Aktuelle Publikationen

Many observers contend that wartime civilian victimization is an instrument of political leaders to achieve a particular goal. This article examines whether retaliation for similar acts by the other side, the developments on the battlefield, or the behavior of international actors accounts for the ups and downs of this so-called one-sided violence. Using information from the Konstanz One-Sided Violence Event Dataset and other sources, we evaluate the empirical relevance of these complementary models statistically. Time series analyses of the weekly number of killed and harmed Muslims (Bosniacs) and Serbs during the Bosnian civil war support the military and the massacre logic. We show that the Serbian side decreased one-sided violence following a territorial conquest, but that its one-sided violence was not a reciprocal response to the Bosniac targeting of civilians. Conversely, the Bosniac side resorted to violence during times of increasing Serbian atrocities and when the fighting was particularly intense. The analysis reveals that most international interventions did not reduce the carnage, but that the Serbs responded to Russian moves.

Research in areas affected by armed conflict presents many challenges beyond those normally encountered by social scientists. This enhanced complexity has resulted in the conventional academic view that serious quantitative field research has to wait until the fighting stops. Those studies that were conducted in a conflict area fail to discuss how insecurity affects the methodological side of the research process. In this article, the authors argue that valid and reliable quantitative fieldwork is possible even in the most dangerous contexts, but it requires some methodological flexibility. In discussing this flexibility, the authors devote attention to two major components of quantitative survey research: the sampling process and the data collection. In doing so, this article focuses in particular on face-to-face interviews as the mode of data collection.

Although the European Monetary Union (EMU) is mainly an economic institution, its future has always hinged upon political manoeuvres. This article examines whether and to what extent non-scheduled and scheduled political events concerning the fiscal governance framework of the EMU have influenced foreign exchange markets. In particular, we estimate how decisions made by the European Commission, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council and the European Council affected the systematic euro-dollar risk premium. Analysing daily data from 2001 to 2005 with a Component GARCH model, we show how the political rhetoric and action have influenced financial markets. Our empirical results highlight crucial shortcomings of the fiscal policy framework of the EMU.

This article provides the design of a new student-centered information management course to teach the effective use of social media technologies in the public sector as part of public affairs programs. The goal of this “Government 2.0” course is to provide students with analytical and technological skills to navigate the challenges future public managers are facing in a networked workplace. Social media technologies, such as wikis, blogs, microblogging services, or social networking sites, have evolved into innovative channels to collect and share information about government updates and breaking news as well as ongoing operations. Future public managers trained in public affairs programs expect to have access to and work with social media technologies at their future workplace. This course sets out to build competencies and skills to create an increased awareness and knowledge about the effective use of social media technologies for informal learning among government practitioners. Six course elements are identified that support student-centered learning and distributed responsibilities in a combination of online and offline learning experiences. Each course element is discussed, including its learning objectives, related student activities, outcomes, and evaluation elements The article concludes with recommendations for faculty who plan to teach with social media technologies in public affairs programs.

Das erfolgreiche Management von Teamprozessen ist eine der größten Herausforderungen für Unternehmen und Führungskräfte. Viele Aufgaben in der heutigen Arbeitswelt können nur bewältigt werden, wenn Experten aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen produktiv in Teams zusammenarbeiten. Insbesondere ist dies der Fall, wenn es darum geht, kreative Lösungen für neue Produktentwicklungen zu generieren. Erfolgreiche Führung und Steuerung von Teamprozessen ist deshalb häufig ein entscheidender Wettbewerbsfaktor für Unternehmen. Die technische Entwicklungsabteilung eines großen deutschen Automobilkonzerns war sich dieser Herausforderung bewusst und plante deshalb eine systematische, evidenzbasierte Analyse der Teamprozesse in ihren zahlreichen Projektentwicklungsteams.

The question whether organizations should encourage leaders to treat their followers differently, or as a collective entity, has long fueled discussion among both practitioners and scholars. Recent advances point to two possible key constructs, namely, collective-focused leadership climate and differentiated individual-focused leadership. These constructs are important as they can have opposite effects on collective outcomes. However, at present, no single overarching theoretical framework has been put forward to help understand these opposite effects. Therefore, this study develops and tests a new, more unified, perspective. Drawing from the commitment literature and in particular the often used theories of social exchange and perceived organizational support therein, we first argue for opposite effects on the affective organization commitment climate among employees. Then we reason that organizational performance can increase, if such affective commitment is ‘put into action’ and raise the organizational-citizenship-behavior climate. Our three-path-mediation hypotheses are tested, and supported, by Structural Equation Modeling analyses in a multi-source dataset that contains more than 18,000 respondents from 175 companies. This new empirically tested and supported perspective takes important steps toward resolving the long lingering question of whether to differentiate leadership or not.

The German system of industrial relations has undergone significant changes in the last decade. This article reflects on and provides empirical evidence for how these changes have affected the training behaviour of firms. Conventional perspectives would predict a general decline in training investment when the constraints of collective wage bargaining are loosened. Relying on a large data set on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training for the years 2000 and 2007, we do find evidence for this hypothesis but would add that the strength of the effect varies strongly across different types of firms. Large firms have benefited much more from participating in training than have small firms and have therefore maintained their investment in training because they are able to reduce net costs by expanding the productive contributions of apprentices. This finding may help to explain the apparent resilience of the German training system in the recent economic and financial crisis.

Beim Plebiszit über das Bahnhofsprojekt „Stuttgart 21“ unterschieden sich die Abstimmungsergebnisse regional erheblich. Journalisten und Politiker begründeten dies mit kulturellen Unterschieden zwischen Baden und Württemberg und dem „Rheintal-Effekt“, der eine regionale Konkurrenz um Ressourcen zum Bahnausbau unterstellt. Wir prüfen diese Thesen mithilfe statistischer Analysen und zeigen, dass die regionale Varianz der Abstimmungsergebnisse in den Stadt- und Landkreisen kaum mit diesen Faktoren zu erklären ist. Vielmehr erklären neben der parteipolitischen Bindung die Vorteile, die von dem umgebauten Bahnhof zu erwarten sind, sowie deren regional unterschiedliche Relevanz die Abstimmungsergebnisse. Dagegen zeigen die potenziellen rheintalspezifischen Nachteile keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf das Abstimmungsergebnis. Unsere Befunde unterstreichen damit Ergebnisse anderer Studien zu Plebisziten, die ebenfalls parteipolitische und nutzenmaximierende Faktoren identifizieren. Wenn aber, wie auch im Fall von S21, plebiszitäre Abstimmungsergebnisse parlamentarische Mehrheiten widerspiegeln, dann scheint der Wert von Plebisziten für die Bürgerbeteiligung begrenzt zu sein; wenn dazu noch das Abstimmungsergebnis von der Kovarianz der regional relevanten Vorteile mit der Bevölkerungsverteilung abhängt, dann gefährden Plebiszite Infrastrukturprojekte in bevölkerungsarmen Regionen. Daher gilt es zu prüfen, ob nicht andere Formen der Mitgestaltung, etwa bei der Entwicklung und Umsetzung von Infrastrukturprojekten, Bürgerinteressen umfassender berücksichtigen als die „Mitgestaltung“ über ein Plebiszit.

Scholarly interest in the study of education from the perspective of political science has increased rapidly in the last few years. However, the literature focuses on comparing education politics at the country level, neglecting the analysis of micro-level foundations of education policies in terms of individual preferences and their interaction with macro contexts. This paper provides a first step in addressing this research gap, engaging in a multilevel analysis of survey data for a large number of OECD countries. The core research question is how institutional contexts – in this case socio-economic and educational inequalities – shape the micro-level association between the individual income position and support for education spending. The core finding is that these different dimensions of inequality have different implications at the micro level. Higher levels of socio-economic inequality enhance the conflict between the rich and the poor over public investments in education. By contrast, when access to higher levels of education is effectively restricted, the rich are more likely to support public education spending. This is because higher levels of educational stratification ensure that further public investments in education benefit the rich relatively more than the poor, who in turn become less willing to support this kind of public spending.