Forschung…

Da die Überarbeitung der Seite zu den Forschungsaktivitäten von Prof. Busch noch nicht beendet ist, übernehmen wir hier einstweilen weitgehend die entsprechenden Teile seiner website in Oxford, obwohl diese zum Teil etwas veraltet sind.
Informationen zum Forschungsprojekt über "Coping with innovation: The political regulation of personal information in comparative perspective" können unter folgendem Link eingesehen werden - allerdings auch in einer etwas veralteten Version.
Eine Auswahl von Artikeln und working papers zum download können über den Link am rechten Rand der Seite erreicht werden.

My main field of interest in political science is comparative public policy. Besides that, I have a keen interest in comparative and international political economy, German and British government, and certain aspects of modern political theory.

International Political Economy

I have been one of the founding speakers of the section on International Political Economy in the German Political Science Association (DVPW) since 2003.
Here you find the report 2003-2006 of our group, as well as the programme for our panel "Rule-making in the global economy - between power and persuasion" at the DVPW Congress in Münster (Germany) in September 2006. If you want to subscribe to our email list, please send an email.
In addition, I am the co-editor of the series on "International Political Economy" with Nomos, a leading German academic publisher. You can find the titles in the series by following this link.

Conferences

Privacy and Information: Modes of Regulation (2007)
A workshop in Helsinki, jointly organised with my colleague Charles Raab (University of Edinburgh), that takes place 7 to 12 May 2007 under the auspices of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions of Workshops.
From the programme:
"Public policy issues like video surveillance, biometric passports, the use of RFID chips, international transmission of passenger travel data, the establishment of DNA sample databases, and internet and telephone traffic data retention have prompted social and political conflicts and debates in many countries. They focus on data accessibility and the purposes for which such data can be used, and have triggered both regulatory challenge and change.
The workshop invites both empirical and theoretical work on privacy and information policy in modern societies. Much has already been contributed on these issues by legal and computer science scholars, and we hope that the workshop will help to establish this topic more firmly on the political science research agenda as well."
International Political Economy in Germany: Assessment and Perspectives (2004)
The first conference of the section on International Political Economy of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) was organised in cooperation with Jörg Faust (DIE) and Doris Fuchs (Handelshochschule Leipzig) and funded through a generous grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Its main purpose was the discussion of ongoing work in IPE in Germany and an attempt at community building.
The conference took place between 22 and 24 September 2004 at the Evangelische Akademie Arnoldshain (Hesse). The conference plan with the name of participants and the titles of the papers given can be downloaded here (in German).
Representation in the Digital Age (2003)
A one day conference, organised together with Elizabeth Frazer (New College) and Stephen Coleman (Oxford Internet Institute). The central question is, which impact electronic communications and the internet are having on political representation. This conference brings together academics and political representatives to discuss how the digital age has already and will further change our understanding of representation, what chances for increased participation it brings and what problems it may harbour.
Opening the Black Box: Europeanisation, Discourse, and Policy Change (2002)
A workshop at the Department of Politics of Oxford University, co-organised with Vivien A. Schmidt and Claudio Radaelli. For further details, see the workshop webpage.
The papers originally presented at this workshop were published as a special issue on "Policy Change and Discourse in Europe" of the journal West European Politics (March 2004).

Research projects

Here are informations on projects that I am currently involved in or that I have been working on in the past couple of years:
The Governance and Politics of Privacy (2004- )
Revolutionary technical innovations in the areas of telecommunication, data transmission and computerisation have changed the availability of data fundamentally. Today, any sort of data is in principle available anywhere and at anytime. At the same time the capacity for storing data has grown tremendously, and the fact that stored data can be digitally processed and linked to each other means that new data can be generated from very diverse sources of information, giving them a new quality.
How do different states and societies deal with this new situation? Who controls these data, who has access to them, what purpose can they be used for? What role do policy legacies, be they in the form of data protection laws or institutionalisation of privacy agencies, play? What governance mechanisms are in place? Do parties make a difference? And does the fight against terrorism after 9/11 mean that security has to take precedence over privacy?
These are just some of the questions that I aim to deal with in my comparative study of the politics of privacy. As an experiment, I have started a weblog in which I present and discuss some of my ideas and findings. You're invited to visit it and comment!
In 2007, the Economic and Social Research Council awarded me a major grant for a two year project on Coping with innovation: the political regulation of personal information in comparative perspective. It will run from 2007 to 2009 and compare the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden in three policy areas. More information here.
The state's capacity to act under conditions of globalisation: the case of banking regulation (1997-2002)
The financial sector is arguably among the most strongly "globalised" sectors of the economy, yet at the same time, this sector has for a long time been characterized by marked differences between countries, e.g. with respect to the nature of the banking system or the institutionalisation of state banking regulation, largely as a result of specific historical developments. Will globalisation lead to convergence here, and thus potentially to a reduction in the nation state's capacity to act? That is one of the central questions of this research project which compares state responses in four advanced industrial nations (United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland).
The book resulting from this project was published (in German) as "Staat und Globalisierung" with Westdeutscher Verlag (Wiesbaden) in autumn 2003. A revised English language version has just been published with Oxford University Press under the title "Banking Regulation and Globalization" (see here for more information).
Success and Failure in Public Governance (1997-2000)
This project was initiated by Mark Bovens (Utrecht), Paul ´t Hart (Leiden) and Guy Peters (Pittsburgh) in 1997 and deals with "non-standard challenges to governance" (decline, structural reform, acute crisis and innovation) and states' reactions towards them. Six European states (Germany, France, the UK, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands) are compared with respect to their reactions in four sectors: steel industry (decline), health system (structural reform), HIV-tainted blood (acute crisis) and banking regulation (innovation). Within this project, I was responsible for the last topic as sectoral editor.
The results (24 case studies + theoretical and sectoral introductory chapters) were published in the autumn of 2001 under the title "Success and Failure in Public Governance" with Edward Elgar (Cheltenham).
The role of ideas in public policy (1997-1999)
In March 1998, Dietmar Braun (University of Lausanne) and I organised and directed a workshop on the topic of "The role of ideas in policy-making" at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops. You can find more information on the workshop and the topic here.
Some of the workshop's results were published in our co-edited volume entitled "Public Policy and Political Ideas", published with Edward Elgar (Cheltenham) in 1999.
National state and international economy (1997-1999)
While everybody seemed to talk about "globalisation", at least in Germany the public debate was primarily characterized by assumptions about the consequences rather than systematic knowledge. Thomas Plümper (University of Constance) and I therefore invited a group of political scientists and economists to help put the debate on a firmer footing.
You can find the results -- empirical studies across a number of policy areas -- in our edited volume "Nationaler Staat und Internationale Wirtschaft", published in 1999 with Nomos Verlag (Baden-Baden).