construction materials can account for up to 70 per cent of programme budgets. Despite this, there is scarce empirical evidence on PWPs’ effects through the “asset channel”: indeed; most studies have focused solely on the traditional “wage channel”. To bridge this gap, this paper examines whether and how assets created under Malawi’s Climate-Smart Enhanced Public Works Programme (CS-EPWP) – a programme recently implemented by the government of Malawi and funded by the World Bank – strengthen the resilience of households to climate shocks such as droughts and floods. The paper relies on case study analysis using primary qualitative data based on focus group discussions and key informant interviews with different stakeholders at the national, district and community levels. Interviews were conducted during fieldwork in September 2024 in two southern districts of Malawi highly affected by climate change. The analysis is complemented by site visits and quantitative survey data on asset quality. By combining these methods, we find that the CS-EPWP generates durable, community-maintained assets, which in turn enhance households’ capacity to cope with and adapt to climate shocks. In particular, land-based assets provide multiple benefits for both households and communities, while forest-based interventions are expected to generate similar long-term gains, though further research is needed to confirm their (long-term) impacts. To maximise the impact of climate-smart public works programmes, policymakers and donors should align asset creation with climate objectives and adopt participatory approaches to ensure their relevance, maintenance and long-term sustainability.

Sophia Schubert is an independent researcher.
Dr Donald Makoka is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD) of the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in Malawi.

Powerful but dysfunctional? The Group of 77 and UN multilateralism

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:13:35 +0100

The G77 represents the Global South in the United Nations (UN). It holds a two-thirds majority and exercises significant influence in the General Assembly, while also being party to North–South tensions in the UN. Nearly all intergovernmental processes at the General Assembly, particularly those related to economic and financial issues, are marked by protracted and frustrating negotiations that affect the UN’s ability to develop solutions to global challenges. Despite its influence in the General Assembly, little is known about the G77’s internal processes. This article addresses this gap by examining the group’s decision making and how it shapes multilateral negotiations and outcomes in the General Assembly. It introduces an ideal-type model of intra-group interest aggregation and assesses how this function unfolds in the G77 and with what effects on UN negotiations. Drawing on group politics literature and interviews with UN delegates, the article demonstrates that while the G77 can leverage its numerical strength, there are noteworthy deficits in the group’s function of aggregating interests. Specifically, the limited inclusiveness in the group’s decision making, the dominance of a few members and the lack of informed input can undermine effective multilateralism and reinforce North–South tensions.

New rationalities, inner logic, and hope for sustainable future coasts

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:24:41 +0100

In the coastal zone, the triple planetary crisis manifests as accelerating losses and changes and increasing challenges and risks for people and livelihoods. Acceptance of a future existential crisis compels the urgency of corrective action to cause an inverse positive societal response to bend the negative trajectories of loss and damage. The rate and extent of corrective societal action (policies, laws, practices, knowledge, etc.) should at least keep pace with the projected rate of loss and environmental degradation. This urgency and acceleration of action are major societal challenges, especially considering the overwhelming evidence of impacts. In this paper, we offer three propositions for accelerating urgent actions and fostering innovation in coastal research and management, focusing on emerging trends and foundational changes. Scientists need to (1) reflect on the performativity of their research and perceptions of neutrality in anticipating the future of coasts; (2) think and act equitably in local and global partnerships; and (3) improve their engagement and willingness to innovate with society. This is not a call for linear or incremental change, but a call for the radical. The relationship between society and science drives progress and shapes our collective future.

Welt ohne Zentrum: wie Deutschland umdenken muss

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:01:54 +0100

Deutschland stellt sich thematisch zu breit auf in einer sich neu ausrichtenden Weltordnung. Das zeigt sich besonders in der Entwicklungspolitik, die als Instrument deutscher Außenpolitik und internationaler Zusammenarbeit dort eingesetzt werden sollte, wo Wirkung realistisch nachgewiesen ist.

A world without a center: how Germany must rethink its approach

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:59:13 +0100

Germany is spreading itself too thinly across too many issues in a world order that is undergoing realignment. This is particularly evident in development policy, which, as an instrument of German foreign policy and international cooperation, should be used where its effectiveness has been realistically proven.

Policies for accelerating sustainability transitions: bridging insights from transition studies and policy studies

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 01:57:48 +0100

Pressing environmental and societal challenges, such as the climate crisis and social inequality, demand policy interventions to steer and accelerate sustainability transitions. This chapter highlights four key intervention areas: providing direction to transitions (directionality), fostering innovation (niche support), phasing out unsustainable practices (regime destabilisation), and coordinating transition processes (coordination). We outline their theoretical rationale in transition studies and offer interdisciplinary insights from policy research. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we present 15 concrete policy interventions to transform production and consumption systems. Evaluating these interventions with empirical findings from leading transition journals, we highlight research opportunities at the intersection of public policy and sustainability transitions. Given the resistance and contestation around transformational policies, we aim to foster interdisciplinary exchange on how to accelerate sustainability transitions.

Unveiling the Weave: social cohesion in African post-colonial state- and nation-building

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:02:55 +0100

This chapter explores the role of social cohesion in African post-colonial state- and nation-building. It argues that understandings of social cohesion, rooted in pre-colonial traditions and concepts, were central to political and intellectual debates during decolonization in the 1960s and remain relevant today. Drawing on ethnophilosophical sources, such as oral traditions, proverbs, and communal practices, as well as social theories of African humanism and socialism, this chapter identifies core African notions of interconnectedness, collective responsibility, and the common good. Concepts including ubuntu, ujamaa, harambee, and other local philosophies illustrate how interdependence, identity, lineage, and community well-being shaped both traditional societies and post-independence political visions. African leaders and intellectuals invoked these ideas to legitimize distinctive paths of development, often contrasting them with Western models of statehood and individualism. At the same time, tensions arose between local, national, and pan-African identities, and between communal ideals and the practicalities of mass societies. By situating these debates historically and conceptually, this chapter demonstrates that social cohesion has been a constitutive element of African state- and nation-building and offers insights into contemporary challenges of inclusion, identity, and unity across diverse societies.

Inequality and social cohesion in Africa

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:00:28 +0100

This paper analyses both theoretically and empirically, the relationship between inequality and social cohesion, where social cohesion is conceptualized as a multi-faceted phenomenon encompassing three core attributes: trust, inclusive identity and cooperation for the common good. These attributes operate along two dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical dimension. First, it provides an overview of the empirical evidence regarding the relationship between inequality and the three attributes of social cohesion. While inequality is likely to have a negative effect on all three attributes, the intensity of the relationship may depend on some key mediating factors. The empirical analysis focuses on Africa, given the scarce evidence for this continent. As expected, it shows that countries with higher income inequality usually have lower levels of social cohesion, measured by an aggregate index. This negative correlation holds when the three attributes of social cohesion are examined separately; however, the intensity varies. It is stronger for trust than for identity and cooperation. Further analysis indicates that a clear negative relationship between inequality and social cohesion attributes is visible only when the focus is on the horizontal dimension of social cohesion.

Humanitäre Hilfe

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:05:42 +0100

Die humanitäre Hilfe ist ein wichtiger Bestandteil des auswärtigen Handelns der Europäischen Union (EU). Seit den 1990er-Jahren wurde sie schrittweise weiterentwickelt und mit dem Vertrag von Lissabon (2009) fest im EU-Vertragswerk verankert. Mit der Generaldirektion Europäischer Katastrophenschutz und humanitäre Hilfe (GD ECHO) existiert eine eigene Institution, die für das Politikfeld zuständig ist. Sie unterhält ein weltweites Netzwerk von Expert:innen, welche die Umsetzung der humanitären Hilfe in Kooperation mit Partnerorganisationen wie den Vereinten Nationen und NGOs koordinieren. Die Unabhängigkeit der humanitären Hilfe von der Außenpolitik ist ein wichtiges Prinzip des humanitären Völkerrechts. Gleichzeitig gibt es vonseiten der EU aber auch Bestrebungen, die humanitäre Hilfe stärker mit anderen Bereichen der Außenpolitik zu verzahnen. Inwiefern dies gelingt, wird sich in den kommenden Jahren zeigen.

Frieden und Entwicklung

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:12:05 +0100

Das Kapitel analysiert die wechselseitige, jedoch nicht deterministische Beziehung von Frieden und Entwicklung. Defizite in der Entwicklung erhöhen Konfliktpotenziale, während Gewalt Fortschritte rückgängig macht. Frieden führt jedoch nicht automatisch zu hohem Entwicklungsniveau, ebenso wenig garantiert Entwicklung dauerhafte Stabilität. Zentrale Faktoren sind inklusive Institutionen sowie Gleichheit. Die viele Jahrzehnte währende Programmatik, Frieden und Entwicklung gemeinsam zu denken, verliert an Bedeutung. An ihre Stelle treten sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitische Prioritäten.

Beyond projects: the role of development partners in institutionalising renewable energy innovations: lessons from the Global South

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:23:49 +0100

Renewable energy has seen rapid uptake, particularly in the Global South. Solar energy projects have boomed in recent years, but uptake by countries is uneven. Beyond geophysical conditions, technological innovation, market dynamics and donor-driven “lighthouse projects”, political institutionalisation has played a critical role in decarbonisation. In this policy brief, which is based on extensive research from Global South case studies, we argue that political institutionalisation is key to determining whether and how innovative solar initiatives become stabilised, scaled up, and mainstreamed.
Drawing on the research project Institutionalizing Low Carbon Development in the Global South (INLOCADE) and expert contributions from a follow-up IDOS workshop, this policy brief synthesises comparative policy-relevant findings on how institutionalisation unfolds in various emerging economies of the Global South, including Brazil, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia and South Africa.
Key messages:
• Political institutionalisation – understood here as an enduring change of formal and informal rules and practices towards low-carbon development – is essential for making renewable energy projects sustainable by embedding them in conducive, stable governance frameworks. Isolated, donor-driven initiatives are at risk of provoking resistance and backlash, and of fading away once external support ends.
• Multiple pathways for institutionalisation exist. State leadership, subnational action, alliances between development partners and communities,
and crisis-driven coalitions can enable institutionalisation under different conditions. Policies should be tailored to the institutional realities of each context rather than using one-size-fits-all models. Similarly, development partners should assess local realities and adapt their strategies accordingly.
• Distributive justice and participation must be actively supported. Political institutionalisation can lead to inequitable outcomes and reinforce exclusionary practices. Development partners should take a proactive role by aligning their interventions with inclusive and equitable approaches to ensure support for marginalised groups leads to socially just transitions, not just box-ticking.
• Crises can be opportunities. Energy shortages and climate shocks can disrupt fossil-fuel lock-ins and open the door to innovation. Development partners need flexible instruments and strategies to help translate crisis-driven experiments into durable institutional change.
• Development partners are catalytic, not deci-sive. They can accelerate change by providing finance, technical expertise, and legitimacy, especially when working with domestic actors beyond national governments. German and EU development cooperation should place greater emphasis on strengthening domestic institutional enviro-ments, including regulatory stability, administrative capacity, and actor coalitions that embed projects in lasting policy and organisational change. This helps ensure donor interventions contribute to sustained low-carbon transitions beyond initial project cycles.

Dr Joshua Philipp Elsässer is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Environment, Economy and Energy (C3E) of the Brussels School of Governance.
Prof em. Dr Harald Fuhr is a Professor Emeritus of International Politics at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam.
Anna Fünfgeld is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Hamburg; Mercator Professorship for Sociology.
Prof Dr Markus Lederer is a Professor of International Relations at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Dr Jens Marquardt is a Research Associate in the Research Group “International Relations” at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
Dr HyunAh Yi is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Comparative Governance, Korea University, and an Associate Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

Can reminders promote regular pro-environmental behavior? Experimental evidence from Peru

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:14:44 +0100

Pro-environmental behavior, such as recycling, often needs to be regular to be effective, and interventions to encourage behavioral change may therefore need to be repeated; yet, little evidence exists on the optimal time pattern and frequency of such repeated interventions. To fill this gap, we investigate the impact of mobile text reminders on households’ recycling behavior in urban Peru by randomly varying the exposure length and continuity of reminders. We find that reminders increase both the likelihood that households start to recycle and the frequency of recycling among households that already did so before the intervention. The effects are stronger when reminders are repeated over a longer period. Our findings suggest that both limited attention and habit formation matter for recycling behavior, and that low-cost mobile text reminders can effectively support regular pro-environmental behavior.

Sustainable finance, reflexive law, and the epistemic infrastructure of financial markets

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:29:07 +0100

In recent years, the European Union (EU) has introduced several policy measures to better align financial markets with sustainability goals. So far, these policies have mainly aimed to improve how information on the sustainability impacts of investments is collected and transmitted. Policymakers hope that adjustments to the epistemic infrastructure of financial markets will lead to a shift in investments that translates into transformational change in the real economy. The EU’s sustainable finance policies often follow a reflexive law approach and confine themselves to setting procedural and organisational norms. This article analyses the potential and limitations of this approach and argues that sustainable finance policies must be sufficiently detailed and binding to avoid the risk, associated with reflexive law policies, of granting too much discretion to agents with vested interests detrimental to the governance aims. However, detailed and binding policies do not fully realise the advantages in dealing with highly complex and dynamic situations that are often ascribed to reflexive law policies. While sustainable finance policies that address the epistemic infrastructure of financial markets are for various reasons still important, their potential and advantages compared to other governance approaches should not be exaggerated.

How China can exploit the disruption of international order

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:08:25 +0100

Bonn, 9 March 2026. Current upheaval in world politics is expanding China’s room for manoeuvre – and calls for a more in-depth engagement with the People’s Republic.

It is not all plain sailing for the People’s Republic of China. The crisis in the country’s real estate market shows no sign of abating, domestic demand is faltering, and a rapidly ageing population is causing concern for Beijing. Internationally, tensions with the U.S. government are creating challenges for the Chinese economy. Despite holding several trump cards — notably rare earths — export-reliant sectors would have much to lose in an escalating trade war. At the National People's Congress, the Chinese government has just announced the lowest growth target of the past 30 years.

With regard to world politics, however, things could hardly be going better for the People’s Republic. While global attention is focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine or U.S. airstrikes against Iran, China is emphasising the key role of the United Nations (UN) in ensuring stable international cooperation. Compared with Donald Trump’s or Vladimir Putin’s campaigns against core principles of the post-war order, Xi Jinping’s China appears as a staunch defender of multilateralism. For many, China’s close ties to Moscow are no reason to reproach the country. While Western states have only recently begun debating the potential loss of the United States as a security guarantor, China has long been criticising the hegemonic role of the U.S. government. For the People’s Republic, reform of the international order primarily means one thing: less dependence on Washington and hence a greater alignment with Beijing’s interests.

International cooperation with Chinese characteristics

China stresses that it does not seek hegemonic control itself – not least because enforcing such hegemony would tie up too many resources. For the Chinese government, survival of its own regime in the one-party state is of paramount importance. Instead of taking over from the United States as the alleged world police, Beijing hopes to achieve greater – and indeed China-dominated – global connectivity. A key lever in this effort is China’s position as primus inter pares in the heterogeneous group of “developing countries”, which account for the majority of the world’s population. Economic interdependence, development cooperation, and rhetorical support for the concerns of the Global South are key instruments in China’s toolbox.

At the multilateral level, Chinese reform proposals are geared not only towards shifts in power but also towards changes in procedural and normative logics. The UN as China envisions it would be characterised less by multilateral bureaucracy and more by intergovernmental decisions. In some respects, this overlaps with preferences in Moscow and Washington. Normatively, China positions itself in opposition to much of the liberal agenda. Rather than promoting the civil and political rights of individuals, China is attempting to place the collectively conceived Right to Development at the heart of global human rights discourse. Instead of a Responsibility to Protect on the part of the international community, Beijing sees non-interference in internal affairs as the guiding principle of multilateral cooperation. From protesters in Hong Kong to “reunification” with Taiwan, there are a range of matters on which the People’s Republic seeks a free hand.

China as a complex counterpart

Overall, the disruption of an international order long dominated by the United States is widening the scope for China’s preferences and reform proposals. Regardless of all discrepancies, this has increased the longer-term relevance of the People’s Republic – including for Europe. At the end of February, the German federal statistical office reported that Germany’s trade volume with the United States had decreased by 5 percent in 2025 and that China had once again become Germany’s most important trading partner.

Despite the in many ways understandable tendency of European governments to view Beijing as a systemic rival, the contours of China as a potential partner — as recently seen during Friedrich Merz’s trip to China — are likely to come back to the fore. This calls for a nuanced approach that combines detailed knowledge with strategic astuteness. The much-invoked “China competence”, which often leaves much to be desired, is not only about learning the Chinese language. It also requires a broader societal engagement with China as a country and with the Chinese government as a global actor.

Against this backdrop, the traditional focus on political, economic, and cultural engagement with the United States urgently needs to be expanded. Germany and other countries that still regard themselves as part of the West currently seem united by a broad consensus that international relations need to be recalibrated. As a complex counterpart, China should take centre stage in this process. This will entail expanding dialogue formats, including atypical ones, pooling expertise in research and public administration, and already devoting sufficient attention to China in school curricula. It also means interacting with Chinese people to gain an understanding of the diversity of Chinese realities that could offer starting points for critical engagement – beyond unequal trade relations and the one-party state.

International democracy promotion across two waves: from support to protection

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:48:20 +0100

The Third Wave of Democratization's international dimension connects domestic democratization processes with the global spread of democracy after 1989. How has democracy promotion, a specific international source, contributed to the Wave of Democratization? And is scholarship well equipped to study the fundamental shifts in democracy promotion caused by the Third Wave of Autocratization? This article answers these questions from two perspectives. First, it assesses the relevance, patterns and effects of international democracy promotion between 1995 and 2024. Second, it takes a meta-perspective and identifies the main characteristics and blind spots of the study of international democracy promotion. Based on these insights, the article makes a conceptual contribution by distinguishing between democracy support and democracy protection. Furthermore, it defines the international scope conditions necessary for effectively promoting democracy during periods of autocratization. Finally, it proposes a new agenda for the study of international democracy promotion after the Third Wave of Democratization.