The German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer (German: Deutsche Universität für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer; sometimes referred to as Speyer University), is a national graduate school for administrative sciences and public management located in Speyer, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Founded in 1947 by the French occupational authorities as a grande école, today it is operated under the joint responsibility of both the Federal Republic (Bund) and all 16 German states (Länder). It runs four Master's programs, grants doctoral degrees and habilitations, offers a postgraduate certificate program, and administers programs of executive education. The school is a major training ground for German and international senior government officials. Noted alumni and faculty include former President of Germany Roman Herzog, Professor Niklas Luhmann; current Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht, former President of the Bundesbank Helmut Schlesinger, former Prosecutor General of Germany Alexander von Stahl, and CEO of BASF Jürgen Strube.The school was founded in 1947 as the State Academy of Administrative Sciences Speyer (Staatliche Akademie für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer). In 1950 it was renamed the School of Administrative Sciences Speyer (Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer) and after reunification became the German School of Administrative Sciences Speyer (Deutsche Hochschule für Verwaltungswissenschaften Speyer).
Während Deutschland beim Schutz von Frauen an bürokratischer Zersplitterung und uferlosen Diskussionen um Straftatbestände scheitert, hat Spanien den Kampf gegen Gewalt gegen Frauen mit beispielloser Entschlossenheit zur Staatsräson erhoben. Von spezialisierten Gerichten bis zur synchronisierten GPS-Überwachung von Tätern und Opfern zeigt das "spanische Modell", wie ein konsequenter Opferschutz die Femizid-Rate im Vergleich zu Deutschland halbieren kann. Was muss sich hierzulande ändern, damit Schutz kein Zufallsprodukt mehr ist?
A reform in the German state of Hesse selectively shifted the responsibility for overseeing and enforcing a balanced budget rule at the municipal level. Oversight was transferred from politically affiliated county administrators to non-political and potentially more impartial fiscal supervisors at a higher administrative layer. We use this institutional change to empirically examine whether enforcement under the former regime was affected by hidden bias related to geographic proximity. We find that municipalities located closer to the former political supervisors reduced their cash loans more strongly under the subsequent neutral regime, consistent with the existence of proximity-related favoritism prior to the reform. This spatial pattern is most evident for smaller municipalities, when supervisors oversee more municipalities, and when mayors and supervisors are not politically aligned.
Many contemporary urban development projects focus on managing global challenges, developing resilience, and improving Quality of Life (QoL) through digital transformation (DT). DT thus serves as a means to an end - not as an end in itself. Smart City research explicitly defines QoL gains as the purpose of urban digitalization measures, but their positive impact on citizens' QoL is mostly assumed implicitly rather than established theoretically and empirically. We develop a tool to assess the impact of DT measures on QoL in cities by adopting an approach from development studies: The Choice Framework, which operationalizes the role of technology in the capability approach. Based on this framework, we develop a method for systematically estimating the capability-impacts of DT measures ex ante. We offer a theoretical contribution by defining a set of potential dependencies that determine the realization of the capabilities of measure recipients. Integrated in our method it allows for better comparability and prioritization of potential DT-projects in resource- and capacity-restricted cities. Strengthening the link between smart city-/ urban development practice and QoL, our method can serve as a heuristic, low-cost impact assessment tool for decision-makers in cities. Our method was developed with a design science research approach. In this article, we describe the theoretical background of our method as well as its evaluation via a software prototype and focus groups with practitioners from German cities, public organizations, and an academic expert.
