The German Parliament

ABSTRACT

In the words of Louis Marie de La Haye Cormenin (1788-1864), the French lawyer, politician and pamphleteer, in the Livre des orateurs (1843), ‘Four people know the secret of the weakness of the parliamentary orator: his doctor, his confessor, his lover and his stenographer’. Stenographers worked for the first time in 1840 in the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament. The Bureau of Stenographers as a permanent office was established in 1868. For the Upper House and the House of Representatives, a joint Bureau of Stenographers was organized with two superiors, four auditors, twelve ordinary stenographers and two rotation guides. The stenographers worked at five-minute intervals with no backlog of work. The stenographic report of each session was published half an hour later after the last word had been spoken in the session room. The parliamentary stenographer was required to have a university degree and to take a shorthand exam. Journalists, lawyers, professors and also engineers were employed as stenographers. Reproductive intelligence, quick comprehension, responsiveness, and craftsmanship were some of the qualities that were required to be a qualified parliamentary stenographer.     

Israeli snipers in the Al-Aqsa intifada: killing,humanity and lived experience

This article is an analysis of Israeli military snipers who served during the Al-Aqsa intifada. It takes issue with the scholarly consensus that, for such acts to take place, perpetrators have to somehow dehumanise their enemies. Based on interviews with 30 individuals, it shows that snipers do not always need to dehumanise their targets and that they experience killing in conflicting ways, both as pleasurable and as disturbing. The snipers simultaneously deploy distancing mechanisms aimed at dehumanising enemies and constantly recognise their basic humanity. The article ends on a cautionary note: violence should not be seen as only belonging to the realm of the pathological. Rather we must be aware of rules of legitimate violence, the culturally specific ideology of violence at work in specific cases. This kind of ideology may ‘humanse’ enemies but still classify them as opponents against which violence may be legitimately used.     

Linking national and global population agendas: Case studies from eight developing countries

Human rights advocates have sought to shame the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) into compliance with 'universal' norms. For more than a decade, foreign critics have tried to give the PRC the diplomatic equivalent of a black eye. Proponents of human rights have exposed abuses in the PRC, condemned Beijing in international settings, and protested when PRC leaders travelled abroad, as a way of denying the PRC international prestige. In response, the PRC has issued a sequence of indignant white papers on human rights and has demonstrated a robust capacity to offer gestures of compliance while otherwise resisting pressure to reform. This paper questions whether the effort to shame the PRC leads to enduring improvement in the protection of human rights. It suggests that efforts to shame Beijing arouse indignation born of national pride, coupled with a cultural relativist defence, but that there is little evidence of enduring change. Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink's model of socialisation to international human rights norms informs an examination of how progress toward improved human rights in the PRC has 'stalled'. Indeed, absent a viable opposition within China, shaming may not only be ineffective in altering Beijing's behaviour, but also counterproductive.     

The Poverty of Statistics and the Statistics of Poverty

This paper offers a critique of the picture of world growth and world inequality generally disseminated by international agencies. The positive view commonly presented depends on the widespread consensus that economic performance should be measured using ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP) statistics, instead of market exchange rates. Although originally conceived narrowly as a basis for comparing living standards, PPP indicators are now indiscriminately promoted as an unexceptionable standard for comparing and aggregating national income statistics. This article highlights the flaws in the PPP approach by accepting the claims made on their behalf at face value. It shows that, even on the basis of these claims, the wrong conclusions have been drawn. By comparing PPP and market exchange rate measures of inequality it shows that what really took place, at the end of the last century, was a systematic reduction in the prices of consumption goods in the Third World. PPP statistics have concealed this underlying and unsustainable trend, allowing it to be packaged as a stable reduction in poverty. Neither genuine growth, nor lasting poverty reduction was achieved over this period. The fall in the price of consumer goods masked a systematic failure to overcome the central problem of development—the high price of capital goods, which PPP statistics understate, and of intermediate goods, which they completely omit.     

Strategies used by Health Scrutiny Committees to Influence Decision-makers

The scrutiny function, designed to enhance and provide a counterbalance to executive decision-making, is a key element in the modernisation of public service delivery in England. Early research expressed concerns about the effectiveness of scrutiny however, with lack of responsiveness by local decision-makers being suggested as one of the main difficulties. This paper applies a model of political influence strategies drawn from the business sector to analyse the strategies which health scrutiny committees in eight local authorities adopted in order to influence decision-makers. The relevance of the model to health scrutiny is assessed, and possible implications for enhancing health scrutiny in the future are discussed.     

The role of local government in the review of public administration in Northern Ireland: The challenges of enhancement,devolution and modernisation

A very limited system of local government has been one of the main characteristics of public administration in Northern Ireland for the past 35 years. Yet in the recently completed Review of Public Administration changes in local government occupied a very dominant position. This article gives an account of the reasons for this, analyses the processes which led to what may be viewed as an enhancement of local government but argues that the principles adopted by the UK Government to guide the reforms, of subsidiarity, strong local government, coterminosity and good relations have not been met. The lack of an analysis in the Review of the implications of devolution for local government reform and the distribution of functions is highlighted including the relevance of the distinction between administrative and political devolution. How the proposed reforms relate to the UK-wide local government modernisation agenda is also discussed.     

The continuing relevance of Germany's engine for CEE and the EU

The article looks first into the nature of the relations between Germany and the CEE countries a decade since the accession of the CEE countries to the EU. The relations are characterized as normalised and intensive with diverse levels of closeness and co-operation reflecting of the conceptual and ideological compatibility/differences.Next, the article focuses on the German attitude to the euro zone crisis. Germany has become a hegemon in the rescue effort aimed at stabilisation and economic invigoration of the euro zone. However, German hegemony has developed by default, not by design: her leading position is linked with considerable political and financial costs. Germany moved central stage and took the position of a reluctant hegemon. However, German role is contested internationally (it has not the support of the French government in key areas) as well as internally (particularly by the Federal Constitutional Court and the Bundesbank).The article argues that the new situation makes the German–CEE relations increasingly relevant for both sides. The German leadership of the EU increasing split along the north–south divide requires backing by the Northern group countries to which the CEE in general belongs. Given a number of reasons the CEE countries implement three distinctive strategies of co-operation with Germany in European politics. Also military co-operation, which remained rather limited so far, may receive new impulses, given the financial austerity.