Mass media attention to welfare state reforms: evidence from Britain, 1996–2014

One of the core questions facing political scientists is how politicians are able to implement cutbacks without suffering electoral backlash. A possible explanation might be that the mass media refrain from reporting on welfare state reforms in a consistent way. In order to explore this, two unique datasets have been collected: one contains information on all policy reforms of British old age pensions and unemployment protection from 1996 to 2014, and the other contains hand-coded media articles that allow the tracking on a monthly basis of what reforms are picked up. It is found that the mass media report on cutbacks, but not on expansions, and that they prioritise easy-to-understand cutbacks over cutbacks that are more technical in nature.     

Policy deviations,uncertainty, and the European Court of Justice

The implementation of European Union directives into national law is at the discretion of member states. We analyze incentives for member states to deviate from these directives when the European Commission may sue a defecting member state and rulings at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are uncertain. We find that higher uncertainty about the preferences of the ECJ increases policy deviation, irrespective of whether a case is taken to court or not. If decisions of member states to deviate are interdependent, the incidence of filed cases decreases while for those policies reaching the ECJ deviations increase.     

Die sozialen Konsequenzen der Restitution von Grundeigentum in Deutschland und Polen

Der Artikel vergleicht die Restitution von Immobilieneigentum in Polen und Deutschland. In Polen gibt es bisher keine gesetzliche Regelung, aber über Verwaltungsentscheidungen wird dennoch Privateigentum restituiert; in Deutschland ist der Restitutionsprozess weitgehend abgeschlossen. Die Analyse geht der Frage nach, ob die moralisch und funktional begründete Privatisierung ihre vorgegebenen Ziele erreicht hat. Die Privatisierung von Häusern und Grundstücken greift in einen sensiblen, mit persönlichen Emotionen verquickten Bereich der Sozialordnung ein, so dass die doppelte Zielsetzung der Restitution, sowohl historische Gerechtigkeit als auch kapitalistische Marktverhältnisse herzustellen, besonderen Schwierigkeiten begegnet. Die Analyse der sozialen und ökonomischen Konsequenzen der sehr unterschiedlich gestalteten Prozesse zeigt, dass in beiden Gesellschaften das anspruchsvolle Ziel einer Herstellung historischer Gerechtigkeit nicht ohne die Entstehung neuer sozialer Ungleichheiten und Ungerechtigkeiten umgesetzt werden konnte. An den Beispielen Prenzlauer Berg und Kleinmachnow in der Region Berlin werden große Unterschiede in der Akzeptanz der Rückgabe durch die Betroffenen deutlich.     

Rethinking disproportionate policy making by introducing proportionate politics

Policy Sciences - This article seeks to critique and extend recent work in the policy sciences, by Maor in particular, on disproportionate policy making—including policy overreaction and...     

Stable money and central bank independence: implementing monetary institutions in postwar Germany

Germany prides itself in having one of the most successful central banks and national currencies with respect to independence and stability. I show that not only were both imposed on the country after 1945, but that German experts and officials resisted both initially. It thus represents a rare case of the successful imposition of institutions from abroad. Events are discussed in light of Peter Bernholz’s requirements of stable money and an independent central bank.

     

Challenging the Power Consensus: GDP,CINC, and Power Transition Theory

Power Transition Theory (PTT) has hitherto often relied on power indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) to capture its power variable. The underlying assumption is that these indicators are highly correlated, and thus it matters little as to which one the researcher chooses. I call this PTT's power consensus and argue that this consensus is problematic, as the choice of power indicator is often crucial. For PTT, it does not only matter whether such indicators come to similar results by and large; the position of certain singular actors—such as the dominant power, its prime challengers, and the top ranked great powers generally—is even more essential. However, it is precisely with regard to the positions of these actors that we find important discrepancies between what PTT's favored indicators (GDP and CINC) suggest. Analysis of some crucial historical and recent cases supports my challenge to the power consensus. First, the celebrated peaceful power transition between the United Kingdom and the United States in the nineteenth century becomes suspect under closer scrutiny, as GDP places the United States entering the parity zone at a time during which it must arguably be counted as a dissatisfied power. Second, a number of CINC-exclusive power transitions in the twentieth century are not accounted for by GDP. A few possible options might mitigate the power-problem for the cases under scrutiny, however scholars of PTT should generally be much more conscious about their choice of power indicator.     

Combining Household Income and Asset Data to Identify Livelihood Strategies and Their Dynamics

Current approaches to identifying and describing rural livelihood strategies, and household movements between strategies over time, in developing countries are imprecise. Here we: (i) present a new statistical quantitative approach combining income and asset data to identify household activity choice variables, characterise livelihood strategy clusters, and analyse movements between strategies, and (ii) apply the approach using an environmentally-augmented three-wave household (n = 427) level panel dataset from Nepal. Combining income and asset data provides a better understanding of livelihood strategies and household movements between strategies over time than using only income or asset data. Most households changed livelihood strategy at least once over the two three-year periods. A common pathway out of poverty included an intermediate step during which households accumulate assets through farming, petty trading, and migratory work.     

China's Monetary Reform: The counterrevolution from the countryside

Until the late 1990s, the rapid development of rural cooperative funds as semi-formal financial institutions in the countryside attracted little attention. In many provinces, these funds took over large swathes of rural finance, before the State Council in March 1999 issued a secret decree requesting that they be immediately dissolved. This paper explores the reasons for the rapid development of rural cooperative funds in many localities, examines why this has been an issue of contention, and explains why it has taken the central government such a long time to come up with a coherent—and, furthermore, drastic—response. Although rural cooperative funds are now being dissolved across the country, they may already have achieved their purpose of revolutionizing financial intermediation in the countryside.     

The influence of camera-to-object distance and focal length on the representation of faces

When one thinks of the so-called barrel or wide-angle distortion, grotesquely warped faces may come to mind. For less extreme cases with primarily inconspicuous facial proportions, the question, however, still arises whether there may be a resulting impact on the identification of faces. In the first experiment, 3 test persons were photographed at a fixed camera-to-object distance of 2 m. In the second experiment, 18 test persons were each photographed at a distance of 0.5 m and 2.0 m. For both experiments photographs were taken from a fixed angle of view in alignment with the Frankfurt Plane. An isolated effect of the focal length on facial proportions could not be demonstrated. On the other hand, changes in the camera-to-object distance clearly influenced facial proportions and shape. A standardized camera-to-object distance for passport photos, as well as reconstruction of the camera-to-object distance from crime scene photos and the use of this same distance in taking photographs for comparison of suspects are called for. A proposal to refer to wide-angle distortion as the nearness effect is put forward.