„Nord“ und „Süd“ im globalen Regieren

The debate on global governance has been focused primarily on the highly industrialized countries of the OECD world. However, domestic preconditions for cooperative and effective global governance tend to be precarious in many non-OECD countries. The consideration of such factors allows to identify different types of global governance strategies employed by developing countries, which have severe implications for the concept of global governance. Such a perspective from liberal foreign policy analysis also enables a differentiated analysis of normative challenges of global governance.     

Kolloquium „Globale Strukturen und deren Steuerung — Zwischenbilanz eines Förderschwerpunkts der Volkswagen Stiftung“, 25.–27. Februar 2001

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Adorno and Marcuse at the Barricades?: Critical Theory,Scholar-Activism,and the Neoliberal University

When Marx proclaimed the importance of not just interpreting the world but actually changing it, he initiated an important imperative that has existed within all forms of critical theory up to today. Drawing upon the work of Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, we use their unique way of looking at the theory/praxis couplet as an avenue to rethink the role of critical theory as a form of “scholar-activism.” Theory, to paraphrase Adorno, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed; and it is because of this lack of immediate utility that theory occupies a space of resistance. Nonetheless, as Marcuse avered, theory itself may retreat into the privileged space of scholastic philosophy if it does not constantly engage activist movements that challenge the historical and social conditions of human oppression. In the first part of the essay, we will look at Adorno and Marcuse’s critical theories as well as their own political engagements to clarify the concept of critical theory as scholar-activism. In the second part of the essay, we will demonstrate the importance of this particular kind of scholar-activism in the context of (and against the logic of) the neoliberal university.     

Bildung und die „neue“ Sozialdemokratie: eine Analyse aus der Sicht der vergleichenden Staatsausgabenforschung

The rhetoric of “reformed” social democracy has emphasized education and investment in human capital formation since the 1990s. Nevertheless, scholarly accounts of social democratic government policies have neglected the study of education politics. This article addresses the question of whether the move from traditional to reformist social democracy can be traced in the analysis of public social and education spending in the 1980s and 1990s. I show that government participation of social democrats went along with increases in social transfer spending in the 1980s, whereas in the 1990s, social democrats have instead increased spending on education, and higher education in particular, and curtailed spending on social transfers. The final section of the article discusses the implications of these findings for the future development of partisan theory.     

Die „Sonntagsfrage“, soziale Erwünschtheit und die AfD: Wie alternative Messmethoden der Politikwissenschaft weiterhelfen können

In Germany, the standard vote intention survey item has come under attack because it failed to correctly measure the vote share of the German party “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD). We argue that alternative measurement techniques that aim to reduce social desirability bias are better suited for this task. We test three measurement techniques to forecast AfD vote share—a double list experiment, the crosswise-model randomized response technique, and the wisdom of crowds design—and compare their performance to the standard vote intention item. Our results indicate that the wisdom of crowds design is an easily implementable and promising addition to political scientists’ toolbox of survey items.     

„Gibt es so etwas überhaupt noch?“ Forschung zu Protest und sozialen Bewegungen

Research on protest and social movements has undergone a process of consolidation. However, it has lost visibility in Germany where it was in full bloom in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A review of recent scholarship shows that the analysis of protest and the concept of “social movement” is vital to understand both politics emerging “from below” and the dynamics of political processes. While the focus on societal antagonisms which was central in the interpretation of new social movements has been abandoned, historical and cultural approaches have more and more received attention.