Project for a Kantian Europe

Immanuel Kant’s political treatise Perpetual Peace can be seen as a project for world peace with practical value. Applied to contemporary word politics, the United Nations is commonly seen to be the closest approximation of this project. This article argues that such a view is misguided and fails to perceive that the United Nations lacks crucial elements of a Kantian peace federation. Kant’s argumentation for perpetual peace rests on two pillars: peace through law and peace through institution. Both of these are necessary conditions that must be supplanted by an exclusive peace federation of republican states in order to make a sufficient guarantee for lasting peace. Viewed from this perspective, the European Union comes closest to a real-world Kantian peace federation, even though it remains a regional organization, and despite the current challenges it faces.     

Integrating biodiversity: a longitudinal and cross-sectoral analysis of Swiss politics

Policy Sciences - The effective conservation and promotion of biodiversity requires its integration into a wide range of sectoral policies. For this to happen, the issue must receive attention...     

Political Efficacy und Wahlbeteiligung in Ost‐ und Westdeutschland

Es wird die Frage untersucht, ob in Ostdeutschland die Beteiligung an den Bundestagswahlen unter anderem deswegen geringer ist als in Westdeutschland, weil ostdeutsche Wähler weniger davon überzeugt sind, mittels der Beteiligung an politischen Wahlen persönlich die Politik beeinflussen zu können. Die empirischen Analysen erfolgen mit Querschnittdaten des ALLBUS 1998. Sie zeigen, dass sich die Einflusserwartungen in Ost und Westdeutschland nur zufällig voneinander unterscheiden. Daher können die Einflusserwartungen nicht das entscheidende Kriterium für die unterschiedlichen Wahlbeteiligungen sein. Von Bedeutung für die Stärke der Einflusserwartungen sind persönliche Überzeugungen über eigene politische Kompetenzen und Reaktivität des politischen Systems, deren Einflüsse bei den Ostdeutschen grösser sind als bei den Westdeutschen.     

The Involvement of Children in Decisions about Shared Residence

This article discusses the relationship between law and socialchange in connection with the child's right to participate indecisions on residence. The empirical data are drawn from asurvey of parents who have arranged shared residence for theirchildren. In line with earlier research on children's participationin court disputes over contact and residence, we found thatthe age of the child is decisive regarding the degree of influencethey have in private agreements. But, surprisingly, it was foundthat the educational level of the parents had a major impacton children's participation in decisions about shared residence.When we controlled for gender it turned out that highly educatedfathers were least likely of all parents to report that thechild had been taken into a co-decision process. This resultmight add a new dimension to our understanding of the relationshipbetween law and social change.     

Comparison of German population data on the apoB-HVR locus with other Caucasian, Asian and Black populations

A population study of 505 unrelated individuals from Southwestern Germany was carried out on the 3′-apoB hypervariable region (HVR). After amplification via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and agarose gel electrophoresis, 15 different alleles and 47 genotypes were observed. The most common alleles were hypervariable elements (HVE) 37 and 35 with an allele frequency of 0.374 and 0.244, respectively. The heterozygosity index was calculated to be 78.4%. Allele frequencies of this study are compared with results from other databases obtained from a French, a Spanish, an Asian and an American (Black) population.     

Fiscal and Spending Behavior of Local Governments: Identification of Price Effects when Prices are not Observed

This paper analyzes local public fiscal andspending behavior in a setting where localgovernments, represented by the dominantparty or coalition, are treated as utilitymaximizing agents. The econometricanalysis, which is based on a modifiedversion of ELES, recognizes total spendingas well as total income as endogenousvariables. Identification of the priceeffects is achieved by utilizing data onenvironmental cost factors and localtastes. The performance of the estimatedmodel is investigated by testing itsability to make out-of-sample predictionsof local government behavior.     

Consensus on validation of forensic voice comparison

Since the 1960s, there have been calls for forensic voice comparison to be empirically validated under casework conditions. Since around 2000, there have been an increasing number of researchers and practitioners who conduct forensic-voice-comparison research and casework within the likelihood-ratio framework. In recent years, this community of researchers and practitioners has made substantial progress toward validation under casework conditions becoming a standard part of practice: Procedures for conducting validation have been developed, along with graphics and metrics for representing the results, and an increasing number of papers are being published that include empirical validation of forensic-voice-comparison systems under conditions reflecting casework conditions. An outstanding question, however, is: In the context of a case, given the results of an empirical validation of a forensic-voice-comparison system, how can one decide whether the system is good enough for its output to be used in court? This paper provides a statement of consensus developed in response to this question. Contributors included individuals who had knowledge and experience of validating forensic-voice-comparison systems in research and/or casework contexts, and individuals who had actually presented validation results to courts. They also included individuals who could bring a legal perspective on these matters, and individuals with knowledge and experience of validation in forensic science more broadly. We provide recommendations on what practitioners should do when conducting evaluations and validations, and what they should present to the court. Although our focus is explicitly on forensic voice comparison, we hope that this contribution will be of interest to an audience concerned with validation in forensic science more broadly. Although not written specifically for a legal audience, we hope that this contribution will still be of interest to lawyers.     

Agreements of Economic Integration and the Choice of National Environmental Policies

This paper analyzes the question whether and in which respect agreements of (regional) economic integration affect the choice of environmental policies by individual countries. We focus our interdisciplinary analysis on the agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). We find that these agreements primarily restrict a country's choice among possible instruments to achieve a certain environmental level or target, but do, in principle, not restrict its choice with regard to the environmental target or level itself. We also show that this type of restriction is likely to benefit the individual countries and the world as a whole because it tends to promote the implementation of more efficient environmental policy instruments. A brief analysis of the case of Switzerland illustrates this point.