BEYOND POLITICS AND POSITIONS: A CALL FOR COLLABORATION BETWEEN FAMILY COURT AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROFESSIONALS

The domestic violence advocacy and family court communities have each grown dramatically over the last three decades. Although these professional communities share many values in common, they often find themselves at odds with one another on a host of issues. This article examines the practical, political, definitional, and ideological differences between the two communities and calls for them to join forces and collaborate on behalf of children and families.     

Peter Berger and the Comedic Drama of Political,Economic and Social Life

Peter L. Berger’s work offers his readers a window into the human drama in all its dimension: political, economic and social. He invites his readers to think intensely, endlessly, and shamelessly about the doings of man. Through a comparative analysis of Invitation to Sociology this paper discusses Berger’s contributions to the sciences of man in terms of methodological individualism, the theory of unintended consequences, spontaneous sociability, institutional analysis, and freedom. In so doing, I hope to show that Berger’s work demonstrates the intellectual power of spontaneous order analysis and the link between the humanistic project in sociology and our understanding of the human condition in general and the freedom of the individual in society in particular.     

Folgerungen aus dem Lissabonurteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts

Das Lissabonurteil des deutschen Bundesverfassungsgerichts hat gro?e Aufmerksamkeit erzeugt, die keineswegs auf Deutschland beschr?nkt blieb. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob die vom Bundesverfassungsgericht gezogenen Schlussfolgerungen auch die Rechtslage in ?sterreich tangieren. Insbesondere stellt sich die Frage, ob eine allf?llige Gesamt?nderung der Bundesverfassung durch den Vertrag von Lissabon neu zu diskutieren w?re. Schlie?lich behandelt der Beitrag auch die Frage, ob der Vertrag von Lissabon zwingend eine ?nderung der parlamentarischen Mitwirkungsrechte in ?sterreich erfordert.     

An Election With No Losers: The 1994 Federal Elections in the New Germany

The German federal election in October 1994, just four years after German Unity, revealed that clear divisions between east and west Germany still exist. Whilst the PDS on the left of the political spectrum was supported by around one fifth of east German voters, the parties on the right gained negligible support in Germany as a whole. The federal German electoral system, based on a personalised sytem of PR, again played a key role; it is, however still too early in the development of the new Germany to speak of a single new party system.