Aktuelle Publikationen

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A central assumption of deliberative theory is that political preferences are endogenous to decision-making processes in which they are transformed by communicative interaction. We identify discursiveness and coordination of interaction as central determinants of preference change and develop a typology of political modes of interaction that affect the likelihood of preference change differently. These properties are in turn influenced by institutional characteristics of the fora in which communicative interaction takes place. To illustrate our approach empirically we present a comparative analysis of two extreme modes of interaction, ‘debate’ and ‘deliberation’, providing a case study of a parliamentary debate and a citizen conference on the same conflict: the import of embryonic stem cells in Germany. We assess the discursiveness and coordination as well as the amount of preference transformation in both forums.

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Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich am Beispiel der Jugendhilfe empirisch mit dem Einfluss der Modernisierungs- und Ökonomisierungsimpulse auf die Ausgestaltung und den Wandel lokaler Wohlfahrtsarrangements. Im Mittelpunkt steht erstens die Frage, welchen Einfluss Modernisierungsanstrengungen der kommunalen Sozialverwaltung und Ökonomisierungsimpulse auf die institutionelle Ausprägung lokaler Wohlfahrtsproduktion, d.h. die Trägerstrukturen sozialer Dienstleistungen haben. Zweitens wird untersucht, wie die Leistungsbeziehungen und Koordinationsstrukturen zwischen Sozialverwaltung und externen Wohlfahrtsproduzenten im Zuge der Modernisierung verändert werden. Angesichts offensichtlicher Widersprüche zwischen formaler Implementierung von Instrumenten des Kontraktmanagements und den tatsächlichen Wirkungen entwikkelt der Beitrag ein Modell unterschiedlicher Implementationsstrategien.

"Trade, not aid" has long been a catchphrase in international development discourse. This paper evaluates whether the "trade, not aid" logic has driven bilateral aid allocations in practice. Using a dataset that covers development assistance from 22 donor countries to 187 aid recipients from 1980 to 2002, we find that donor countries have dispersed bilateral aid in ways that reinforce their extant bilateral commercial ties with recipient countries. Instead of "trade, not aid," bilateral aid disbursement has followed the logic of "aid following trade." The policy implication is that bilateral aid allocation patterns have reinforced the disadvantages of poor countries that have a limited ability to participate in international trade due to a variety of factors such as geography and a lack of tradable resources.

Forecasting plays an increasingly important role in the scientific study of European Union politics and in political science in general. This is because forecasts are not only indispensable for (political) actors who need to form expectations about future events, but can also be used to judge the validity of (competing) theoretical models. While the debate about whether political science should engage in forecasting is largely over, many questions about how this should be done in everyday research are still open. One of these is how forecasts of political time series can be derived from theoretical models. Using a practical example from European Union research, we start to address this question. We first show how forecasts of political time series can be derived from both theoretical and atheoretical models. Subsequently, we use an atheoretical time series (ARMA) imputation approach to demonstrate how they can be fruitfully integrated in order to overcome some of the limitations to making forecasts of political time series which are based on theoretical models.

Welche Auswirkungen hat die 1999 aufgehobene Fünfprozenthürde auf die Zusammensetzung und Arbeitsweise der Kommunalparlamente in Nordrhein-Westfalen? In der Betrachtung wird einerseits die Wahrung der Wahl- und Chancengleichheit und anderseits die Funktionsfähigkeit der Räte abgewogen. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich insbesondere in den Großstädten eine deutliche Zunahme der Fraktionen und Gruppierungen beziehungsweise Einzelpersonen ohne Fraktionsstatus. Bei kleineren Städten und Gemeinden greift dagegen eine „natürliche Sperrklausel“, die eine Fragmentierung der Räte verhindert. Die Zunahme der Gruppierungen und Fraktionen führt in den betroffenen Städte zu einer deutlichen Beeinträchtigung der Arbeit der Räte, die sich in einer deutlichen Verlängerung der Sitzungszeiten, erschwerter Mehrheitsbildung und redundanter Diskussionen durch die Störung der Arbeitsteilung zwischen Ausschüssen und Ratsplenum. Im Ergebnis ist es ratsam, eine moderate Sperrklausel von 2,5 Prozent, die in kleineren Städten und Gemeinden die Wahl- und Chancengleichheit nicht beeinträchtig, in den Großstädten aber die Arbeitsfähigkeit der ehrenamtlichen Kommunalparlamente gewährleistet, wiedereinzuführen.

The Polish government funds NGO democracy-assistance programs in Belarus and Ukraine, recognizing that it is in Poland's interest that its neighbors should develop in positive directions, that Poland has a moral obligation to help others as it was helped, and that Poland's own successful post-communist transition lends authority and expertise to its efforts in support of democratization and development.

The Swiss party system has become strongly polarized over the last decade, following the rise of the Swiss People's Party and the electoral losses of center parties. This article suggests that these developments are, at least in part, a consequence of strategic behaviour among voters. As the government policy is the result of institutionalized multiparty bargaining, voters have incentives to compensate for this watering-down by supporting parties whose positions are more extreme than their own. This article empirically tests extent and conditions of compensatory voting in the 2007 National Council Elections using Selects survey data. Our results suggest that compensatory voting generally outweighs voting based on ideological proximity and increases with rising district magnitude.

The present paper explores the relationship between agrarian structure and human capital formation between and within Brazil’s federal units. It is argued that whether states’ agriculture is in plantation style, based on cheap coerced labor, or organized around family farming matters for the formulation of educational policies. According to the main claim, landlords were not interested in paying higher taxes to educate the masses and curtailed the expansion of schooling in order to keep a cheap workforce and maintain their monopoly over the decision-making process. Describing several episodes in Brazil’s history of public instruction, the paper stresses the distributional conflicts over education as well as the rural aristocracy’s resistance towards broadly-targeted, citizenship-enhancing educational policies. The descriptive evidence is complemented by statistical analyses employing historical as well as more recent data. It is shown that states characterized by a more egalitarian land distribution, which are not under the dominance of powerful landlords, exhibit better educational coverage and enhanced instruction quality. They also spend more on schooling.

Aim
This paper summarizes the deficiencies and weaknesses of the most frequently used methods for the allocation of health-care resources. New, more transparent and practical methods for optimizing the allocation of these resources are proposed.
Method
The examples of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and efficiency frontier (EF) are analyzed to describe weaknesses and problems in decisions regulating health-care provision. After conducting a literature search and discussions with an international group of professionals, three groups of professionals were formed to discuss the assessment and appraisal of health-care services and allocation of available resources.
Results
At least seven essential variables were identified that should be heeded when applying the concept of QALYs for decisions concerning health-care provision. The efficiency frontier (EF) concept can be used to set a ceiling price and perform a cost-benefit analysis of provision, but different stakeholders a biostatistician (efficacy), an economist (costs), a clinician (effectiveness), and the patient (value) could provide a fairer appraisal of health-care services. Efficacy and costs are often based on falsifiable data. Effectiveness and value depend on the success with which a particular clinical problem has been solved. These data cannot be falsified. The societal perspective is generated by an informal cost-benefit analysis including appraisals by the above-mentioned stakeholders and carried out by an authorized institution.
Conclusion
Our analysis suggests that study results expressed in QALYs or as EF cannot be compared unless the variables included in the calculation are specified. It would be far more objective and comprehensive if an authorized institution made an informal decision based on formal assessments of the effectiveness of health-care services evaluated by health-care providers, of the value assessed by consumers, of efficacy described by biostatisticians, and of costs calculated by economists.

This article analyses the extent to which national policies in the highly internationalised environmental sector are influenced by the policy preferences of political parties. The focus is on policy outputs rather than environmental performance as the central indicator of policy change. Based on a discussion of the relevant theoretical literature competing hypotheses are presented. For an empirical test, a dataset is used that includes information on the number of environmental policies adopted in 18 OECD countries at four points in time between 1970 and 2000. The results show that not only international integration, economic development and problem pressure, but also aspects of party politics, influence the number of policies adopted. The number of environmental measures increases if the governmental parties adopt more pro-environmentalist policy positions. This effect remains robust even when controlling for the institutional strength of governments, the left-right position of parties in government, the inclusion of an ecological or left-libertarian party inside the (coalition) government, and the presence of a portfolio that deals exclusively with environmental issues.