The Finnish Citizens’ Initiative: Towards Inclusive Agenda‐setting?

This article examines whether the Citizens' Initiative (CI) in Finland has enhanced inclusion in processes of political agenda‐setting. Democratic innovations such as CIs have been proposed as a solution to the challenges facing Western democracies. CIs are expected to increase political inclusion by allowing citizens to set the political agenda and by mobilising otherwise marginalised or passive citizens. However, the empirical evidence on this proposition remains scarce. This study examines the impact of the CI in Finland on political inclusion. It relies on the Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) to determine whether the CI mobilises citizens who otherwise tend to be less involved in political matters and thereby enhances inclusiveness. The data come from the Finnish National Election Study 2015 (FNES2015), which is a cross‐sectional representative survey conducted in the wake of the national parliamentary elections in April 2015. Logistic regression models are used in the article to examine the relative importance of socioeconomic resources and civic skills, psychological political engagement and recruitment networks. The results show that while users have many of the familiar traits of political activists, the CI also activates marginalised groups. Most importantly, young citizens are likely to support CIs and the Internet constitutes a central recruitment network. In this sense, the CI has helped increase democratic inclusiveness.     

Die Konstruktion der soziologischen Realität durch Forschungsrating

The article subjects the research rating of sociology, published in 2008 and carried out by an evaluation group on behalf of the German Science Council, to a secondary analysis. It is shown that the research rating constructs a reality of sociology which does justice neither to the variety of sociological knowledge production nor to its own claim of multidimensionality. Unwillingly, the peer reviewed article has imposed itself as the dominant criterion for assessing the research quality of research units against other types of publication and other activities such as externally funded research, knowledge transfer for practical problem-solving and knowledge diffusion in the public sphere. This preference also affected the assessment of entire research institutions with regard to their impact and efficiency as well as the devaluation of knowledge transfer and diffusion. In this way, sociology is limited to the type of professional sociology, while critical, public and policy-oriented sociology are displaced.     

Emile Durkheims Moralpolitik des Individualismus

Emile Durkheim was neither a political scientist nor a political sociologist. His oeuvre though exhibits a political dimension which is not easy to grasp. This article makes the attempt to reconstruct his project of a moral politics of individualism. How is it possible to institutionalize successfully what Durkheim calls moral individualism? Durkheim’s project rests upon two pillars: the scientific and scholarly pillar which aims at the establishment of sociology as a scientific discipline at universities. The political pillar which sets out to analyze the socio-structural, institutional, cultural conditions, forms and effects of individualism and the successful socialization of its values which allows to take seriously the rhetoric of the freedom and dignity of human beings in modernity. Durkheim’s project is confronted with the traditional images of politics and the social order to delineate the differentia specifica of his moral politics of individualism.     

Rethinking the Tunisian miracle: a party politics view

Five years on from the Tunisian revolution, Tunisia stands as the sole success story of the Arab Spring. The country since then has managed to adopt a pluralist and democratic constitution, and held three free and fair elections. Accordingly, in the eyes of several observers, Tunisia is now in the process of consolidating its new democracy. However, the reality on the ground seems much gloomier, as most recent opinion surveys suggest that there is a significant degree of dissatisfaction, not only with political parties and Parliament but also with the very institution of democracy. Nevertheless, what accounts for this change? After the collapse of the long-lasting and oppressive Ben Ali regime, how, just in five years, has Tunisians’ confidence in the democratic process changed? This article accounts for this state of affairs from a party politics view, arguing that political parties, which are the main protagonists of the consolidation process, fail to fulfill their role of acquiring legitimacy for the new regime. While party–state relations seem to be stabilized due to the inclusiveness of the constitution-making process, both inter-party relationships and the relationship between parties and society suffer from numerous flaws which, in turn, hamper the democratic consolidation process.     

Policy Analysis,International Relations,and European Governance – Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

ABSTRACT

The article highlights the rationale of the special issue in terms of its objectives and guiding principles. It maps different evolutions and challenges within three analytical streams (1) regarding the field of policy analysis, (2) concerning the interaction between domestic and international affairs, and (3) with regards to the transformation of European Union governance in troubled times. These three research avenues highlight how not only European governance itself has evolved in a changing world, but also how the analysis of interests, institutions, and policy-making has morphed, oftentimes transgressing disciplinary and methodological boundaries.     

“Vivimos en Jaula de Oro”: The Impact of State-Level Legislation on Immigrant Latino Families

This study sought to learn from Latino immigrant parents which and how state-level immigration policies impact their families. Fifty-four Latino immigrant parents participated in interviews. Constructivist grounded theory methods were used to complete the analysis. Results indicate that fear of detainment, deportation, and family separation affects participants emotionally and behaviorally. Participants experience exploitive practices in the workplace and through traffic infractions. Social support networks are constantly changing and weakened when families relocate in search of immigrant friendly communities. Simultaneously, parents develop strategies to protect their families against stringent immigration enforcement. Implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed.     

Seal the Deal: Bargaining Positions,Institutional Design,and the Duration of Preferential Trade Negotiations

Multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization have stalled. This has contributed to a steep rise in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). At the same time, negotiations for PTAs have not always proven quick and painless: While some treaties are sealed within a few months or days only, other agreements are preceded by protracted bargaining processes in trade and trade-related issue areas. In this article, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical variation. More specifically, we argue that PTA negotiations take longer the greater the distance between the prospective partners’ initial bargaining positions. Moreover, we contend that negotiation processes become more protracted the higher the relative ambition of the prospective PTA. Due to the limited links to the domestic political arena in autocracies, we expect this latter effect to play out for groups of democratic bargaining partners only. We test these two hypotheses for 198 preferential trade negotiations using novel measures for bargaining templates and the ambition of PTA clauses. In our two-stage survival models, we find support for our argument. In line with qualitative evidence from recent preferential trade initiatives, our models indicate that services, investment and intellectual property rights are particularly sticky agenda items for democratic leaders at the international bargaining table.     

EU-Professionalismus als transnationales Feld

The article scrutinizes the emergence and expansion of EU-related professions and forms of occupation from a field-analytical perspective. Starting from the observation that the EU is not just an influential political actor, but also an expanding area of work, expert involvement and job specialization the paper discusses various forms, dimensions and loci of the ongoing “professionalization” of Europe. It is shown that the expansion of EU-related professional activities is not just a phenomenon of Brussels and the “Eurocracy”, but has expanded into the member states and various areas of occupational activity and expertise. The EU professionalization is conceptualized as a transnational field of specialization and professionalization which produces own principles, forms of knowledge and resources which are used and reproduced by experts and specialists. The field perspective allows identifying common principles, but also the variance and transnational dimension of EU affairs.