The ‘New Right' Vote: An Analysis of the Gender Gap in the Vote Choice for the SVP

Studying the Swiss national elections 2003, we find a pronounced gender gap in the SVP vote ‐ women are significantly less likely to vote for this party than are men. In order to explain this gender gap, this article combines two innovative approaches. On the one hand, it links the literature on gender gaps with research on the New Right. On the other, it makes a distinction between the conditional and compositional effects of explanatory factors. Our analysis reveals that conditional effects are of greater relevance than compositional ones. Explanatory factors regularly applied in research on the New Right have a conditional effect inasmuch as they only have an effect on male voters, but cannot explain the behaviour of women. This, in turn, also highlights the importance of a gender‐specific focus for further research.     

Authoritarianism or democracy? Marketization as a political problem

As the enormous scope of the reform task in Eastern Europe is becoming paintfully clear, there are growing doubts that the new democratic regimes will be capable of making the transition to the market successfully. A variety of plausible arguments suggest that pursuing the right economic reform policies may require the strong hand of authoritarian rule. This view derives from a faulty conception of the problem according to which economic transformation is a technical problem, to be solved by a set of well-established technocratic policies. This article identifies the weaknesses of this narrow conception, proposes an alternative view, and reassesses the potential contributions of democratic institutions and practices to economic transformation.The more dissension, the more contention and less consensus, the less you get on with the job. In the early stages you need to achieve clear-cut goals like universal education, high savings, high productivity, low consumption. Those are simple truths that everybody has to accept, in order to accumulate the surplus to build up the infrastructure. You need the capital to get going. And you can't have contention over these simple truths indefinitely.Lee Kuan Yew     

Strukturale Psychologie. Zum Verhältnis von Sozialraum,Habitus und Persönlichkeit

The article addresses Pierre Bourdieu’s occasional reflections on a “structural psychology” and suggests an approach to further develop this concept as part of his relational program. For this purpose, the paper first elaborates the psychoanalytical and psychological aspects of habitus-field theory. Based on data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) it then illustrates the empirical correspondence between Bourdieu’s social space and the big five personality factors as well as occupational interests on the basis of various indicators. The psychological information is transferred into empirical typologies, and the resulting classes are used for a psychologically informed reconstruction of the social space. The study and its results demonstrate the potential of a psychological interpretation of Bourdieu’s habitus concept and a socio-spatial, structural interpretation of psychological characteristics.     

The credibility of monetary reform – New evidence

The history of monetary policy is characterised by crisis and reform. The paper is dedicated to an explanation of what makes monetary reforms successful. A cross-sectional econometric analysis is chosen to deal with this problem. It is based on a standard macroeconomic model of commitment and credibility. As the dependent variable, we calculate a post-reform inflation rate. The exogenous variables are the degree of legal commitment, the constraining influence of institutions and a new variable for ex-ante credibility of the reform. The paper allows for the conclusion that monetary commitment, the consideration of institutional constraints and abstinence from the money press are crucial for the success of a monetary reform.     

Transnationale Diskurse in der europäischen Medienöffentlichkeit: Die Debatte zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei

In December 2004, the European Council decided unanimously to initiate accession talks with Turkey. Although Turkey’s definite membership depends on successful negotiations and will be decided upon later, the Council will hardly be able to revise this offer and it seems reasonable to assume that Turkey will join the EU sooner or later. This article presents a comparative analysis on whether and how intensively this decision was accompanied by a transnational discourse in the public sphere of the mass media. The study is based on leading quality newspapers from the EU member states France, Germany, and Great Britain.     

Moment of Stasis: The Successful Failure of a Constitution for Europe

The 2005 French and Dutch negative votes on the Constitution open up a space of conceptualisation, not only of Europe's relation to its demos, but significantly to its failures. Through a critical analysis of mainly Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, the article proposes taking a distance from traditional constitutional dogmatics that are no longer capable of dealing with the paradox of contemporary society, and more specifically with the eventual resurgence of the European project as one of absence and stasis: the two terms are used to explain the need, on the one hand, to maintain the 'absent community' of Europe, and, on the other, to start realising that any conceptualisation of the European project will now have to take place in that space of instability and contingency revealed by the constitutional failure. The relation between law and politics, the location of a constitution, the distinction between social and normative legitimacy, the connection between European identity and demos, and the concept of continuity between constitutional text and context are revisited in an attempt to trace the constitutional failure as the constitutional moment par excellence.     

Symptom Validity Testing in Claimants with Alleged Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Comparing the Morel Emotional Numbing Test, the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, and the Word Memory Test

In independent medical examinations, unjustified claims of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are to be expected at an increased rate. In a prospective study, consecutive cases of patients claiming PTSD who underwent independent neuropsychiatric evaluation were analyzed. For 61 adult patients, results of three symptom validity tests (Morel Emotional Numbing Test, Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, and Word Memory Test) were available. Seventy percent of all claimants showed probable negative response bias in at least one of the three tests, 25% in all three tests. High probability of negative response bias was associated with symptom overreporting and demonstration of cognitive deficits in performance tests. The results indicate that high rates of uncooperativeness must be expected in civil forensic patients with claimed PTSD. A multi-method approach to the assessment of response distortion in PTSD claimants is indicated.     

Gender equality in Swedish AI policies. What's the problem represented to be?

Over the past few decades, Sweden has established itself as a “world leader” in gender equality. Alongside this development, Swedish politicians have also initiated ambitious plans that aim to establish the country as “world class” in terms of digitalization. International research shows that women and racialized groups are in a minority in the design processes, that AI facial recognition systems are built with white male faces as the norm, and that digital tools replicate racial injustices. In this paper, we are interested in if, and if so how, gender equality is articulated and thus filled with meaning in national policies on AI and digitalization. The overall aim is to discuss the potential of gender (equality) mainstreaming to challenge systems of privilege in the implementation of AI systems in the public sector. The paper analyses how gender equality is filled with meaning in national policy documents on AI and gender equality. The main findings show that gender equality is turned into a question of lack of knowledge and information, which in turn blocks out an understanding of gender equality as something that is related to gendered power relations.