To P or not to P? The Usefulness of P‐values in Quantitative Political Science Research

This contribution gives a short overview over the mechanics of significance testing in inferential statistics, in particular linear models, and tries to put the discussion about the usefulness of p‐values into a broader perspective of scientific practise. This discussion needs to be embedded into the larger debate about the credibility crises faced by empirical social science research. In particular, it seems of utmost importance to discuss what the profession as a whole, journals, publishers, as well as editors can do to encourage better research practise that generates reliable and useful empirical findings.     

An ounce of prevention? The reform of the German trade union Federation

This article investigates the causes and content of the ongoing reform of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). We argue that problems predating German unification ‐ in particular, a skewed demographic profile, financial crisis and waning political clout ‐ are the central factors that led German unionists to undertake reform and have largely determined the reform's content. German unification acted simply as a catalyst rather than the cause prompting union reform. German unions can only retain their prominent economic and social position if they promote genuine democratic reform within their ranks. Otherwise unions will never attract employees from the high technology and service sectors that are essential to the union movement's survival in the coming century. German unions should also resist the temptation to take on all of the problems plaguing German society. They must instead concentrate on the essential tasks of all labour movements: discerning the ever‐changing wants of today's increasingly heterogeneous work force and fighting with employers and governments to obtain them.     

Ahmadis or Indonesians? The polarization of post-reform public debates on Islam and orthodoxy

Since the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesian public discourse about “mainstream” Muslim identity and practice has polarized sharply into various factions. This article offers a detailed analysis of a subset of this discourse that focuses on the Ahmadiyya in order to grasp how the new normative contours of Islam are being shaped in Indonesia. I make three arguments: First, the discourse is homogenizing what was once a wide spectrum of identitarian positions, and that consequently, Islamic diversity in Indonesia is shrinking. Second, the various internally homogenized sets of arguments for and against the Ahmadiyya mis-engage with each other in a way that produces social fragmentation and further polarization. Third, these arguments produce exclusionary mechanisms that reinforce each other. Both the opponents of the Ahmadiyya and their defenders exclude Ahmadis from conceptions of an Indonesian “majority.” This dynamic in Indonesian public discourse has resulted in the acceleration of the marginalization of the Ahmadiyya within an increasingly fragmented Indonesian society.     

Forward to democracy or back to authoritarianism? The attitudinal bases of mass support for the Russian election protests of 2011–2012

Two UK-based political scientists present the results of an original survey they conducted in Russia soon after the presidential elections of 2012. The survey examines the interaction between mass attitudes toward the causal triggers of protest during the 2011–2012 electoral cycle and underlying political attitudes regarding the preferred alternatives to a hybrid regime (both more democratic and more authoritarian). They find that supporters of the protests were not stronger advocates of a democratic transition; on the contrary, they were more likely to support authoritarian leadership and ethno-nationalism. This finding leads to a discussion of whether one of the major constraints on elite-mass mobilization in Russia is the authoritarian direction such mobilization might entail.     

From Small Streams to Pipe Dreams – The Hydro-Engineering of the Cyprus Conflict

A 2008 water crisis triggered collective fears of droughts and long-term scarcities both north and south of the buffer zone dividing the Mediterranean island of Cyprus since 1974. Tectonic shifts in the island’s water management were the result. Central to export oriented agricultural production since British colonial days, water has always been a policy priority throughout independence, conflict and division for all administrations on the island. With discourses of scarcity and impending doom on the rise, policy makers north and south of the buffer zone started investing heavily in non-conventional high capacity water resources. Since October 2015 an underwater pipeline from the Turkish mainland supplies the north of the island with freshwater while the Republic of Cyprus has commissioned desalination plants through public private partnerships. This article argues that both the construction of the motherland’s “umbilical water cord” in the north as well as the “desalination rush” in the south are not just reactions to issues of environmental scarcity. It shows that Malthusian narratives of water scarcity leading to conflict are just as mistaken as liberal notions of scarcity leading to cooperation. Instead, relationships of power, rooted in post-colonial state formation, development, conflict and division have motivated financially costly but politically expedient investments in excess capacities, rather than improvement of water management. Both the northern and southern water infrastructure boom is understood within its geopolitical context of creating water as political capital in the peace process. This geo-politically conditioned over-engineering of water resources, finally, provides ample grounds for rethinking the relations between water, conflict and division more generally.     

Concession or compromise? The politics of abortion in United Germany

Most GDR policies instituted to secure women's equality between 1949 and 1989 have been dismantled in the name of German unity, including freedom of choice regarding abortion. That right ceased to exist in May 1993, when the Constitutional Court imposed a number of western restrictions on eastern women as the new law of the land. This study addresses the post‐unity search for an acceptable compromise between the western constitutional mandate of foetal protection and the eastern guarantee of a woman's right to choose. It argues that a three‐year reform process which should have provided a positive introduction to the art of democratic compromise served instead as a negative socialising experience for Germans in the new Lander. Besides denying them a chance to render a meaningful policy contribution to their new state, the nature of the process has distorted East German perceptions of the quintessential ‘balance of power’ between legislative and judicial institutions under democracy. ‘Compromise’ has been attained, but consequences for the German Rechtsstaat are not all positive.     

The New Electoral Law – or: Good Things Don't Always Come to Those Who Wait

In the year 2008, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the formerly applicable Electoral Law was unconstitutional due to the effect of the so-called ‘negative voting weight’. After a five-year debate, the new Electoral Law was passed in spring 2013, according to which the following parliamentary elections were conducted in autumn. This new law mainly fulfils the regulations laid down by the Constitutional Court, although not to their full extent. Through the introduction of adjustment mandates for overhang mandates, the proportional representation between the parties represented in the German Parliament Bundestag was guaranteed for the first time. At the same time, however, an abundance of new problems such as a procedural return which is hard to reason, and the risk of a severely inflated Bundestag, are created.     

The Outcry of the Periphery? An Analysis of Ticino's No to Immigration

When the popular initiative “against mass immigration” was accepted by the Swiss people and cantons on 9 February 2014, Ticino had by far the highest approval rate. The Italian‐speaking canton thus once more confirmed its singular position, assumed since the 1990s, on popular votes regarding immigration and foreign policy. This seems to be indicative of wider crises and changes in both the economic and political spheres that have favoured the emergence of a political opposition between centre and periphery. The results of a survey among 1400 citizens of Ticino after the vote of 9 February confirm this. In essence, on top of the question of immigration, the vote was influenced by a fearful perception of Ticino as a “double periphery” vis‐à‐vis both Berne and Lombardy.     

Straightjacketing migrant rescuers? The code of conduct on maritime NGOs

In July 2017, Italy drafted an EU-sponsored code of conduct aimed at regulating non-governmental migrant rescuing NGOs offshore Libya. The code makes permission for NGO vessels to disembark migrants in Italian ports conditional on collaborating in the fight against smugglers and accepting the presence of law enforcement personnel on board. This article investigates the inception, content and likely consequences of the Code, arguing that most of its provisions are either redundant or counterproductive. As suggested by scholarship on civil–military cooperation and maritime rescuing, the code as it stands would only violate humanitarian principles without increasing existing rescuing capabilities.     

The Impact of International Perception on China’s Approach to Human Rights

East Asia - Given the tremendous amount of money that China has poured into events such as the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2010 Shanghai Expo and establishing Confucius Institutes throughout the...     

‘The devil or the Dutch’: Holland's impact on the financial revolution in England, 1643–1694

SUMMARY

In this article Beat Kümin and Andreas Würgler make a comparative study of how the peoples in early modern England and Hesse used their acknowledged rights to present petitions and grievances to exercise a real influence on the process of legislation, and even over administration in general. They could on occasion, virtually initiate legislation from below. The article illustrates the unusually wide scope and usage of the petition in England, helped by the early recognition of the subjects' right to petition both houses of Parliament as well as the monarch. It is suggested that this could result in a broad popular participation in the work of government. But even in Hesse, where the rulers asserted their sovereign rights as sole legislators and where, from the seventeenth century, they were attempting to develop an effective bureaucratic administration to sustain their aspirations, the method of petitioning the ruler, either through the Estates, Gravamina or directly, enabled ordinary people to have a part in promoting legislation and to participate in, and even effectively restrain, the princely administration.     

From ethnic exclusion to terrorism? The case of radical Basque nationalism

ABSTRACT

This article reflects upon the beginnings and development of radical Basque nationalism in light of its ethnic exclusion criteria. We argue that the existence of a tradition of “strong” alterity does not necessarily lead to the appearance of tendencies favoring the use of violence to confront the other. Without rejecting the importance of a discourse of hate proceeding from the past, such tendencies are due more to a combination of the historical context and individual and group decisions. It is important to bear this in mind to underscore the responsibilities of those who were not satisfied with constructing the image of a despicable enemy, but instead decided to employ violence to solve the problem that the latter might cause.