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"Weiss, Moritz"
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Transaction costs and security institutions : unravelling the ESDP
\"Examines international cooperation in European security from a transaction cost economics perspective. This book addresses the puzzle of how to approach differing institutional preferences. It argues that the reduction and limitation of transaction costs was the primary determinant of security preferences\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Exploring Free Energy Profiles of Enantioselective Organocatalytic Aldol Reactions under Full Solvent Influence
We present a computational study on the enantioselectivity of organocatalytic proline-catalyzed aldol reactions between aldehydes in dimethylformamide (DMF). To explore the free energy surface of the reaction, we apply two-dimensional metadynamics on top of
molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations with explicit solvent description on the DFT level of theory. We avoid unwanted side reactions by utilizing our newly developed hybrid AIMD (HyAIMD) simulation scheme, which adds a simple force field to the AIMD simulation to prevent unwanted bond breaking and formation. Our condensed phase simulation results are able to nicely reproduce the experimental findings, including the main stereoisomer that is formed, and give a correct qualitative prediction of the change in
product ratio with different substituents. Furthermore, we give a microscopic explanation for the selectivity. We show that both the explicit description of the solvent and the inclusion of entropic effects are vital to a good outcome-metadynamics simulations in vacuum and static nudged elastic band (NEB) calculations yield significantly worse predictions when compared to the experiment. The approach described here can be applied to a plethora of other enantioselective or organocatalytic reactions, enabling us to tune the catalyst or determine the solvent with the highest stereoselectivity.
Journal Article
The Role of Sport Psychology in Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation in Junior Athletes
Sports injuries have historically been addressed and treated from a purely physical perspective. Nevertheless, like in many other aspects of sports, it has become evident during the last decades that psychological considerations and consequent interventions are both vital and inevitable in the work with athletes, particularly in the work with junior athletes. Especially in the domains of sports injury prevention and rehabilitation, psychological measures can yield significant benefits for junior athletes. Stress management techniques, cognitive restructuring, mindfulness, motor imagery, or seeking social support have been demonstrated as being highly effective. These techniques, many of them originally intended by sport psychologists to optimize performance, now aid junior athletes in performing at their best while also preventing injury and facilitating a safe return to competition after injury. During injury rehabilitation, sport psychological measures play an important role as well. The purpose of this review is firstly to provide an overview of the psychological factors that significantly support both injury prevention and rehabilitation. We subsequently elaborate on the identification and optimization of these factors by presenting evidence-based psychological interventions and training programs. In addition, we provide science-informed fundamentals that may serve as a basis for the adaptation and/or development of novel psychological measures to support junior athletes during injury prevention and rehabilitation.
Journal Article
Who's in the cockpit? The political economy of collaborative aircraft decisions
Few issues are more important to states' security than their ability to acquire modern weaponry. Today, advanced industrial democracies possess three options for doing this. In principle, they can: autonomously produce their own armaments, import them from foreign suppliers, or collaborate with other states to co-produce common weapons. In this study, we examine the factors driving state decisions to either collaboratively or autonomously procure advanced weaponry. To this end, we analyse French and British decisions about whether or not to collaborate in the domain of combat aircraft. To preview our conclusion, we draw on the Varieties of Capitalism approach to argue that the underlying institutional structures of national political economies explain why otherwise similar states have enacted divergent policies. Within Étatist France, dense exchanges and close relationships within elite networks enable large defence contractors to veto government decisions that contravene their preferences. By way of contrast, Britain's liberal market economy empowers its government to impose its preference for collaborative projects onto aircraft manufacturers, even when the latter attempt to lobby in favour of promising national designs. Thus, what variety of capitalism a state practises determines whether governments or contractors occupy the metaphorical cockpit when it comes to making procurement policies.
Journal Article
How to become a first mover? Mechanisms of military innovation and the development of drones
States generate the hardware of military power by either developing new technologies as first mover or adopting demonstrated technology as second mover. Given that military drones have arguably demonstrated effectiveness and thus proliferate, scholars have produced profound insights into today’s second mover dynamics. Yet, the preceding political process of developing this military technology remains poorly understood. The article’s objective is to explain how states become first movers of military hardware. To this end, it applies four causal mechanisms of military innovation studies to the historical trajectory of the development of drones. I argue that security threats initially formed state interests in drones. Yet, capacity was necessary for success. Politically induced transfers and cross-sector diffusion supplied technological progress. At the same time, distributional implications and legacy systems constrained the development process, but could ultimately be overcome. This mechanismic pathway results from the process-tracing analysis of two separate, but related trajectories in Israel and the United States since the 1970s. Given within-case variation, a sequencing and domain-of-application perspective allows the formulation of scope conditions of the mechanisms behind military innovation. This contributes to a historically contingent, yet generalisable, understanding of the political process of how states generate military power.
Journal Article
The 'Political Economy of Conflicts': A Window of Opportunity for CFSP?
The European Union (EU) is frequently criticised for lacking substantive military capabilities and thus not being able to conduct an effective security policy. The objective of this article is to challenge the underlying assumptions of this critique in light of the features of contemporary security problems and the ‘demands’ they pose to effective security policy. Firstly, the article points towards some conceptual fallacies that these assumptions tend to be based on. Secondly, it presents an exemplary empirical exploration of the EU’s emerging potential to address what has been termed the ‘Political Economy of Conflicts’. Finally, the article suggests that the distinct characteristics of today’s security challenges might indeed constitute a ‘window of opportunity’ for the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to further evolve as a prominent actor in world politics.
Journal Article
Disarmed principals: institutional resilience and the non-enforcement of delegation
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 institutional resilience. A preexisting set of rules shapes non-enforcement through the combination of (i) its structural misfit with the delegation contract and (ii) asymmetric interdependence that favors the agent over time. To demonstrate the plausibility of our argument, we trace the political process behind Europe’s largest military transport aircraft, the A400M. Governments delegated the development and production of this complex program to a private firm, Airbus. They layered a ‘commercial approach’ onto traditionally state-run defense industries. Yet, resilience caused these new formal rules to fail and eventually disarmed principals. Our mechanism constitutes an innovative approach by theorizing an alternative path toward dynamic continuity.
Journal Article
Power and signals: explaining the German approach to European security
This article explains some of the recent changes in German foreign policy, namely the shift in preferences for institution building in the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The empirical exploration compares the phase before the European Union's (EU) Intergovernmental Conference in the mid-1990s with the Convention negotiations in 2002/2003. While the German government used to be a strong defender of NATO's primacy and supported a modest scope for the EU, it then began to promote high-intensity crisis management for ESDP and wanted to see the EU on an equal footing with NATO. Building on neoclassical realist thought, the paper argues that a two-stage analysis of the
power context
offers a comprehensive explanation of these changes. It refers to power in a materialist sense
and
its cognitive understanding on behalf of the political actors. Based on the assessment of uncertainty stemming from its interpretation of the power context, the German government formed its preferences on what the EU's responsibilities for European security should be and how it should relate to NATO. More specifically, the mixture of isolationist and unilateralist signals sent by the United States increased German concerns about the latter's commitment. The German government adapted to the uncertain power context by promoting stronger responsibilities for ESDP.
Journal Article