On 17 January, our former colleague Helge Staff visited the TU Kaiserslautern political science department. Helge, who is now working in the project “Administration and Science” (“Verwaltung und Wissenschaft”) at the University of Hannover, made his way to Kaiserslautern to complete his dissertation with the oral exam (disputatio).
We congratulate him to taking this big step and to the excellent result he achieved!
As for the work that Helge defended in the exam: His doctoral thesis deals with the political economy of private security in a way that makes both a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature. The thesis combines policy analysis and specifically the multiple streams framework with criminological work in an innovative fashion. With its multi-method approach that integrates quantitative analysis and the qualitative method of process tracing, the study probes what determines policy choices for the privatization of security as well as which factors condition relevant policy outcomes. The results from the analyses point to the importance of government composition – which party is in government? – and to a central role played by policy entrepreneurs.
So, policy scholars and criminologists may want to look out for a significant addition to the literature on law and order policy being published in the next time.
Pascal König