As a result of the collapse in wind energy expansion in 2018 and the gas shortage caused by Russia's attack on Ukraine, the European Union and the German legislature adopted measures from 2022 onwards to accelerate the expansion of wind energy. These measures primarily targeted the permitting procedures, which were considered a barrier to deployment due to increasing legal requirements and the associated longer processing times. The aim of these measures was to streamline the previously complex regulatory framework through simplification and standardization, thereby facilitating the implementation of permitting procedures. However, both the diagnosis of regulatory growth and the actual effects of the acceleration measures have so far received little empirical attention. This paper therefore analyzes whether the growth of the regulatory framework has contributed to increasing processing times and whether the acceleration measures adopted since 2022 are an effective approach to reducing both the regulatory framework and the duration of procedures. For this purpose, an analytical framework is developed that captures changes in the regulatory framework and their effects on the implementation burden for authorities. It became apparent that acceleration measures initially also lead to a further increase in the regulatory framework and pose additional challenges for the responsible authorities. While some measures reduce the implementation burden, others have the opposite effect. Thus, the observed reduction in processing times cannot be attributed solely to the acceleration measures, but also to the prioritization of permitting procedures at the expense of other tasks. This raises questions regarding the sustainability of these acceleration measures.
Germany's "traffic light" coalition (2021-2025) announced ambitious health policy reforms but produced a mixed record of incremental adjustments and stalled initiatives. We ask why some projects advanced while others failed during times of severe problem pressure. Drawing on actor-centered institutionalism (ACI), we analyze how problem types and actor constellations interacted across three central subfields of German health policy: statutory health insurance, digitalization, and hospital policy. Using interpretive process tracing based on publicly available parliamentary documents, we reconstruct decision-making processes and veto interactions on selected reform initiatives. Policy outcomes are conceptualized as legislative formulation, that is, the formal adoption of reform bills rather than implementation effects. The article refines ACI by linking coordination and distribution problems to crisis-driven reform attempts and differentiated veto capacities in a fragmented institutional setting. We develop three hypotheses on joint versus separated bargaining, actor constellation, and compensation or exclusion of veto players. Our analysis suggests that the success of reform does not depend primarily on the urgency of the problem but rather on the interplay between the nature of the problem, the constellation of actors, and coordination that is either facilitated or blocked by institutional factors. Practically, the findings offer diagnostic value for policy advisors and strategic actors seeking to anticipate reform outcomes in complex policy systems.
Während eine negative Bewertung der Wiedervereinigung in der öffentlichen Debatte oftmals mit Anfälligkeit für Populismus und demokratischer Unzufriedenheit in Ostdeutschland in Verbindung gebracht wird, fehlt bislang eine systematische empirische Analyse dieser Zusammenhänge. Diese Studie untersucht die Transformation der Wiedervereinigungskritik in Ostdeutschland und argumentiert, dass sich diese Kritik von einer vorwiegend linken, ökonomisch motivierten Position hin zu einer identitätspolitischen Frage gewandelt hat. Auf Basis von Ansätzen des kollektiven Gedächtnisses, der politischen Polarisierung und ideologischer Konfliktlinien analysieren wir mit ALLBUS-Daten das Verhältnis von politischer Ideologie und Wiedervereinigungsbewertung. Die Ergebnisse zeigen einen kurvilinearen Zusammenhang zwischen Links-Rechts-Orientierung und Wiedervereinigungsbewertung in den späten 1990er- und frühen 2000er-Jahren, der sich zwischen 2006 und 2010 vorübergehend abschwächt und sich ab 2018 konsolidiert. Gleichzeitig verändern sich die Trägermechanismen systematisch: In den späten 1990er-Jahren ist der Zusammenhang vor allem über sozioökonomische Ungleichheitskritik vermittelt, ab 2018 über migrationskritische Einstellungen und 2023 bei rechten Befragten über die AfD-Präferenz. Daraus ergeben sich Implikationen für die Debatte über den Aufstieg des Rechtspopulismus in Ostdeutschland und für demokratische Strategien zur Rückgewinnung des Diskurses über die deutsche Einheit.
This article examines how state borders become powerful through everyday emotional practices within urban spaces. Bringing the emotional turn and the practice turn in international relations (IR) into dialogue, it conceptualises emotions as embodied, relational, and performative social practices through which political order of state borders is reproduced, negotiated, and contested in everyday life. By combining a participatory research approach with art-based methods, the article advances a critical and co-creative methodological approach that provides analytical access to forms of ‘felt knowledge’ that often remain difficult to grasp through conventional research approaches. In doing so, the article offers empirical insights into how ordinary people experience and navigate the everyday effects of state borders and challenge them through emotional practices that create alternative spaces of belonging, presence, and participation. At the same time, it contributes to integrating subjects and forms of knowledge that often remain marginalised within dominant IR research into critical practices of knowledge production.
International practices are inherently normative. This finding comes to the fore, albeit sometimes rather implicitly, in most current research on processes of global ordering. Focusing on questions of normativity also brings practice scholars closer to research in international relations (IR) on contestation, relationality, and reflexivity. While this has sparked productive conversations between practice and IR scholars, shifting discussions from abstract theorizing to concrete empirical research, methodological clarity remains elusive. It remains an open question how we can and should study normativity in international practices. What does it meanto understand practices as inherently contested and oscillating between order and change? Where should we start doing research on normativity? And how does the role of the researcher change? We argue that doing practice research on normativity requires combining established practice approaches, which together form a methodological toolkit for guiding research projects in IR. Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology allows for studying the nature of disputes, the community of practice account can be adopted for studying learning processes, and practice-oriented norms research is useful for decoding moral ambiguity in its implications. We demonstrate what it means to zoom in and out for all these approaches, using research examples and experiences. The article aims to encourage scholars to reflect systematically on their strategies for conducting practice research on normative issues in world politics.
