Tim Heinkelmann-Wild

Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich | LMU · Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft

The US withdrawal from international institutions is a broader trend, not solely tied to Trump-era policies. Consequently, European governments that aim to preserve the rules-based international order should be prepared to take the lead and fill the gap left by the US exit. To pursue this strategy effectively, certain imperatives must be addressed.

International institutions are increasingly under attack from their member states, who embark on varying and sometimes escalating modes of contestation. At the same time, states’ negative institutional power, i.e. their opportunities to avoid undesired outcomes in international institutions, has been declining for some time. This paper claims that...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? This book challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. It is argued that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plau...

Who is held responsible when international organisations (IOs) fall short of public expectations? Scholarship on IO blame avoidance assumes that member states can hide behind IOs. As clarity of responsibility is assumed to be lacking in IOs, public responsibility attributions (PRA) will usually target the IO rather than individual member states. We...

While the United States (US) acted as a liberal hegemon in setting up the Liberal International Order (LIO), it is increasingly contesting the inclusive legacy institutions underpinning the LIO and is instead moving towards alternative, more exclusive institutions. Why is the US contesting the institutions it once set up to stabilize the LIO? We ar...

International organisations (IOs) have become increasingly contested resulting in worries about their decline and termination. While IO termination is indeed a regular event in international relations, this article shows that other institutions carry the legacy of terminated IOs. We develop the novel concept of IO afterlife and suggest indicators t...

In the European Union (EU), blame games have become a regular feature of EU politics. A fast-growing literature studies political actors’ blame avoidance and blame generation strategies in the EU. Thanks to this literature, we possess ample knowledge about the strategies political actors employ when playing European blame games. We introduce a new...

The authority of international organizations (IOs) is generally assumed to drive their member states' contestation even to the point that they terminate their membership. We provide a first systematic assessment of this relationship and suggest that the type of IO authority matters. IOs with pooled authority exert centrifugal effects on their membe...

International institutions underpinning the 'liberal international order' are increasingly contested by established Western powers. This article contributes to a better understanding of this novel challenge 'from within'. We conceptualize four types of contestation frames according to (1) whether contesting states attribute the source of grievances...

Internationale Institutionen werden vermehrt durch westliche Mächte attackiert, die gemeinhin dem Kern der "liberalen internationalen Ordnung" zugerechnet werden. Die Intensität und die Modi ihrer institutionellen Kontestation variieren jedoch stark. Unser Beitrag untersucht, inwiefern institutionelle Faktoren-Merkmale und Effekte der kontestierten...

The delegation of governance tasks to third parties is generally assumed to help governments to avoid blame once policies become contested. International organizations, including the European Union (EU), are considered particularly opportune in this regard. The literature lacks assessments of the blame avoidance effects of delegation, let alone of...

The Liberal International Order (LIO) is in a crisis from within. Under President Trump, the United States (US) has turned against some of the major multilateral institutions that underpin the order. Existing research either points to the material decline of the US as a driver of the LIO's crisis, as the power shift literature does, or emphasizes a...

Instead of attacking their adversaries directly, states often do so indirectly by supporting rebel groups. While these support relationships vary considerably, existing research lacks a comprehensive account thereof. To explain states’ choice of support, we suggest differentiating between two modes of support relationships according to the control...

The politicisation of the EU renders blame avoidance for unpopular EU policies an essential task for governments. This article looks at one particular blame avoidance strategy, which governments have at their disposal in the EU policy process: the threat of non-compliance. In order to gauge its effectiveness, we present two competing arguments. Acc...

While the United States (US) have been one of the key promoters of the rule-based international order, they have regularly terminated their commitment to or participation within multilateral institutions. Faced with the severe challenge of hegemonic withdrawal, some multilateral institutions decay while others are resilient. This paper develops a t...

Why do states withdrawal from international organizations (IOs)? While recent withdrawals are explained by domestic backlash against IO authority, geopolitics are seen as the drivers of earlier withdrawals. We argue that IO authority has always had an effect on member states' decision to withdrawal. This authority effect is not limited to the recen...

When member states contest policymaking in international organizations, some inter- national public administrations (IPAs) react in a conciliatory way while others are adversarial. This article argues that IPAs’ dependence on contesting states, their policymaking authority, and affectedness from contestation shape communicative responses. A Qualita...

Zusammenfassung Wie reagieren internationale Organisationen (IOs) auf Schuldzuweisungen ihrer Mitgliedstaaten? Oftmals werden in der Forschung IOs im Falle von gescheiterten Politiken als gute Sündenböcke für die Schuldzuweisungen ihrer Mitgliedstaaten gesehen, weil sie sich kaum zu Wehr setzen müssen, können oder wollen. Demgegenüber argumentieren...

Governments across the world increasingly rely on non-state agents for managing even the most sensitive tasks that range from running critical infrastructures to protecting citizens. While private agents frequently underperform, governments as principals tend nonetheless not to enforce delegation contracts. Why? We suggest the mechanism of institut...

Blame games between governing and opposition parties are a characteristic feature of domestic politics. In the EU, policymaking authority is shared among multiple actors across different levels of governance. How does EU integration affect the dynamics of domestic blame games? Drawing on the literatures on EU politicisation and blame attribution in...

Who blames whom in multilevel blame games? Existing research focuses either on policymakers' preferences or their opportunities offered by the institutional structures in which policymakers operate. As these two strands of literature barely refer to each other, in this article we develop an integrated theoretical model of blame‐shifting in multilev...

This paper develops a theory of wedge issue politics in modern democracies. It argues that wedge issues are associated with a politics of intransigence which differs from the politics of concessions that typically comes with non-wedge issues. This theory explains why Prime Minister Theresa May opted for a divisive approach to secure ratification of...

An increased number of refugees entering Germany between 2015 and 2017 has resulted in a fierce political debate on the potentials and dangers of increased immigration and the meaning of ‘refugees’ in the country. So far, most studies on the social construction of the ‘refugee’ either have focused on the linkage between immigration and threats, suc...

Who blames whom in European blame games? Existing research either focusses on policy-makers’ preferences or opportunities posed by institutional structures. As these two strands of literature barely refer to each other, we develop theoretically and assess empirically an integrated model of blame shifting. In line with the first strand of literature...

Who is held publicly responsible for mistakes in EU policies? We argue that in complex policy-making systems responsibility tends to be attributed to implementing actors. To test this expectation, we analyse public responsibility attributions (PRAs) for two alleged mistakes in EU financial policies: The absence of sanctions against countries that v...

Whom do EU institutions and member states blame for contested EU policies in the public? To explain when EU policy-makers’ shift blame to the EU or the national level, existing research either focusses on policy-makers’ preferences or the policy- specific governance design. This thesis develops a synoptic two-step model that explains the direction...

The development of military platforms, such as transport aircraft, has always been an eminently vital, but challenging task for both supplier-firms and customer-governments. Despite substantial delays and cost overruns almost from the outset, the German government has legally enforced the A400M contract of 2003 only in 2015. Why did it take the cus...

Vor dem Hintergrund des sogenannten "Arabischen Frühlings" brachen in Libyen und Syrien Anti-Regimekriege aus. Während jedoch in Libyen der Sturz des alten Regimes gelang, konnte in Syrien bis heute das alte Regime seinen Sturz vermeiden. Dennoch kam es in beiden Bürgerkriegen sukzessive zur Fragmentierung der Gewaltakteure, zur Ökonomisierung ihre...