Think Tanks in Iceland

This article maps the landscape of think tanks in Iceland. It shows that think tanks are very few and insignificant in Icelandic policymaking. In the literature, the growth of think tanks in European countries with corporatist pasts has been linked to a change to a more pluralist system of interest representation. The case of Iceland lends support to this claim. In contrast to Scandinavia, corporatism remains entrenched in Iceland. But although there is a very limited market for local think tanks in Iceland, it is nevertheless recognized by political actors that touting policy advice offered by prestigious (international) think tanks can bring political benefits. This is also demonstrated in the article, showing that the influence of think tanks transcends at times national borders.     

The Autopoiesis of Administrative Systems: Niklas Luhmann on Public Administration and Public Policy

This article offers an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems as it pertains to public administration and policy, as a first step towards both a critique and its empirical application to empirical reality. It reconstructs Luhmann's early writings on bureaucracy and policy-making and shows how this early, more empirical work grounded his abstract theory of social systems in general and the political system in particular. The article also introduces some central concepts of Luhmann's more recent work on the autopoietic nature of social systems and considers the latter's consequences for bureaucratic adaptiveness and governmental steering in the welfare state. One of the main benefits of applying Luhmann's theory to public administration, the article concludes, is that it conceptualizes the central concerns of public administration within a complex picture of society as a whole, in which both the agency that issues decisions and the realm affected by these decisions are included.     

Collecting on Moral Debts: Reparations for the Holocaust and Pořajmos

In the early 1980s, Sebba (1980) explored the victimological and criminological dimensions of German Holocaust reparations, utilizing a broad definition of victimization similar to Mendelsohn's (1976) earlier framing of this notion, which included victims of genocide and mass violence. Since this time, scant attention has been paid to the victimology of state crime, and even less to the victimological implications of genocide and mass violence. This is unfortunate since critical victimological lessons can be drawn from the study of the victims of genocide and mass violence. In this article, we focus on the post–World War II monetary reparations, or "compensation," demands made against the West German state by Jewish and "Gypsy" survivors of Nazi state-sponsored violence. Through a comparative analysis of these two cases, we seek to illustrate the organizational, social, and discursive conditions that either enabled or obstructed victim mobilization and, in so doing, to develop critical tools for better understanding "victim movements" and the trauma narratives they construct.     

Fairness, Justice, and Legitimacy: Experiences of People's Judges in South Russia

Which criteria do Russians use to evaluate the fairness of their judges, and how does perceived fairness of actual trials influence general beliefs about Russian courts? Lay assessors at courts in South Russia were asked about their experience serving on mixed courts. The justice of the verdicts rendered and the fairness of judges partly explain the respondents’ view of national courts. According to the results, the respondents are also using similar criteria for fairness as Americans or Germans. The social and psychological group effects in a Russian court of lay assessors exhibit a striking similarity to other Western tribunals.     

Legal Positivism and the Nature of Legal Obligation

Law and Philosophy -     

Social Stigma and Support for the Populist Radical Right: An Experimental Study

The ‘taboo’ or ‘stigma’ associated with many populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has been argued to be an important constraint on their electoral success. In comparison to mainstream parties, there seems to be a higher barrier keeping voters from supporting PRRPs. However, this mechanism has not been tested directly. We conducted a randomized survey‐embedded experiment manipulating the social stigma of a fictitious radical right party in Sweden. We compare three conditions. Two of these contain subtle signals about how other respondents feel about this party. In one condition the fictitious party is supported by many voters (the neutralizing condition) and in the other it is evaluated negatively by the overwhelming majority (the stigma condition). Both experimental groups do not differ significant from the control group in support for this fictitious party. However, the difference between the two experimental groups is borderline significant. This suggests that there is a causal effect of social stigma on support for a RRP, even though the evidence is rather tentative.     

Conflict Resolution Between Power Sharing and Power Dividing, or Beyond?

McGarry, J. and O'Leary, B. (2004) The Northern Ireland Conflict: Consociational Engagements . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roeder, P. G. and Rothchild, D. (2005) Sustainable Peace: Power and Democracy after Civil Wars . Ithaca NY and London: Cornell University Press.
O'Leary, B., McGarry, J. and Salih, K. (2005) The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq . Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.     

Land- und Forstwirtschaft im Umweltgesetzbuch – Wird der Referentenentwurf den ökologischen Herausforderungen gerecht?

Zusammenfassung  Eine wesentliche Ursache für den anhaltenden Rückgang der Biologischen Vielfalt und der Belastung des Naturhaushaltes ist die moderne land- und forstwirtschaftliche Bewirtschaftung. Ein zukunftsf?higes Naturschutzrecht, welches den 2010-Zielen und der Nationalen Biodiversit?tsstrategie der Bundesregierung dienen soll, muss bei diesem Wirtschaftszweig ansetzen. Der Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit der Referentenentwurf des Bundesumweltministeriums vom 20. Mai 2008 diesem Anspruch gerecht wird.     

Die symbolische Inszenierung als „kultureller Anderer“ – Zur Auslegung weltkultureller Skripte im Feld der europäischen Inklusionspolitik

This paper puts forward a sociological perspective on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) going beyond the usual focus on power and learning in governance studies. It uses a combined approach based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and John W. Meyer’s neoinstitutionalism. Seen from this angle the OMC transmits and amplifies the abstract ideas of the world polity for EU Member States. The coordination procedure gives rise to a political field in Bourdieu’s sense filled with a variety of actors that claim to be selfless and disinterested “cultural others”. Hence, the OMC can be used by these actors as an opportunity structure for symbolic enrichment. By symbolically enriching their strategies, these actors avoid triggering the automatic recourse to subsidiarity as a means to fend off European influence. Empirically, the article identifies five types of cultural others: conceptual entrepreneurs, knowledge producers, fundamental critics, detached observers and robust actors.