Member Profile for DIE, Bonn

Warum Regierungen in Vertrauen investieren müssen, um COVID-19 zu beenden
Impf-Skeptizismus ist in Hinblick auf das Ende der Pandemie eine Herausforderung. Für eine erfolgreiche globale Impfkampagne müssen Regierungen stetig daran arbeiten, Vertrauen wiederherzustellen.

Does economic growth reduce multidimensional poverty? Evidence from low and middle-income countries
The long-standing tradition of empirical studies investigating the nexus between economic growth and poverty has concentrated on monetary poverty. This paper engages in the little-explored debate on the relationship between growth and multidimensional poverty, by employing two novel, individual-based multidimensional poverty indices: the G-CSPI and G-M0. It relies on an unbalanced panel dataset of 95 low- and middle-income countries between 1990 and 2018: this is thus far the largest sample and time-span used for this purpose. Using a first-difference econometric strategy, the empirical analysis indicates that a 10% increase in GDP decreases multidimensional poverty by approximately 4-5%. However, results differ depending on the subperiod considered: the elasticity is insignificant before 2000, while it is negative and largely significant afterwards. This is probably due to the changes that occurred in the international scenario at the beginning of the 21st century. Finally, a comparative analysis reveals that the elasticity of income-poverty to growth is between five to eight times higher than that of multidimensional poverty. Our results indicate that economic growth is an important instrument to alleviate multidimensional poverty, but its effect is substantially lower than that on monetary poverty.

Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und humanitäre Hilfe
Im Juli 2020 übernahm Deutschland die rotierende Ratspräsidentschaft der Europäischen Union (EU), deren Funktion vor allem die Moderation und Vermittlung in Verhandlungsprozessen ist. 2020, dem ersten Jahr der Covid-19-Pandemie, gab es viele wichtige Verhandlungsdossiers, allen voran das EU-Budget für 2021-2027, das auch wichtige Implikationen für die Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und Humanitäre Hilfe der EU hat. Diese Verhandlungen erforderten ein gutes Prozessmanagement – mit welchem sich die deutsche Ratspräsidentschaft in hohem Maße auf EU-Ebene einbrachte. Alles in allem erwies sich das vergangene Jahr als Auftakt zu einer wichtigen Übergangsperiode im auswärtigen Handeln der EU und vor allem in ihrer Entwicklungspolitik und Humanitären Hilfe.

Protection against autocratisation: how international democracy promotion helped preserve presidential term limits in Malawi and Senegal
This article analyses the conditions under which international democracy support contributes to protecting presidential term limits. As autocratisation has become an unwelcome global trend, researchers turned to the study of the toolboxes of would-be autocrats, including their attempts to circumvent term limits. Through a paired comparison of failed attempts in Malawi (2002) and Senegal (2012), we find that external democracy support can assist domestic actors and institutions in deflecting challenges to term limits. We offer a novel qualitative analysis that posits that international democracy support can only be effective if sustained by popular democratic attitudes and behaviours of actors in the recipient state. On the one hand, a mix of conditioning relations with the incumbent government while capacitating pro-democratic opposition is a successful strategy in aid-dependent political regimes with a minimum democratic quality. On the other, societal attitudes factor into decision-making at domestic and international levels. Our results suggest that popular pro-democratic attitudes encouraged international democracy support during critical junctures in the two countries, i.e. when incumbents attempted to circumvent term limitation. Donor investments had positive results when donors had directed resources towards building up civil society organisations long before any attempts at circumventing term limits were made.

Gesundheit, Klima und geopolitisches Miteinander
Das Jahr 2022 hat zur Aufgabe, die Bewältigung der Pandemie, den Umbau unserer Wirtschafts- und Sozialsysteme und die Aushandlung einer multipolaren und regelbasierten Weltordnung signifikant voranzubringen.

Unintended consequences of microfinance: effects on credit access for small- and medium-sized enterprises
While competition in the financial system generally mitigates small- and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) financing constraints, this paper theorises that competition by microfinance institutions (MFIs) has adverse effects through aggravating the ‘graduation problem’: Small firms outgrowing microfinance struggle to find financing as conventional financial institutions abstain from downscaling and developing suitable lending instruments for smaller firms if these market segments are narrowed down by upscaling MFIs. Using data from 51 countries between 2002 and 2015, microfinance is found to significantly lower SMEs' access to credit. Credit bureaus can reverse this effect indicating that credit information infrastructure can reconcile a strong microfinance sector with functioning SME finance.

Populist radical right parties' impact on european foreign aid spending
Since the early 2000s, populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have more than doubled their electoral support in Europe. Previous research found that PRRPs impact migration policy. However, little is known about whether they also impact other fields of domestic and foreign policy. Using a cross-country panel analysis, we test to what extent the rise of PRRPs has influenced European foreign aid spending. We find that while the rise of PRRPs has not been associated with an overall reduction in foreign aid, it has led to changes in how aid moneys are spent. PRRP strength is linked to a higher share of aid for migration-containment objectives, and less aid for addressing climate change and for multilateral organizations. Our analysis thereby provides evidence that the ‘electoral threat’ of PRRPs puts mainstream parties under pressure not only with regard to migration but also in relation to the climate–development nexus and aid for multilateralism.