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Institute
Die UdSSR und der Golfkrieg
(1991)
Wachsende Rivalität
(1996)
Die Transatlantische Sicherheitspolitik und ihre künftige Entwicklung : Weg frei für Osteuropa?
(1995)
Introduction
(2007)
Conclusions : Governance and Democracy at the Local Level - Structures, Processes and Tensions
(2007)
Neue Herausforderungen an die europäische Sicherheitspolitik in den neunziger Jahren (Thesen)
(1992)
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.
Although the low-wage employment sector has enlarged over the past 20 years in the context of pronounced flexibility in restructured labor markets, gender differences in low-wage employment have declined in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In this article, the authors examine reasons for declining gender inequalities, and most notably concentrate on explanations for the closing gender gap in low-wage employment risks. In addition, they identify differences and similarities among the German-speaking countries. Based on regression techniques and decomposition analyses (1996-2016), the authors find significantly decreasing labor market risks for the female workforce. Detailed analysis reveals that (1) the concrete positioning in the labor market shows greater importance in explaining declining gender differences compared to personal characteristics. (2) The changed composition of the labor markets has prevented the low-wage sector from increasing even more in general and works in favor of the female workforce and their low-wage employment risks in particular.
As presidents approach the end of their constitutionally defined term in office, they face a number of difficulties, most importantly the deprivation of sources of power, personal enrichment, and protection from prosecution. This leads many of them to attempt to circumvent their term limits. Recent studies explain both the reasons for the extension or full abolition of term limits, and failed attempts to do so. Key explanations include electoral competition and the post-term fate of previous post holders. What we do not know yet is how compliance with term limits may be tied to the current president's expectations for their post-term fate. In particular, we do not know whether leaders who attempt to remove term limits and fail to do so jeopardize their post-term career as a result, and conversely, whether leaders who comply will have better outcomes in terms of security, prestige, and economic gain. Hence, we ask how the decision of a leader to comply or not comply with term limits is conditioned by the expectation of their post-term fate. To address this question, this article introduces new data on the career trajectories of term-limited presidents and its systematic effect on term limit compliance.
The power of business
(2007)
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.
Introduction and Preview
(2004)
A new political system model
(2018)
Semi-parliamentary government is a distinct executive-legislative system that mirrors semi-presidentialism. It exists when the legislature is divided into two equally legitimate parts, only one of which can dismiss the prime minister in a no-confidence vote. This system has distinct advantages over pure parliamentary and presidential systems: it establishes a branch-based separation of powers and can balance the ‘majoritarian’ and ‘proportional’ visions of democracy without concentrating executive power in a single individual. This article analyses bicameral versions of semi-parliamentary government in Australia and Japan, and compares empirical patterns of democracy in the Australian Commonwealth as well as New South Wales to 20 advanced parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. It discusses new semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require formal bicameralism, and pays special attention to semi-parliamentary options for democratising the European Union.
Veto player theory is a powerful approach to comparative politics. This article argues that the debate about its explanatory success would benefit from more systematic distinctions. The theory not only comes in different theoretical variants, it is also used in radically different ways empirically. Starting from recent debates about the ‘testing’ of theoretical models, the article distinguishes five ways in which theoretical models can be used empirically: contrastive, axiomatic, exploratory, presumptive and modular. The typology is applied to veto player theory and illustrated with exemplary studies and debates. The article concludes that each type raises different questions that should be answered in individual studies. Moreover, while veto player theory has an excellent track record on four empirical uses, the picture on its contrastive use is far more nuanced. More explicitly contrastive testing of the theory is desirable.
Review article: Democratic inclusiveness : a reinterpretation of Lijphart's patterns of democracy
(2010)
This contribution to the study or democratic inclusiveness advances three main claims, based on Lijphart's original data First, his measurement of executive inclusiveness is incoherent and invalid. Secondly, executive inclusiveness is best explained by the interaction of many parties and strong legislative veto points. This implies that executive inclusiveness should not be contained in either of Lijphart's two dimensions of democracy. Thirdly, parties have incentives to economize on the costs of inclusive coalitions by avoiding strong legislative veto points, and these incentives are greater in parliamentary than in presidential systems. Hence. Lijphart's favourite version of consensus democracy - characterized by a parliamentary system and a high degree of executive inclusiveness - is unlikely to be a behavioural-institutional equilibrium.
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.
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.