Aktuelle Publikationen

In the past few years the effects of European integration on national legal and administrative structures have increasingly attracted the attention of legal and administrative analysts. One of the main topics of this branch of research based on the catchword Europeanisation is the question whether and to what extent these processes have led to the approximation of national legal and administrative structures in the course of time. However, we still lack comprehensive findings as to whether and under what conditions the effects of European integration lead to domestic administrative and legal changes. It this paper, we try to address this research gap. We analyse whether and to what extent the implementation of European policies leads to an approximation of legal and administrative structures in the Member States. This question will be thoroughly elaborated by using the example of the implementation of directives related to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Germany and England.

Interviewing French political elites is often considered an arduous task. French politicians and bureaucrats are commonly said to mistrust transparency--at least when compared to Scandinavian standards--which is why they are reluctant to give insider information to social scientists or to accord interviews at all. This paper concentrates on the question of how to get access to French political elites for in-depth interviews. Drawing on the author's research on French European policy-making in the context of divided government, the article in a guidebook style presents various approaches to 'getting in Parisian doors'. The pessimistic perspectives on scheduling elite interviews are not confirmed by the author's own experiences. However, since the author's 'techniques' are not properly validated, for example, by experiments, the article is designed as a research report and not as a rigorous methodological treatise.

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In der politikwissenschaftlichen Literatur zu Verfassungsgerichten findet sich häufig die These einer fortschreitenden Justizialisierung der Politik, durch welche die Handlungsfreiheit politisch gewählter Organe in der Gesetzgebung immer weiter eingeschränkt werde. Andere Autoren betonen hingegen die Grenzen der Justizialisierung, da Verfassungsgerichte zur Umsetzung ihrer Urteile auf die Unterstützung anderer Organe angewiesen seien und daher ihre formalen Handlungsmöglichkeiten nicht uneingeschränkt wahrnehmen könnten. Ich vertrete im Sinne des zweiten Ansatzes die These, dass die Bereitschaft eines Verfassungsgerichts, aktiv in den Gesetzgebungsprozess einzugreifen, von dem der Entscheidung zugrunde liegenden Grundrechtstyp abhängt. Verfassungsgerichte gewähren der politischen Mehrheit systematisch mehr Entscheidungsfreiheit bei Fällen zu positiven Grundrechten als zu negativen Abwehrrechten. Sie versuchen, ihre Wertschätzung in der Öffentlichkeit zu bewahren, indem sie auf die klassische Gewaltenteilungsdoktrin zurückgreifen. Diese mag zwar als wissenschaftliches Erklärungsmodell für politische Prozesse veraltet sein, wird in der Öffentlichkeit aber weiterhin akzeptiert und ist daher für die Kalkulationen politischer Akteure relevant. Der Beitrag zeigt, wie diese Argumentation in Georg Vanbergs Modell der Interaktion zwischen Verfassungsgericht und Parlamentsmehrheit integriert werden kann, und illustriert ihre Plausibilität an zwei Fallstudien zum deutschen Bundesverfassungsgericht und dem italienischen Corte Costituzionale.

In the past few years the effects of European integration on national legal and administrative structures have increasingly attracted the attention of legal and administrative analysts. One of the main topics of this branch of research based on the catchword 'Europeanisation' is the question whether and to what extent these processes have led to the approximation of national legal and administrative structures in the course of time. However, we still lack comprehensive findings as to whether and under what conditions the effects of European integration lead to domestic administrative and legal changes. It this paper, we try to address this research gap. We analyse whether and to what extent the implementation of European policies leads to an approximation of legal and administrative structures in the Member States. This question will be thoroughly elaborated by using the example of the implementation of directives related to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Germany and England.

The ubiquitous hope among managers of new product development (NPD) teams that a cross-functional team composition may be a royal road to enhancing team innovations appears to be an illusion. Empirical analyses show positive as well as negative or nonsignificant relationships between crossfunctionality and team innovations. In this article, we integrate the extant literature and develop a process model that explains the contradictory empirical findings. We propose that introducing specific mediators and moderators enables improved predictions of the effects of cross-functionality on team innovations. In developing our model, which is primarily based on a conflict-theoretical perspective, we address theories of social categorization, identity and self verification, information/decision making, group problem solving, and innovativeness, respectively. Our process model explicates how (i.e., via what mediators) and when (i.e., in the presence of what moderators) cross-functionality enhances or impedes synergistic communication among team members, which in turn fosters team innovations. On the basis of this new model we discuss strategies for managing cross-functionality in NPD teams.

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