The Federal Gendarmerie in Austria

Editor's Note: Mr. Robert Harnischmacher is a West German free-lance writer and lecturer in the Legal Sciences and Police Affairs, with a background in the German military and the Japanese martial arts. The author has been involved in developing unarmed combat skills for various German police forces and a number of foreign countries. His articles on self-defense, criminology and police history and administration have been published in the police publications of Germany, Austria, Australia, Canada, the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland and Britain. Mr. Harnischmacher has also written some judicial books regarding the police in West Germany. He has traveled widely and delivered many speeches and lectures including highly selective and sensitive topics to highly selected audiences. He is currently an Honorary Deputy Sheriff of San Diego County in California as well as an Honor member of the San Diego Crime Commission. The Editor takes this opportunity to thank Mr. Harnischmacher for his contributions to the journal and anticipates his further cooperation in disseminating his experiences and expertise through the journal. Mr. Harnischmacher has published several articles through this journal in previous volumes.     

奥地利的法律信息公开制度

我被邀请谈一个十分特别和技术性的题目 :关于法律诉讼的当事人和公众查阅法院案卷的法律制度 ,以及关于判决书的公布和对判例法的了解的法律制度。法院案卷的查阅在一个法治国家 ,查看案卷的权利是法院和行政机关公正地行使职能不可缺少的条件。在很多情况下 ,法律程序的当事人必须依靠它的帮助才能维护其相对于其他人以及相对于社会权力机关的权利。刑事诉讼在刑事诉讼当中 ,被告人必须被给予了解侦查结果和所提出的指控的机会 ,以便准备其辩护。虽然《欧洲人权公约》① 和《公民权利和政治权利国际公约》② 没有明确赋予获得公诉人的文件…     

Registered cartels in Austria: an overview

Cartels were legal to a large extent in Austria until the country’s EU accession in 1995. We examine archival material on registered horizontal cartels to learn about their inner working. Applying content analysis to legally binding cartel contracts, we comprehensively document different collusion methods along the lines described by Stigler (J Political Econ 72:44–61, 1964). Quota cartels employ regular reporting schemes and use compensation mechanisms for departures from set quotas. Specialization cartels divide markets, and rely the least on information exchange and punishment. Price and payment condition cartels primarily aim to prevent secret price cuts, requiring information provision upon request, allow for discretionary decision-taking and (sometimes immediate) punishment. These stylized facts on the contractual arrangements suggest that the possibility to write legally binding agreements was employed to address the usual obstacles to sustain collusion.     

Police Prosecutor and Police Prison: A Note on Summary Justice in Austria

The Austrian Administrative Code, designed to manage relatively minor violations, authorizes an extraordinary court that practices summary justice through a police prosecutor who can impose short sentences to a police prison. This paper concentrates on the use of this remarkable legal institution as a form of holding action that reduces delay between formal charges and final disposition in prosecution under criminal law.     

Internationalisation of R&D and embeddedness: the case of Austria

Internationalisation of corporate R&D—driven mainly by multinational enterprises (MNEs)—has received increasing interest recently. As a small open economy, Austria faces special challenges with regard to this on-going process. The share of Austrian R&D financed from abroad is outstanding in international comparison. Indeed, a significant portion of R&D activities in Austria is defined by strategic decisions of international corporations, which are re-assessing their spatial division of labour continuously. In our paper, we analyse the characteristics of these foreign-owned corporations in Austria and demonstrate that they form the more ‘modern’ part of Austrian industry. At the same time, we show that these companies and R&D facilities are embedded in the Austrian national innovation system (NIS) to a large extent. This embeddedness is also explicitly and implicitly supported by the Austrian technology policy. We conclude that this high degree of embeddedness in the NIS may be crucial for the sustainability of foreign-owned R&D facilities.

Constitutional Review in the United States and Austria: Notes on the Beginnings

Abstract.   Despite far-reaching historical and political differences, and despite legal systems that reflect altogether different traditions, the United States and Austria manifest striking similarities where some aspects of their respective development of constitutional review are concerned. For example, on the constitutional review of federalist issues (competing claims of federal and state law), the review power was there from the beginning in both countries. And both countries developed a power of constitutional review reaching to the enactments of the federal legislature. In a brief sketch of aspects of the early development of constitutional review in both countries, the author looks, in particular, to the kinds of arguments made on behalf of constitutional review in the American and Austrian legal systems.     

Pesticide poisoning in domestic animals and livestock in Austria: a 6 years retrospective study

A 6 years retrospective study of pesticide poisonings in domestic animals and livestock from 1999 to 2004 submitted to the Institute for Medical Chemistry, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna in Austria was compiled and analysed. Totally 380 pesticide analysis requests were referred by veterinary practitioners, from the Institute for Pathology of the above university, by regional and central governments as well as local police departments and district administrations, animal protectionist groups, public health authorities and private clients. Among the total number of suspected samples for pesticides, 175 (46.1%) cases were found positive to contain pesticides of various kinds. Among the pesticides found, carbamate insecticides were most prominent, representing 50.3% of the total positive cases. These compounds were followed by rodenticides-anticoagulants with 18.9% of the positive results, by organophosphate insecticides 5.1%, and by the rodenticides-nonanticoagulant 3.4%, the other 22.3% included molluscicides, herbicides, etc. In totally 225 animals, 123 animals were found positive for pesticide intoxication, among them 47.2% were dogs, 34.1% were cats 9.8% of other species and 8.9% of unspecified animal samples. The pesticides were characterized by HPLC-techniques using commercially available standards. The aim of this Austrian survey was to determine the incidence and frequency of confirmed pesticide intoxications in animals in Austria and to emphasize its relevance in veterinary practice for livestock and domestic animals.     

Interactive Relations Between Universities and Firms: Empirical Evidence for Austria

In recent years interaction between universities and the business sector and the role of these collaborations in fostering innovation has received greater attention. This paper analyzes different types of interactions between the two sectors from the perspectives of universities and firms. The three major research questions address the frequency of different types of interactions, the benefits that companies derive from interaction with universities and determinants of interaction for both sectors.Two different surveys form the empirical base for this paper: One among innovative firms in Austria, one among all Austrian university departments. The methodologies we use are analyses of variance and logistic regressions. Our results demonstrate that the main channel of knowledge transfer from universities to the business sector still occurs through the mobility of human capital. The major barriers of interaction lie in the differences between cultures of the two spheres as well as lack of information at the side of firms.     

Isotope evidence to link a suspect with a pipe bomb multimurder in Austria 1995

A bomb attempt in Oberwart, Austria, on February 4, 1995, was the culmination of several pipe and letter bomb attempts mainly in Austria. The pipe bomb had been mounted on a self-made gypsum (plaster of Paris) pedestal and exploded when touched, killing four persons. With a level of 200 tritium units (TU), the water extracted from the gypsum pedestal was unusually enriched in tritium (3H) compared to an environmental level of about 20 TU at that time. Investigation of the 3H content of air moisture in the living room of an arrested suspect showed values of about 1000 TU (normally, 50 TU is not exceeded). Additionally, water used as sealing liquid in a glass with nitroglycerine found in the living room was also significantly enriched in 3H (>400 TU). The living room therefore offered the high 3H level environment necessary to lead to elevated 3H concentrations in the gypsum pedestal.     

Costly Signals: Voter Responses to Parliamentary Dissent in Austria,Britain, and Germany

When Members of Parliament (MPs) disagree publicly with their party, this provides a signal to voters regarding both their political views and their character valence. We argue that the strength of this signal to voters depends on the personal career costs an MP incurs by dissenting. The greater the perceived costs of dissent to the MP, the more positively voters should react to dissent. In line with this theory, we use a series of conjoint analysis experiments in Britain, Germany, and Austria to show that: (1) dissent has a more positive effect on voter evaluations in systems where the costs of dissent are higher, and (2) more costly types of dissent have a greater impact on voter evaluations. These findings have important implications for understanding how voter evaluations of MPs depend on beliefs about parliamentary systems and how parliamentary institutions condition the link between voters and MPs.