The Media Salience of Germany's Bilateral Relations to the United States,France and Britain

This article provides a comparative analysis of the salience of Germany's bilateral relations to the United States, France and Britain in the German media since the end of the cold war. It offers a media content frequency analysis which identifies long-term similarities and differences in media reporting across the three relationships as well as short-term upswings of media interest in each of them individually. This is relevant because the media salience of bilateral relations is a measure of their underpinnings in public discourse and speaks to the significance of domestic drivers in conducting such relationships. The article finds that media reporting on Germany's three bilateral relations under study has significantly increased in the post-9/11 period and that US–German and Franco–German relations attract far more attention in the German media than Anglo–German relations. Short-term upswings in media coverage are triggered by specific types of events, in particular crises in European integration and international military missions.     

Von der typologischen zur dimensionalen Analyse parlamentarischer Demokratien: konzeptionelle Überlegungen am Beispiel Mittelosteuropas

Zusammenfassung  Am Beispiel von zehn parlamentarischen Demokratien in Mittelosteuropa (1995–2004) werden neue Demokratiemuster nachgewiesen, welche die Kombination von machtkonzentrierenden und machtdispersiven Effekten von Akteurskonstellationen und formal-institutionellen Entscheidungsregeln (elektoral und legislativ) erfassen. Damit leistet die vorliegende Untersuchung einen theoretischen und empirischen Beitrag zur Wirkungslogik von Institutionen und Akteuren auf die Politikperformanz parlamentarischer Demokratien.