The Danzig Question in British Foreign Policy, 1918–1920

Among the many and often bitter territorial disputes following the collapse of Germany and Russia in Central and Eastern Europe — to mention only the questions of Vilna, Memel, Teschen, or Lemberg — the problem of the Polish sea access was particularly explosive and became the most vexing territorial problem of the whole conference. This paper examines the question of Danzig and the lower Vistula within the context of contradicting Polish, German and Western, mainly British ambitions and preferences. The author shows that the proclamation of the Free City of Danzig and the creation of the Polish Corridor, dividing Germany into two parts, was a compromise not liked in Warsaw and Berlin and one the British, always fearing fatal repercussions to future stability, only considered to be the lesser choice of evils.     

Imperfect adaptation: how the WTO and the IMF adjust to shifting power distributions among their members

How do international institutions adjust to shifting power distributions among their members? We argue that institutional adaptations to the rise of emerging and the decline of established powers are different from what power transition theories (PTTs) would lead us to believe. Institutional adaptations are not impossible, as pessimist PTT variants hold; and they are rarely easy to attain, let alone perfect, as optimist PTT variants imply. To bridge the gap between these versions of PTT, we propose an institutionalist power shift theory (IPST) which combines insights on the conditions and mechanisms of institutional change from functionalist, historical and distributive variants of rational institutionalism. IPST claims that institutional adaptations will succeed or fail depending on whether or not emerging powers are able to undermine the international institution and to make credible threats to this effect. To demonstrate IPST’s plausibility we analyze: (1) how India and Brazil gained the agreement of established powers to their membership in the WTO core negotiation group (“Quad”), which had previously been dominated by developed countries; and (2) how China reached agreement with established powers on (more) even-handed surveillance of IMF members’ financial stability, which, up to then, had focused on developing countries and exchange rate issues.     

Federal-level Government Participation and State-level Electoral Performance: A Party-based Analysis of Land Elections in Germany, 1949–2017

To what extent does the federal political arena contaminate the regional one in Germany? Does a party’s position as government or opposition on the federal level have a systematic impact on its performance in Land elections? Land elections are often characterised as second order elections, but existing empirical studies that use real election data suffer from important methodological problems. Unlike previous approaches using survey data or comparing vote shares in regional and federal elections, we analyse contamination in two ways. First, we test whether a party’s role at the federal level has a systematic impact on gaining or losing office at the Land level. Second, we examine the vote difference of parties relative to their result in the previous election in the Land. Drawing on a complete dataset of all Land elections from 1949 to 2017, we find confirmation for two phenomena well known in comparative electoral studies. First, the anti-incumbency effect: government parties tend to lose votes. In the German context, as in many other multilevel systems, this is exacerbated by the second effect: contamination. Gaining power or votes on the Land level is very difficult when a party is in government on the federal level.     

Mehr Normativität wagen: Ein Plädoyer für eine reflexive Grundhaltung in der politikwissenschaftlichen Lehre

This article argues for a more conscious reference to normativity in political science education. A greater reference to normativity should find its expression in a self-reflexive attitude which includes a disclosure of own normative assumptions, an examination of given postulates and knowledge and a recognition of the complexity of social relations. By looking at students, teachers and learning relations, we show how such a reflexive attitude can be implemented and facilitated in order to educate students who think and act critically.     

The Danzig Question in British Foreign Policy, 1918-1920

Among the many and often bitter territorial disputes following the collapse of Germany and Russia in Central and Eastern Europe — to mention only the questions of Vilna, Memel, Teschen, or Lemberg — the problem of the Polish sea access was particularly explosive and became the most vexing territorial problem of the whole conference. This paper examines the question of Danzig and the lower Vistula within the context of contradicting Polish, German and Western, mainly British ambitions and preferences. The author shows that the proclamation of the Free City of Danzig and the creation of the Polish Corridor, dividing Germany into two parts, was a compromise not liked in Warsaw and Berlin and one the British, always fearing fatal repercussions to future stability, only considered to be the lesser choice of evils.