Staatlich gesteuerte Tarifautonomie

The German Tarifautonomie, the state-free collective bargaining system on working conditions, can be considered as an institutionalized arrangement of political exchange between labor market associations and the state. This understanding allows to examine the state’s interests in regard to free collective bargaining as well as the state’s options to achieve his interests and to impact the social partnership activities. The article highlights the intentions, the methods and the effects of various forms of state intervention. As a result, the decade-long institutional change of the German industrial relations system can be seen inter alia as an outcome of the dynamic and flexible relationship between associations and the state. A central feature of this relationship is the finding of a guided autonomy.     

Digital Anonymity and the Law

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Die Entwicklung der Rechtsprechung zum Umweltinformationsgesetz in den Jahren 2007 und 2008

Zusammenfassung  Der Artikel gibt einen überblick über die in den Jahren 2007 und 2008 ergangene Rechtsprechung zu grundlegenden Fragen des Umweltinformationsgesetzes (UIG) des Bundes und einzelner L?nder. Die Entscheidungen werden anhand des Sachverhaltes kurz zusammengefasst und bei Bedarf durch die Verfasser kommentiert. Der Artikel ist nach den einzelnen Themenbereichen des UIG strukturiert, denen sich die jeweiligen Entscheidungen zuordnen lassen.     

Linkages between Parliamentary and Ministerial Careers in Germany, 1949–2008: The Bundestag as Recruitment Pool

Germany is noted within Europe for its weak tobacco control policies and its opposition to European Union tobacco control legislation. In this article, we aim to explain Germany's stance on tobacco control. We review two explanations commonly proposed, namely tobacco industry donations to political parties and the legacy of the Nazis' opposition to smoking, and examine the politics of tobacco control in detail. We suggest that the interplay of numerous factors explains Germany's stance. Aspects of political culture including the Nazi heritage which has resulted in a dearth of public health research and teaching, institutional factors such as the reliance on industry self-regulation facilitated by Germany's system of corporatist policy-making and interest group politics are key. The tobacco industry has also successfully used framing strategies to uphold the social acceptability of smoking and undermine the acceptability of tobacco control in Germany. In addition a phenomenon that we call ‘autarkic epistemic isolation’ explains why so little policy learning from abroad has occurred. We suggest that our multi-factor model has significant explanatory power for Germany's weak stance that has resulted in a long-standing policy equilibrium. Recent events, however, suggest that this equilibrium may now have been punctuated.     

Chinese direct investment in the EU and the US: a comparative view

Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in developed economies has increased substantially in recent years, driven by policy liberalization and structural adjustments in China’s economy. Efforts to accurately describe the dimensions of this increase are complicated by problems with official statistics and the complexity of deal structures. This article introduces the major problems of capturing data on global cross-border investment flows and elaborates on the particular difficulties of measuring Chinese outward FDI. It identifies alternative datasets that can help to better capture the scope and patterns of the Chinese overseas investment and uses one of them to describe the growth of Chinese investment in the EU and the US since 2000, highlighting similarities and differences in investment patterns in the world’s two biggest economies.