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The increased emphasis on labour market activation in many European countries has led to new forms of governance in recent decades. Primarily through qualitative data and document analysis, this article compares the restructuring of labour market service delivery in the UK and Germany. The comparison suggests the emergence of complex governance arrangements that seek to balance public regulation and accountability with the creation of room for market competition. As a result, we can observe in both countries a greater use of markets, but also of rules. While in both countries the relationships between different providers of labour market services can best be described as a mixture of cooperation and competition, differences exist in terms of instruments and the comprehensiveness of coordination initiatives. The findings suggest that the distinctions between governance models may be more important in theory than in practice, although the combinations of theoretical forms vary in different circumstances.
Previous studies on the electoral fortunes of extreme right parties (ERPs) have pointed to the importance of variables of party competition for the success - or failure - of ERPs. These studies vary greatly when it comes to describing the political opportunity structure of the extreme right. Apart from their methodological differences, existing studies differ especially with regard to the assumed underlying dimension of party competition. This article tests the impact of three frequently discussed variables in the political opportunity structure of ERPs (mainstream party convergence, position of the established right and party system polarisation) on the vote share of ERPs in Western Europe. In addition to examining previous studies in this field, it focuses on the interplay between the economic and the cultural dimensions as part of the political opportunity structure. The authors show that a decrease in polarisation with regard to economic questions is accompanied by a growing salience of ERPs' core issues, leading in the end to an increase in ERPs' vote share.
Although party competition is widely regarded as an important part of a working democracy, it is rarely analysed in political science literature. This article discusses the basic properties of party competition, especially the patterns of interaction in contemporary party systems. Competition as a phenomenon at the macro level has to be carefully distinguished from contest and cooperation as the forms of interaction at the micro level. The article gives special attention to the creation of issue innovations. Contrary to existing approaches, I argue that not only responsiveness but also innovation are necessary to guarantee a workable democratic competition. Competition takes place on an issue market, where parties can discover voters' demands. Combined with the concept of institutional veto points, the article presents hypotheses on how institutions shape the possibility for programmatic innovations.
This article compares two transnational public-private partnerships against hunger and malnutrition, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and the International Alliance Against Hunger with regard to their degree of business involvement and their input and output legimacy. We examine the participation of stakeholders, the accountability and transparency of the decision-making process, and the perceived provision of a public good. We identify a link between business involvement and output legitimacy, and we discuss the implications for public and private food governance.
A decade into the proclaimed "global war on terror," states are still struggling with the phenomenon's locus and definition under the effective laws. Remarkably, preventive detention of suspected terrorists fluctuates between various legal regimes: In Europe, criminal law is predominantly used but special security orders are occasionally issued as well; Israel applies in part the law of international armed conflicts; and in the United States, detention under a new war premise has been claimed.
This Article analyzes the response of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights to legislative and executive policies asserting the power of preventive detention in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The comparison exposes significant differences with regard to the application of international law, and most prominently concerning the underlying question of whether the struggle against terrorism should be considered a "war," or, perhaps more traditionally, a fight against crime.
Despite the substantial discrepancies in these three jurisdictions, this Article argues that the similarities are actually more striking. Whereas no court has accepted any attempt to fight terrorism outside the bounds of law, the judges have not hesitated to stretch and blur the pertinent frameworks by extensive interpretation. Ultimately, it is questionable whether on account of the individual's rights the resulting flexibilities and uncertainties are justifiable.
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!" "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumptysaid, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master that's all."
Torture is an extreme act of collective violence that is secretly executed in the name of a state. In order to explain the reasons why people torture others, individualist approaches concentrate on individuals' motives or interests. Contrary to that, the article argues that torture should be understood as a social relation. Thus, it takes the social relations of the group of torturers as a starting point. Firstly, following Georg Simmel's analysis of the secret society the paper argues that the group of torturers can adequately be conceptualized as a secret society; secondly, against this background the article reconstructs the conditions which structure torturers' agency; finally, this article offers an outline of the processes and dynamics that allows for explaining the phenomenon of torture. The thesis of the article argues that a relational sociology helps better explain and understand the social phenomenon of torture.
The conclusion to the special section has three objectives: First, it argues that a focus on "practice" implicitly connects all the articles in the special section and thereby reinforces the core points of the analytical framework introduced by Fuchs and Glaab. Second, the paper summarizes the main messages of the articles by identifying three red threads that are dominant in all four contributions. These are the strong focus of all authors on ideational forces, an emphasis on the role of academics and the description of complexities of local-global interdependencies. Third, some common blind spots are identified that merit future research.
In this paper, we provide a comprehensive multivariate cointegration analysis of three parts of the steam coal value chain - export, transport and import prices. The analysis is based on a rich dataset of international coal prices: in particular, we combine data on steam coal prices with freight rates, covering the period December 2001 until August 2009 at weekly frequency. We then test whether the demand and supply side components of steam coal trade are consistently integrated with one another. In addition, export and import prices as well as freight rates for individual trading routes, across regions and globally are combined. We find evidence of significant yet incomplete integration. We also find heterogeneous short-term dynamics of individual markets. Furthermore, we examine whether logistics enter coal price dynamics through transportation costs, which are mainly determined by oil prices. Our results suggest that this is generally not the case.
In a longitudinal sample of Icelandic children (7.9-12-15 years; n=109) the developmental relations between of control beliefs (locus of control) and school achievement were examined on the background of child rearing practices, socialization conditions, and social class from childhood to adolescence. Results show that supportive and restrictive socialization conditions in social classes affect school achievement as well as the development of control beliefs. Supportive child rearing practices in upper class families encourage the development of internal control beliefs in adolescence, and are coincident with higher school achievement. On the other hand, restrictive child rearing practices appear independent of social class and generally hinder the development of internal control beliefs and positive school achievement. Results of a path model suggest a lagged relationship between school achievement and control beliefs. School achievement in childhood (ages 7 and 9) predicts internal control beliefs in adolescence.
Whereas the US President signed the Kyoto Protocol, the failure of the US Congress to ratify it seriously hampered subsequent international climate cooperation. This recent US trend, of signing environmental treaties but failing to ratify them, could thwart attempts to come to a future climate agreement. Two complementary explanations of this trend are proposed. First, the political system of the US has distinct institutional features that make it difficult for presidents to predict whether the Senate will give its advice and consent to multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) and whether Congress will pass the required enabling legislation. Second, elected for a fixed term, US presidents might benefit politically from supporting MEAs even when knowing that legislative support is not forthcoming. Four policy implications are explored, concerning the scope for unilateral presidential action, the potential for bipartisan congressional support, the effectiveness of a treaty without the US, and the prospects for a deep, new climate treaty.
Policy relevance
Why does the failure of US ratification of multilateral environmental treaties occur? This article analyses the domestic political mechanisms involved in cases of failed US ratification. US non-participation in global environmental institutions often has serious ramifications. For example, it sharply limited Kyoto's effectiveness and seriously hampered international climate negotiations for years. Although at COP 17 in Durban the parties agreed to negotiate a new agreement by 2015, a new global climate treaty may well trigger a situation resembling the one President Clinton faced in 1997 when he signed Kyoto but never obtained support for it in the Senate. US failure to ratify could thwart future climate agreements.
Over the last three decades, the German political economy can be characterized by both institutional continuity and change. Understanding the dynamics of institutional change therefore requires an examination of the interplay of changes in formal institutional rules and how organizations respond to these changes by strategic attempts to promote or hinder further change in institutions. The macro-level political story of institutional change shows a number of paradoxes resulting in unexpected and often incomplete forms of market liberalization shaped by continued support for some core features of Germany's social market economy. The resulting erosion of Germany's co-ordinated model of economic organization through networks and business associations has gone hand-in-hand with the attempts to preserve these institutions for core workers and sectors of the economy in the face of changing environments. The result is a more varied institutional landscape characterized by international diffusion of liberal policies and the politics of their variable re-embedding within a long-term path of institutional continuity.
This article calls for a holistic perspective on parliamentary change through the analytical lens of parliamentary agenda powers. In addition to agenda control, the concept of agenda powers not only refers to the ability of parliamentary actors to directly influence parliamentary output through legislation (efficiency), but also to exert indirect influence through controlling the government (effectiveness) and through affecting public opinion (legitimacy). The concept of agenda powers comprises the formal institutional rules underlying the distribution of the parliamentary agenda, the factual application of these rules and the organisational powers enabling actors to make use of their time. The distribution of agenda powers can be explained by the sequencing of legitimacy, effectiveness, and efficiency reforms. Consequently, the concept of parliamentary agenda powers allows for a comparative long-term analysis of parliamentary change. Furthermore, the concept of parliamentary agenda powers enables us to operationalise normative scenarios of a de-parliamentarisation and the alleged transitions towards post- or neo-parliamentarian democracy.
Queerly intimate friends, fans and affective communication in a Super Girl fan fiction community
(2012)
This article examines the rise of the Girls' Love (GL) fan fiction community in contemporary China. More specifically, we focus on the 'Pink Super Girl Bar', an online fan fiction community devoted to the pairing of the contestants of the 2006 season of Super Girl, an entertainment program featured on Hunan Satellite TV that enjoys great popularity in the Sinophone world. Through an ethnographic account of the formation, convention and performativity of identities and socialities in this community, we demonstrate how Super Girl GL fans mobilize their emotional capital to create artworks, to have fun and to enrich their everyday lives. We argue that the GL fan fiction community has become a space of female homosociality, intimacy and affect in which a new generation of young Chinese women actively enact friendship and female subjectivity in a way that refuses the normalization of gender, sexuality and social relations. Moreover, by linking fan studies to affect studies and emotional geography, and by paying particular attention to indigenous concepts and cultural practices in mainland China's fan communities, we wish to contribute to fan studies with feminist, queer and transnational perspectives.
Jorn Knobloch, Between Self-reference and Other-reference: Typology and Transformation of Authoritarianism within the World Society, pp. 35-59. The article offers a conceptual framework for the analysis of the interdependence of the world society and the new authoritarianism. At first the article criticizes existing conceptual approaches and develops a new approach, which will use the assumptions of the systems theory. In the next part we discuss different theoretical impacts of the world society and the possible reactions of the authoritarianism. The third part evaluates the theoretical reactions. Therefore we use the empirical case of Russia. The empirical investigation of the approach permits the development of a conceptual framework for the further empirical research of the new authoritarianism.
According to gender and labor market research, differentiation of male and female work is not primarily grounded in specific tasks but rather rooted in male and female features attributed to work. In this paper, the effects of classification patterns are related to the categories used in occupational statistics. According to this argument statistical patterns contribute to gradual processes of inclusion into society by categorizing people. Put more precisely, this process of "making up people" (Hacking 1986) is conflated with gendered views of persons. This conceptual conflation is examined in the historical context of emerging occupational statistics, social sciences, and law in Germany around 1900. Inasmuch as statistical observation differentiated between economically productive and non-productive work, gendered distinctions were deeply encoded in its categories. These distinctions were institutionalized by means of the social scientific definition of role models as well as legal codification. In the conclusion, the sociology of knowledge approach followed in this paper is extended toward a discussion of broader questions of inclusion and gender inequality. In order to explain the persistence of gendered classifications in the organization of work in society, further gender inequality research needs to account for the enduring social evidence and symbolic relevance of sex classifications at the meso and macro levels.
Cross-dressing took on new political meanings in Germany's Weimar Republic, with the emergence of organizations and periodicals aimed at promoting the interests of self-identified "transvestites." This new sexological category, developed by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1910, formed the basis for a shared sense of identity and belonging among individuals who identified as members of the "opposite" sex. Drawing on the experiences of the homosexual emancipation movement and discourses of bourgeois respectability, middle-class transvestites came together to demand legal and social recognition, including acknowledgement of "transsexual" desires. Their efforts represent a critical but forgotten moment in the history of transgender political activism.
Social Network Sites (SNSs) rely exclusively on user-generated content to offer engaging and rewarding experience to its members. As a result, stimulating user communication and self-disclosure is vital for the sustainability of SNSs. However, considering that the SNS users are increasingly culturally diverse, motivating this audience to self-disclose requires understanding of their cultural intricacies. Yet existing research offers only limited insights into the role of culture behind the motivation of SNS users to self-disclose. Building on the privacy calculus framework, this study explores the role of two cultural dimensions - individualism and uncertainty avoidance - in self-disclosure decisions of SNS users. Survey responses of US and German Facebook members are used as the basis for our analysis. Structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis results reveal the distinct role of culture in the cognitive patterns of SNS users. The authors find that trusting beliefs play a key role in the self-disclosure decisions of users from individualistic cultures. At the same time, uncertainty avoidance determines the impact of privacy concerns. This paper contributes to the theory by rejecting the universal nature of privacy calculus processes. The findings provide for an array of managerial implications for SNS providers as they strive to encourage content creation and sharing by their heterogeneous members.
This article distinguishes methodological problems in quality evaluation and measurement in two policy fields, namely higher education and public broadcasting. Both are characterized by similar external and internal basic conditions and are thus suitable for comparative research. The difficulties of quality measurement and evaluation are discussed with respect to three main features: (1) definition of quality, (2) operationalization of quality and (3) interpretation of quality. Furthermore the identified difficulties in both areas are not always the same, because they depend on different research criteria. Thus the debates of quality measurement and evaluation in higher education and public broadcasting can learn from each other and increase the understanding of quality measurement in general. In addition the comparative design provides opportunities for the development of methods and perspectives.
This article focuses on the emergence of a decentralized institutional complex, interplay management, and the institutional interplay between the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the EU in the issue area of environmental shipping policies. It shows that the synergistic relationship between both institutions has been driven primarily by commitment and compliance mechanisms. By influencing IMO decision-making and improving the implementation and effectiveness of IMO conventions, the EU has become a driving force in international environmental shipping policies, and its new initiatives may even enhance its leadership role within the IMO in the future. Despite the still-existing lack of cognitive leadership by the EU, the synergies between both institutions provide evidence for the EU's leadership capacities in global environmental politics.
In dealing with surveillance, scholars have widely agreed to refute privacy as an analytical concept and defining theme. Nonetheless, in public debates, surveillance technologies are still confronted with issues of privacy, and privacy therefore endures as an empirical subject of research on surveillance. Drawing from our analysis of public discourse of so-called smart closed-circuit television (CCTV) in Germany, we propose to use a sociology of knowledge perspective to analyze privacy in order to understand how it is socially constructed and negotiated. Our data comprise 117 documents, covering all publicly available documents between 2006 and 2010 that we were able to obtain. We found privacy to be the only form of critique in the struggle for the legitimate definition of smart CCTV. In this paper, we discuss the implications our preliminary findings have for the relationship between privacy issues and surveillance technology and conclude with suggestions of how this relationship might be further investigated as paradoxical, yet constitutive.
The article argues that the uprisings during the Arab Spring as well as the riots in either the banlieues of French cities or in London have to be considered as violent conflicts that pose a serious threat to the social orders in which they emerge. These different kinds of social resistance have in common that they communicate more or less developed alternative conceptions of social orders that challenge what has been considered legitimate so far. Until now, sociology has neither successfully explained such kinds of conflicts nor the way they are triggered. Therefore, the article discusses crucial problems of a sociology of violence, i.e. violence as term and concept, theoretical and methodological deficits and, finally, assumptions about the role of violence in conflict-ridden processes of modernization and civilization in general. The article argues that a sociology of violence should concentrate on the nexus of social order and violence in order to explain how and why violent conflicts emerge in specific social contexts. Thus, a sociology of violence should take an effort to reconstruct the crucial social mechanisms that underlie the dynamics of emerging violence in processes of production and reproduction of social order.
One of the most striking features of recent public sector reform in Europe is privatization. This development raises questions of accountability: By whom and for what are managers of private for-profit organizations delivering public goods held accountable? Analyzing accountability mechanisms through the lens of an institutional organizational approach and on the empirical basis of hospital privatization in Germany, the article contributes to the empirical and theoretical understanding of public accountability of private actors. The analysis suggests that accountability is not declining but rather multiplying. The shifts in the locus and content of accountability cause organizational stress for private hospitals.
The project of public-reason liberalism faces a basic problem: publicly justified principles are typically too abstract and vague to be directly applied to practical political disputes, whereas applicable specifications of these principles are not uniquely publicly justified. One solution could be a legislative procedure that selects one member from the eligible set of inconclusively justified proposals. Yet if liberal principles are too vague to select sufficiently specific legislative proposals, can they, nevertheless, select specific legislative procedures? Based on the work of Gerald Gaus, this article argues that the only candidate for a conclusively justified decision procedure is a majoritarian or otherwise 'neutral' democracy. If the justification of democracy requires an equality baseline in the design of political regimes and if justifications for departure from this baseline are subject to reasonable disagreement, a majoritarian design is justified by default. Gaus's own preference for super-majoritarian procedures is based on disputable specifications of justified liberal principles. These procedures can only be defended as a sectarian preference if the equality baseline is rejected, but then it is not clear how the set of justifiable political regimes can be restricted to full democracies.
Political scientists regularly justify particular democratic institutions. This article explores two desiderata for such justifications. The first is a formal equality baseline which puts the burden of justification on those who favour more unequal institutions. This baseline is seen as an implication of the rule of law. The second desideratum, the comparison requirement, builds on the first: adequate justifications of particular institutions must compare them to the best alternative, and this comparison must consider the costs for political equality. The two desiderata are applied to political science debates about the proportionality of the electoral system and bicameral systems of legislative decision-making.
Benefit duration, unemployment duration and job match quality aregression-discontinuity approach
(2013)
We use a sharp discontinuity in the maximum duration of benefit entitlement to identify the effect of extended benefit duration on unemployment duration and post-unemployment outcomes (employment stability and re-employment wages). We address dynamic selection, which may arise even under an initially random assignment to treatment, estimating a bivariate discrete-time hazard model jointly with a wage equation and correlated unobservables. Owing to the non-stationarity of job search behavior, we find heterogeneous effects of extended benefit duration on the re-employment hazard and on job match quality. Our results suggest that the unemployed who find a job close to and after benefit exhaustion experience less stable employment patterns and receive lower re-employment wages compared to their counterparts who receive extended benefits and exit unemployment in the same period. These results are found to be significant for men but not for women.
Accountability can be conceptualized as institutionalized mechanisms obliging actors to explain their conduct to different forums, which can pose questions and impose sanctions. This article analyses different crises' in immigration policies in Norway, Denmark and Germany along a descriptive framework of five different accountability types: political, administrative, legal, professional and social accountability. The exchanges of information, debate and their consequences between an actor and a forum are crucial to understanding how political-administrative action is carried out in critical situations. First, accountability dynamics emphasize conventional norms and values regarding policy change and, second, formal political responsibility does not necessarily lead to political consequences such as minister resignations in cases of misbehaviour. Consequences strongly depend on how accountability dynamics take place.
The article explores how recent changes in the governance of employment services in three European countries (Denmark, Germany and Norway) have influenced accountability relationships. The overall assumption in the growing literature about accountability is that the number of actors involved in accountability arrangements is rising, that accountability relationships are becoming more numerous and complex, and that these changes may lead to contradictory accountability relationships, and finally to multi accountability disorder'. The article tries to explore these assumptions by analysing the different actors involved and the information requested in the new governance arrangements in all three countries. It concludes that the considerable changes in organizational arrangements and more managerial information demanded and provided have led to more shared forms of accountability. Nevertheless, a clear development towards less political or administrative accountability could not be observed.
The Westminster system places great power upon the Executive with minimal accountabilities. Despite the dissolution of the British Empire, so many countries maintained the Westminster system whether it was transplanted or implanted to their soil. The Westminster system provides various actors with a great potential of increasing power autonomy over others due to the high levels of flexibility and manoeuvrability. Political actors, especially following independence, were able to operate generally unencumbered by fixed and formal institutional expectations. This allowed the countries and their executive, particularly the Prime Minister, the ability to mould and establish constitutional traditions, which in turn shaped the nascent polity that surrounded the real and constitutional independence. This article examines the Westminster systems critical legacy to accountability and its impact on executive power.