The ADA on the Road: Disability Rights in Germany

This paper examines the impact of a "disability rights model" on the emerging disability rights movement in Germany. Traditional German disability politics and activism are based on the expansion of welfare and special needs provisions rather than on equal rights and integration. Inspired by the 1990 Americans with Disability Act, German activists adopted a disability rights model and successfully worked toward the passage of a constitutional equality amendment in 1994 and ant-discrimination legislation in 2002. Using the literature on rights mobilization, this paper argues that German disability activists use rights talk to both support and contest culturally specific approaches to disability rights, equal treatment, and the role of the state in guaranteeing welfare rights. The globalization of disability rights should not be viewed as an imposition of American norms but as a more complex process of adaptation and cultural transformation that involves constructing locally legitimate approaches to disability rights with an American import.     

Staatskapazität und Verwaltungsreformen in hybriden und autoritären Regimen – am Beispiel der Steuerverwaltung in postsowjetischen Ländern

In order to enlarge state capacity, authoritarian regimes have undertaken considerable efforts to (re-)construct and modernize their administrations. Combining various research strands, this literature review links basic findings of research on authoritarian and hybrid regimes to those on administrative reforms in post-soviet countries. As tax administrations are essential for increasing state capacity, a particular focus is laid on these reforms. Drawing on the cases of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazachstan, the article reveals that stable, hegemonic authoritarian regimes seem to succeed better in increasing administrative efficiency and capability. While professionalizing their civil services, however, tax administrations can still be used to repress opponents. Hybrid regimes which are shaped by frequent government turnovers, by contrast, seem to avoid longsome efficiency-oriented reforms of their administrations.     

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence.     

The many lives and deaths of Sofia Kovalevskaia: approaches to women's role in scholarship and culture in grmany at the turn of the twentieth century

This article examines the ways in which the scientific work, life, and death of Sofia Kovalevskaia, the first female professor of mathematics in modern Europe, were represented in approaches to women's role in scholarship and culture in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century. Kovalevskaia's greatest scholarly successes and early death coincided with the period of most intense debate on women's admission to higher education in Germany, and her example came to be extensively discussed by supporters and opponents alike. The various ways in which the story of the woman mathematician was portrayed were symptomatic of what was at stake in the question of women's entry to university in the German Empire.     

On the estimation of lay-time by measurements of rigor mortis

Measurements of the torgue to overcome rigor mortis on the legs of 101 male human cadavers at 5 degrees C are reported. There seems to exist an upper limit, which is dependent on the lay-time, above which no value occurs, but below which every value may be found. By calculating the 90% tolerance limits for lay-times grouped at 12-hourly intervals, this upper limit was found to decrease exponentially with lay-time. This may be used for the estimation of maximum lay-times from rigor mortis measurements.     

Path Dependencies in European Integration: A Constructive Response to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer

There is no doubt about the political necessity of the Eastern enlargement of the European Union and corresponding reforms of its political institutions. By contrast, the shape and content of these reforms is a subject that is highly contested between the member states. In this context, when the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, presented his vision of future development for Europe his ideas were refreshingly welcome. However, Fischer's ideas imply, in many respects, a turning away from hitherto accepted paths to European integration. The main claim we want to make in this paper is that, against the backdrop of this breach with the present European-level institutional system, the chance that the Fischer initiatives could come to political fruition must be viewed with scepticism. On the basis of this finding, which rests essentially upon a historical-institutionalist analysis, we develop an alternative concept for a European constitution.     

Implementing children’s right to be heard: Local attenuations of a global commitment

A critical challenge for human rights and human security alike turns on diminution of subject audibility and voice and the reduction of rights-bearing subjects to mere referent objects of security. Owing in part to inadequate theorization of child/youth subjecthood, this problem is especially acute where the rights and security of young people are at issue. Though the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child makes specific provision for recovery of the voices of children and youth, this may be frustrated at implementation in local settings. Moving beyond the Global South, where this problem has been more readily acknowledged, this article inquires into practices that undermine child/youth rights by reinforcing the subject/object positions of protector/protected in ways that disallow young people’s articulations of their best interests and security needs. Spurious presumptions about young people’s (in)capacity for independent subjecthood as well as emergent rhetorical technologies of silencing and voice-denial are identified.