Sexual harassment in student residences: A response to DeKeseredy and Kelly's study

Research data from a recent study of sexual harassment in single student residences are provided as confirmation of DeKeseredy and Kelly's national study. The implications of data confirming the consistency of gender differences in attitudes towards and perceptions of unwanted sexual experiences are discussed. Future research in sexual harassment should focus on evaluating preventive education programmes and on operationalizing contextual factors that support sexual harassment.     

Negotiating Identities: The Party of Democratic Socialism between East German Regionalism, German National Identity and European Integration

For many East Germans, the Party of Democratic Socialism has been a political and social environment in which German national identity, GDR biographies, post-unification East German experiences and European integration could be successfully negotiated. The PDS enabled GDR identifiers to arrive at a critical evaluation of GDR history while maintaining self-respect for their individual biographies and avoiding the temptations of GDR nostalgia. As it found its place in the regionalized pluralism of the new German party system, PDS supporters came to terms with the dual transformation that ended the post-1945 socialist experiment as well as GDR statehood. Far from deepening the continuing cultural divisions between East and West Germans, the expression of regional East German interests and identity by the PDS contributed to the integration of post-unification German society.     

Beinahe-Gleichzeitigkeit. Die europäische Anti-Gentechnik-Welle und das Öffentlichkeitsdefizit der EU

Massenöffentlichkeiten spielen in der Geschichte des internationalen Gentechnikkonflikts seit dessen Einsetzen vor nunmehr drei Jahrzehnten eine entscheidende Rolle. Die Rekonstruktion dieses Konflikts lässt indes die nationale Situiertheit dieser Öffentlichkeiten erkennen: Die in ihnen stattfindenden Gentechnikkonflikte verlaufen voneinander unabhängig, in nationalem Rahmen und nationaler Selbstbezüglichkeit. Gleichzeitig wird in der zweiten Hälfte der 1990er Jahre aber auch eine andere bemerkenswerte Entwicklung deutlich: der Übergang von einem asynchronen Nebeneinander nationaler Kontroversen zu deren annähernd gleichzeitiger Mobilisierung. Theoretische Relevanz erhält diese Erscheinung vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Diskussion um die Transnationalisierung politischer Systeme und die demokratietheoretischen Implikationen dieses Vorgangs. In der entstehenden ?postnationalen Konstellation“ bricht eine Kluft auf zwischen nationalen Massenöffentlichkeiten und supranationalen Entscheidungsabläufen. Am deutlichsten zu Tage tritt dieses Problem im ?Öffentlichkeitsdefizit“ der Europäischen Union. Der internationale Konflikt um die Gentechnik lässt jedoch darauf schließen, dass, obwohl es kein Anzeichen eines ?Verschmelzens“ nationaler Massenöffentlichkeiten zu einer gemeinsamen europäischen Öffentlichkeit gibt, der dargestellte Synchronismus ein funktionales Äquivalent einer solchen europäischen Öffentlichkeit bilden könnte.     

Regulating Vertically Integrated Utilities When Transfers are Costly but Revenues are Beneficial

This paper considers regulating a vertically integratedutility under asymmetric information about efficiency gainsdue to integration. The benchmark case – benevolentregulation – implies a divestiture of a technically efficientintegration, unless the cost savings due to integrating aresubstantial. This highlights how private information causes adeviation from the standard perfect information framework.This result is at odds with the worldwide experience withpublic utilities that remained integrated almost throughoutthe 20th century despite that integration offered meager or nosavings as now becomes evident. Of course, this divergencebetween normative analysis and facts is no surprise for publicchoice. Indeed, a rather mild kind of a Leviathan motive –regulators dislike transfers to the utility, and by symmetry,like revenues – coupled with the `secrecy' only integrationoffers due to private information explains why a regulator hasan interest to keep even economically inefficiently integratedfirms integrated. This is in line with Crew and Rowley (1988)that public regulation serves to `milk' rather than to imposeefficiency.     

Austria

European Journal of Political Research -