Partisanship,Ministers, and Biotechnology Policy

Research in public policy and political economy has provided many insights in the evolution of public resistance against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the last two decades. But how does the partisan composition of a government, its programmatic orientation and the allocation of cabinet offices affect policy making in this specific area? We argue that the regulation of GMOs is determined by the ideological orientation of governments and the presence of parties with a specific ideological background in the cabinet. In addition, we hypothesize that the parties' control over relevant cabinet posts matter for GMO regulation. We test our hypotheses by using an innovative dataset that contains information on biotechnology regulation outputs of European governments in the time period from 1996 until 2013, the partisan composition and policy‐area specific positions of governments, and the party affiliation of key cabinet actors. The results show that the presence of a Christian democratic party in a cabinet increases the chances of a ban on biotech crops, in particular if it controls the Ministry of the Environment.     

Einwanderer als Wähler,Gewählte und transnationale Akteure

The political incorporation of immigrants is a relatively new and little researched topic in Germany. This review article presents selected results of recent international research on the political participation of immigrants and members of ethnic minorities. Apart from some core themes of research on the United States, I discuss the role of institutional motors of incorporation, the emergence of parliamentarians with a migration background, protest activities of non-citizens, and some findings on transnational forms of political engagement.     

Fiscal Explanations for Inflation: Any Evidence from Transition Economies?

Recent arguments, motivated partly by the new fiscal theory of price level, suggest that fiscal deficits undermine price stability in transition economies. This paper addresses these claims by examining vector-autoregressive models of inflation for three transition economies (Bulgaria, Romania and Russia). The results indicate that fiscal deficits have increased inflation in Bulgaria and Romania but not in the case of Russia. In Bulgaria and Romania, money aggregates and exchange rate have also been more influential to inflation than fiscal deficits. The analysis based on this method therefore suggests that while fiscal deficits have some influence on inflation, monetary factors mostly determine inflation in these three countries.     

Identität als Netzwerk

Wenn man von „Identit?t” spricht, dürfte sich im Allgemeinen das geistige Bild einer Kugel, etwas in sich Geschlossenes, einstellen. Die entsprechende „klassische” Identit?tsvorstellung ist seit dem cultural turn in eine Krise geraten, ohne dass jedoch eine befriedigende neue Vorstellung an ihre Stelle getreten w?re. Ausgehend von einer relationalen Wirklichkeitsauffassung (Cassirer, Rorty, Bourdieu) unterbreitet der vorliegende Artikel den Vorschlag, sich Identit?ten als Netzwerke von Dispositionen vorzustellen. Die Problematik wird in der Diskussion um kollektive Identit?ten sozialer Bewegungen verortet. Die Entwicklung der theoretischen Modellvorstellung nimmt ihren Ausgang bei der empirischen Untersuchung von religi?sen Bewegungen in einer Bürgerkriegssituation (Guatemala). Eine Analyse der Tiefenstruktur praktischer Operatoren der Wahrnehmung, des Urteilens und des Handelns der Akteure erlaubt die Rekonstruktion dieser Operatoren im Modell eines Netzwerks fundamentaler logischer Relationen, die den allt?glichen Wahrnehmungs-, Urteils- und Handlungsweisen zugrund liegen. Auf dieser Basis werden dann theoretische Perspektiven eines Netzwerk-Modells von Identit?t diskutiert. Dabei werden verbreitete Probleme der Identit?tstheorie im Rahmen der Bewegungstheorie aufgegriffen, wie z.B. individuelle vs. kollektive Identit?t, das Verh?ltnis von Kognition, Affekt und Leib oder die Relation von Identit?ten und gesellschaftlichen Strukturen. Diese Fragestellungen werden mit Hilfe des Netzwerk-Modells neu interpretiert.     

Immediate legitimacy? Problems of legitimacy in a consensually oriented application of law

This article was first presented at the Symposium on the Legitimacy of Law in Modern Society, in Murikka, Finland, in August 1988.     

Has the Right to Education a Future Within the United Nations? A Behind-the-Scenes Account by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education 1998-2004

This article ponders over the future of human rights work withinthe United Nations on the basis of the author's six years ofexperience as the Special Rapporteur on the right to educationof the Commission on Human Rights. This broadens the analysisto the factors shaping the work of the Commission on Human Rightsthat are not formally documented, and generates a series ofquestions concerning the Commission's recent past and uncertainfuture.