Canada and the Honduran Coup

The purpose of this article is to expose the part played by Canadian imperialism in Honduras before and after the military overthrow of democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, on 28 June 2009. It draws attention to the neglected role of the Canadian state's efforts to protect the interests of Canadian capital in Honduras and Latin America more generally through the constant undermining of Zelaya's attempts to return to his legitimate office, and in the ultimate consolidation of the coup under Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo in early 2010. The article simultaneously develops a critique of what has become the standard account of the Honduran coup of 2009. We show how Zelaya was neither a puppet of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, nor an autocrat seeking to entrench his power indefinitely through illegal constitutional reform when he was violently tossed out of government.     

Quality of democracy in unrecognized states: lessons from Northern Cyprus

Scholars have recently debated whether non-recognition is a blessing or a curse for democracy. Some suggest that lack of recognition forces political elites to democratize and acquire internal legitimacy to compensate for the lack of external legitimacy. Others suggest that democratization is used as a strategy by which to acquire international recognition. Still others claim that non-recognition obliges unrecognized states to rely on a patron state which, in turn, hinders the quality of democracy. To contribute to this discussion, we have conducted an in-depth case study. Focusing on democratic quality in Northern Cyprus from 2010 to 2016, it is observed that reliance on a patron state leads to dynamics of tutelage, in turn hindering the quality of democracy.     

Unexpected Persistence Amidst Enlargement Stasis: Usages of Europe in Turkey’s Nuclear Energy Debate

Recent studies on European Union (EU) Enlargement have emphasised the importance of usages of ‘Europe’ by domestic actors as a necessary condition for the EU to have an impact on domestic politics. We study the usages of Europe in the critical case of Turkey’s nuclear energy policy. We analyse the narratives and actions of domestic actors in Turkey to identify if they use ‘Europe’ (the EU and the idea of Europe). We reach the counter-intuitive finding of usages by both state and non-state actors, which illustrates that usages of Europe can persist despite enlargement stasis in candidate states.     

Reproduktion als Praxis

The interdependency of ?production“ and ?reproduction“ has increasingly attracted the attention of the scientific community and the media. Biological and social reproductions are topics of family and gender studies: In family research reproduction is analysed as a basic function of the family; in gender research reproduction is mainly studied as a factor that effects social inequality. While sociological research was for a long-time concentrated on the ?conciliation“ of ?work“ and ?(family) life“, nowadays a change of perspective is necessary: How can employees maintain their psychological and physical strength when the work sphere becomes more and more flexible? How can they safeguard their social relationships? The article connects the categories ?work-strength –life-strength “ as a perspective that considers the structural and contradictory relationship of ?work“ and ?life“. With the concept of ?doing reproduction“, individual efforts are brought in the centre of research. Hereby is shown that the functionality of reproduction as a social sphere is fundamentally based on reproduction as an individual practice.     

The impact of suicide on the family

Little research has examined the consequences of a suicide for social or family networks. Because suicide occurs within families, the focus on the aftermath of suicide within families is an important next step to determine exactly how to help survivors. In this article, we review and summarize the research on the impact of suicide on individuals within families and on family and social networks. We begin with a discussion of family changes following suicide. Next, we discuss the effects of suicide on social networks overall and responses of children and the elderly to a suicide in the family. Finally, we identify key issues that remain to be resolved in family survivor research and make recommendations for future studies.     

Operational oceanography in Indonesia

In 2005 Indonesian and European institutes joined to start the first step for the implementation of an Ocean Operational System in the Indonesian archipelago. The system will support the decision making process for the sustainable use of marine resources, providing useful information and added value products as well as a service for an improved management of the sea with high business impact to targeted groups as public authorities and commercial operators (coastal managers, fishermen, shipping companies). In this paper the System is shortly described with its potential benefits and economic and social impacts.

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Presidential Environmental Appointees in Comparative Perspective

The pathologies of the presidential appointment process are well documented and include appointees' frequent lack of federal government work experience and their short appointment tenures. Less well understood are whether and to what extent these problems affect different subsets of high-level appointees, such as administrators in the environmental bureaucracy. Top-tier environmental appointees tend to stay longer in their appointed positions than do presidential appointees generally, and more than 40 percent have prior federal government management experience. These and other data suggest that key problems ascribed to the presidential appointment process are less salient in the case of high-level environmental appointees. Appointees in Republican and Democratic administrations have comparable levels of academic training and federal government experience. These similarities notwithstanding, White House expectations for appointees' political loyalty varies more from administration to administration. The Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush (first term) administrations maintained the highest demands for political loyalty, with consequences for the policy–administration dichotomy in environmental agencies.     

Rechtsextremistische Wahlabsicht und regionaler Kontext: Mehrebenenanalysen zur Rolle sozialer Milieus und regionaler Gruppenkonflikte in Deutschland

In this article, we test individual and contextual level hypotheses about right-wing extremist voting in Germany derived from cleavage theory and the theory of realistic group conflicts. The data base is exceptional insofar as it allows multilevel analyses of right-wing extremism that include the level of the German districts between the respondent and the federal state level. Our findings demonstrate — to our knowledge for the first time — that the contextual influence of the religious/catholic milieu as well as of the regional tradition of trade union membership reduce the likelihood of a right-wing extremist party preference. Cleavage theory is thus clearly supported. With respect to the theory of realistic group conflicts we find support for some of its implications.