The Pluralism of Global Administrative Law

As public power is increasingly exercised in structures of globalgovernance, principles of domestic law and politics are extendedto the global level, with serious repercussions for the structureof international law. Yet, as this article seeks to show forthe emerging global administrative law, this extension is oftenproblematic. Using administrative law mechanisms to enhancethe accountability of global regulation faces the problem offundamental contestation over the question of to whom globalgovernance should be accountable. National, international andcosmopolitan constituencies are competing for primacy, and thisresults in an often disorderly interplay of accountability mechanismsat different levels and in different regimes. This pluraliststructure, based on pragmatic accommodation rather than cleardecisions, strongly contrasts with the ideals of coherence andunity in modern constitutionalism and domestic administrativelaw. However, given the structure of global society, it is likelyto endure and it is also normatively preferable to alternative,constitutionalist approaches. It helps avoid the friction thatmay result from a federal-type distribution of powers and thepractical problems of a consociational order, and by denyingall constituencies primacy it reflects the legitimacy deficitsof each of them. Mirroring divergent views on the right scopeof the political order, it also respects everybody’s equalright to political participation. A pluralist global administrativelaw thus presents an alternative to problematic domestic modelsfor ensuring accountability in the circumstances of global governance.     

The politicians’ wage gap: insights from German members of parliament

Using a unique dataset of German members of parliament (MPs), this paper analyzes the politicians’ wage gap (PWG). After controlling for observable characteristics as well as accounting for election probabilities and campaigning costs, we find a positive income premium for MPs which is statistically and economically significant. Our results are consistent with the citizen candidate model, with a PWG of 35%–65% when comparing MPs to citizens occupying executive positions. However, it shrinks to zero when restricting the control group to top level executives.     

Nanoscience and technology publications and patents: a review of social science studies and search strategies

We undertake a comprehensive review of more than 120 social science studies on nanotechnology, 90% of which are based on the analyses of the nanotechnology publications and patents. We discussed four intellectual debates formed by these studies, namely whether nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field, whether nanoscience and nanotechnology are closely interlinked, whether nanotechnology development is path dependent and who is winning the global nanorace. We also conduct a comparative analysis of bibliometric search strategies used in the literature to harvest the publications and patents, including lexical queries, evolutionary lexical queries, citation analysis, and the use of core journal sets to identify nanotechnology articles. Because most of the compared strategies, except the one using 10 core journals in the field, share a core set of keywords and thus harvest a common batch of publications, they produce very similar ranking tables of the top subject areas and journals and the most prolific countries and institutions. Moreover, the core journal strategy does not provide a robust delineation of an emerging field such as nanotechnology due to the fact that nanotechnology related articles are published in a wide range of journals. Also, the different criteria for selecting the core journals will affect the analytical results dramatically.     

Increasing income inequality and wealth concentration in the prosperous societies of the west

Since about 1980, personal income and wealth inequality in many western societies has increased. This is a reversal of the trend of diminishing socioeconomic inequality during the larger part of the twentieth century. Both trends are explained by relating them to the long-term growth of networks of interdependence. When and insofar as the development predominantly took place within national states, it led to the diminution of power differences between socioeconomic classes. In recent years, however, transnational relations of interdependence have intensified to such a degree that they bring about a weakening of interdependence within national states and increase inequality. Nico Wilterdink teaches sociology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He also occupies the Norbert Elias chair in social sciences at Utrecht University.     

Kooperative Politikberatung ohne machtpolitisches Kalkül?

The paper contributes to the discussion about policy advice, initiated by Falk et al. in PVS 2/2007. Based on a differentiation between output- and input oriented politics, several notions of advice and knowledge are discussed. This leads to the insight that the relevance of studies in political science does rely on the careful consideration of the strategic influence of knowledge in the political process. The fruitfulness of such a perspective is exemplified by a short view on some institutional developments in the field of political advice. A detailed analysis of the newly organised economic policy report “Gemeinschaftsdiagnose” then reveals that the diagnosis of new cooperative modes of governmental acting, as postulated by Falk et al., has to be modified. Particularly with regard to core fields of governmental acting, like economic and social policy, there is an unbroken continuity of hierarchical forms of governing.