Historisch-strukturelle Grundlagen westeuropäischer Politik: das Vermächtnis Stein Rokkans

Ohne Zusammenfassung Rezensionssessay zu: Peter Flora (Hg. zusammen mit Stein Kuhnle und Derek Urwin): State Formation, Nation-Building and Mass Politics in Europe — The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999, XViii + 422 S., US$70.-.     

Mechanismen der Europäisierung: nationale Regulierungsmuster und europäische Integration

Der Schwerpunkt bisheriger Europaforschung konzentriert sich auf die Frage, in welchem Ausmass nationale Bedingungen den Aufbau von Institutionen und die politische Entscheidungsfindung auf der europäischen Ebene beeinflussen. Die Auswirkungen der europäischen Integration auf die Politikgestaltung und institutionelle Strukturen in den Mitgliedstaaten sind hingegen nur wenig erforscht worden. Erst seit kurzem gibt es eine zunehmende Anzahl von Analysen, die sich explizit mit der Europäisierung von nationalen Institutionen beschäftigen. Von besonderem Interesse ist dabei die Frage, in welchem Ausmass die Implementation europäischer Policies mit Veränderungen in bestehenden Regulierungsmustern auf nationaler Ebene einhergeht. Der Beitrag identifiziert drei Mechanismen, um die Wirkungsweise europäischer Policies auf nationale Regulierungsmuster zu charakterisieren. Europäische Politik kann ein konkretes institutionelles Modell für die nationale Umsetzung vorschreiben; sie kann sich auf die Beeinflussung nationaler Opportunity Structures beschränken; oder sie kann primär über die Veränderung nationaler Ideen und Überzeugungen (Framing) wirken.     

Computerized craniofacial reconstruction using CT-derived implicit surface representations

In forensic craniofacial reconstruction, facial features of an unknown individual are estimated from an unidentified skull, based on a mixture of experimentally obtained guidelines on the relationship between soft tissues and the underlying skeleton. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using full 3D cross-sectional CT images for establishing a reference database of densely sampled distances between the external surfaces of the skull and head for automated craniofacial reconstruction. For each CT image in the reference database, the hard tissue (skull) and soft tissue (head) volumes are automatically segmented and transformed into signed distance transform (sDT) images, representing for each voxel in this image the Euclidean distance to the closest point on the skull and head surface, respectively, distances being positive (negative) for voxels inside (outside) the skull/head. Multiple craniofacial reconstructions are obtained by first warping each reference skull sDT maps to the target skull sDT using a B-spline based free form deformation algorithm and subsequently applying these warps to the reference head sDT maps. A single reconstruction of the target head surface is defined as the zero level set of the arithmetic average of all warped reference head sDT maps, but other reconstructions are possible, biasing the result to subject specific attributes (age, BMI, gender). Both qualitative and quantitative tests (measuring the similarity between the 3D reconstructed and corresponding original head surface) on a small (N = 20) database are presented to proof the validity of the concept.     

Transregional security cooperation after September 11, 2001

The aim of this article is to answer the question what kind of global security architecture emerged after September 11 and what functions Europe, East Asia and the United States assumed in this triadic structure. The empirical findings reveal that the transpacific security cooperation is the strengthening link in this global security structure, the transatlantic security cooperation the weakening one and the Asia–Europe Security Cooperation is to be seen as the emerging link. In order to explain these different institutional manifestations of transregional cooperation, different theories of International Relations are applied to the three cases. It comes as no surprise that neoinstitutionalism and constructivism offer the best insights into the formation and development of international institutions.

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Electoral participation in the Netherlands: Individual and contextual influences

Abstract Research into electoral participation has produced two traditions, one focusing mainly on individual level explanations while the second concentrates primarily on aggregate level explanations. By bringing these two research approaches together, we are not only able to explain individual electoral participation more thoroughly, but we also gain additional insight into the influence of aggregate level characteristics on individual behavior. We combine eight National Election Studies held in the Netherlands between 1971 and 1994 enabling us to study variation on the individual and the contextual (aggregate) level, including interactions between these two levels. Findings show that the addition of contextual characteristics form a significant improvement to an individual level model predicting electoral participation. Findings also confirm our expectation that the influence of individual characteristics such as education or political interest is dependent upon contextual characteristics describing for instance the salience of the election.     

Private Actors and the State: Internationalization and Changing Patterns of Governance

This article investigates the implications of political and economic internationalization on patterns of governance from a statecentric perspective. The actual patterns of governance in internationalized environments can be related to the respective governance capacity of public and private actors, which hinges in turn on the strategic constellation underlying the provision of a public good. The specific strategic constellation varies in three dimensions: the congruence between the scope of the underlying problem and the organizational structures of the related actors, the type of problem, and the institutional context, all of which involve a number of factors. With this concept in mind, we identify four ideal-typed patterns of governance, enabled by different configurations of public and private capacities to formally or factually influence in various ways the social, economic, and political processes by which certain goods are provided.     

‘We go back to the land’: processes of re-peasantisation in Araponga,Brazil

This contribution draws on original data relating to a land settlement case in Araponga, an administrative area in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The settlement of the land and subsequent building of robust, more self-dependent, land-based livelihoods have followed a joint experimentation trajectory in which the agro-ecologicalisation of agrarian production practices to regenerate and enrich the resource base has been coupled with effective institutional reform and the creation of a favourable institutional setting. Key to this grassroots transformation process has been the enrolment of various strategic actors in a collaborative support network by a mediating change agent. The paper argues that the Araponga case represents a particular expression of re-peasantisation. The Araponga project has evolved without the involvement of landless peoples' social movements such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). This has been crucial to its character and impact.