‘No one is Forgotten,Nothing is Forgotten’: Duty,Patriotism, and the Russian Search Movement

This article discusses duty in relation to the past, focusing on Russia’s nationwide Search Movement (Poiskovoe dvizhenie). This civil movement of volunteers searches for the remains of fallen soldiers left on the battlefields of World War II all over Russia and has young people as its main target group. Despite in many ways being critical of the state, the Search Movement explicitly wants to make a contribution to the patriotic upbringing of Russian youth. In its work, the movement relates to the official government plans for patriotic education. Several obligations are central to the notion of patriotism: for the Search Movement, an obligation to the past, to remember, is the most important. In this article I will examine how the malleable concept of duty allows the Search Movement to carry out work implicitly critical of state failings in the name of patriotism.     

An Application of Unconditional Quantile Regression to Cigarette Taxes

This study investigates heterogeneous response to state cigarette tax increases using unconditional quantile regression (UQR). We make two contributions to the empirical policy analysis literature. First, we argue that UQR provides more policy‐relevant information than conventional quantile regression in most empirical state policy analyses. Second, we document cigarette tax elasticity across a sample of adult smokers in the Current Population Survey Tobacco Use Supplements between 1992 and 2011. Our ordinary least squares regression show an imprecise negative relationship between taxes and cigarettes smoked in the past 30 days, while UQR reveals a U‐shaped relationship: Only moderate smokers reduce their smoking following a cigarette tax increase, and the magnitude of the effect is small. A $1.00 (135 percent) increase in the cigarette tax leads to a 3.5 percent reduction in the number of cigarettes smoked in the past 30 days among the most responsive smokers (implied tax elasticity = ?0.03).     

From Nomos to Hegung: Sovereignty and the Laws of War in Schmitt's International Order

Carl Schmitt's notion of nomos is commonly regarded as the international equivalent to the national sovereign's decision on the exception. But can concrete spatial order alone turn a constellation of forces into an international order? This article looks at Schmitt's work The Nomos of the Earth and proposes that it is the process of bracketing war called Hegung which takes the place of the sovereign in the international order Schmitt describes. Beginning from an analysis of nomos, the ordering function of the presocratic concept moira is explored. It is argued that the process of Hegung, like moira, does not just achieve the containment of war, but constitutes the condition of possibility for plural order.     

Social identities in the policy process

Policy Sciences - This paper introduces social identity theory and self-categorization theory to policy process research. Drawing from the prominent and widely acknowledged psychological social...     

Weisungsfreie Verwaltungsbehörden nach Art 20 B-VG idF der B-VGN 2008

Die Einrichtung weisungsfreier Verwaltungsbeh?rden war bislang dem Verfassungsgesetzgeber vorbehalten und die Kompetenz des einfachen Gesetzgebers im Wesentlichen auf die Einrichtung von Kollegialbeh?rden mit richterlichem Einschlag begrenzt. Mit der B-VGN 2008 wurde die Einrichtung weisungsfreier Verwaltungsbeh?rden nunmehr – iSd Vermeidung verfassungsrechtlicher Sonderbestimmungen – dem einfachen Gesetzgeber übertragen. Art 20 B-VG idF der B-VGN 2008 wirft zahlreiche Fragestellungen auf, die zT auch bereits den Gegenstand verfassungsgerichtlicher Verfahren bildeten. Der folgende Beitrag widmet sich einigen ausgew?hlten Themen, wobei insbesondere die Auswirkungen der Novelle auf Kollegialbeh?rden mit richterlichem Einschlag n?her untersucht werden sollen.     

Securing the Homelands: Transatlantic Co-operation after Bush

Since 9/11, internal security co-operation has grown into a major feature of transatlantic relations. This article seeks to appraise both the achievements of the Bush administration in this field and the prospects for President Obama's period of office. Homeland security has been a new and difficult area of co-operation to foster, yet both sides of the Atlantic have come to recognise their shared interests in working together. The article cautions those European policy-makers who are hoping for a major change in homeland security co-operation under the new president. It is likely that the policies of the new administration will be characterised more by continuity than by change.