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At the academic level and in political practice, participatory and evidence-based political processes are increasingly recognized as mechanisms that guarantee more efficient political decisionmaking. However, no theoretical framework that allows a clear definition of participatory and evidence-based policy processes and demonstrates the positive impact of these processes on political performance is currently available. In addition, no operational approach that allows for the empirical measurement and characterization of these processes currently exists. In this context, this chapter develops the evolutionary computable general political economy equilibrium model (eCGPE) as a theoretical framework and an empirically applicable tool for defining, evaluating and designing efficient participatory and evidencebased policy processes. We further demonstrate that based on the eCGPE approach, a political diagnosis can be made (i.e., political performance gaps can be identified). Furthermore, a political therapy (i.e., a set of adequate strategies for reducing existing performance gaps) can be derived via simulation analyses that are based on the eCGPE.

In this paper, the mechanisms of climate change impacts on the incidence of civil conflict are tested separately in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for the period 1981 to 2015. We draw several conclusions: (i) Climate has a significant impact on economic development, through economic growth rate in the MENA, and food production in SSA. (ii) Economic growth rate and food production index are significant indicators for social stability reduce the risk of civil conflict, in SSA and MENA, respectively. (iii) A direct impact of climate change on civil conflict is identified. (iv) Conflict in the previous year increases the probability of civil conflict in SSA by 0.30 pp, and in the MENA by 0.50 pp. Moreover, as the type of political system and accountability are important control variables in SSA, water availability reduces the risks of conflict in the MENA region. However, there appears to be evidence of different mechanisms in different regions. However, the identification of stable mechanisms needs to be precisely addressed in future work.

We replicated the findings of Miguel and his co-authors, who find a significant negative relationship between economic shocks and the likelihood of civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for the period 1981- 1999, using rainfall growth as an instrumental variable for the economic growth rate. The replication of this study is successfully performed. Furthermore, we apply a robustness test to the results using new cross-country panel data, with different measurements, and econometric specifications. The results appear to be sensitive to changes in data sources that use different methods of making the data available, although we find partly the same patterns between weather and economic growth rate, and between the income growth and the likelihood of civil conflict, like Miguel et al. (2004) for SSA period 1981-1999.

Farm animal welfare is the main driver of nowadays criticism on German livestock sector. At the same time, non market actors more and more are key actors within animal welfare politics. Hence, we investigate political power of stakeholder organizations in German livestock policy. Our network based framework consists of two components: First, actors influence policy decisions through informational lobbying. Informational lobbying refers to providing expert knowledge in order to influence decision makers' policy beliefs. Second, the exchange of influence resources and power allows interest groups to influence the policy positions of political agents. We combine both measurements with the Banzhaf power index in order to quantify the power of both, political agents as well as interest groups. How this power affects animal welfare policy is illustrated in the field of piglet castration. Results imply that the agricultural sector as well as animal protection groups have the highest influence on beliefs and that state actors distribute most of the power to the agribusiness sector. This structures leads to a positive evaluation of surgical castration under anaesthesia. On the other hand, immunocastration is evaluated as rather useless. This implies that participatory processes decrease the procedures acceptance.

In a world of increasing complexity, politicians have only limited information about the relationship of policies and the outcomes. They often make use of simplified heuristics, i.e. policy beliefs. Hence, an influence opportunity for interest groups occurs: informational lobbying. It complements classic lobbying strategies, e.g. vote buying or campaign spending. Providing expert knowledge allows interest groups to influence legislators towards the preferred policy position. Aside from so-called "approved votes", German parliamentarians generally follow parliamentary group's discipline. Thus, experts' role within parliamentary groups is crucial. They deal with key issues and represent the parliamentary group in the committees. Furthermore, they work out the group's positions on these specific issues. They are the starting point for interest groups to disseminate their information and hence influence the legislators' positions. An exemplary field of complexity is the agricultural sector. In particular, livestock production is challenged by questions of sustainability, i.e. public expectations towards animal welfare, producers and consumers' welfare as well as ecological consequences. Importance of animal welfare is demonstrated by the ongoing debate about piglet castration or husbandry system standards. This raises two questions: First, to what extend are stakeholders able to gain direct access to politicians? Second, how can they use this structure to influence policy decisions? Using a social network approach, we first investigate the structure of three networks: exchange of expert knowledge, political support and informal social ties. In particular, we put emphasis on the connection between parliamentary actors and other stakeholders from society, i.e. interest groups. This refers to the first question. Second, we apply a model of political exchange using information and lobbying networks. Following Henning et al. (2019), this model not only includes political exchange, but also belief updating. Moreover, it considers direct as well as indirect ties. This analysis step serves to answer the second question.