Europäisierungsdruck und Parteiendifferenz in den deutschen Bundesländern

Based on the 2008 Rüffert judgment by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which dealt with wage-related compliance requirements laid out in several German federal state procurement laws (Tariftreueerfordernis) the convergence induced by Europeanization through law is being investigated. Contrary to the initial presumption of unilinear adjustment, three different responses are identifiable. Conservative-liberal governments abolish the respective regulations. Conservative governments which are subject to influence from associations representing small- and medium-sized business enterprises absorb the adjudication by a rapid adjustment consistent with the European requirements. Coalitions led by the Social Democratic Party tend to a policy expansion influenced by smaller coalition partners. They codify more rather than less social and environmental standards in policy amendments. The case study points out the persistence of political party differences in the face of Europeanization which is dependent on a sufficient degree of programmatic incongruence as well as on the plurality of European law.     

Netzwerkstruktur, Handlungslogik und politische Räume: Institutionenwandel in europäischen und nordamerikanischen Grenzregionen

This paper is a contribution to the debate on political order and governance in a “debordered world” beyond the “Westphalian system”. It is based on empirical information about the development and change of political institutions in cross-border regions in Europe and North America in the 20th century. First, it is shown that the nation state is loosing its gate keeper role at the end of the century and that various sub-national actors institutionalise independent cross-border links or participate on an equal footing. Therefore, the pattern of interaction is changing from formal hierarchies to networks. Nevertheless, if we define hierarchies and networks as modes of governance, we cannot conform such a change since the mode of interaction has not changed over the years. There does not exist and never has existed any other mode of interaction as “negotiated agreement”. What has changed is the institutional logic for finding such a cross-border agreement. Whereas older institutions were designed to find a common solution by using a technocratic-deductive logic, younger institutions use a symbolic-inductive logic (mainly in Europe). In North America they are based either on a rationalistic-evolutionary logic (at the US-Mexican border) or on a discursive-constructivist logic (in the Pacific Northwest). Also in respect to the much proposed tendency towards “deterritorialization” of political orders we find strong differences between the continents: Whereas in Europe even the younger institutions are based on “spaces of place”, in North America the more recent institutions are much more oriented towards “spaces of flows”.     

Deliberative Politik in transnationalen Räumen — Legitimation und Effektivität in der grenzüberschreitenden Umweltpolitik zwischen Kanada und USA

The article addresses new, horizontal and dialogue-oriented forms of political governance in transnational spaces. A normative-analytical model of deliberative governance will be developed to appraise the democratic potential of transnational structures and actions. The research is guided by the observation that the North American Great Lakes Regime reveals a high democratic-deliberative quality whereas international governance rather tends to de-democratization. This raises a challenging research question: To what extent does the deliberative governance of the Great Lakes Regime provide a model case, which allows drawing conclusions on institutional prerequisites and means how to “democratize” governance in similar issue areas.     

Begrenzte Rationalität und regulatives Lernen in der EG: die Liberalisierung der Elektrizitätsversorgung

The article analyses the liberalization of the EC electricity supply industry. Confronting the intergovernmental approach, the case study is based on the premise that the member state executives act within the limits of a bounded rationality and do therefore not always represent clear and fixed interests in EU negotiations. Taking the examples of France and Germany, it shows that the national positions and preferences may change greatly during the course of the decision making process. While the French positional changes may be reasonably well explained by the intergovernmental approach, the German preference changes are attributed to effects of the EC institutions and negotiations. Institutional principles, policy-concepts and fairness criteria guide member state orientations and behavior and hinder the pursuit of unilateral advantages. Incremental negotiation techniques within the Council induce learning processes and cause reassessments of the domestic situations. Furthermore, the EC decisions may cause behavioral changes which clearly surpass their regulatory content even if they contain extensive flexibilisation mechanisms.     

Moderat bevorzugt, extrem gewählt. Zum Zusammenhang von Präferenz und Wahlentscheidung in räumlichen Modellen sachfragenorientierten Wählens

This article demonstrates, on the basis of survey data from the 2005 German national election, that voters often systematically choose more extreme parties than warranted by their own preferences. Estimation of Grofman’s (1985) spatial discounting model reveals that party preference and vote decision follow different utility functions. Preferences turn out to be purely proximity driven, i. e. voters prefer parties with positions close to their own. Moving from preference to the vote of the top-ranked alternative, a devaluation of party positions and a significant shift in voter utility towards more extreme parties is observed. These results show that voter behaviour may change, even though voter preferences remain unchanged. Results also suggest that the remarkable success of FDP and Linke in the 2005 election is more likely due to shifting behaviour by moderate voters rather than to sweeping changes in the German electorate’s preferences toward welfare policy.     

Politikwandel und seine Messung in der vergleichenden Staatstätigkeitsforschung: Konzeptionelle Probleme und mögliche Alternativen

Policy change is an important concept in comparative policy analysis. Despite its central significance, most empirical studies fail to provide clear-cut definitions and measurement of this concept. Against this background, this article evaluates previous scholarship on policy change in the areas of social and environmental policy. We find that most studies use proxies for measuring policy change even though they contradict the basic idea of policy-making activities. Furthermore, studies usually neither capture the complexity of policy change, nor take into the possibility of policy change through dismantling account. Additionally, the empirical focus of most analyses is too narrow, thereby impeding robust statements about causality. In response to these shortcomings, we propose a new conceptual perspective, which captures policy change as a broader empirical phenomenon. We discuss its advantages as well as its disadvantages and show the implications for the research process.     

Globale Besteuerung und Demokratische Legitimität

The democratic state has been offering the conditions for legitimately levying taxes. Tax revenues have been securing the sovereign’s ability to act, policy aims pursued through taxation have been the outcome of a democratic process and the coercion backed institutions levying taxes have enjoyed the status of democratic legitimacy. But a twofold dynamic challenges this status quo. States are under pressure to address problems to which global taxation offers the most promising response. And phenomena like capital mobility impose constraints on the state’s ability to effectively use the policy instrument of taxation. Under what institutional arrangements could taxation be maintained as a justifiable instrument? And what should future institutional arrangements of public finance look like?     

Europäisierung und innerstaatlicher Wandel. Zentralisierung und Entparlamentarisierung?

A number of studies suggest that European integration impacts upon the domestic institutions of the member states by changing the distribution of resources among domestic actors. This paper argues that resource dependency needs to be embedded in an institutionalist understanding of Europeanisation in order to explain when and how Europe affects the domestic institutions of the member states. First, domestic institutions determine the distribution of resources among the domestic actors in a given member-state. Second, the compatibility of European and domestic institutions determines the degree to which Europeanisation changes this distribution of resources and hence the degree of pressure for institutional adaptation. Third, the domestic institutional culture determines the dominant strategies of actors by which they respond to such a redistribution of resources facilitating or prohibiting institutional adaptation. This argument is empirically tested by comparing the impact of Europeanisation on the territorial institutions of the five most decentralized member states, with special reference to Germany and Spain as representatives of opposite institutional cultures. The study shows that the regions succeeded in balancing the territorial centralization caused by Europeanization. However, the compensation of regional losses of competencies through the intrastate participation of the regions in the formulation and representation of the national bargaining position in European affairs reinforces executive dominance in European decision-making contributing to the tendencies of deparlamentarization in the member states.     

Dimensionen der Disproportionalität – Erststimmen und Direktmandate in den Bundestagswahlen von 1953 bis 2009

This article looks at how candidate votes have been translated into district mandates in the plurality tier of Germany’s mixed electoral system in all Bundestags-elections since 1953. Two questions in particular are addressed: How has disproportionality changed over time? And: What are the main determinants of disproportionality? To answer these two questions the article employs a modified version of the cube rule that accounts for the fact that the number of district parties in a mixed electoral system is higher than in a pure majoritarian system. The article identifies the effective number of district parties as the most important determinant of the disproportional translation of candidate votes into district mandates, i. e., the higher the number of district parties, the less proportional the translation.     

Rationalitätsdefizite in der Biopolitik

Zusammenfassung  Der Fortschritt der molekularen Medizin und der Biotechnologie ist zu einem fundamentalen Faktor der gesamtgesellschaftlichen Orientierung geworden. Ethische und politische Beurteilungen der biomedizinischen Entwicklung bleiben schwierig. Einerseits macht diese politische und rechtliche Ma?nahmen erforderlich, andererseits wird von „politischem Missbrauch“, einer besorgniserregenden „Ethisierung der Forschungspolitik“ bzw. einer „erschreckenden Politisierung“ der bioethischen Debatte gesprochen. Die Schwierigkeiten, die sich bei der übertragung von wissenschaftlicher Expertise und moralischen überzeugungen in biopolitische Normierungen zeigen, erweisen sich als Symptome weitreichender Rationalit?tsdefizite in der Biopolitik, die sich an der politischen Semantik in den Grenzbereichen von biomedizinischer Forschung, ethischer Beurteilung, politischer Steuerung und politikwissenschaftlicher Analyse ablesen lassen. Besonders kritisch zu betrachten sind in diesem Kontext Adaptionen bestimmter „Public-Reason“- und Diskurs-Modelle, die ihrerseits Rationalit?tsdefizite aufweisen. Als problematisch erweist sich in diesem Zusammenhang ein verbreiteter Vorbehalt, der im Namen der Demokratie gegenüber Ans?tzen der politischen Philosophie vorgebracht wird. Die politische Philosophie kann indessen als „Rationalit?tsreserve“ dienen, auf die angesichts von Defiziten im Bereich der Explikation biopolitischer Leitideen und demokratietheoretischer Begründungszusammenh?nge nicht verzichtet werden kann.      

Regionalisierung und Dezentralisierung in Mittel- und Südosteuropa 1997–2007

The review essay takes stock of the last decade of decentralisation and regionalisation research in Central and South Eastern Europe. Classifying the existing scholarship with regard to its focus of analysis, its explanatory programme, and methodological predilections, we suggest to distinguish three different agendas: system transformation, EU conditionality and subnational governance. We argue that scholarly interest in regionalisation and decentralisation issues from the perspective of state transformation or Europeanisation is vanishing. Instead, we witness the emergence of a subnational governance approach which is rooted in comparative politics and policy analysis. The debate about decentralisation and regionalisation in CEEC is thus in a process of “normalising” and converging with the Western European subnational political discourse.     

Der Einfluss von Koalitionsaussagen,programmatischen Standpunkten und der Bundespolitik auf die Regierungsbildung in den deutschen Ländern

Party politics at the German state level plays a decisive role for patterns of party competition and for legislative decision-making at the federal level. This article analyses the impact of party politics at the state and the federal level on the formation of coalition governments in the German Laender. The empirical analysis is based on a unique dataset that covers information on the state parties’ programmatic positions, their pre-electoral alliances, and the structure of party competition on the federal level in the time period between 1990 and 2007. The results reveal that the programmatic positions of state parties have a decisive impact on government formation. Other relevant factors are the parties’ relative strength, their coalition preferences and the partisan composition of government and opposition on the federal level.     

Clausewitz,Guerillakrieg und Terrorismus. Zur Aktualität einer missverstandenen Kriegstheorie

Politische Vierteljahresschrift - Carl von Clausewitz gilt als der Theoretiker des großen Krieges. Wir wollen zeigen, dass er auch ein innovativer Theoretiker des kleinen, asymmetrischen...     

Alltag oder Vergangenheit? Einstellungen zur herrschenden politischen Ordnung in den Neuen Bundesländern, Polen, Tschechien und Ungarn

“What determines attitudes towards the current regime in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the former GDR (Neue Bundesländer)?” — is the main concern of this paper. If people’s attitudes are based on belief systems formed under socialism (hypothesis of socialisation), the transformation will be a long-lasting process, and one is not yet justified to speak about consolidated democratic political systems. On the other hand, if attitudes are more likely to stem from people’s situation of life (hypothesis of situation of life), it is the performance of the political system that can bring about consolidation. The empirical analysis is based on the Central European Database for Social Policy. The results raise some doubts, whether the regimes surveyed are already resistant to crises.     

Parteien, Vetospieler und der Wettbewerb um Wählerstimmen: Die Arbeitsmarkt-und Beschäftigungspolitik der Ära Kohl

The paper develops a model to explain the labour market and employment policies of the Christian-liberal coalition in Germany between 1982 and 1998. It takes partisan theory as its starting point, but expands it by taking into account the effects of party competition and veto players as well. For the first period of observation, the years 1982 to 1989/90, only moderate reforms can be observed. This can be explained by the fear of the coalition that more far-reaching reforms could exert negative effects on its electoral performance on the one hand, and by the strong influence of the labour union wing of the Christian democratic party on the respective policies on the other hand. During the first years after German unification the government could not implement far reaching partisan reforms either. This was due to the necessity of reacting to the external shock of the unification and the problems associated with it. Only during the last three years in office the coalition was able to push through more coherent reforms due to the huge problems on the labour marker which put the government’s re-election at risk. These reforms could be carried through because the CDU’s labour wing had lost its veto power and because the Bundesrat’s approval was not necessary.     

Theorien als latente Quellen von Normativität und Verantwortung in der Hochschullehre: Die Bedeutung von didaktischen und fachspezifischen Theoriedebatten am Beispiel des politikwissenschaftlichen Teilgebiets „Internationale Beziehungen“

The article deals with normative aspects that are negotiated in didactic and subject-specific theoretical debates and thus gain relevance in teaching. It turns out that the didactic theories provide divergent answers to the question of what should be taught how and by whom. Similarly, the example of theoretical debates in International Relations shows that, from a subject-specific perspective, there can often be a lack of consensus on the essentials that are to be taught. Such conflicting requirements, however, demonstrate the instructors’ scope for action, which they should realize and use responsibly. Due to academic pluralism, it seems possible that the societal pluralism, which is sometimes perceived as crisis-laden, can be used productively for teaching.     

Die Politik wirtschaftlichen Wachstums in autoritären Staaten

The article analyses the widely debated impact of democracy on economic growth. It is argued that an increase of political participation causes a shift in the support-seeking strategies of opportunistic governments. Pure autocrats rationally ensure political support by providing rents to a small group of supporters. With growing political participation, however, public goods become a more efficient political instrument. While rents are assumed to be economically neutral, public goods have an positive impact on economic performance. Hence, growing participation in autocracies is related to higher growth rates of per capita income. This hypotheses is supported by the data.