Aktuelle Publikationen

This article investigates changes within national budget by examining actors’ behavioral predilections and the institutional constraints under which they operate. The article presents three theoretical propositions about the influence of attention and institutions on all magnitudes of programmatic budget changes ranging from large cuts to massive expansions. Using quantile regression, the author is able to uncover which distinct processes bear on cuts, stasis, and expansion across spending categories within a budget. An examination of budgetary data from Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States from 1964 to 1999 leads to the conclusion that attention shifts lead to contractions and expansions of budgetary items, whereas preference-based explanations have marginal support. In addition, institutional costs involved in budgetary politics amplify budgetary shifts. The author closes the article by discussing the implications of the findings for partisan theories of government and institutional theories.

Bislang hat sich die Demokratieforschung kaum damit auseinandergesetzt, in welcher Weise sich der Umgang mit unter dem Vorgängerregime begangenen Menschenrechtsverletzungen auf die Konsolidierungschancen einer jungen Demokratie auswirkt. Der Beitrag vertritt die These, dass die Suche nach Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit lediglich einzelne Teildimensionen von Demokratie beeinflusst, und greift die Dimension der Rechtsstaatlichkeit heraus. Neben der theoretischen Diskussion möglicher Effekte von Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung auf die Herausbildung rechtsstaatlicher Standards und Institutionen werden Probleme der Konzeptspezifikation und Messung von abhängiger und unabhängiger Variable aufgezeigt. Empirische Analysen liefern deutliche Hinweise auf einen positiven Zusammenhang zwischen Vergangenheitsbearbeitung und Rechtsstaatlichkeit. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die Herausforderungen weiterführender Forschung zur Wirkung von Transitional Justice beleuchtet.

The virtual world Second Life allows social interactions among avatars - online representations of real-life people – and is slowly adopted in the public sector as a tool for innovative ways to interact with citizens, interorganizational collaboration, education and recruitment (Wyld 2008). Governments are setting up online embassies, voting simulations, interactive learning simulations and virtual conferences. While there are very prominent and elaborate examples on the federal and state level of government, we have seen only a handful of applications on the local level. One of these local examples is MuniGov2.0 – a collaboration of municipal government professionals who regularly meet in Second Life. The goal of the group is to support each others geographically distributed implementation attempts to incorporate new technologies in the public sector. Interviews with the founding members and core group show clear mission-specific needs that Second Life collaboration can support, but that there are also technological and behavioral challenges involved using this highly interactive environment. The article will highlight the challenges, how they were met, lessons learned, future directions of the project and ends with recommendations for the use of Second Life in local government.

Measures of constituency preferences are of vital importance for the study of political representation and other research areas. Yet, such measures are often difficult to obtain. Previous survey-based estimates frequently lack precision and coverage due to small samples, rely on questionable assumptions or require detailed auxiliary information about the constituencies' population characteristics. We propose an alternative Bayesian hierarchical approach that exploits minimal geographic information readily available from digitalized constituency maps. If at hand, social background data are easily integrated. To validate the method, we use national polls and district-level results from the 2009 German Bundestag election, an empirical case for which detailed structural information is missing.

This article addresses current issues and relevant prospects of EU social dialogues at sectoral level. It examines fundamental difficulties ‘post-Lisbon’, especially as regards implementation, including procedures for follow-up and monitoring. The article also deals with the Commission’s most recent Staff Working Document on sectoral social dialogue, raises major caveats and elaborates on various prospects of most recent voluntary results (‘autonomous agreements’ and ‘process-oriented texts’).

Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich vorwiegend aus einer theoretischen Perspektive mit Korruption als einer bestimmten Form von Devianz in Kleinstaaten, insbesondere Mikrostaaten: Weisen sie Besonderheiten im Hinblick auf Korruptionsanfälligkeit, das Kosten-Nutzen-Verhältnis von Korruption sowie die Korruptionsbekämpfung auf? Zunächst wird eine grobe Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse für Kleinstaaten im Hinblick auf Korruption skizziert. Es folgt ein Versuch, darüber hinausgehend strukturelle korruptionserhöhende oder korruptionsreduzierende Einflussfaktoren für das Korruptionsniveau in kleinen politischen Systemen zu benennen. Daraufhin wird anhand eines Stufenmodells diskutiert, wann und gegebenenfalls in welcher Weise Kleinstaaten aktiv Korruptionsbekämpfung betreiben. Einige der in den verschiedenen Abschnitten entwickelten Überlegungen werden am Beispiel Liechtensteins punktuell veranschaulicht. Der Beitrag versteht sich als theoretische Vorstudie für weiterführende empirische Analysen.

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The purchase of environmental-labelled goods is an important dimension of sustainable consumption. Existing research on environmental labels and sustainable consumption has a rather individualistic bias. Organizational and structural determinants have only recently sparked attention. In this paper, a comparative framework is used to analyse the impact of organizational varieties of environmental labelling and market supply characteristics on purchases of environmental-labelled goods in 18 European countries. Focusing on labels for organic food and ecological durables, the plurality of existing labels as well as state involvement into labelling are used as the central dimensions constituting the organizational varieties. Market structures refer to the supply of labelled goods and the dominant retailing channels that make up the infrastructure for this dimension of sustainable consumption. After giving an overview on the underlying theoretical mechanisms of the main determinants, country differences in the organization of environmental labelling as well as the market structures are outlined. To analyse the effect of these differences, individual level data of a 2007 Eurobarometer survey on purchases of environmental-labelled goods is combined with organizational and market structural indicators. Using random intercept regression models and controlling for individual socio-economic and aggregate market demand-side factors, like average per capita income, share of post-materialists, and level of generalized trust, only the market supply and retailing structure reveal a robust effect on individual purchases of environmental friendly labelled goods.

Questions of institutional change have recently received increased attention in comparative politics. Even though comparative legislative research has identified important effects of parliamentary rules on processes and outputs as well as large variation across countries, we know very little about changes in these rules. This article takes several steps towards mapping and explaining rule changes in European parliaments. Theoretically, it sketches a model explaining such changes based on the rational choice notion of institutions as endogenous equilibria. Methodologically, it proposes two complementary approaches to measure rule changes. In combination, these measures allow us to identify the content, relevance, and effects of changes in parliamentary rules. Empirically, the article provides the first systematic analysis of all changes in the parliamentary standing orders of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland since 1945. This analysis demonstrates that parliamentary rules are changed frequently and massively. It also identifies differences across countries and content areas that are largely in line with theoretical expectations.

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