Renaturalisierung sozialer Ungleichheiten? Zu Wolfgang Kerstings vergeblicher Hoffnung, auf dem Weg von John Rawls über Robert Nozick zu einer liberalen Sozialstaatsphilosophie zu gelangen

In 2000, Wolfgang Kersting gave a much acknowledged outline concerning a liberal welfare state-philosophy within the debate on libertarianism and egalitarianism. Kersting, who used to sympathize with John Rawls’ theory of justice, now bases his approach on a ‘naturalism of merits’, which he polemically distinguishes from all egalitarian forms of political liberalism. This article deals with Kersting’s way from John Rawls’ ‘Theory of Justice’ (1971) via Robert Nozick’s ‘Anarchy, State, and Utopia’ (1974) to his present conception of a minimal welfare state; furthermore, the article points out that Kersting’s conception is appropriate neither to the complexity of modern societies nor to the basic normative standards of the classical political liberalism.     

Pacifists and Revenge-Seekers in Response to Unambiguous Peer Provocation

In order to better understand why some children retaliate when they feel provoked and others do not, the present study identified “pacifistically-oriented” children who made negative interpretations in response to unambiguous provocations, yet did not endorse revenge goals, and compared them to “revenge-seeking” children who also made negative interpretations but did endorse revenge goals. Groups were identified based on seventh graders’ (N?=?367; 54.77% male; 22.89% racial/ethnic minority) responses to hypothetical situations in which a peer excluded and insulted them. Comparing these groups revealed that Pacifists endorsed relationship-maintaining goals and emotion regulation goals more highly than Revenge-Seekers. Revenge-Seekers reported more anger and endorsed beliefs about negative reciprocity and aggression being legitimate more highly than Pacifists. Additionally, Revenge-Seekers were more disrespect sensitive than were Pacifists, based on a measure of vigilance for signs of disrespect and expectations that others would disrespect them. Together these findings point to social-cognitive and emotion-related processes that may inhibit revenge-seeking in unambiguous provocation situations, even when children interpret the peer’s behavior quite negatively.     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

Energy Transition by Conviction or by Surprise? Environmental Policy from 2009 to 2013

With the inauguration of the new federal government in 2009, many Germans were afraid of a rollback in energy and climate policy. Indeed, Christian democrats and liberals extended the operational lifespan of nuclear power plants but also continued with the previous green energy policy, known as Energiewende (energy transition). Beginning with a strong ideological separation, the Fukushima accident in Japan provoked a u-turn in nuclear policy, leading the government to abandon the lifespan extensions and to intensify the implementation of Energiewende, which became one of the core policy projects of the Merkel II cabinet then. Moreover, a new kind of consensus atmosphere was established which helped to settle some controversial environmental problems. Albeit policy outcomes concerning Energiewende were rather mixed, energy and climate policy was a rather low ranking issues during the federal election campaign in 2013.     

Best Friends’ Discussions of Social Dilemmas

Peer relationships, particularly friendships, have been theorized to contribute to how children and adolescents think about social and moral issues. The current study examined how young adolescent best friends (191 dyads; 53.4 % female) reason together about multifaceted social dilemmas and how their reasoning is related to friendship quality. Mutually-recognized friendship dyads were videotaped discussing dilemmas entailing moral, social-conventional and prudential/pragmatic issues. Both dyad members completed a self-report measure of friendship quality. Dyadic data analyses guided by the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model indicated that adolescent and friend reports of friendship qualities were related to the forms of reasoning used during discussion. Friends who both reported that they could resolve conflicts in a constructive way were more likely to use moral reasoning than friends who reported that their conflict resolution was poor or disagreed on the quality of their conflict resolution. The findings provide evidence for the important role that friendship interaction may play in adolescents’ social and moral development.     

Knowing Me,Knowing You: Media Portrayal of the EU in Kazakhstan

Abstract

The dichotomy of Self/Other prevails in shaping identity. This article asks how and to what extent the elements of the EU’s image produced by media discourse shape the national identity of Kazakhstan. It contends that a state’s identity can be formulated not in opposition—that is, not ‘Us against Them’—but rather, ‘Us as One of Them’. It argues that, in the case of Kazakhstan, the predominantly positive media discourse about the EU ‘Other’ contributes to a positive formulation of the Self via the legitimisation of the domestic regime on the national and international levels.     

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