Umbau des Sozialstaates? Österreich und Deutschland im Vergleich

In comparative analysis of welfare states, there is a consensus that mature welfare state systems have been confronted, for some considerable time, with substantial pressure towards re-structuring and that, as a result, they actually have undertaken several and varied modifications. This articles aims at exploring and analysing these developments in Austria and Germany from a comparative point of view. The analysis concentrates on two vital fields of social policy: old-age insurance and unemployment insurance. Especially in respect of the development of social policy and regarding important characteristics of the two welfare state systems, both countries traditionally show a large degree of resemblance to each other. Many similarities remained to exist during the phase of growing pressures on the welfare state, whereas at the same time it is evident that differences between the two countries increased. The respective actual developments will be interpreted in the light of corresponding theories of comparative welfare state research and classified as gradual and structural changes.     

Der Geist des „Roten Wien“ ins 21. Jahrhundert gerettet: Karl Popper Reconsidered by Malachi Haim Hacohen

Ohne Zusammenfassung Der nachstehende Text ist eine überarbeitere Fassung der Laudatio für Malachi Haim Hacohen anl?sslich der überreichung des Victor-Adler-Staatspreises in Wien am 25. April 2003. Hacohen erhielt diesen Preis für sein Werk „Karl Popper — the Formative Years, 1902–1945. Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna“, Cambridge: University Press 2000.     

Candidates' Ideological Locations,Abstention, and Turnout in U.S. Midterm Senate Elections

Many spatial models of voting suggest that citizens are more likely to abstain when they feel indifferent toward the candidates or alienated from them. In presidential elections, previous research offers evidence that alienation and indifference affect individuals' probabilities of voting. We find evidence that indifference and alienation also affect the decision to vote in midterm Senate elections, a context not previously explored. These individual-level effects imply that candidates' ideological locations should influence aggregate turnout by affecting the proportions of citizens who feel indifferent toward or alienated from the candidates. Our aggregate-level analysis supports this (at least in contests featuring two previous and/or future members of Congress). Our findings underscore the importance of the electoral context for understanding citizen behavior and suggest that elections featuring at least one centrist candidate may be normatively appealing since they stimulate participation.     

Do school accountability systems make it more difficult for low‐performing schools to attract and retain high‐quality teachers?

Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school‐based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low‐performing students face in retaining and attracting high‐quality teachers. Most clear are the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence on teacher turnover, in such schools. Less clear is the extent to which that higher turnover has translated into a decline in the average qualifications of the teachers in the low‐performing schools. Other states with more primitive accountability systems can expect even greater adverse effects on teacher turnover in low‐performing schools. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Regulatory budgeting: A bad idea whose time has come?

Advocates of regulatory relief propose a budget that would annually cap regulatory costs. But emulating fiscal budgeting would be much more difficult than they envision. An arbitrary macrobudgetary constraint would have to be selected, and the potential scope of the regulatory budget would be vast. The process of regulatory budgeting would be very-time consuming, and could increase micromanagement by the Congress. Estimating regulatory costs would be challenging, and ignoring regulatory benefits would be unfair and inefficient. A preferable alternative to regulatory budgeting would be to expand the Government Performance and Results Act to include cost-effectiveness reviews for regulations.     

Interstate Cooperation: The Roles of the State Attorneys General

State attorneys general are major participants in intergovernmentalrelations in the United States. This article presents six modelsthat may explain their interactions with each other and teststhree hypotheses associated with two models. Their interactionscomport with the cooperative and the innovation-diffusion models.Only limited evidence supports the hostility model and its associatedhypothesis. No evidence supports the mercantilist and competitivemodels. The response from only one attorney general suggestedhis actions are based on the benign neglect model. The conclusionis drawn that the cooperative activities of the attorneys generalhave produced a more harmonious federal system in terms of enforcementpolicies.     

On the Nature of Tolerance: Dichotomous or Continuous?*

The purpose of this article is to reconsider the claim made recently by Mondak and Sanders that political tolerance ought to be thought to be a dichotomous rather than continuous variable. Using data from both Russia and the United States, I demonstrate that those Mondak and Sanders regard as uniquely tolerant are most likely no more than people who were given insufficient opportunity to express their intolerance. Even if such a phenomenon of “absolute tolerance” exists (all ideas expressed in all ways are to be tolerated), it is sufficiently rare that few practical implications are indicated for those doing empirical work on political tolerance and intolerance. * I appreciate the valuable comments of Jeffcry Mondak on an earlier version of this paper.