Aktuelle Publikationen

The article focuses on the use of social media in emergency management in the U.S. The core activities of social media interactions among first responders, utility companies and citizens are outlined. The Twitter channel of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is highlighted which offers online updates on crisis situations.

How does major policy change come about? This article identifies and rectifies weaknesses in the conceptualization of innovative policy change in the Advocacy Coalition Framework. In a case study of policy belief change preceding an innovative reform in the German subsystem of old-age security, important new aspects of major policy change are carved out. In particular, the analysis traces a transition from one single hegemonic advocacy coalition to another stable coalition, with a transition phase between the two equilibria. The transition phase is characterized (i) by a bipolarization of policy beliefs in the subsystem and (ii) by state actors with shifting coalition memberships due to policy learning across coalitions or due to executive turnover. Apparently, there are subsystems with specific characteristics (presumably redistributive rather than regulative subsystems) in which one hegemonic coalition is the default, or the “normal state.” In these subsystems, polarization and shifting coalition memberships seem to interact to produce coalition turnover and major policy change. The case study is based on discourse network analysis, a combination of qualitative content analysis and social network analysis, which provides an intertemporal measurement of advocacy coalition realignment at the level of policy beliefs in a subsystem.

This article explores the motives and means of the African Union and its member states for engaging in governance beyond Africa, and shows the leeway and limits the African organization faces in this regard. Two questions are at the center of the article. Is the AU successful in influencing governance beyond Africa? And what explains its success or failure? Three case studies form the article's empirical background: a study of the 2005 discussion about a reform of the UN Security Council; a study of the negotiations during the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009; and, finally, a study of the attempt to defer the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in 2009. The article argues that the AU can influence governance beyond Africa only if it is united, adopts realistic positions, and gains the support of more influential global players.

This article presents a new method of reconstructing actors' political positions from coded political texts. It is based on a model that combines a dynamic perspective on actors' political positions with a probabilistic account of how these positions are translated into emphases of policy topics in political texts. In the article it is shown how model parameters can be estimated based on a maximum marginal likelihood principle and how political actors’ positions can be reconstructed using empirical Bayes techniques. For this purpose, a Monte Carlo Expectation Maximization algorithm is used that employs independent sample techniques with automatic Monte Carlo sample size adjustment. An example application is given by estimating a model of an economic policy space and a noneconomic policy space based on the data from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Parties’ positions in policy spaces reconstructed using these models are made publicly available for download.

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Ob und unter welchen Umständen ein Schwangerschaftsabbruch erlaubt sein sollte, ist in Gesellschaft und Politik eine besonders strittige Frage. Seine Regulierung wurde in Deutschland dementsprechend von breiten und kontrovers geführten Debatten begleitet. Der Schwangerschaftsabbruch wird zur Gruppe der sogenannten Moralpolitiken gezählt, die sich durch grundlegende Wertekonflikte auszeichnen und daher nur bedingt durch Aushandlungen zu regulieren sind. Der Aufsatz möchte erklären, welche Positionen die Parteien im Deutschen Bundestag in diesem Konflikt bisher eingenommen haben, ob sich die Einstellungen ihrer Abgeordneten in der Bevölkerung widerspiegeln und ob es einen Einstellungswandel in den letzten Jahrzehnten gegeben hat. Für den Zeitraum zwischen 1974 und 2009 werden mittels eines qualitativ-quantitativen Methodenmixes Analysen der Parlamentsdokumente und der ALLBUS-Daten durchgeführt. Sie zeigen, dass es in der politischen Arena Meinungskoalitionen gibt, die zeitlich weitgehend konstant sind und deutlich entlang der Parteigrenzen verlaufen. In der Bevölkerung wie in der Politik fällt die Beurteilung von Schwangerschaftsabbrüchen je nach Begründung unterschiedlich aus: So wird ein Schwangerschaftsabbruch aus medizinischen oder kriminologischen Gründen grundsätzlich eher befürwortet als aus anderen Motiven.

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Morality policies generally refer to issues in which political conflicts are shaped by debates over first principle; i.e., value conflicts are more important than instrumental considerations of policy design. Yet there is still a remarkable lack of scholarly attention on morality policies, in particular with regard to general implications for the study of public policy. To stimulate further research in this area, the article discusses different concepts of morality policy and suggests a distinction between different morality policy types. Moreover, distinctive features of morality policy content and effects are discussed. The article concludes with sketching out promising areas of future research in this field of inquiry.