Gender equality in Germany: Comparing policy change across domains

Focusing on the past 25 years in three central arenas of political, social, and civil rights, this article engages in the current debate over policy change and the direction of German politics by analysing the issue of gender equality. Combining T.H. Marshall's concept of citizenship and Hall's analysis of policy change, I obtain a two-level framework that differentiates between policy changes and categorises reform in Germany in three different domains. The case studies are: quotas in political representation (political citizenship), women and reconciliation policy (social citizenship), and anti-discrimination policies (civil citizenship). Comparing policy change across domains demonstrates that change in these three arenas has occurred to different degrees and for different reasons; electoral competition has fostered policy change in representation, while the male-breadwinner model has slowed down reform for reconciliation of family and employment. A conservative affirmative action regime stands in opposition to individual anti-discrimination and limits potential change. This comparison across domains defines the dependent variable ‘policy change’ in a more nuanced way, helping to pinpoint and differentiate specific areas of reform.     

Cash or Combat? America’s Asian Alliances During the War in Afghanistan

Abstract

A basic trade-off in military cooperation exists: States must respond to the dominant ally’s demands and act as a reliable partner while simultaneously making a decision that is acceptable to domestic audiences. We argue that compensatory burden-sharing strategies are imperfect but dependable solutions to manage foreign policy decisions at the domestic and alliance levels. Our theoretical expectations are tested using the US-Japan and US-Republic of Korea alliances and, in particular, the contribution of each country to the war in Afghanistan. We find that foreign aid commitments to third parties are made as a form of compensation when alliance expectations are substantial, but the secondary ally's ability to contribute militarily is highly constrained. Foreign aid has therefore served as an alliance management tool.     

Tenure Insecurity,Gender, Low-cost Land Certification and Land Rental Market Participation in Ethiopia

There is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in Africa. This paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low-cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in Ethiopia in the late 1990s. Four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern Ethiopia are analysed, showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of (potential) tenant and landlord households, especially those that are headed by females.     

Suicidal gunshot to the head while driving a car

A severe traffic accident occurred on the German autobahn. According to eye witnesses, the car had changed from the left to the right lane at 160 km/h before crashing into a thicket at full speed. In the car, a sports pistol was found in the footwell of the driver's side. The emergency doctor who performed the external examination of the victim's body found a gunshot wound in the region of the driver's right lower jaw. As the prosecutor released the body without further examination, the family of the suicide asked for an autopsy, which demonstrated a lethal suicidal gunshot to the head; toxicological tests proved a previous consumption of cocaine.     

Estimation of age at death based on quantitation of the 4977-bp deletion of human mitochondrial DNA in skeletal muscle

The 4977-bp deletion in human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is known to accumulate in various tissues with age. Since this deletion in mtDNA correlates closest with age in muscle tissue, iliopsoas muscle tissue was taken at autopsy from 50 persons aged 24-97 years to determine whether age at death can be estimated based on the amount of the 4977-bp deletion in skeletal muscle. Total DNA (nuclear and mtDNA) was extracted from 100 mg tissue and the 4977-bp deletion quantified using a kinetic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by visualization of the products on silver stained polyacrylamide gels. The amount of the 4977-bp deletion of mtDNA ranged from 0.00049% to 0.14% depending on age, with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.83 (P = 0.0001). In forensic practice this method can aid in the estimation of age at death with a relatively wide confidence interval, thus enabling a discrimination between young and elderly persons in the identification of human remains based solely on skeletal muscle.     

International regimes and environmental policy integration: introducing the special issue

Pressure is mounting for states to become better at integrating its environmental policies into sector policy, a challenge often referred to as environmental policy integration (EPI). Policy research on EPI has grown to become a distinct and substantial field of study at the national and EU levels, where political commitment and interest in the topic have been large. In the study of international regimes, EPI analytical concepts have so far not been applied although the EPI quest is at least as important and critical at this level. This special issue addresses this gap, by combining these two sets of literature and examining various aspects of EPI in international regimes, its manifestations and its challenges. This introductory paper introduces key conceptual discussions underlying the development of this special issue, distils and discusses some of the key findings and messages from the four ensuing research articles and presents directions for future research. It finds that many EPI challenges and institutional barriers are strongly accentuated at international levels of governance, but also that similarities with the national level suggest that closer interactions between the two fields of study are warranted. At both levels, the EPI “game” is full of inherent tensions and goal conflicts, institutional constraints abound, and cognitive interactions and learning processes appear as key mechanisms to advance EPI. Suggestions for how to enhance EPI in international regimes are still tentative, and analysis beyond international relations and regime theory is needed to capture potential institutional innovations for advancing EPI.     

Bioinformatics Approach to Assess the Biogeographical Patterns of Soil Communities: The Utility for Soil Provenance,

Soil DNA profiling has potential as a forensic tool to establish a link between soil collected at a crime scene and soil recovered from a suspect. However, a quantitative measure is needed to investigate the spatial/temporal variability across multiple scales prior to their application in forensic science. In this study, soil DNA profiles across Miami‐Dade, FL, were generated using length heterogeneity PCR to target four taxa. The objectives of this study were to (i) assess the biogeographical patterns of soils to determine whether soil biota is spatially correlated with geographic location and (ii) evaluate five machine learning algorithms for their predictive ability to recognize biotic patterns which could accurately classify soils at different spatial scales regardless of seasonal collection. Results demonstrate that soil communities have unique patterns and are spatially autocorrelated. Bioinformatic algorithms could accurately classify soils across all scales with Random Forest significantly outperforming all other algorithms regardless of spatial level.     

Competition and cooperation in artificial intelligence standard setting: Explaining emergent patterns

Efforts to set standards for artificial intelligence (AI) reveal striking patterns: technical experts hailing from geopolitical rivals, such as the United States and China, readily collaborate on technical AI standards within transnational standard-setting organizations, whereas governments are much less willing to collaborate on global ethical AI standards within international organizations. Whether competition or cooperation prevails can be explained by three variables: the actors that make up the membership of the standard-setting organization, the issues on which the organization's standard-setting efforts focus, and the “games” actors play when trying to set standards within a particular type of organization. A preliminary empirical analysis provides support for the contention that actors, issues, and games affect the prospects for cooperation on global AI standards. It matters because shared standards are vital for achieving truly global frameworks for the governance of AI. Such global frameworks, in turn, lower transaction costs and the probability that the world will witness the emergence of AI systems that threaten human rights and fundamental freedoms.     

Sozialer Wandel und politische Stabilität: politische Einstellungen von Arbeitnehmern in der Schweiz

Der Gegenstand dieser Studie ist die Entwicklung der individuellen und kollektiven Arbeitsbeziehungen in der Schweiz. Die Ausgangsfrage lautet, ob die Modernisierung der Arbeitswelt zu einer Erosion von deren bisherigen Institutionen geführt hat. Ich argumentiere, dass die Modernisierung der Arbeitsverhältnisse bislang noch keine Krise der herkömmlichen Institutionen nach sich zog; vielmehr sind die Herausforderungen des sozialen Wandels bislang gut gemeistert worden. Dafür gibt es mindestens zwei Gründe: Zum einen ist der Gewerkschaftsbewegung eine neue Klientel und Gruppe von Unterstützern zugewachsen, die in modifizierter Form die Kernideen der sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterbewegung übernommen hat. Zum zweiten werden die Institutionen der kollektiven Arbeitsbeziehungen weder durch die Individualisierung der Arbeitsbedingungen, noch durch die modernisierungsbedingte Auflösung der Arbeitsethik der Industriegesellschaft noch durch eine Strategie der Eliten gefährdet. Die Datenbasis der Untersuchung bildet der Schweizer Arbeitsmarktsurvey von 1998.     

The White Woman's Burden: “Feminist” War Rhetoric and the Phenomenon of Co-optation

This article takes a critical stance towards the rhetoric of protecting and liberating Afghan women in the wake of the “war on terror”, in this paper called “feminist” security rhetoric. An increased gender awareness in general and in relation to war in particular has influenced the ways in which war stories have been expressed over the last two decades. References to UN Resolution 1325, on women and security in post-conflict situations, will serve as both an indication and illustration of “feminist” security rhetoric, the co-optation phenomenon included, a practice that absorbs the meanings of the original concepts to fit into the prevailing political priorities. The rhetoric of the former Norwegian defence minister, Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen, is presented as a case study of this phenomenon. The Norwegian (and the Nordic) gender equality model has mainly been analysed from a welfare perspective, seldom from a post-colonial war(fare)/peace perspective. By analysing Norwegian “feminist” security rhetoric, I also want to push feminist rhetoric to create a space that is sensitive to post-colonial perspectives as well as political philosophy. I thereby intend to question both cultural relativism and aggressive cosmopolitanism dressed in various feminized outfits, aiming instead to suggest some common ground for feminist post-colonial voices to meet the voices of Western feminists who oppose the tendency to see whole cultures as internally homogeneous and almost externally sealed. These voices may together constitute a potent oppositional discourse to Western feminized security rhetoric.