Aktuelle Publikationen

In this paper we investigate the impact of gender stratification on the gender gap in both medicalisation attitudes and professional health care use. Furthermore, we examine to what extent medicalisation attitudes explain the gender gap in professional health care use. Using data from the second wave of the European Social Survey (N = 42028), we find that women report more positive attitudes towards medicalisation than men, explaining a small part of the gender gap in professional health care use. No association was observed between gender stratification and the gender gap in medicalisation attitudes or health care use. However, respondents living in societies characterized by a lower level of gender stratification, position themselves more independently towards physicians, while they use professional health care more frequently.

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Social media applications have become acceptable communication and interaction channels in the public sector. Driven by online behavior of citizens, available social networking platforms, and the governments' need to become more participatory, transparent, and collaborative, public managers must design a social media strategy that helps to fulfill the mission of their organization.Social media applications have become acceptable communication and interaction channels in the public sector. Driven by online behavior of citizens, available social networking platforms, and the governments' need to become more participatory, transparent, and collaborative, public managers must design a social media strategy that helps to fulfill the mission of their organization. Social media applications have become the newest wave of e-government and are making government Web sites more interactive and engaging. Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and photo- and video-sharing sites have become accepted communication channels in the public sector. The most important driver for social media use in the public sector should be the existing organizational mission and communication strategy of the agency. The organizational goals and objectives drive the extent and types of social media tools an agency should add to the already existing communication channels.

Dank größerer Datenfülle und verbesserter Schätzverfahren ist es für die Konfliktforschung mittlerweile möglich, das Risiko von Kriegen oder terroristischen Ereignissen recht präzise zu schätzen. Doch wie bei der Prognose von besonders heftigen Erdbeben ist die Vorhersage von extrem blutigen Ereignissen in andauernden Konflikten bis anhin schwer gefallen. Dieser Artikel berichtet, wie sich mit den Potenzgesetzen extreme Massaker gegenüber der Zivilbevölkerung ex post und ex ante prognostizieren lassen. Die verwendete Power Law-Verteilung beruht auf der Beobachtung, dass besonders massive Gewaltereignisse von gängigen Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungen wie der Normalverteilung unterschätzt werden. Nach unseren Berechnungen liegt die Wahrscheinlichkeit von mindestens einem Massaker mit 250 oder mehr zivilen Opfern in Syrien bis Ende Februar bei rund 80% (60% - 94%) und zwischen März und Mai 2013 bei bis zu 48%. Wir diskutieren die moralischen und praktischen Implikationen solcher Befunde und argumentieren, dass Prognosen den Entscheidungsträgern eine transparente Risikoeinschätzung bieten können.

Figures from postelection surveys often grossly overestimate election turnout. Two distinct phenomena are responsible for this gap: overrepresentation of actual voters and vote misreporting by actual nonvoters among survey respondents. Previous accounts of turnout bias are inconclusive in that they either focus on a single component, or fail to separate between the two. In this paper, we formally decompose turnout bias in election surveys into its constituent parts, assess their empirical prevalence and heterogeneity using an extensive collection of 49 vote validation studies from six countries, and employ Bayesian meta regression techniques to account for cross-study differences. Our results indicate that both election and survey characteristics such as actual voter turnout and survey response rates differentially affect the components of turnout bias. We conclude with a discussion of the threats and potentials of our findings for survey-based comparative electoral research.

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This contribution adds to the scholarship on morality politics. It addresses the conditions of morality policy change by comparing the decision-making dynamics in the regulation of prostitution and same-sex partnerships in Italy and Spain over two decades. We seek to explain why and under what circumstances some political actors are successful in reforming morality policies. For this purpose, we develop a four-fold typology of morality policy change. Our findings highlight that the different regulatory dynamics in both Catholic nation-states depend on the balance of power among the change and blocking coalitions and their degree of congruence. We show that governments succeed in realizing their morality policy goals only if they are able to form a coalition with the relevant political and societal actors. Furthermore, the Catholic Church, not least owing to its historical ties with both nation-states (Italy and Spain), plays a particular but context-specific role.

Previous research suggests that most treaties are ineffective in ensuring countries’ compliance with human rights standards. It has been argued, however, that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) including ‘hard’ human rights standards can withhold economic benefits and, thus, can have a real potential to substantially reduce human rights violations. The following article questions this as existent work on the effects of PTAs on human rights standards neglects a selection process underlying the implementation of these treaties. Countries being aware of the ‘shadow of the future’ already take into account what may happen at the succeeding enforcement stage when establishing a particular PTA. This implies that states agree on ‘hard’ human rights standards in PTAs only if they have a general propensity to abide by human rights in the first place. For testing the empirical implications of their argument, the authors collected new data on PTAs in 1976/77-2009, and employ genetic matching techniques. The results support the theoretical argument that PTAs are unlikely to affect human rights compliance when controlling for the outlined selection problem.