https://hdl.handle.net/10419/33 2026-09-13T05:13:05Z 2026-09-13T05:13:05Z Lillie, Karen Hideg, Luisa https://hdl.handle.net/10419/341981 2026-07-17T17:09:06Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Moral and legitimate? Historical, legal, and affective issues around educational privatization in Germany Authors: Lillie, Karen; Hideg, Luisa Abstract: Germany's education system is in the midst of privatization. Although this trend, which started in the 1980s, ostensibly parallels neoliberal education reforms across Europe and the Anglophone world, Germany's case is a special one. Privatization in the country is happening within a historical and legal context that favors public schooling; however, families increasingly exercise school choice to select "the best" for their children. The tension between historically and legally informed norms, on the one hand, and affective desires, on the other, is morally problematic for parents navigating between what is generally accepted as good for society and what they believe is good for an individual. At stake in this struggle is whether school choice becomes a "legitimate" part of the German education system, in a Bourdieusian sense. If it does, it risks strengthening social class closure mechanisms and heightening resultant social class anxiety.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Stausholm, Saila Garcia-Bernardo, Javier https://hdl.handle.net/10419/341980 2026-07-17T17:09:07Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: A practical guide to LinkedIn advertising reach data for social science: Methods, challenges, and five applications Authors: Stausholm, Saila; Garcia-Bernardo, Javier Abstract: LinkedIn data offers a unique way to study how professional groups and organizations underpin economic and political life. This paper shows how LinkedIn's advertising reach data, which provides anonymized counts of users by job title, skills, employer, and location, can be used to study organizational and professional dynamics relevant to a wide range of issues in political economy and economic sociology. We showcase the potential through five illustrative cases: 1) the revolving doors between Wall Street and US financial regulators; 2) the geography of professionals such as accountants and bankers; 3) the professional composition of interdisciplinary firms such as antitrust consulting firms; 4) recruitment by different industries and specifically big professional services firms in the face of new regulatory demands for sustainability reporting; and 5) the emergence of a profession of cyber security professionals over time. Alongside these examples, we provide a step-by-step guide for implementing the method in practice and discuss how linking professional attributes with geographical or organizational characteristics can provide new answers to various research questions. We hope this paper serves as a helpful practical guide as well as inspiration for new research questions.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Wansleben, Leon https://hdl.handle.net/10419/343081 2026-08-27T12:04:29Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Mismatch crises: Conceptualizing advanced energy transitions Authors: Wansleben, Leon Abstract: Renewable electrification - upstream switches to variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, combined with downstream electrification - implies a profound reconfiguration of the energy-society nexus. This is evidenced by significant frictions and political conflicts that intensify at the very moments at which the diffusion of the respective technologies gains pace. Existing transition scholarship has not sufficiently captured these dynamics since it lacks a conception of regime instability and trusts too optimistically in transition progress through economic and policy feedbacks. I leverage the concept of "mismatch" or "structural adjustment" crises from innovation economics to capture situations in which technology adoption happens broadly and quickly, while the development of integrative mechanisms adjusted to the demands of renewable energy lags behind. We see this evidenced by mismatch crises that manifest in three domains: Infrastructures facilitating energy production and use are maladapted to variable power; status orders are destabilized amid growing distributional conflict; and institutions of energy governance are not appropriately reformed. Identifying these manifestations of mismatch crisis does not automatically imply a need to slow down the transition but rather to explore much-needed reforms to establish the integrative foundations for societies powered by renewables.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Cova, Joshua Marenco, Matteo https://hdl.handle.net/10419/343055 2026-08-27T12:04:29Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Safeguarding or sidestepping? The centre-right, the minimum wage, and collective bargaining autonomy in the German and Italian low-wage s ectors Authors: Cova, Joshua; Marenco, Matteo Abstract: Opposition to statutory minimum wages by right-of-centre parties has typically been framed around employment externalities. Yet in Germany before the adoption of a statutory minimum wage, and in Italy today, right-of-centre parties have often invoked a different rationale: defending collective bargaining autonomy against state interference. In this paper, we investigate how centre-right parties in both countries have engaged with collective bargaining while each facing a specific scenario: declining coverage in Germany, and weakened representativeness in Italy. Examining recent policy proposals such as linking public procurement to collective bargaining agreements or regulating union representativeness, we find that these measures were largely opposed by the centre-right. A quantitative text analysis of parliamentary debates further reveals a strategic use of collective bargaining discussions by centre-right parties: In Germany, salience peaked before the statutory minimum wage was introduced but fell sharply thereafter, while collective bargaining gained prominence discursively for the Italian centre-right only in conjunction with the minimum wage debate. Complemented by stakeholder interviews and electoral data analysis, our findings suggest that this trend reflects ideological as well as electoral dynamics, as centre-right parties draw on significant support from small business owners in sectors with weak collective bargaining. Appeals to bargaining autonomy thus function less as substantive commitments than as instruments to preserve the status quo in the low-wage sector.

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