Unity in the face of threat? Exploring the empirical relationship between strategic threat perceptions and public support for a common European army in Germany

ABSTRACT

Perceptions of threat from Russia’s military activities in Ukraine and President Trump’s critical attitude towards NATO have put the idea of a common European army on the agenda of European politics. Do these strategic threat perceptions also influence public support for the creation of a common European army? Previous research has largely overlooked strategic threat perceptions as individual-level determinants of public support for a common European army. This article explores the empirical relationship between strategic threat perceptions and support for a common European army at the individual level of analysis with representative German survey data from 2018. The multivariate analysis shows that perceiving Russia’s military activities in Ukraine as a threat to Germany’s security, and U.S. foreign and security policy as a threat to the cohesion of NATO significantly increases support for the creation of a common European army, even when the influence of numerous other determinants is controlled for. The findings highlight the importance of considering strategic threat perceptions in future analyses of public opinion on European defence cooperation and integration.     

Agilität als Chance für einen neuen Anlauf zum demokratischen Unternehmen?

There has been a long-standing discussion since the 1980s about the question whether new production models harbor a potential for extended employee participation and involvement, in most cases with disillusioning results. This paper is concerned with so called “agile methods”, which play an important part in the area of knowledge work in the course of the digital transformation. On the basis of two case studies from software development and industrial R&D, the paper examines the concrete implementation of these methods and the employees’ perspective upon them and their consequences. The result is that agile methods present a potential for extended employee participation and involvement; however, the realization of this potential depends on the concrete way how the agile concept of “empowerment” is implemented.     

Welfare Reform in Delaware: "A Better Chance" for Whom?

Does welfare reform provide "A Better Chance"(ABC) for Delaware'swelfare recipients? Not in terms of meeting the program's objectives.The employment and earnings impacts are modest. ABC had relativelylittle impact on recipients with three to five years of previouswelfare experience. ABC recipients had some understanding ofthe broad parameters of the new rules, but not of many of thecritical details. Nearly one-half of the ABC participants werefinancially penalized for violating the rules. Sanctions didnot necessarily change their behavior, as only about 25 percentcured their sanction within six months. There is little evidencethat the state has moved forward on encouraging two-parent familiesand discouraging teenage pregnancy and unwed motherhood.     

What Determines Ethical Behavior in Public Organizations: Is It Rules or Leadership?

Leadership is widely seen as having an important role in fostering ethical conduct in organizations, but the ways in which the actions of leaders intersect with formal ethics regulation in shaping conduct have been little researched. This article examines this issue through a qualitative study of the operation of the “ethical framework” for English local government, which entailed all councils adopting a code of conduct to regulate the behavior of local politicians. Studying local government provides an opportunity to examine how personal and managerial factors combine to influence ethical conduct and to analyze the ways in which ethical leadership is exercised through multiple people in leadership roles (politicians and managers). The article finds that organizations that exhibit consistently good conduct have multiple leaders who demonstrate good conduct but also act to preempt the escalation of problems and thereby minimize the explicit use of ethics regulation.     

Scopic valuations: how digital tracking technologies shape economic value

How do market actors in the contemporary economy make decisions when they are uncertain of the value of what is being traded? To answer this question, this paper analyses the changing temporal and spatial orientation of economic valuations in increasingly digitalized economies, in which markets can no longer be understood as locally bound and closed sites of valuation and exchange. Drawing on ethnographic material from the fishing industry, the paper shows how digital tracking technologies link and synchronize auction markets with real-time information on fishing activities. Hence, ‘scopic media’ such as chart plotters and computer screens are not only deployed by skippers to monitor one another, but are also used as valuation devices that recontextualize local knowledge for the purpose of coping with economic uncertainty. As a consequence of this panoptic valuation regime, fishermen control their virtual identities by disciplining harvesting practices according to their buyers’ expectations.     

‘Strong,United and Independent’: the British Foreign Office,Anglo–Iranian Oil Company and the internationalization of Iranian politics at the dawn of the Cold War, 1945–46

This article challenges traditional accounts of the 1946 Cold War Crisis in Iran by moving beyond Soviet–American confrontation to focus on British policy. In contrast to the United States, Britain was a major stake-holding power in Iran due to the valuable holdings of the Anglo–Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). By comparing the reactions of the AIOC and Foreign Office, continuity between the events of the 1946 Crisis and later developments in the Mosaddegh premiership becomes apparent. Soviet interference in Azerbaijan prompted great concern from representatives in Iran, but the central Foreign Office pursued a more cautious policy. Only concerns relating to the growth of domestic Iranian communism in the form of the Tudeh Party and the threat this entailed to the British concession prompted the Foreign Office and AIOC to take measures rendering them partially complicit in the internationalization of Iranian politics, setting an important precedent for future action. This article evaluates the policy-making process and its impact on Anglo–Iranian relations by utilizing records from the UK National Archives, British Petroleum Archive and diplomatic personal papers.     

Fluorescence Imaging of Posterior Spiracles from Second and Third Instars of Forensically Important Chrysomya rufifacies (Diptera: Calliphoridae),

Entomological protocols for aging blowfly (Diptera: Calliphoridae) larvae to estimate the time of colonization (TOC) are commonly used to assist in death investigations. While the methodologies for analyzing fly larvae differ, most rely on light microscopy, genetic analysis, or, more rarely, electron microscopy. This pilot study sought to improve resolution of larval stage in the forensically important blowfly Chrysomya rufifacies using high‐content fluorescence microscopy and biochemical measures of developmental marker proteins. We established fixation and mounting protocols, defined a set of measurable morphometric criteria and captured developmental transitions of 2nd instar to 3rd instar using both fluorescence microscopy and anti‐ecdysone receptor Western blot analysis. The data show that these instars can be distinguished on the basis of robust, nonbleaching, autofluorescence of larval posterior spiracles. High‐content imaging techniques using confocal microscopy, combined with morphometric and biochemical techniques, may therefore aid forensic entomologists in estimating TOC.