Scenes from a mall: Retail training and the social exclusion of low-skilled workers

In this article we examine how post-industrial Britain and Denmark undertake vocational training for low-skilled retail workers. Specifically, we evaluate whether leaders in training skilled industrial workers are also doing the best job with low-skilled service workers. While Danish retail is increasingly becoming a haven for low-skilled workers, British workers are gaining in skills levels with the transition to services even in the retail sector. While some suggest that social democratic countries have sacrificed the political interests of low-skilled workers in order to protect core manufacturing workers, we find no evidence of this. Rather, the high expectations of vocational training in Denmark have forged barriers to the easy admission of low-skilled service workers, while the British system provides more entry points for vocational training at different levels. The structures of coordination that had narrowed the gap between white-collar and blue-collar manufacturing workers during the industrial age are creating new cleavages in the post-industrial economy.     

Coping with economic integration: Corporatist strategies in Germany and Austria in the 1990s

While Germany is facing the wholesale disorganisation of sectoral collective bargaining, the Austrian social partnership has gained new strength in the 1990s. Comparatively, Austro‐corporatism proved able to undergo a process of skilful adaptation. This divergence in performance poses a puzzle, given Germany's commanding presence both in international markets and in the European Union, and given Austria's traditional hostility to modernisation. This article explains German—Austrian differences in the performance and resilience of corporatist governance in the face of modernisation and market integration in terms of (i) the organisational differences between German and Austrian corporatism (sectoral concentration versus vertical centralisation and little horizontal formalisation); (ii) the long term policy strategies employed by labour unions in either system (co‐determination versus macro‐level policy influence); and (Hi) by the different responses to modernisation chosen by German and Austrian corporatist actors (internal organisational reforms verus becoming modernisation brokers).     

Practices of Implementation of Sexual Harassment Policies: Individual Versus Collective Strategies1

abstract This article examines the implementation of sexual harassment law in the workplace in Germany and the United States. Both countries have developed different approaches to the issue, with certain trade‐offs for the pursuit of gender equality and changes in gender workplace culture. Germany has developed a corporatist, collective strategy. Yet, few German employers have adopted policies and training programs. New policy approaches focus on sexual harassment as a group‐based, but gender‐neutral, issue in the context of general unfair workplace practices of “mobbing.” In contrast, sexual harassment is primarily understood as an individual rights issue in the U.S. This approach emphasizes individual (internal) redress. Social and organizational change comes at a high cost for individuals who have been harassed. Employers’ practices in both countries have turned sexual harassment into a gender‐neutral issue. I conclude that a synthesis of both individual and collective approaches with an explicit focus on gender inequality would be desirable.     

The Enemies of Promise: Labour's Long War against Education

Labour and New Labour alike have been the enemies of education. Consider the brutalism of Charles Clarke—‘history for display purposes only’; statistics of achievement based on the soft marking of soft subjects to achieve soviet pig‐iron statistics; fat inspection and thin curriculum; compulsory lesson plans and paper plagues; foreign languages as too difficult. Before all that, remember Anthony Crosland ‘destroying their schools if it's the last fucking thing I do’ and the consequent rise of the public schools as bought excellence. What to do : Follow Housman's dictum, ‘Knowledge is happiness’; rescue good minds in bad places with state places in boarding schools; utilise the quiz nationally the as a pop method to stimulate the study habit; get back to French and German; take the educationalism out of education especially in training colleges; thin inspection down from terror to weather‐eye mentoring.     

UNPACKING COMPLEX MEDIATION MECHANISMS AND THEIR HETEROGENEITY BETWEEN SITES IN A JOB CORPS EVALUATION

This study aims to test the theory underlying Job Corps, one of the largest education and training programs in the U.S. serving disadvantaged youth. Central to the program are vocational training and general education that serve as two concurrent mediators transmitting the program impact on earnings. To distinguish the relative contribution of each, we develop methods for decomposing the Job Corps impact on earnings into an indirect effect transmitted through vocational training, an indirect effect transmitted through general education, and a direct effect attributable to supplementary services. We further ask whether general education and vocational training reinforce each other and produce a joint impact greater than the sum of the two separate pathways. Moreover, we examine the heterogeneity of each causal effect across all the Job Corps centers. This article presents concepts and methods for defining, identifying, and estimating not only the population averages but also the between‐site variance of these causal effects. Our analytic procedure incorporates a series of weighting strategies to enhance the internal and external validity of the results and assesses the sensitivity to potential violations of the identification assumptions.     

The finnish centre party: Profile of a ‘Hinge group’

Recently, the functioning of Austrian Social Partnership has been increasingly called into question. The strains on the system, often traced to the internationalisation of the economy and the related shift to neoliberally inspired policies, might make Austria prone to disorganising pressures. However, case studies infields of social and economic policy‐making crucial for international competitiveness (working time, vocational training, industrial policy) suggest that many elements of interest intermediation, concertation, and conflict resolution have remained constant over the last 30 years, entailing both elements of concertation and of conflict as well as different trends across policy areas.     

In search of reliable results: Socialist values and political trust in unified Germany – A comment on Campbell's analyses and conclusions

In a recently published article in this journal, Ross Campbell argues that adherence to socialist values establishes a hitherto neglected factor when it comes to the explanation of differences in East and West German citizens’ political trust. As the results of his study indicate, adherence to socialist values impacts negatively on citizens’ political trust, this effect is more pronounced and more stable over time for East German as compared to West German citizens and is sufficiently strong to eliminate aggregate‐level differences in political trust between East and West Germany. However, this research note suggests that Campbell's article contains several substantial inconsistencies and obscurities that question the reliability and validity of the empirical findings presented. It provides a re‐analysis of Campbell's main arguments and shows to what extent his initial conclusions can be upheld after the shortcomings have been remedied. The results of this re‐analysis suggest that socialist values indeed exhibit a negative impact on German citizens’ political trust, which is relatively stronger for East as compared to West German citizens. However, contrary to Campbell's initial results, the negative effect of socialist values on political trust is robust over time for both East and West German citizens. What is more, there is no empirical evidence confirming that differences in adherence to socialist values between East and West German citizens are sufficiently strong to account for aggregate‐level differences in political trust. In light of these findings, two of Campbell's three main conclusions are dubious and call for further examination.     

Europäisierung regionalen Regierens: Mit Sinatra zum „autonomieorientierten Systemwechsel“ im deutschen Bundesstaat?

Within the last years integration theory is focusing on studies analysing the impact of Europeanization on national and regional governance. This contribution demonstrates that the German Länder till the mid 90’ies have developed and still follow a twofold strategy in representing their interests in the European interactive system: interest representation through the German federal system and direct interest representation at the European level. Since some years the guiding ideas of the Länder have changed. Thus, the further development of co-operative and interactive policy-making was no longer on top of the agenda. Despite, the Länder asked for a clear cut of competence within the multi-level system — what is called here Sinatra-strategy, according to the song “I did it my way …”. This discussion at the European level is linked with the demand for reforming German federalism in the sense of “competitive federalism”. The contribution asks whether the Sinatra-strategy at the European level could have an impact on the German co-operative federalism and could help to transform it towards a more “autonomy oriented system”.     

“Adversarial legalism” in the German system of industrial relations?

The US has a distinctive legal style, which Robert Kagan has called “adversarial legalism.” It is marked by a pattern of political decisionmaking and conflict resolution in which the courtrooms and the law are systematically exploited as political arenas for making and implementing political settlements and policy outlines. In this article it is argued that a “German way” of adversarial legalism is about to emerge in the German industrial relations system. Economic liberalization, the fragmentation and decentralization of lawmaking authority in the political sphere, and the common‐law‐like nature of German labor law have contributed to the appearance of a judicialized pattern of governance. Nonetheless, Germany is not converging on the “American way of law” and major differences are expected to persist in the years to come.     

The Revised German Raw Materials Strategy in the Light of Global Political and Market Developments

Raw material markets have proven to be challenging in recent years. The so‐called critical raw materials (CRMs), which are required for green technology, have particularly high environmental and supply risks. The revised German raw materials strategy attempts to address challenges of production and supply of CRMs and other mineral‐based raw materials. This contribution analyzes the motivation, measures, goals, and challenges of the German raw materials strategy in the light of global economic and political developments, applying the qualitative method GABEK®. Results show that the revised strategy is more ambitious and reaches farther than the initial strategy of 2010. Challenges that remain include the lack of willingness of the German industry to engage in mine production and the more pro‐active political approaches demonstrated elsewhere. As all major economic powerhouses outside of Europe pursue a hands‐on approach, it remains questionable if the revised German raw materials strategy will fundamentally be able to sustainably secure raw material supply for the German industry.     

社会制度与青年农民工的就业质量——基于湖南长沙市的实证调查

对长沙市301名青年农民工的实证研究结果表明,青年农民工的就业质量偏低,且受社会制度的显著影响。其中就业机构、就业培训和继续教育状况与职业声望和收入水平显著相关;就业机构和就业培训与职业稳定性显著相关;就业培训和继续教育与职业发展机会显著相关。因此,必须改革与完善户籍制度及相关制度,消除青年农民工就业的制度歧视,并大力加强青年农民工群体的自组织建设。     

The expenditure and revenue effects of defense spending in the Federal Republic of Germany

This article examines three questions. First, is there evidence of systematic defense tradeoffs in West German budgetary outputs? Second, exactly which programs - or types of program - have been the primary victims of tradeoffs? Finally, is there evidence that expenditure tradeoffs are avoided by raising taxes or reallocating tax burdens within the West German system of fiscal federalism? Evidence of expenditure tradeoffs is weak, but those that do occur seem to be based on the simplifying decision rules characteristic of complex organizational and political environments. Change in taxation is related to change in the defense burden, but the strength of the relationship is not overwhelming. The findings for the German case indicate a need to reevaluate the theoretical basis of tradeoff studies. They also suggest an agenda for comparative research on the tradeoff question.     

The spy who never was: An intelligence myth in Palestine, 1914–18

Myths, like old soldiers, refuse to die, let alone myths about spies. The adventures of the daring German super‐spy, Fritz Frank (1873–1968), who operated behind British lines in Sinai and Palestine during World War I, disguised as a British officer, have fired the imagination of contemporaries as well as historians and scholars to date. This article shows that while Frank himself was a real, flesh and blood figure, the deeds attributed to him were almost entirely imaginary.     

Belgium adopts law against racial discrimination and incitement to racial hatred

German neo‐Nazis revive an old World War I myth to whitewash Hitler.     

How to not speak the ‘F‐word’: Federalism between mirage and imperative in the euro crisis

The recent financial and debt crisis has resuscitated the debate about European federalism – a theme that seemed not to have survived the painful constitutional adventure that ended with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. With the adoption of significant policy and institutional measures for tightening macroeconomic and budgetary coordination (including a constitutionally enshrined debt brake), the reforms of the monetary union have undisputedly brought the European Union further on the path towards an ever closer union. In an era where EU integration has been increasingly politicised, and Euroscepticism has been on the rise and exploited by anti‐system parties, national leaders have to face a political hiatus and respond to increased needs for symbolic and discursive legitimation of further federalisation. This is all the more crucial for French and German leaders who have brokered the main decisions during the crisis of the eurozone. Against this background, the purpose of this article is not to assess whether, or to what extent, the recent reforms of economic and monetary union have made the EU more federal. Rather, the purpose is to tackle the following puzzle: How have EU leaders legitimised the deepening of federal integration in a context where support for more European federalism is at its lowest? To elucidate this, a lexicographic discourse analysis is conducted based on all speeches held by the German Chancellor Merkel and the two French Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande, previous to, or after European summits from early 2010 until the spring of 2013. The findings indicate that federalism is both taboo and pervasive in French and German leaders' discourse. The paradox is barely apparent, though. While the ‘F‐word’ is rarely spoken aloud, two distinctive visions co‐exist in the French and German discourse. The coming of age of a political union through constitutional federalism is pictured as ineluctable, yet as a distant mirage out of reach of today's decision makers. At the same time, the deepening of functional federalism in order to cope with economic interdependence is a ubiquitous imperative that justifies further integration. The persisting gap between the constitutional and the functional vision of European federalism has crucial implications. Insofar as the Union is held responsible for not delivering successful economic policy, political leaders will fail to legitimise both functional and constitutional federalism.     

Recasting German federalism? The politics of fiscal decentralization in post-unification Germany

Why did the ideas of fiscal decentralization gain such political currency in Germany in the late 1990s but meet such a relatively dismal political fate by the Summer of 2001? In answering this question, I propose a framework centered around the interaction of ideas and state institutions to study the politics of fiscal decentralization in advanced democratic nation-states. First, I show that the new set of politically-charged ideas of fiscal decentralization which gained political weight in Germany in the late 1990s were driven by economic problems associated with German unification, the increasing popularity of “fiscal federalism” in German policy circles, and a centerperiphery conflict within German political parties. Second, my analysis explains the political failure of these ideas despite their apparent popularity among political and policy elites. Here, I focus on the role of the upper house of the German parliament in order to explain why these ideas have had such little policy success. After demonstrating that the long-standing tradition of “cooperative” federalism has largely survived German unification, the paper concludes by discussing the potential impact of the European Union’s 1997 Growth and Stability Pact on German federalism.     

The effect of a reduction in the opening hours of polling stations on turnout

In recent years, scholars and policymakers alike have discussed potential causes and consequences of low voter turnout. Election administration laws may provide means to encourage turnout that are of low cost and easily implementable. In this paper, I provide a policy evaluation of a change in an election administration law. Specifically, I estimate the causal effect of a reduction in the opening hours of polling stations on turnout. To this end, I make use of a policy change in a German state that cut the number of opening hours of polling stations. Using political units from an adjacent state with the same election dates and effectively the same election system as a control group in a difference-in-differences design, I find that reducing the opening hours of polling stations significantly reduces voter turnout.     

The Franco‐German relationship and economic and monetary union: Using Europe to ‘Bind Leviathan’

This article explores the interaction between the institutional, strategic and cognitive dimensions of the Franco‐German relationship on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). It begins by spelling out its institutional setting and its context of structural power. These sections highlight the main informal rules that have shaped the relationship and help explain the choice of negotiating strategies to reconcile their objectives and secure influence on the design and content of EMU. The next section focuses on the cognitive dimension of the relationship, identifying the nature of Franco‐German objectives, their basis in differences of inherited beliefs and problems in reconciling them. In the final section the nature of the political theory underpinning EMU is clarified and explained and the kind of challenge that it poses for French policy makers as it tests the limits of the republican state tradition. More broadly, EMU is an attempt to redefine the relationship between state and Europe and state and society, bringing with it new political meanings.     

Did the Egalitarian Reforms of the Swedish Educational System Equalise Levels of Democratic Citizenship?

In the mid‐1990s an extensive reform of the Swedish educational system was initiated in order to create a ‘school for everyone’ intended to function like a ‘social equaliser’. The new unified gymnasium initiated longer educational programmes with an extended curriculum of social science courses. This article examines whether the well documented gap in levels of democratic citizenship indicators between students in theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes persisted after this massive reform. Given the vast amount of empirical research that has shown that education promotes democratic citizenship, the reform could be expected to result in a decreased civic gap. However, contrary to the conventional wisdom in research on the impact of education, little evidence is found linking the initiation of longer educational programmes with more social science courses to an increase in the levels of the examined dimensions of democratic citizenship. The egalitarian reform of the Swedish gymnasium, which provided more civic education, did not produce hypothesised positive effects on any of the dimensions under study (i.e., political participation, political knowledge and political attentiveness). Rather, results support the pre‐adult socialisation models since the gap between citizens from theoretical and vocational gymnasium study programmes remained after the unification of the educational system.     

From Unitary to Asymmetric Federalism in Germany: Taking Stock after 50 Years

Policymaking in the German federal system is influenced by thedynamic interplay of the institutions of cooperative federalism,of party competition in a parliamentary system, and of distributiveconflicts between governments. This is shown in an analysisof 50 years of German federalism. It is argued that while theinstitutional setting outlived most reform efforts, changingpatterns of party politics and growing distributive conflictsinduced adjustments in intergovernmental relations. Since the1980s, such adjustments have also been stimulated by Europeanpolitics. In unified Germany, intergovernmental cooperationis now burdened with asymmetries between the East and the West,which are also expressed in a more regionalized party system.However, as party political confrontations have diminished,a pragmatic revision of the federal system seems feasible.