Der Abschluss von Swap-Geschäften durch Gemeinden und die Grenzen der Gemeindeautonomie

Gemeinden haben mit Swap-Geschäften zur Absicherung des Zinsrisikos teilweise erhebliche Verluste erlitten. Dieser Umstand führt mittlerweile auch zu Gerichtsverfahren, in welchen die Gültigkeit dieser Geschäfte streitgegenständlich ist. Im folgenden Beitrag werden die Voraussetzungen für die Gültigkeit von Swap-Geschäften der Gemeinden untersucht.     

Agilität als Chance für einen neuen Anlauf zum demokratischen Unternehmen?

There has been a long-standing discussion since the 1980s about the question whether new production models harbor a potential for extended employee participation and involvement, in most cases with disillusioning results. This paper is concerned with so called “agile methods”, which play an important part in the area of knowledge work in the course of the digital transformation. On the basis of two case studies from software development and industrial R&D, the paper examines the concrete implementation of these methods and the employees’ perspective upon them and their consequences. The result is that agile methods present a potential for extended employee participation and involvement; however, the realization of this potential depends on the concrete way how the agile concept of “empowerment” is implemented.     

Ahmadis or Indonesians? The polarization of post-reform public debates on Islam and orthodoxy

Since the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesian public discourse about “mainstream” Muslim identity and practice has polarized sharply into various factions. This article offers a detailed analysis of a subset of this discourse that focuses on the Ahmadiyya in order to grasp how the new normative contours of Islam are being shaped in Indonesia. I make three arguments: First, the discourse is homogenizing what was once a wide spectrum of identitarian positions, and that consequently, Islamic diversity in Indonesia is shrinking. Second, the various internally homogenized sets of arguments for and against the Ahmadiyya mis-engage with each other in a way that produces social fragmentation and further polarization. Third, these arguments produce exclusionary mechanisms that reinforce each other. Both the opponents of the Ahmadiyya and their defenders exclude Ahmadis from conceptions of an Indonesian “majority.” This dynamic in Indonesian public discourse has resulted in the acceleration of the marginalization of the Ahmadiyya within an increasingly fragmented Indonesian society.     

Leadership Experiences Within Civil Organizations and Candidacy in Public Elections: Causal Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Approach

Standing as a candidate in public elections has been characterized as the ultimate act of political participation. We test the hypothesis that acquiring office within civil organizations increases the probability of becoming a candidate in public elections. In order to take self-selection problems into account, we provide quasi-experimental evidence using election discontinuities, in which we compare the likelihood of being nominated for public office between closely ranked winners and losers in Swedish student union (SU) elections. Our original data cover 5,000 SU candidates and register data on their candidacies in public elections (1991–2010). The analysis provides support to the hypothesis: Students elected to SU councils were about 34 percent (6 percentage points) more likely to become a candidate in a public election than SU council candidates who were not elected. The causal impact is fairly stable over time. The analysis makes important contributions to two interrelated bodies of literature: First, it provides political recruitment literature with causal evidence that acquiring leadership experiences at arenas outside of representative democratic institutions facilitate entry into election processes. Second, it provides strong evidence to an increasingly contested issue within political participation research by showing that certain organizational activities increase individuals’ political involvement.     

When experimentalist governance meets science‐based regulations; the case of food safety regulations

This paper examines a central regulatory mechanism that shapes food economies. Food safety regulations in the United States rely on a science‐based transnational regulatory system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), which bears central features of what Sabel and Zeitlin identified as experimentalist governance: a new form of regulation that is flexible, responsive, and involves stakeholders in iterative and direct democratic deliberation. The core theoretical question the paper examines is what the reliance on science means for the promise of an experimentalist policy regime to enable a new form of democratic politics. Based on a case study of the HACCP system implemented by the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service since the late 1990s, HACCP's reliance on food science has acted as an effective divider between producers who were able to take advantage of the system's flexibility and others for whom this was challenging. There is clear evidence that HACCP posed a disproportionate burden on small processors and that some of them were unable to adapt to the requirements of the regulatory system. In so far as the HACCP‐based food safety regulations delineated the kind of producer that thrived in the system and contributed to the demise of another set of producers, the regulatory system shaped market outcomes.     

„Outstanding universal value“. Die Arbeit an der Universalisierung des Wertvollen im UNESCO-Welterbe

The UNESCO World Heritage List is an international inventory of natural and cultural sites that are, according to the conception of its initiators and administrators, of importance for mankind as a whole. The evaluation of the list can be interpreted as a specific form of the social production of the valuable. Focusing on the cultural sites, the paper argues that the production of World Heritage renders a form of practical universalization of the value of particular goods. It centres on the questions of how a site is produced as culturally valuable, how its value is universalized, and what role is played by the concept of authenticity in the process. Two aspects of the evaluation practice are examined with regards to the production of universalization: working with and working on the assessment criteria. It is shown that universality and particularity are interwoven in this practice.     

Institutionelle Arbeit am Konflikt – ein Beitrag zur Transnationalisierung der Arbeitsbeziehungen?

Although political decisions and the mobility of capital have advanced the integration of markets at the European and the global level, durable transnational bargaining relationships between labor and capital remain rare. Drawing on case studies in two automobile companies the article explores whether and how class-based conflicts are institutionalized in the transnational social space of European industry. Concepts are borrowed from the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and neo-institutionalism to develop a relational, space-sensitive understanding of power lacking in existing perspectives, such as the power resource approach. This allows for a better grasp of the institutions shaping transnational employment relations in the two studied companies, Volkswagen and General Motors-Opel, as well as of the differing stability of these institutions.     

Hierarchical,Decentralized, or Something Else? Opposition Networks in the German Bundestag

Members of the German parliament may force government to publicly answer questions by issuing minor interpellations (kleine Anfragen). We use 3,608 interpellations from the session 2009–13 that have been signed by authoring and supporting members to construct the social network of support relations among members within the three opposition parties. We find that parties differ markedly in terms of internal structure. While social democrats organize hierarchically, Greens cooperate horizontally. The network for socialist Linke in contrast shows signs of homophily and social segregation. Our approach yields a novel perspective on intraparty politics in parliamentary systems which are notoriously difficult to analyze.