Laboratory for Analysis of Governance and Public Policy in Europe

Fields | Projects and contracts | Collaborations |

Projects

Projects FNS

The Rise of the Sub: Territorial challenges of nation-state sovereignty in Europe and North-America
2020 - 2024
Applicant : Sean Müller
Other partners : Alessia Setti, Carlo Epifanio
Can regions and cities succeed where nation-states have failed? This Eccellenza project investigates the extent to which sub-national entities address contemporary policy problems like climate change or large-scale immigration. As nation-states grapple with these complex challenges, the project aims to assess the role and efficacy of three different types of emerging sub-national activity: a) local autonomy in stateless nations, b) cross-border integration along the European Union’s internal borders, c) city to city cooperation in the European Union. By examining these themes, the project seeks to understand the balance between nation-state sovereignty and local pragmatismand, as well as the potential of sub-national and multi-level governance strategies to address global challenges.

Regulation in developing countries: Electricity in Northern Africa
2023 - 2027 (48 mois)
Applicant : Emmanuelle Mathieu
Other partners : Noel Löcse, Colin Pache
In the face of rising concerns for energy security and for climate change, huge investment projects about the production of renewable energies in Northern Africa are under consideration. Attracting investments require adopting credible investor friendly policies. In this context, international organisations push for the adoption of liberalization and regulatory reforms, coupled with the creation of independent regulatory agencies. This project focusses on the electricity sector reforms adopted in the region, with a particular emphasis on the Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian cases. In a bottom-up approach, it examines and explains the extent to which these reforms depart from the international prescription, and evaluates the impact of different policy designs observed on the level of private investments. The research contributes to our understanding of the factors of diffusion of regulatory agencies in developing countries, of the dynamics of economic reforms in Northern Africa, and on the factors of development policy success.

Bypassing the Nation State? How Swiss Cantonal Parliaments Deal with International Obligations
2019 - 2023 (48 mois)
Applicant : Martino Maggetti, Evelyne Schmid
Other partners : Jonathan Miaz, Constance Kaempfer, Matthieu Niederhauser
Today, international law frequently requires legislation by domestic parliaments. Yet, a thorny problem that international law continues to face is precisely its limited ability to influence the behaviour of domestic legislators and the 'relative impermeability of national systems to international legal imperatives' (Cassese 2012, 188). Moreover, the expansion of international law and its shift away from regulating interstate relations towards a complex system of governance virtually concerning all societal domains has sparked opposition. Starting with the premise that 'the future of international law is domestic' (Slaughter and Burke-White, 2006), we claim that the challenges at the intersection of international obligations and domestic legal realities are particularly acute with respect to parliamentary processes located at the subnational level. Domestic legislatures, let alone subnational parliaments, have, however, been largely overlooked so far both internationally and in Switzerland and existing research has predominantly focused on courts rather than on domestic legislative actors. Although the literature recognises the importance of national and subnational legislative actors for the effectiveness of international law, when and how cantonal legislatures engage with international obligations has not yet been systematically studied.To fill this gap, we are building a research team of legal and political science researchers to answer two tightly connected questions. First, we want to find out through which formal and informal mechanisms cantonal parliaments and other actors involved in cantonal legislative processes engage with international obligations that require them to legislate and that are contained in two sets of international treaties: i) selected obligations related to the protection of human rights of particularly vulnerable individuals (such as Travellers, persons with disabilities, or undocumented minors) and ii) selected obligations from the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU.

Performance-Information Use in Switzerland: Do Organizational Climate and Cooperation Among Actors Matter?
2019 - 2023 (48 mois)
Applicant : Giauque David
This research is centered on specifying and testing a research model that links whether and how performance-information use is created, to how it is used. Two drivers in the model are organizational climate and cooperation among actors-namely, how they relate to each other, and the extent to which these three groups see their working relationships as being cooperative or not.The main objectives of this research are linked to two important research questions. The first one deals with the relationships among council members, high civil servants, and field civil
servants, and the extent to which these relationships are grounded on a positive climate and cooperative behaviors. The second one is related to the drivers and barriers of performance-information use at the local government level. Previous scientific literature has indicated that the relationships among actors are important to consider when explaining the development and use of performance information in public organizations. Using a mixed methods approach, we will gather quantitative as well as qualitative data to answer the research questions. In the first step, we will compile a data set via a structured survey of elected officials, high civil servants, and field civil servants in samples of Swiss municipalities. This data set will allow us to conduct statistical analyses to estimate the relationships among local government performance-information use and the explanatory variables in the research model. To better understand the mechanisms underlying the causal relationships among the variables, we will proceed with a case study research as well as with the statistical first phase. Thus, the second phase of this research will include a component that uses qualitative case study methods to elaborate on behavioral models of local-government performance-information use in selected local governments to validate the survey-based perceptions and modelbased
linkages.

Employees' performance and well-being in different contexts: Do New Ways of Working matter?
2019 - 2022 (36 mois)
Applicant : Giauque David, Emery Yves

Integration of the Swiss Energy System into the European Energy Policy
2018 - 2019 (12 mois)
Applicant : Matthias Finger, Manuel Fischer, Martino Maggetti and Géraldine Pflieger
This project will identify the main characteristics of the current and expected future energy policies of Switzerland and Europe. For this purpose it will study Switzerland's and Europe's energy policies from the point of view of governance. It will analyse not only the formalised rules, but also the institutions, the formal and informal political processes and the interactions between governmental and non-governmental players.

Urban Transformations and Local Political Elites: A Comparative Study among four Swiss Cities
2016 - 2020 (48 mois)
Applicant : Oscar Mazzoleni, Andrea Pilotti et André Mach (co-requérants)
Other partners : Roberto Di Capua, Karim Lasseb
This project aims to contribute to a better knowledge of the profile of urban elected representatives over time in connection with urban transformation. To what extent do social, institutional, and political changes affect the profile of the elected representatives? And is it possible to observe an increasing democratization and professionalization of the urban political elite? Assuming sub-national legacies are crucial in the evolution of urban political elites, this project simultaneously adopts a comparative approach and a prosopographic perspective able to take into account change and persistence over time. The research will focus on the evolution of four cities in Switzerland which represent different legacies among the main urban Municipalities, from demographic, institutional, economic, and political point of view. For each of the municipalities involved, we will analyze the evolution of the elected representatives (age, training, profession, gender, and political longevity) in legislative and executive institutions in the period between 1946 and 2016, in relation to socio-economic, institutional, and political transformations.

When and why do governments integrate policy sectors? A comparative analysis of eleven countries and four policy areas
2016 - 2019 (36 mois)
Applicant : Martino Maggetti
Other partners : Philipp Trein, Iris Meyer
Depuis quelques années, les gouvernements des pays développés ont commencé à re-intégrer certains secteurs de politiques publiques, surtout dans des domaines considérés comme prioritaires. Par exemple, la politique de la santé fait l'objet de tentatives de coordination accrue avec la politique en matière de migration. Ce projet vise à étudier ces nouvelles dynamiques.

Réseaux ou bonnes campagnes? Le succès électoral des candidats aux élections fédérales suisses 2015
2015 - 2018 (36 mois)
Applicant : Georg Lutz
Other partners : André Mach (co-requérant)
Networks of good campaigns? Electoral success of Swiss candidates in the 2015 election

Les institutions politiques suisses à l'épreuve d'un scandale : emergence et désamorçage du scandale des fiches
2015 - 2018 (36 mois)
Applicant : Bernard Voutat (co-requérant) et André Mach (co-requérant)
Other partners : Hervé Rayner (chercheur), Fabien Thetaz (doctorant)
Swiss political institutions put to the test: the emergence of the secret files scandal and how it was defused.

Professionalisation of sports federations in Switzerland: origins, forms and consequences
2014 - 2017 (36 mois)
Applicant : Emmanuel Bayle
Other partners : David Giauque, Siegfried Nagel (UNIBE), Torsten Schlesinger (UNIBE)
International and national federations are the key actors regarding the relations inside the sport system (with clubs) but also outside the sport system (state, economy, media...). They are facing great challenges (e.g. growing competition in top-level sport, development of sport for all, use sport to answer to society problems : integration, education, health, unemployment...). In this context, professionalisation of sports organisations seems to be an appropriate strategy in order to solve the current problems. The recruitment of paid staff in sport national federations (82 in charge of 20 000 clubs) is growing a lot in Switzerland (plus 10% in the last 6 years). This potential of growth of paid staff is also very important in most of international federation which have their headquarters in Switzerland (e.g. 26 in the Canton Vaud). We define professionalisa-tion of sport organisations as an organizational process leading towards organizational rational-isation, efficiency and project management. We are interested in the following main research questions:

1) How do (sports) organisations professionalise? (Origins, forms and dynamics of profession-alisation)
2) What are the effects of professionalisation on the organisation structures, processes and members? (consequences of professionalisation)

Lobbying, litigation and direct democracy: comparing advocacy strategies of interest groups in Switzerland and California
2014 - 2017 (36 mois)
Applicant : Frédéric Varone et André Mach

Access for citizen-consumers to decisions relating to the sustainability of food systems
2014 - 2017 (36 mois)
Applicant : Jean-Philippe Leresche

Le contrôle démocratique sur la gouvernance privée transnationale
2013 - 2017 (48 mois)
Applicant : Fabrizio Gilardi, Martino Maggetti, Ioannis Papadopoulos
The globalization process goes with more demand for regulation and coordination at the international and transnational levels. In the last two decades, major changes have taken place in the modes of such regulation. There has been a proliferation of transnational networks of regulatory agencies in different policy domains. Furthermore, private forms of governance have developed. Examples of such transnational, private regulatory bodies are companies (e.g., rating agencies), private organizations (e.g., the International Accounting Standards Board), private standard-setting bodies (e.g., the International Organization for Standardization), non-profit organizations (e.g., the Forest Stewardship Council), and multi-stakeholder platforms (e.g., the United Nations Global Compact).

Some of these private actors are considered to be extremely powerful and relevant for global governance. Although the rules they issue are deliberately voluntary, they may be de facto binding and even become incorporated into "hard law". Often they provide normative guidance for the elaboration and preparation of domestic legislation and are eventually included in national laws.
A significant and increasing share of policy making is thus carried out by private bodies that are neither elected - which would make them directly accountable to citizens - nor embedded in democratic institutions. However, these non-public actors make rules that involve collectively binding decisions. How do such forms of private governance affect democratic policy-making? To whom are these private bodies accountable? And how can transnational, private governance be democratically controlled?

Academic Elites in Switzerland (1910-2000): between Autonomy and Power
2013 - 2016 (36 mois)
Applicant : Félix Bühlmann, André Mach et Thomas David

Change structure and structure of change: academic curricula production in Switzerland and Bologna reform
2013 - 2015 (36 mois)
Applicant : Leresche Jean-Philippe
Other partners : Adriana Gorga, Vaia Fouradoulas

Impact study of the new principles and tools of management on managers' health and satisfaction at work in the Swiss French-speaking hospital environment
2011 - 2013 (24 mois)
Applicant : Véronique Haberey-Knuessi (Haute Ecole Arc)
Other partners : Jean-Luc Heeb (Haute Ecole de Fribourg) et David Giauque (UNIL)

NCCR Democracy: Internationalization, mediatization, and the accountability of regulatory agencies
2009 - 2013
Applicant : Fabrizio Gilardi (ETH), Martino Maggetti, Ioannis Papadopoulos
Following the privatization of former state-owned enterprises and the liberalization of markets in recent decades, regulation has become an important public policy, whose responsibility has in many cases been delegated to independent agencies. During the past 15 years, these regulatory agencies have become powerful actors in the governance of different policy domains across Europe and beyond. A significant and increasing share of policy making is thus carried out by institutions that are not elected, are independent from elected politicians and insulated from democratic institutions. These developments pose serious challenges for democratic accountability.


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National regulatory agencies are increasingly embedded in international, interdependent networks of regulators, whose establishment is promoted by supranational bodies such as the EU Commission. This project examines whether networks significantly contribute to the promotion of "best practices" among these agencies through "peer pressure" and mutual accountability. To analyze this is crucial for assessing and improving the performance of regulators.

Furthermore, in order to assess the public accountability of regulatory agencies, the project also studies their communication practices targeted at the media, governments, and other actors that are likely to monitor and evaluate their performance. With its research results, the project aims to increase public awareness about the regulatory activity of agencies and to contribute to the improvement of their performance and their democratic accountability.

Evaluation du programme des bourses FNS
2009 - 2010 (11 mois)
Applicant : Jean-Philippe Leresche, Gaël Goastelle
Other partners : Ramuz R., Adangnikou N., Pekari N.

Les élites suisses au 20e siècle : un processus de différenciation inachevé ?
2007 - 2010
Applicant : André Mach et Thomas David

Is it possible to motivate agents with public service? Test of the public service motivation concept to the Swiss context
2007 - 2010 (36 mois)
Applicant : David Giauque
Other partners : Frédéric Varone et Adrian Ritz

European Programs

Network of Excellence "CONNEX": "Connecting Excellence on European Governance" (6e PCRD-UE)
2006 - 2009
Applicant : Ioannis Papadopoulos
Participation au réseau, co-responsable du thème "Accountability in multi-level systems" dans le cadre du Research Group 2: "Democratic governance and multilevel accountability"

Fonds pour l'organisation de workshops et d'une conférence thématique sur l'Accountability.
Fonds complémentaire du Secrétariat d'Etat à la Recherche en Suisse

Policies for Research and Innovation in the Move towards the European Research Area (PRIME)
2004 - 2008
PRIME was a network of excellence to develop long-term research and shared infrastructures on policies for research and innovation in the move towards the European Research Area (ERA); the overall objective of PRIME was to carry out the research and related structural actions needed to underpin policies for research and innovation in the move towards the European Research Area (ERA).

Others projects

Rethinking Stakeholder Participation in International Governance
2015 - 2017
grant-giving organisation : SNIS (Switzerland)
Applicant : Tim Büthe, Martino Maggetti, Joost Pauwelyn
To address current_date's highly complex and rapidly evolving cross-border problems, countries and other stakeholders are increasingly resorting to case-by-case networks, expert- driven bodies or club-like arrangements. Given the rigidity of formal treaties and formal international organisations (IOs) such new forms of governance can more efficiently respond to volatility and more easily adapt and innovate. However, one side effect of such rapid-response arrangements is that they may not sufficiently take account of external stakeholders who are outside of the arrangement but nonetheless impacted by it.
This project will, in a hands-on, practical way, identify and carefully map the different responses to legitimacy challenges raised by external stakeholders in a series of selected formal and informal governance arrangements, focusing on health and finance. The project seeks to establish and explain the variation in institutional reforms, including the lack of reforms in some cases. It aims to understand the effectiveness of institutional reforms in terms of actually increasing external stakeholder input and the perceived legitimacy of the global body's governance among those external stakeholders. Finally, the research will assess the effect of introducing these participation mechanisms on the process and the efficiency of rule-making and, on that basis, propose a set of best practices and practical guidelines.

What is Governed in Cities: Residential Investment Landscapes and the Governance and Regulation of Housing Production
2019 - 2022
Applicant : Mike Raco (UCL)
Other partners : Julie Pollard
This project draws on a precise comparative, inter-disciplinary methodology to examine the inter-relationships between contemporary investment flows into the housing markets of major metropolitan centers and the governance arrangements and public policy instruments that are designed to regulate them.
Our case studies are the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, Greater London, and Grand Paris. The project asks what is governed in major cities and draws on two streams of analysis: mapping and explaining the types of investment that are shaping housing production in the 3 cities; and developing understandings of the effectiveness of public policy instruments that are in place to regulate them.
The project is timely as major cities have been faced with unprecedented development pressures as their populations and economies have expanded and their built environments have become highly attractive locations for global investment. These pressures have been particularly acute in the production and consumption of housing, where the impacts of investments on markets, citizens, and places are generating a widely perceived crisis and set of governmental challenges to produce affordable housing.

Wealth inequalities and the dynamics of housing market : Interpreting real-estate market-based regime of spatial inequalities
2019 - 2022
Applicant : Renaud Le Goix (Univ. Paris Diderot)
Other partners : Julie Pollard
The project analyzes growing socio-economic inequalities induced by property prices inflation. Housing prices have increased faster than the income of buyers in most of post-industrial city-regions. Real estate has become a major driver of these inequalities because the flows of household real estate investments are instrumental to the dynamics of asset capitalization. The project structures a multidisciplinary research group to investigate the systemic dimension of inequalities induced by the dynamics of French housing markets and their political and financial context since the end of the 1990s. In French metropolitan areas, the most salient dynamics for the last two decades have been a continuous and steep increase in property prices and a steady increase of homeownership, analyzed as a « resilient bubble », and therefore described as a new price regime.

The following paradox has emerged in the post-financial crisis era: while the evolution of both price to income ratio (i.e. affordability index) and rent to price ratio should discourage homebuyers and investors in metropolitan areas, housing markets have remained active and the price trend did not reverse. We assume this situation is linked to many parameters, from the national level (financial and credit affordability conditions, pro-homeownership policies, shift toward asset-based welfare) to the local level (pro-market housing policies, spatial differentiation of housing prices). Our research question stems from this analysis: to what extent contemporary social inequality is shaped by one's relationship to housing markets? We will examine it through three overlapping dimensions: urban policies to promote the production of residential real estate; local access and affordability to participate in that market; specific trajectories of wealth accumulated through home ownership - and its attendant effects on urban policies.

The Policy Laboratory for Institutional Regimes for Sustainable Resource Development (Polisurd) (C1)
2014 - 2016 (36 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Académies Suisses des sciences (Switzerland)
Applicant : Stéphane Nahrath
Other partners : -

Motivating Employees and Volunteers in International Organizations: Do Values Matter?
2010 - 2012 (22 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Swiss Network for International Studies (Switzerland)
Applicant : David Giauque
Other partners : Frédéric Varone (UNIGE), -Simon Hug (UNIGE), Ursula Haefliger (UNIZH), Simon Anderfuhren-Biget (UNIGE)
International organizations (IOs) face particular challenges when it comes to their workforce. They comprise permanent employees, interns and field volunteers. At the same time, the personnel comes from diverse cultural backgrounds and works mostly as an expatriate workforce in headquarters or in the field. Understanding what motivates this diverse workforce and how this affects outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance etc. is thus of considerable importance. The present research project proposes to study these motivations, their antecedents and consequences, by drawing on two strands of the literature, namely the work on Public Service Motivation (PSM) and on Volunteer Motivation (VM). This project tries to identify the combination of factors explaining why employees and volunteers of IOs show various levels of work motivation. In particular, it focuses on the impacts of values, considered here as "higher order drives", on work motivation. The research question is: "To what extent does the fit between personal values and organizational values of an IO contribute to the work motivation of its employees and volunteers?"

CRUS-CUS/B-05 Colloques
2009 - 2013 (48 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Conférence des recteurs des universités suisses (CRUS) (Switzerland)
Applicant : Jean-Philippe Leresche, Olivier Glassey
Other partners : Olivier Moeschler

La coordination interuniversitaire sur le Bassin lémanique (1990-2010)
2008 - 2011 (36 mois)
grant-giving organisation : UNIL, UNIGE, EPFL, Fondation Leenaards, Fondation Louis-Jeantet (Switzerland)
Applicant : Leresche Jean-Philippe
Other partners : F. Joye-Cagnard, M. Benninghoff, R. Ramuz

d'évaluation du programme de l'instrument « Contributions liées à des projets » (2004-2007)
2007 - 2008 (18 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Conférence universitaire suisse (CUS) (Switzerland)
Applicant : Leresche J.-Ph., Benninghoff M., Goastellec G.
Other partners : F. Joye-Cagnard, R. Ramuz, Ph. Sormani

Commitment and involvement of knowledge workers. The swiss enterprises practices
2007 - 2008
Applicant : David Giauque
This research, financed by the strategic fund of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, aims to understand the principal reasons under the commitment and involvement of knowledge workers. This population, very mobile in the employment market, represents a strategic targent for organizations. Which factors can explain the knowledge workers desire to stay in an organization?

Inventaire des standards minimaux relatifs au doctorat
2007 - 2008 (6 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Conférence des recteurs des universités suisses (CRUS) (Switzerland)
Applicant : Leresche Jean-Philippe
Other partners : Baschung Lukas

Evaluation de la réorganisation des Départements fédéraux en matière de formation, recherche et innovation
2006 - 2007 (13 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Conseil suisse de la science et de la technologie (CSST) (Switzerland)
Applicant : Braun D., Leresche J.-Ph.
Other partners : Th. Griessen, L. Baschung, Benninghoff M.

Contracts and Mandates

Assessment of BREF projects funded by the Gebert Rüf Stiftung

2011 - 2012
grant-giving organisation : Gebert Rüf Stiftung (Switzerland)
Applicant : David Giauque
Other partners : Karl Weber

Image of the City of Fribourg by its inhabitants

2010 - 2010
grant-giving organisation : Ville de Fribourg (Switzerland)
Applicant : Laurent Houmard et Jean-Christophe Zuchuat (HEG-Fribourg)
Other partners : David Giauque (UNIL) et Nicolas Babey (HEG-Neuchâtel)