Aktuelle Publikationen

The article introduces the cshapes R package, which includes our CShapes dataset of contemporary and historical country boundaries, as well as computational tools for computing geographical measures from these maps. We provide an overview of the need for considering spatial dependence in comparative research, how this requires appropriate historical maps, and detail how the cshapes associated R package cshapes can contribute to these ends. We illustrate the use of the package for drawing maps, computing spatial variables for countries, and generating weights matrices for spatial statistics.

This contribution examines the role of religion as source of social trust. Going beyond the scope of the existing literature, we jointly evaluate the effect of individual religiosity and regional religious context by means of multilevel analysis of 97 small-scale German regions. The results based on the German Socio-Economic Panel suggest that there is a double positive effect of Protestantism: Not only do Protestants tend to be more trusting, but a Protestant context also increases one’s trust—regardless of individual religious beliefs. Conversely, social trust is less developed in Catholic-dominated regions. In addition, although Catholic individuals are more trusting than the non-religious individuals, they do not differ from members of smaller Christian groups or Muslims. At same time, the notion that certain religious groups and especially religious minorities are distrustful of the wider society is not substantiated by empirical evidence. Furthermore, while church attendance is a powerful predictor for social trust, a context effect for regional levels of devoutness could not be detected. Finally, religious diversity decreases social trust for Muslims only, but not to a degree as to pose a threat to social integration.

This article evaluates the relationship between welfare state institutions and informal voluntary activity. In particular, we wish to investigate the extent to which welfare state arrangements influence the individual's decision to volunteer informally. Focusing on informal volunteering – a vital, yet often neglected form of social capital – we reinvestigate the hypotheses on crowding in and crowding out. Our sub-national multilevel analysis of the Swiss cantons reveals that there is no significant effect of welfare statism on informal volunteering. Cantonal differences in individual propensity to volunteer informally can rather be attributed to different cultural-linguistic backgrounds as well as to the cantonal degree of urbanisation.

This special issue on the capitalist peace explores whether and how new findings alter the liberal research agenda. To this end, we have organized a debate that unites leading capitalist peace scholars as well as some prominent sceptics. In this introduction, we discuss the main research traditions and assess their relative merits before moving on to a presentation of the research articles and the challenges that future research has to confront.

The articles by Kees van Kersbergen and Daniele Caramani constitute an impressive joint plea in favour of descriptive analyses within comparative politics. They also warn, less convincingly, against an alleged obsession of the discipline with variation that, according to them, does not do justice to the similarity of many cases. This response demonstrates that limiting the analysis to similar cases creates the risk of engaging in the hapless exercise of explaining the constant. Augmenting the role of description without simultaneously advancing sound theoretical models furthermore leads to theory-free data mining exercises. I argue that all empirically oriented fields in political science could profit from what I call 'causal description' and hence the in-depth univariate analysis of the dependent variable.

Die Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands ist in der Krise. Ein vergleichender Blick zeigt aber auch, dass in Kontinental- und Nordeuropa sozialdemokratische Parteien stetig an elektoralem Rückhalt einbüßen. In diesem Beitrag wird argumentiert, dass die Krise der deutschen und europäischen Sozialdemokratie auch eine Krise der klassischen Volksparteien ist. Erfolg und Misserfolg der Sozialdemokratie an der Wahlurne wird von langfristigen gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen, kurzfristig-programmatischen Entwicklungen sowie den institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen des Parteienwettbewerbs beeinflusst. Fallanalysen für sozialdemokratische Parteien aus Schweden, Großbritannien und den Niederlanden zeigen, welche Ressourcen und Einschränkungen der jeweilige Parteienwettbewerb jenseits programmatischer „Dritter Wege“ für die Sozialdemokratie darstellt. Der bundesdeutsche Parteienwettbewerb ist eine besondere Herausforderung für die SPD. Neben programmatischen Neujustierungen drängen sich daher koalitionsstrategische Überlegungen für die SPD auf.

This article re-examines recent studies that link different forms of social diversity ethnic polarization and fractionalization to underdevelopment and an increased risk of civil war. We review theoretical arguments in favor of a connection between diversity and these social outcomes and discuss the inter-linkage between economic growth and internal conflict in situations of extreme diversity. Our analysis confirms that the relationship between ethnic polarization and civil war is ambiguous and depends on the use of civil war incidence or civil war onset as an outcome variable. Furthermore, fractionalization rather than polarization seems to be negatively related to economic growth.

Existing empirical models of international co-operation emphasize domestic determinants, although virtually all theories of international relations focus on interdependencies between countries. This article examines how much states’ linkages with the international system, relative to domestic factors, such as income and democracy, influence the dynamics of global governance efforts. To this end, we study the ratification behaviour of 180 countries vis-à-vis 255 global environmental treaties. Except for integration into the world economy, which affects co-operative behaviour negatively, our results show that international factors have a stronger and more positive impact on cooperative behaviour than domestic factors. This implies that Galton’s advice not to examine the effects of internal and external variables in isolation is also useful in the study of international politics.

Der Beitrag behandelt die bisher vernachlässigten Probleme der Umsetzung und Implementation von Flexicurity-Konzepten. Er analysiert detailliert die prozeduralen Hauptschwierigkeiten sowohl auf europäischer als auch auf nationaler Ebene und geht jeweils auf die Makro- sowie auf die Branchenebene ein. Im Mittelpunkt stehen zunächst verschiedene Formen von Sozialdialogen, welche die Kommission als Instrumente empfiehlt. Anschließend werden Gesetzgebung und Kollektivverhandlungen und ihre spezifischen Probleme behandelt. Der Schlussteil geht auf aktuelle Entwicklungen in der Krise ein.

This paper evaluates whether direct democracy supplements or undermines traditional representative democracy. While a first approach assumes that a culture of active direct democracy stimulates citizens political interest and ultimately bolsters participation in parliamentary elections, a competing hypothesis proposes a negative relationship between the frequency of ballot measures and electoral participation due to voter fatigue and decreased significance of elections. Our multilevel analysis of the 26 Swiss cantons challenges recent studies conducted for the U.S. states: In the Swiss context, where direct democracy is more important in the political process than the less salient parliamentary elections, greater use of direct democratic procedures is associated with a lower individual probability to participate in elections. Furthermore, by distinguishing between short and long-term effects of direct democracy, we show that the relationship observed is of a long-term nature and can therefore be seen as a result of adaptive learning processes rather than of instantaneous voter fatigue.