Category: Journal News

 

 

 

 

 

Interest groups frequently attempt to influence public policy by lobbying legislators. For decades, it has been debated whether lobbying benefits or undermines the democratic process. On the one hand, it may privilege some public preferences over others. On the other hand, it may help legislators to better understand citizens’ interests. In their recent article “Interest group tactics and legislative behaviour: how the mode of communication matters“, Oliver Huwyler and Shane Martin argue that the answer depends on how precisely lobbying is shaping legislative behaviour. Building on social presence theory, they expect that lobbying tactics with more direct contact are more likely to influence legislators’ behaviour. The analysis of all 217,886 lobbying attempts in the Irish Parliament between 2015 and 2019 and 167,347 parliamentary questions tabled by Irish legislators shows that lobbying tactics where communication is synchronous and rich in non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalics, is indeed more effective. In their conclusion, the authors hint at potential implications for representative democracy: “For better or worse, lobbying impacts what legislators do, and different communication tactics can be more or less effective.“

How do governments convince profit-oriented banks to provide liquidity to firms in need? To shed light on that question, Elsa Clara Massoc analyzes the elaboration and implementation of state-guaranteed credit programs (SGCPs) during the COVID-19 crisis in her article “Having banks ‘play along’ state-bank coordination and state-guaranteed credit programs during the COVID-19 crisis in France and Germany”. The COVID-19 crisis constitutes a particularly puzzling case as no bank would, from a commercial point of view, willfully grant cheap and copious credit to struggling firms in the context of a global pandemic. SGCPs were specifically designed to make banks do so, nevertheless. Building on a comparative process analysis of SGCPs in France and Germany, Elsa shows that it has been less costly for the French government to convince their banks to provide liquidity as German banks obtained better terms for their participation in their national SCGP. The variation stems from differences in the institutionalized state-bank modes of coordination: In France, state-bank coordination is characterized by mutual trust among a small number of socially homogeneous groups used to close cooperation. By contrast, state-bank coordination is weaker in Germany. As a consequence, state officials have to resort to monetary incentives to persuade banks. State-led credit allocation may prove an essential tool in maintaining modern states’ capacity to govern in economic crises, and different modes of coordination between states and banks are instructive for how states are able to meet that challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do EU’s citizens think about the notion of differentiated EU integration? In their recent article, “Public support for differentiated integration: individual liberal values and concerns about member state discrimination” Dirk Leuffen, Julian Schuessler & Jana Gómez Díaz argue that individuals which support values, such as the freedom of choice and tolerance of unequal outcomes are more likely to appreciate a ‘two-speed Europe’. Both, individual political attitudes concerning economic liberalism, as well as national sociotropic concerns are hypothesized to shape the support for differentiated integration. Using Eurobarometer survey data, the authors show that proponents of a EU of varying speeds do, indeed, display liberal-conservative dispositions, while strong supporters of the equality principle are less supportive of differentiated integration. Furthermore, the analysis sheds light on the role of the national context: citizens in the Southern European member states are more strongly opposed to the concept than citizens in the North and the East – most likely because of the prevalent negative consequences of the Eurozone crisis in these countries. The findings have far-reaching implications for policy makers. If large parts of EU citizens view a ‘two-speed Europe’ as discriminatory and non-solidary, it will be increasingly difficult to promote it as a legitimate tool for future European integration.

 

 

A year that turned our lives upside down draws to a close, and we want to take a moment to thank everyone who kept JEPP’s machine humming despite the circumstances! Our reviewers, who continued to take time out of busy schedules to offer useful advice on manuscripts, our authors, who kept firing off quality submissions, and our readers, who continued to pick up our latest issues after tiring days in their home offices. We hope everyone gets a well-deserved break over the holidays and are looking forward to seeing you in the next year!

We are ringing the new year in by welcoming a new member to the team! Sarah Dingler, Assistant Professor at the University of Innsbruck, will take over the reins of JEPP’s social media presence and strengthen the Alpine flair in the editorial office.

Stay tuned for our upcoming issues, debate sections and special issues. Follow us on Twitter (@jepp_journal), read and subscribe to our newsletter.

Season’s greetings and all good wishes,
Your JEPP team

PS: And if you’re keen to know how JEPP’s editorial team will spend their holidays, go ahead and scroll down!

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In the absence of Christmas markets, Michi is already working towards ensuring “strategic autonomy” for his holiday break: large-scale production of own cookies has started, Christmas decoration massively expanded and Glühwein stocks refilled. Apart from this, he will follow his only sustainable strategy throughout 2020: no plans whatsoever! The picture was taken during the carefree month of August, but already then, he was very much looking forward to leaving this year behind and a bit more “old normal” in 2021.

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For the first time, Sarah will spend Christmas together with Alex in Innsbruck this year. She will swap large family gatherings with (hopefully) solitary ski tours in the Austrian Alps. Instead of the usual Christmas presents, all she asks for is snow fall and good weather conditions for nice powder days. After some time of tranquility, she can’t wait for new endeavors in 2021 and looks very much forward to joining the JEPP’sters as Social Media editor.

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Berthold and Jess will spend the holiday season in their digs near the Chiemsee. Pandemic-life and the end-of-the-year lockdown turn remaining travel options, such as the nearby farm to fetch fresh eggs, into a welcome change from online-teaching, online-researching, online-administrating and online-interacting. Funnily enough, pandemic-life has had zero impact on the workings of the JEPP editorial office. As always, just good old email at a dozen exchanged between down under and the deep Bavarian south. Pandemic-life has brought us a fur-pal from Istanbul. His name is Semih. He liked books when he joined our family in the summer. Now he is more into normal cat-like behavior, such as walking across computer keyboards and the unsolicited sending of half-finished emails. He will need some more training before he turns editorial assistant.

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I am the odd one out on the team, living in NZ where there are currently (02/12/20)  no significant COVID-19 restrictions (things can change rapidly, as we all know). However, we plan to repeat our now well established Kiwi tradition of  heading for the Akaroa beach, ready for the Christmas BBQ. The ‘we’ is the usual ‘we’, namely me Sonia, Tess, Molly, and Murphy the dog. I am minded to have just one more go at standing up on a bloody paddle board as I noticed that some of them have sort of bike handlebars that one can hold on to. I showed one to Sonia the other weekend. My hunch is that I will not get beyond ‘I am minded…’.  I take this dirigiste attitude on the part of my wife to be an act of  true love, bearing in mind that the insurance payout from my death by drowning would be sufficient for her to buy a couple of new BMWs and have money to spare!

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It’s been an odd year, to say the least. I spent most of the year cooped up in shoebox-sized flats in Northern London and Northern Sweden, seeing time fly by while seemingly nothing gets done. But looking back there is still not much to complain about, all the loved ones are healthy and happy, and at least the earlier parts of the year had some highlights (including a trip to the subarctic, eating Swedish pastries surrounded by plenty of snow). Plus, although the annual end-of-year visit to the parents in Munich is cancelled, I get to spend a few cosy days over Christmas with my significant other near Hampstead Heath (living in proximity to an open, green space was extra valuable throughout the year). In keeping with the things unusual this year, this post is also somewhat unusual: It’s the last post I write as JEPP’s Social Media Editor, as it’s time to pass the torch on and leave JEPP’s social media presence in very capable hands. I did the job for more than five years, usually too late in the evening, and it’s been very nice to meet so many of JEPP’s authors along the way. It’s been a pleasure, here’s to a more joyful new year for all of us!

 

2020 hasn’t exactly been littered with moments to celebrate, so one more reason to cherish them when they do come around: The 2019 Journal Citation Reports release by Clarivate Analytics sees JEPP’s impact factor increase from 3.457 in 2018 to 4.177 in 2019, the journal’s highest score in its 27-year history! JEPP is now ranked 7/180 in the Political Science category and 3/48 in the Public Administration category.

JEPP was also able to hold on to its third place in the 2020 Google Scholar Metrics ranking for Political Science, with an h-index of 55, up from 51 (only APSR and AJPS have higher scores).

To top off the good news, JEPP is also doing very well on CiteScore provided by Scopus, with a score of 7.7, which implies that JEPP is ranked 2/157 in Public Administration and 16/1243 in Sociology and Political Science.

We won’t tire of thanking our family of authors who have chosen JEPP as the venue to publish their research, our board members and reviewers for their outstanding and continuing support, and our readers without whom JEPP would have never made it this far!

The JEPP Reviewer Prize provides special recognition to our colleagues for their selfless investment as peer-reviewers, offering guidance to authors to improve their work, to us as editors to take well-informed decisions on manuscripts, and hence to ensure that JEPP’s standards continue to be high. This year we have the pleasure to award the prize to two cherished colleagues who have supported JEPP for decades: They have rarely declined our review requests, and always provided submitting authors and us editors with detailed and constructive comments.

We are thus very happy to award the reviewer prizes to:

Rachel Epstein (University of Denver),

R. Daniel Kelemen (Rutgers University).

Congratulations to our prize winners!