Kampf um Souveränität?

The article documents a panel debate held at the Kiel congress of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) in September 2009. With its Lisbon judgment passed in June 2009, the German Federal Constitutional Court delivered a groundbreaking decision on Germany’s involvement in the European integration process. The Court ruled that the German accompanying law (Begleitgesetz) violated the national constitution because it did not guarantee sufficient parliamentary involvement. Furthermore, the Court announced its intention to intensify the constitutional control of the national applicability of European legal acts (the ultra vires control and the identity control). Stephan Leibfried, Marcus Höreth, Martin Höpner, Fritz W. Scharpf and Michael Zürn discuss the judgment with respect to its implications for the further integration process, for the national and supranational capacities to act, for the democratic quality in the European multilevel system and for political-economic problems.     

Which Party Gets the Mayoralty? A Multivariate Statistical Investigation of Danish Local Government Formation

In non‐presidential multiparty systems, it is not only the voters but also coalition formation after the election that decides the government of the community. Some national‐level studies investigate which parties are most likely to win the Prime Minister's office. The aim of this article is to investigate the same question at the local level: What makes a party more likely to win the post of mayor? The article finds that party size and change in size are important along with experience and ideological centrality. The results are similar to those obtained at the national level, and this study thus expands the scope of these explanatory variables. However, the study also shows that being a large party is not sufficient for a party to have a good chance of winning the mayoralty. Furthermore, norms guiding appropriate behaviour seem important in addition to instrumental behaviour. It appears that parties that are popular in the electorate benefit from being perceived as more deserving of the mayoralty than others.     

Militant neo‐Nazism in Sweden

This study examines the emergence of a neo‐Nazi terrorist movement in Sweden, focusing on the largest group, Vitt Ariskt Motstånd (White Aryan Resistance). VAM is inspired by traditional national socialism, the militant wing of the skinhead movement, South African apartheid ideology and, especially, US racist groups like ‘The Order’. Notions of the ‘Zionist Occupation Government’ (ZOG) and the coming ‘racial war’ are central in VAM's worldview. The adaptation of this extreme revolutionary ideology radicalized the group towards terrorism. The quest for status and prestige within the group and vis‐à‐vis other groups has also been an important factor in this radicalization process.1     

德国住房政策:延续与转变

本文探讨应如何诠释联邦德国住房政策中所发生的政策转变的问题.文章介绍历史概况,将住房政策分成不同的发展阶段,并简要描述了住房政策领域的调控手段以及对这些手段进行的改革.同时,文章将结合政党差异学说和倡导者联盟学说解释历次政策转变.     

Fight the Youth: Youth Bulges and State Repression

It is generally acknowledged that large youth cohorts or “youth bulges” make countries more susceptible to antistate political violence. Thus, we assume that governments are forewarned about the political demographic threat that a youth bulge represents to the status quo and will attempt to preempt behavioral challenges by engaging in repression. A statistical analysis of the relationship between youth bulges and state repression from 1976 to 2000 confirms our expectation. Controlling for factors known to be associated with coercive state action, we find that governments facing a youth bulge are more repressive than other states. This relationship holds when controlling for, and running interactions with, levels of actual protest behavior. Youth bulges and other elements that may matter for preemptive state strategies should therefore be included in future empirical models of state repression.     

Expert judgements of the left‐right location of political parties: A comparative longitudinal study

The purpose of this article is to study the changing left‐right location of parties by means of expert judgments from 1982 and 1993. The analysis concentrates on 13 Western European countries, based on data from 1982 and 1993. According to the ‘experts’, there was a strong centrist tendency in the party systems of Western Europe from 1982 to 1993. This tendency was strongest for the socialist parties, but applies also to the non‐socialist parties, although to a lesser degree. On the other hand, the ‘New Politics’ parties became more firmly located on the extreme left and right, contributing to a new polarisation in the party systems. The analysis supports the notion that left‐right semantics have a substantial absorptive capacity in the sense that New‐Politics conflicts seem to be incorporated in these semantics.