Ernst-W. Diesel/Hans-Peter Lühr (Hrsg.): Lagerung und Transport wassergef?hrdender Stoffe

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Corporatism in Crisis: Stability and Change of Social Partnership in Austria

While recent developments in Western Europe provide numerous examples of the instability and decay of corporatist arrangements in the face of economic crisis, Austrian social partnership still exhibits remarkable stability. The article tries to explain this stability of corporatist politics in Austria. The Austrian case is also used to demonstrate some limitations of the academic literature on the breakdown of corporatism. However, stability in the Austrian case does not mean that nothing has changed. Changes have occurred within the existing institutional framework. Two main factors in the transformation of Austrian social partnership are pointed out, namely socio-cultural and political changes. Finally, some future perspectives of Austrian corporatism are outlined.     

Carboxyhaemoglobin and methaemoglobin findings in burnt bodies

The often observed absence of carboxyhaemoglobin in burnt (charred) bodies is rediscussed in the light of two new cases in which the inhalation of very hot gases obviously led to reflex breathing and circulation arrest. (Macro and microscopic evaluations of the upper respiratory tract can give significant information as to whether a person was still alive at the time of the fire outbreak.) In the cadaver blood of people who survived a given period after a fire, high methaemoglobin values (up to 37%) were found. This was caused by the inhalation of nitrogen oxides that were produced by burning plastic.     

Explaining Reforms of Parliamentary Minority Rights: A Theoretical Framework with Case Study Application

How can we explain institutional reforms that redistribute institutional power between the parliamentary majority and minority? This paper proposes an informal theoretical model to explain such reforms in European parliaments based on congressional literature and inductive explanations from case studies. The article argues that political parties as the relevant actors pursue institutional reforms based on their substantive goals, their current and expected future government status, transaction and audience costs of reforms, second-order institutions that regulate the relative influence of actors in changing parliamentary rules, and the institutional status quo. Hypotheses derived from this model are tested with a qualitative case study of all standing order reforms in the Austrian parliament from 1945 to 2014. The empirical analysis finds support for various hypotheses and their underlying causal mechanisms. As Austria constitutes a least-likely case, the evidence provides strong support for the theoretical model.     

The distribution of individual cabinet positions in coalition governments: A sequential approach

Multiparty government in parliamentary democracies entails bargaining over the payoffs of government participation, in particular the allocation of cabinet positions. While most of the literature deals with the numerical distribution of cabinet seats among government parties, this article explores the distribution of individual portfolios. It argues that coalition negotiations are sequential choice processes that begin with the allocation of those portfolios most important to the bargaining parties. This induces conditionality in the bargaining process as choices of individual cabinet positions are not independent of each other. Linking this sequential logic with party preferences for individual cabinet positions, the authors of the article study the allocation of individual portfolios for 146 coalition governments in Western and Central Eastern Europe. The results suggest that a sequential logic in the bargaining process results in better predictions than assuming mutual independence in the distribution of individual portfolios.