Kontaminierter Boden als Abfall

Seit dem 7. 9. 2004 liegt ein weiteres Urteil des EuGH zum europäischen Abfallbegriff vor. Danach ist Benzin, das unbeabsichtigt in den Boden und das Grundwasser gelangt, ebenso als Abfall zu qualifizieren wie das verunreinigte Erdreich selbst. Nach Ansicht des Gerichtshofs spielt es dabei keine Rolle, ob der Boden nach der Verschmutzung ausgehoben worden ist oder nicht. Diese Rechtsprechung steht nicht länger im Einklang mit der ständigen Rechtsprechung deutscher Gerichte und wirft insbesondere mit Blick auf die fehlende Sonderrechtsfähigkeit nicht ausgehobenen kontaminierten Erdreichs Fragen auf, denen im folgenden Beitrag nachgegangen werden soll.     

The effect of repeated questioning on children's accuracy and consistency in eyewitness testimony

Purpose. In police interviews children may be asked the same question many times. We investigated how the number of repetitions and the interval between those repetitions affected the accuracy and consistency of children's responses. Methods. 156 children aged 4–9 years watched a staged event and were interviewed individually 1 week later. Children were asked eight open‐ended questions, which were each repeated a further four times (making a total of forty questions). Half these open‐ended questions could be answered from information in the event, and half were unanswerable (so children should have said ‘don't know’ in response to these questions). The questions were repeated in gist form. The interval between an initial question and its repetitions was varied by use of other questions and twenty non‐repeated filler questions. The intervals between repetitions were immediate repetition, repetition after a delay of three intervening questions, after a delay of six intervening questions, and after ten or more intervening questions. Results. Over a quarter of children's responses to repeated questions changed, usually resulting in a decline in accuracy, particularly after the first repetition. Subsequently, the number of repetitions and delay interval had little effect on responses to answerable questions although accuracy to unanswerable questions continued to decline. Conclusions. Question repetition had a negative affect on children's consistency and accuracy. For unanswerable questions in particular, the more often a question was repeated the more likely children were to invent a response.     

The Effect of Distributive Justice on Willingness to Pay for Municipality Child Care: An Extension of the GEF Hypothesis

Public-goods dilemmas are characterized by conflicts between self-interest and the welfare of a group or society at large. Research has identified several factors that enhance cooperation in such dilemmas. However, less is known about how concern for distributive justice affects willingness to contribute in asymmetric public-goods dilemmas. To test the hypothesis that contributions to a common resource is related to perceived fairness, experiments were performed to investigate willingness to pay to the social service of child care in hypothetical societies. Experiment 1 aimed at replicating a previous survey study (Biel et al., 1997). Experiments 2 and 3 were extensions. In all three experiments subjects were asked to indicate how fair they considered different distributions of the quality of child care provided by their municipality. These distributions corresponded to the principles of equality, equity, and need. University students (32, 48, and 32 in the three experiments, respectively) served as subjects. Ratings of perceived fairness were positively related to willingness to pay. Other factors also positively related to willingness to pay included ability to pay, personal need, expected payment from others, and the number of households who had to contribute in order to maintain the quality. Furthermore, decreasing municipality size increased willingness to pay.     

Bureaucratic Resistance to International Intelligence Cooperation – The Case of Europol

Abstract

This article analyses the gap between government ambitions and actual outcomes in the case of European counter terrorism intelligence cooperation. Specifically, it investigates why Europol has not managed to live up to its tasks despite outspoken government support. Drawing on rational choice institutionalism, the study suggests why bureaucrats might be motivated to resist calls for international cooperation. By examining the process by which Europol has developed as an actor in the counter terrorism field, this article shows how development in the field of intelligence cooperation is not exclusively the reflection of government preferences. It concludes by suggesting that scholars could gain greater insight from a less state centric approach to the study of intelligence. In addition, the article suggests that policy makers cultivate a greater familiarity with bureaucratic factors and that they continually work with those factors in mind.     

Expert hearings in mini-publics: How does the field of expertise influence deliberation and its outcomes?

Policy Sciences - One of key goals of deliberative mini-publics is to counteract expert domination in policymaking. Mini-publics can be expected to democratize expertise by providing citizens with...     

The Policy Influence of Sustainability Indicators: Examining Use and Influence of Indicators in German Sustainability Policy Making

In 2002 Germany adopted an ambitious national sustainability strategy, covering all three sustainability spheres and circling around 21 key indicators. The strategy stands out because of its relative stability over five consecutive government constellations, its high status and increasingly coercive nature. This article analyses the strategy's role in the policy process, focusing on the use and influence of indicators as a central steering tool. Contrasting rationalist and constructivist perspectives on the role of knowledge in policy, two factors, namely the level of consensus about policy goals and the institutional setting of the indicators, are found to explain differences in use and influence both across indicators and over time. Moreover, the study argues that the indicators have been part of a continuous process of ‘structuring’ in which conceptual and instrumental use together help structure the sustainability challenge in such a way that it becomes more manageable for government policy.