Flesh of the Same Flesh: A Study of Voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 Federal Election

Using the 2017 post-election German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), this article examines the voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election. We show that AfD voters in 2017 were truly ‘flesh of the same flesh’ of the mainstream German political parties, with the AfD drawing its voters from across the political party spectrum as well as from previous non-voters in 2013. In contrast to previous scholarship, we find that in most respects AfD voters in 2017 did not differ demographically from voters for all other parties, be that in terms of gender, education, employment status, and union membership. Furthermore, we find that AfD voters were not driven by anxiety about their own economic situation: they are no ‘losers of globalisation.’ Instead, AfD voters in 2017 were driven solely by two factors: their attitudes towards immigrants/refugees and anti-establishment sentiment/satisfaction with democracy in Germany.     

Data Protection: An Opening Door?

Swedish public law has incorporated a general rule of public access to documents, and to information in the wider sense, since the Freedom of the Press Act of 1766. On the Community level, the relationship between Regulation (EC) 45/2001 on data protection and Regulation (EC) 1049/2001 on public access to documents exemplifies the tension between the public's interest in scrutinising the administration carried on in its name, and the integrity of the individual. However, a similar tension exists between Sweden's Personal Data Act of 1998, implementing Directive 95/46, and the Freedom of the Press Act. A misuse model of data protection law, by seeking to concentrate on serious rather than technical infringements of privacy, might serve to ease the tension. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and are not attributable to any Community institution. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Hong Kong's first criminal file-sharing conviction

On appeal, the High Court of Hong Kong affirmed the defendant'sconviction on three charges of attempting to distribute an infringingcopy of a copyright work via a peer-to-peer online file-sharingprogram (BitTorrent).     

Sa-Skya Pandita’s Buddhist Argument For Linguistic Study

Journal of Indian Philosophy -     

危险的顺耳之言

我们到处寻找安慰,尤其是在股市动荡的年月,比如2007年。但这种寻求安慰的过程却可能将我们引入歧途我们要讨论的问题是一种被称为“确认偏误”(confirmation bias)的行为现象。我们总认为自己能理性地看待世界,衡量各种因素,得出理性的结论。但实际上,我们都有自己认定的东西——而且我们紧紧抓住支持这种信念的信息,同时对不同意见和相互矛盾的证据却不屑一顾。“确认偏误具有很强的渗透性,能够潜移默化地影响人们的