Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

This policy brief analyses how the EU may strengthen its role and advance its legitimacy in the Arctic when redesigning its priorities and partnerships, and how, in the process, it may contribute to the redesigning of established institutions and policies to fill the vacuum left by the Arctic Council. We will first provide a brief overview of the tensions inherent in different
types of cooperation approaches, the role that the EU wishes to play in the Arctic and external expectations that concern the EU’s priorities in the Arctic. Second, we discuss how these tensions affect the EU’s legitimacy as a cooperation partner and assess factors that strengthen and weaken the EU’s perception as an actor that needs to engage in the Arctic to avoid being excluded from policy negotiations of great relevance for the EU’s short-term, mid-term and long-term priorities. Third, we conclude with how EU ambitions have
changed and how it can strengthen its legitimacy as a cooperation partner by emphasizing the human dimension of security in the Arctic.

Das Konjunkturbarometer des Deutschen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin) fällt im Mai deutlich: Mit 94,8 Punkten liegt es nach zwischenzeitlich deutlich höheren Werten nun wieder auf dem Stand von Januar. Die neutrale 100-Punkte-Marke, die ein durchschnittliches Wachstum der deutschen ...

KI wird Arbeitsplätze kosten, aber auch neue schaffen. Das Problem: die Verteilung. Es profitieren die Jungen, die Frauen, die Geringverdiener – oder eben genau nicht., Was wird künstliche Intelligenz mit unseren Arbeitsplätzen machen? Die Ängste sind groß. Doch wer genau hinschaut, kommt zu einem differenzierteren Bild: KI wird unseren Arbeitsmarkt zwar grundlegend verändern, aber wir werden wohl viele Entscheidungen noch immer selbst in der Hand haben. Die ...

Unrest between crowds trying to reclaim the bodies of suspected Ebola cases and authorities have continued.

La wilaya d’Aïn Defla vit depuis plus de deux semaines dans l’angoisse et l’attente. Le jeune Rayane, âgé de 15 ans, a disparu dans des […]

L’article La disparition de Rayane ravive la tragédie de Marwa Boughachiche.. Voici les derniers développements est apparu en premier sur .

L'épidémie, causée par une espèce rare d'Ebola, aurait causé 139 décès à ce jour.

La relation perdure malgré un déséquilibre des pouvoirs. Depuis 2012, Poutine et Xi se sont rencontrés près d’une soixantaine de fois.Le partenariat sino-russe repose surtout sur le pragmatisme : Moscou a besoin du soutien économique et diplomatique chinois, tandis que Pékin voit en la Russie un allié essentiel pour limiter l’influence américaine.

Photos

jQuery(document).ready(function($){$("#isloaderfor-hnrbdz").fadeOut(300, function () { $(".pagwrap-hnrbdz").fadeIn(300);});});

IPI, in partnership with the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy, the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), the Challenges Forum for Peace Operations, and the Permanent Missions of Canada and the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations, co-hosted a closed-door hybrid workshop, “Keeping Protection in Focus: Emerging Research on Protection and Peace Operations,” on May 22nd.

Over more than two and a half decades, there has been significant normative and operational progress in protecting civilians through UN peace operations. There is a wide range of policies, guidance, and good practice to support mandate implementation, as well as a rich body of evidence indicating the effectiveness that peace operations can have in preventing and responding to violence against civilians. At the same time, changes and uncertainty in the global peace and security landscape are challenging the nature of collective security more broadly, with implications for UN peace operations and their ability to protect civilians. Against this backdrop, and amidst an ongoing review on the future of all forms of peace operations, prior assumptions and approaches need to be tested to ensure their continued applicability, and new ways of working need to be considered.

This interactive workshop will present the findings of a series of policy briefs published by IPI, covering a diverse range of issues on how to strengthen protection by UN and UN-supported peace operations. This workshop will feature presentations by some of the authors and an interactive exchange with respondents. Participants for the event will be member state delegates, UN and AU officials, civil society representatives, and other scholars, researchers, and experts. The event will be hybrid and held under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution.

The post Keeping Protection in Focus: Emerging Research on Protection and Peace Operations appeared first on International Peace Institute.

International donors commit substantial resources to GovTech projects (the application of information and communication technologies to government functions). World Bank GovTech investments alone have exceeded $118 billion over the last three decades. Donor strategy documents consistently frame digital transformation not only as a vehicle for improved effectiveness but also for strengthening democracy.
Autocrats are equally invested in these tools. Globally, at least 88 authoritarian regimes currently operate GovTech projects, and electoral autocracies receive the largest share of GovTech aid (48.6 per cent of commitments). Beyond well-known surveillance applications, autocracies deploy GovTech for service delivery, grievance redress and even citizen engagement. These platforms are deployed to project an image of responsiveness and legitimacy. Our experimental evidence from Turkey shows how efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule. We designed a survey experiment focused on CIMER, Turkey’s widely used citizen petition platform, to examine how citizens respond to the government propaganda surrounding it. The results show that the government’s framing of CIMER as an effective tool that “gets things done” significantly increased trust in authoritarian institutions, even among regime opponents. The effect extended beyond attitudes to behaviour: Asked to allocate a hypothetical donation of money among state institutions, independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or themselves, anti-government respondents exposed to messages on the platform were significantly more likely to give the money to state institutions. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Donors must take the second-order effects of GovTech initiatives seriously and develop mechanisms to carefully evaluate the risks of unintended consequences. In many cases, support for GovTech projects is overly optimistic regarding their effects on political openness. Adopting a more context-sensitive and realistic approach demands detailed political economy assessments before supporting GovTech projects and developing monitoring metrics that capture potential regime-legitimation effects.
• Donors need to build stronger safety guardrails into these projects. Depending on the political economy assessments, such measures could include the institutional involvement of international organisations or, if feasible, local NGOs (as conditionality) in platform oversight, mandatory independent audits and open data standards by design, among others.
• Finally, donors need to consider actively participating in public communication on these platforms, with visible donor branding, to counter government-controlled propaganda, claim credit for service delivery and strengthen trust in donor countries and organisations.

International donors commit substantial resources to GovTech projects (the application of information and communication technologies to government functions). World Bank GovTech investments alone have exceeded $118 billion over the last three decades. Donor strategy documents consistently frame digital transformation not only as a vehicle for improved effectiveness but also for strengthening democracy.
Autocrats are equally invested in these tools. Globally, at least 88 authoritarian regimes currently operate GovTech projects, and electoral autocracies receive the largest share of GovTech aid (48.6 per cent of commitments). Beyond well-known surveillance applications, autocracies deploy GovTech for service delivery, grievance redress and even citizen engagement. These platforms are deployed to project an image of responsiveness and legitimacy. Our experimental evidence from Turkey shows how efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule. We designed a survey experiment focused on CIMER, Turkey’s widely used citizen petition platform, to examine how citizens respond to the government propaganda surrounding it. The results show that the government’s framing of CIMER as an effective tool that “gets things done” significantly increased trust in authoritarian institutions, even among regime opponents. The effect extended beyond attitudes to behaviour: Asked to allocate a hypothetical donation of money among state institutions, independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or themselves, anti-government respondents exposed to messages on the platform were significantly more likely to give the money to state institutions. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Donors must take the second-order effects of GovTech initiatives seriously and develop mechanisms to carefully evaluate the risks of unintended consequences. In many cases, support for GovTech projects is overly optimistic regarding their effects on political openness. Adopting a more context-sensitive and realistic approach demands detailed political economy assessments before supporting GovTech projects and developing monitoring metrics that capture potential regime-legitimation effects.
• Donors need to build stronger safety guardrails into these projects. Depending on the political economy assessments, such measures could include the institutional involvement of international organisations or, if feasible, local NGOs (as conditionality) in platform oversight, mandatory independent audits and open data standards by design, among others.
• Finally, donors need to consider actively participating in public communication on these platforms, with visible donor branding, to counter government-controlled propaganda, claim credit for service delivery and strengthen trust in donor countries and organisations.

International donors commit substantial resources to GovTech projects (the application of information and communication technologies to government functions). World Bank GovTech investments alone have exceeded $118 billion over the last three decades. Donor strategy documents consistently frame digital transformation not only as a vehicle for improved effectiveness but also for strengthening democracy.
Autocrats are equally invested in these tools. Globally, at least 88 authoritarian regimes currently operate GovTech projects, and electoral autocracies receive the largest share of GovTech aid (48.6 per cent of commitments). Beyond well-known surveillance applications, autocracies deploy GovTech for service delivery, grievance redress and even citizen engagement. These platforms are deployed to project an image of responsiveness and legitimacy. Our experimental evidence from Turkey shows how efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule. We designed a survey experiment focused on CIMER, Turkey’s widely used citizen petition platform, to examine how citizens respond to the government propaganda surrounding it. The results show that the government’s framing of CIMER as an effective tool that “gets things done” significantly increased trust in authoritarian institutions, even among regime opponents. The effect extended beyond attitudes to behaviour: Asked to allocate a hypothetical donation of money among state institutions, independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or themselves, anti-government respondents exposed to messages on the platform were significantly more likely to give the money to state institutions. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Donors must take the second-order effects of GovTech initiatives seriously and develop mechanisms to carefully evaluate the risks of unintended consequences. In many cases, support for GovTech projects is overly optimistic regarding their effects on political openness. Adopting a more context-sensitive and realistic approach demands detailed political economy assessments before supporting GovTech projects and developing monitoring metrics that capture potential regime-legitimation effects.
• Donors need to build stronger safety guardrails into these projects. Depending on the political economy assessments, such measures could include the institutional involvement of international organisations or, if feasible, local NGOs (as conditionality) in platform oversight, mandatory independent audits and open data standards by design, among others.
• Finally, donors need to consider actively participating in public communication on these platforms, with visible donor branding, to counter government-controlled propaganda, claim credit for service delivery and strengthen trust in donor countries and organisations.

International donors commit substantial resources to GovTech projects (the application of information and communication technologies to government functions). World Bank GovTech investments alone have exceeded $118 billion over the last three decades. Donor strategy documents consistently frame digital transformation not only as a vehicle for improved effectiveness but also for strengthening democracy.
Autocrats are equally invested in these tools. Globally, at least 88 authoritarian regimes currently operate GovTech projects, and electoral autocracies receive the largest share of GovTech aid (48.6 per cent of commitments). Beyond well-known surveillance applications, autocracies deploy GovTech for service delivery, grievance redress and even citizen engagement. These platforms are deployed to project an image of responsiveness and legitimacy. Our experimental evidence from Turkey shows how efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule. We designed a survey experiment focused on CIMER, Turkey’s widely used citizen petition platform, to examine how citizens respond to the government propaganda surrounding it. The results show that the government’s framing of CIMER as an effective tool that “gets things done” significantly increased trust in authoritarian institutions, even among regime opponents. The effect extended beyond attitudes to behaviour: Asked to allocate a hypothetical donation of money among state institutions, independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or themselves, anti-government respondents exposed to messages on the platform were significantly more likely to give the money to state institutions. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Donors must take the second-order effects of GovTech initiatives seriously and develop mechanisms to carefully evaluate the risks of unintended consequences. In many cases, support for GovTech projects is overly optimistic regarding their effects on political openness. Adopting a more context-sensitive and realistic approach demands detailed political economy assessments before supporting GovTech projects and developing monitoring metrics that capture potential regime-legitimation effects.
• Donors need to build stronger safety guardrails into these projects. Depending on the political economy assessments, such measures could include the institutional involvement of international organisations or, if feasible, local NGOs (as conditionality) in platform oversight, mandatory independent audits and open data standards by design, among others.
• Finally, donors need to consider actively participating in public communication on these platforms, with visible donor branding, to counter government-controlled propaganda, claim credit for service delivery and strengthen trust in donor countries and organisations.

International donors commit substantial resources to GovTech projects (the application of information and communication technologies to government functions). World Bank GovTech investments alone have exceeded $118 billion over the last three decades. Donor strategy documents consistently frame digital transformation not only as a vehicle for improved effectiveness but also for strengthening democracy.
Autocrats are equally invested in these tools. Globally, at least 88 authoritarian regimes currently operate GovTech projects, and electoral autocracies receive the largest share of GovTech aid (48.6 per cent of commitments). Beyond well-known surveillance applications, autocracies deploy GovTech for service delivery, grievance redress and even citizen engagement. These platforms are deployed to project an image of responsiveness and legitimacy. Our experimental evidence from Turkey shows how efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule. We designed a survey experiment focused on CIMER, Turkey’s widely used citizen petition platform, to examine how citizens respond to the government propaganda surrounding it. The results show that the government’s framing of CIMER as an effective tool that “gets things done” significantly increased trust in authoritarian institutions, even among regime opponents. The effect extended beyond attitudes to behaviour: Asked to allocate a hypothetical donation of money among state institutions, independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or themselves, anti-government respondents exposed to messages on the platform were significantly more likely to give the money to state institutions. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Donors must take the second-order effects of GovTech initiatives seriously and develop mechanisms to carefully evaluate the risks of unintended consequences. In many cases, support for GovTech projects is overly optimistic regarding their effects on political openness. Adopting a more context-sensitive and realistic approach demands detailed political economy assessments before supporting GovTech projects and developing monitoring metrics that capture potential regime-legitimation effects.
• Donors need to build stronger safety guardrails into these projects. Depending on the political economy assessments, such measures could include the institutional involvement of international organisations or, if feasible, local NGOs (as conditionality) in platform oversight, mandatory independent audits and open data standards by design, among others.
• Finally, donors need to consider actively participating in public communication on these platforms, with visible donor branding, to counter government-controlled propaganda, claim credit for service delivery and strengthen trust in donor countries and organisations.

International donors commit substantial resources to GovTech projects (the application of information and communication technologies to government functions). World Bank GovTech investments alone have exceeded $118 billion over the last three decades. Donor strategy documents consistently frame digital transformation not only as a vehicle for improved effectiveness but also for strengthening democracy.
Autocrats are equally invested in these tools. Globally, at least 88 authoritarian regimes currently operate GovTech projects, and electoral autocracies receive the largest share of GovTech aid (48.6 per cent of commitments). Beyond well-known surveillance applications, autocracies deploy GovTech for service delivery, grievance redress and even citizen engagement. These platforms are deployed to project an image of responsiveness and legitimacy. Our experimental evidence from Turkey shows how efficiency-enhancing GovTech tools, when paired with sophisticated regime communication, can durably entrench autocratic rule. We designed a survey experiment focused on CIMER, Turkey’s widely used citizen petition platform, to examine how citizens respond to the government propaganda surrounding it. The results show that the government’s framing of CIMER as an effective tool that “gets things done” significantly increased trust in authoritarian institutions, even among regime opponents. The effect extended beyond attitudes to behaviour: Asked to allocate a hypothetical donation of money among state institutions, independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or themselves, anti-government respondents exposed to messages on the platform were significantly more likely to give the money to state institutions. Our recommendations are as follows:
• Donors must take the second-order effects of GovTech initiatives seriously and develop mechanisms to carefully evaluate the risks of unintended consequences. In many cases, support for GovTech projects is overly optimistic regarding their effects on political openness. Adopting a more context-sensitive and realistic approach demands detailed political economy assessments before supporting GovTech projects and developing monitoring metrics that capture potential regime-legitimation effects.
• Donors need to build stronger safety guardrails into these projects. Depending on the political economy assessments, such measures could include the institutional involvement of international organisations or, if feasible, local NGOs (as conditionality) in platform oversight, mandatory independent audits and open data standards by design, among others.
• Finally, donors need to consider actively participating in public communication on these platforms, with visible donor branding, to counter government-controlled propaganda, claim credit for service delivery and strengthen trust in donor countries and organisations.

Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.

Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.

Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.

Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.

Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.

Policy coherence is widely regarded as essential for achieving sustainable development, climate targets, and reducing inequality, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Recent scholarship has moved beyond technocratic approaches, drawing on comparative politics, particularly the “3 I's” of ideas, interests, and institutions, to highlight the inherently political nature of coherence. Yet even these studies often treat coherence as binary, easily observable, and intrinsically beneficial. Building on a coherence literature focused on discourses and frames, this paper challenges these assumptions by examining how policy (in)coherence is constructed and contested. Focusing on policy implementation in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's coal heartland, we analyse two cases before and during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine: the commissioning of the Datteln IV hard coal plant in 2020, and the clearance of the village of Lützerath for mining in 2023. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with German energy, climate, and environmental experts, alongside policy and media analysis, we find that (in)coherence is greatly constructed and contested under shifting political and economic pressures, instrumentalised and legitimisatised by different actors to advance their interests, and profoundly shaped by temporal dynamics. Given recent findings that challenge the 2030 Agenda's assumption that policy coherence reduces inequalities, we also explore how (in)coherence is perceived to shape multidimensional inequality in the Energiewende more broadly. Here, we find that (in)coherence is most prominently perceived to cause delays in climate mitigation, disproportionately affecting youth, low-income households, migrants, and activists. In this context, (in)coherence is not merely technical, political nor constructed, but fundamentally a matter of justice, shifting the analytical focus from whether policies and their implementation are coherent to how, and for whom, coherence matters.