Tobias Ochsenbein

Conceptualization of Renewable Energy Regions To be able to analyse renewable energy regions, one needs to define what a renewable energy region is. As Gerring puts it: “Concept formation lies at the heart of all social science endeavours. It is impossible to conduct work without using concepts. It is impossible even to conceptualize a topic, as the term suggests, without putting a label on it. Concepts are integral to every argument for they address the most basic question of social science research: what are we talking about?” (Gerring, 2012, p. 112). This chapter will deal with the question of what we are talking about, when we speak of renewable energy regions. This is especially important, because there is no official definition of the term energy region (Ribi, Buser, von Felten, Walther, & Bernath, 2012, p. 27). Hence, we are at the very beginning of conceptualization. The goal of renewable energy regions is to improve the economic prospects of people living in that re...

Ohne Heimat sein heisst leiden. Fjodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski The UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (“the compact”) has been heavily featured in the news and instrumentalized by politicians for their own (anti-)migration agenda. This is, in itself, not surprising, as “the capacity to decide who can move, who can settle, where and under what conditions is increasingly becoming the core of political struggles” (Achille Mbembe, 2018, “ The idea of a borderless world ”). What sparked my curiosity is how strongly even relatively moderate politicians in Switzerland argued against signing a, at least from the outside, relatively harmless looking international compact (e.g. WOZ, 2018, “ Ein europäisches Gerücht ”). To form my own opinion, I decided to read the whole text. I wanted to understand whether the concerns expressed by (right-leaning) politicians were actually valid. 1. “The pact undermines the sovereignty of states” In fact, it does not. As ...