Who wants the euro – and why? Economic explanations of public attitudes towards a single European currency

The paper looks at whether public attitudes towards a single European currency held in the European Union member states reflect a rational evaluation of the involved benefits and costs. It finds that they do: the looser monetary and fiscal policy was in the past, and the more time a country spent in the EMS, the more citizens welcome the euro. Attitudes towards the euro do not seem consistent with attitudes towards a European Central Bank, however. Upon closer scrutiny, opponents of a single currency appear to be less consistent and less rational in their responses than proponents.     

A Theoretical Note on the Differences Between Attitudes,Opinions, and Values

This theoretical note examines the concepts attitude, opinion, and value. It is argued that such acquired behavioral pre-dispositions are re-lated but have different conceptual foci and tend to address different phenomena. Although it is important to recognize their interconnected-ness, their indiscriminate use is likely to lead to messy theoretical ar-guments and misleading interpretations of empirical findings. This ar-ticle discusses key-aspects that need to be considered in the study of at-titudes, opinions, and values, as well as the relations between these.     

Political performance and types of democracy: Findings from comparative studies

Abstract. This essay explores the relationships between political performance profiles and major types of democracy from a comparative perspective. The article focuses attention mainly on the political performance of majoritarian and non-majoritarian government, democracies with small and large numbers of veto players, hybrid regimes, presidentialism and parliamentary government, referendum democracy and representative government, and established as apposed to partial democracies. The findings point to relatively robust and significant patterns of relationships between performance and type of democracy. Types of democracy are important constraints and represent at the same time enabling conditions of policy choices. However, a caveat must be added: types of democracy do not determine policy choices and they also do not determine the outcome of these choices.     

Voting on standardisation

This paper analyses equilibria of voting on commodity standards within the framework of a Farrell-Saloner model which takes into consideration the trade-off between network effects and losses from a reduction of variety. Social welfare implications are derived and discussed with respect to manipulations of majority rules. The findings indicate that welfare implications of standards are highly sensitive to the decision procedure and that the choice of the decision rule is non-trivial as it can at least prevent worst outcomes if not guarantee optimal results.     

Perceived Injustice in Unified Germany and Mental Health

In a questionnaire study, 929 West Germans and 1275 East Germans were asked to appraise East–West differences in life quality on the labor market 7 years after the German unification. Judgments included perceived East–West differences, the justice of East-West differences, and temporal comparisons (changes since the unification and expectations in East and West Germany). Changes and expectations for East and West Germany were combined to obtain social-temporal comparisons. Negative emotions (envy, anxiety, moral outrage, guilt, hopelessness) and positive emotions (gratefulness, pride) regarding the situation of the labor market were also assessed. Mental health indicators included measures of depression, self-esteem, and psychosomatic well-being. Parameters of a path model were estimated by regressing (i) mental health on emotions and judgments and (ii) emotions on judgments. Mental health of East Germans is associated negatively with envy, anxiety, and hopelessness. Moral outrage has a positive suppressor effect. Mental health of West Germans is linked negatively with envy, anxiety, and existential guilt whereas pride, the perception of unfair privileges, and optimistic expectations have positive path effects. Appraising East–West differences as unjust plays a core role in predicting emotions in both samples. Social comparisons and social-temporal comparisons are superior to egocentric temporal comparisons for predicting social emotions (envy, moral outrage, guilt) while egocentric temporal comparisons are generally more important for predicting nonsocial emotions (anxiety, hopelessness). Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Intersections of gender and water: comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra,Ghana and Cape Town,South Africa

A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well as intersectional differences (e.g. race, income, and so forth). While these relationships are complex, multiple, and vary by context, it is frequently argued that due to responsibility for domestic provision or other pathways, women may be particularly affected if water quality or access is compromised. This paper reports on a statistical evaluation of a 478 household survey conducted in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa in early 2012. Interrogating our survey results in the light of the ideas of gender differentiated access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences of water, we open up considerations related to the context of each of our study sites, and also invite possible revisions and new directions for these debates. In particular, we are interested in the instances where differences among male and female respondents were less pronounced than expected. Highlighting these unexpected results we find it helpful to draw attention to methods – in particular we argue that a binary male–female approach is not that meaningful for the analysis, and instead, gender analysis requires some attention to intersectional differences (e.g. homeownership, employment, or age). We also make the case for the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative work to understand these relationships, as well as opening up what might be learned by more adequately exploring the resonances and tensions between these approaches.     

Klarstellungen zur Grundrechtsbeschwerde

Im Verfahren über eine Grundrechtsbeschwerde kann nach st?ndiger Rechtsprechung des Obersten Gerichtshofes die Sachverhaltsgrundlage des dringenden Tatverdachts nur nach Ma?gabe der M?ngel- und Tatsachenrüge der Z 5 und 5a des § 281 Abs 1 StPO in Frage gestellt werden. Die rechtliche Annahme einer der von § 180 Abs 2 StPO genannten Gefahren wird vom Obersten Gerichtshof im Rahmen des Grundrechtsbeschwerdeverfahrens – vorbehaltlich der in § 180 Abs 3 StPO genannten Tatumst?nde, welche jedenfalls in Rechnung zu stellen sind – dahin überprüft, ob sie aus den angeführten bestimmten Tatsachen abgeleitet werden durften, ohne dass die darin liegende Ermessensentscheidung als willkürlich angesehen werden müsste. Die Unschuldsvermutung des Art 6 Abs 2 MRK gilt hinsichtlich der für die Annahme eines Haftgrundes nach § 180 Abs 2 StPO herangezogenen bestimmten Tatsachen nicht.