Aktuelle Publikationen
Auf dieser Seite finden Sie die chronologisch geordneten Veröffentlichungen unserer Wissenschaftler*innen aus den vergangenen Jahren.
Aktuelle Publikationen (Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaft)
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This diploma thesis examines the psychometric properties of
the Miller Behavioral Style Scale (MBSS), a psychological questionnaire.
The test is
designed to identify the tendency to seek or avoid
information concerning a threatening and uncontrollable event.
Voluminous information induces stress to some people while it
reduces it for others.
Therefore, it is often used in medical settings.
The questionnaire consists of four stress-evoking scenarios (dentist,
terrorist, dismissal and airplane), each followed by eight coping
options of which four are measuring information seeking ("monitoring") and four
representing distraction ("blunting").
Three scores can be derived: a total monitoring score, a total blunting score
and a total difference score.
The coping measure is widely used.
Despite the common usage of the scale, the psychometric
properties are often found deficient. The internal consistency,
especially of the blunting sub-scale, is
problematic and the construct and criterium validity is seldom
confirmed.
Conceptional and methodological shortcomings of the construct
information seeking under threat can be a reason. Section
2 summarizes these problems: Thus, the dimensionality of the construct
is not clear. Furthermore, it is not clarified if information
seeking is situation-specific or not.
In the subsequent
chapter the reliability of the
questionnaire is tested in an internet setting. The findings
confirm the poor results especially for the blunting sub-scale.
An item analysis identifies problematic items supposably
responsible for these outcomes.
The predictive validity is tested by presenting one half of the participants
of Study 1 with a threatening and the other half with a non-threatening
scenario. Here, they could obtain additional information about the scenario.
No connection could be made between the score on the questionnaire
and the amount of information obtained. Additionally, the degree of the threat
did not influence the information behaviour.
Whether internet usage and education is an influential factor for
information seeking in the questionnaire is tested in a non-internet
setting. This could not be confirmed. Moreover, not only the internal consistency
for the blunting sub-scale was found problematic but also for the monitoring sub-scale.
According to the present findings further usage of the
questionnaire is not recommended. -
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Content of the Diploma Thesis:
In our seemingly modern world, more than 2 billion people still have no access to modern energy services, relying instead on traditional biomass sources like fuelwood, charcoal and animal dung. This has severe implications for the day-to-day life of the majority of poor people in developing countries because energy is vitally linked to numerous important dimensions of development: economic productivity, health, nutrition, education, gender, agricultural production and environmental quality. Bearing this in mind, a commonly shared belief is taking hold that the central Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015 will not be achieved without considerably improving the energy situation in developing countries. However, while the current debate is successful in shedding light on the various linkages between poverty and energy and incorporating the so gained insights into overall poverty-reduction strategies, the debate also has some major shortcomings. When it comes to the adverse impacts of unsustainable energy use in developing countries, the energy-poverty debate is mainly restricted to the rural or household level of analysis. On the whole, little detailed investigations are made about the structural economic costs associated with current energy consumption patterns on the macro or national level. This is especially the case for the great majority of developing countries that do not possess significant commercial energy resources and therefore heavily rely on fossil fuel imports to meet part or all of their commercial energy needs. When reference is made, the analysis is mainly limited to a narrow set of country examples and a short appraisal of the adverse macroeconomic impacts arising from high energy import expenditures (e.g. terms-of-trade deterioration, loss of foreign currency reserves, inflationary pressure and increased indebtedness). The thesis is intended to bridge the discrepancy between the repeated acknowledgment of energy import dependency as being a severe problem for developing countries and the lack of a thorough and comprehensive structural analysis of how energy import dependency and poverty are linked at the macro level.
Organization of the Diploma Thesis:
The thesis is organized into five parts. Following the introduction, Chapter 2 provides a critical overview of the recent poverty-energy debate and explores the nexus between inadequate access to modern energy services and the social and economic hardship of the poor. Special emphasis is thereby placed on the linkages between energy and household income, energy and health and energy and the environment. Reference is also made to the potential role of energy in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and the Johannesburg Summit Commitments. Chapter 3 starts by giving a brief summary of some major oil import dependency concepts and indicators frequently used in the present literature. This serves as a starting point to operationalize and measure the broader concept of energy import dependency. With this as a theoretical background, one physical indicator and two economic indicators of energy import dependency for 166 countries are compared. These indicators are the following: (1) net energy imports as a percentage of commercial energy use, (2) ratio of fuel import expenditures to total merchandise export earnings, (3) ratio of net energy import expenditures to GDP. The first indicator is taken directly from the World Bank s World DevelopmentIndicators 2002, whereas the latter two are calculated by making use of data derived from the United Nations Commodity Statistics Trade Database (UN Comtrade). Comparisons are based on inter-group differences. In accordance with World Bank terminology, I differentiate between high income, upper-middle income, lower-middle income and low income countries. The second part of the quantitative analysis is devoted to the socio-economic opportunity costs of energy import dependency. The analysis is confined to two public sectors generally considered essential in combating poverty and enhancing opportunities for future generations, namely the fields of health and education. Furthermore, the opportunity costs of energy import expenditures for developing countries will be measured by calculating the loss of potential transfer income to directly eradicate extreme poverty. Based on the quantitative findings made in the previous section, Chapter 4 explores how renewable energies can contribute to overcome high levels of energy import dependency and which barriers may complicate a country s transition to a cleaner and more sustainable energy future. A short case study of Mali complements the analysis. -
(2005): Tax Competition and Tax Co-operation in the EU : The Case of Savings Taxation Rationality and Society. 2005, 17(4), pp. 475-510. ISSN 1043-4631. Available under: doi: 10.1177/1043463105058319
It took the European Union (EU) 35 years to achieve a co-operative agreement on co-ordinated measures of savings taxation. Political science has offered two explanations for this. First, co-operation is difficult to achieve as a result of heterogeneity. Countries with a small domestic tax base favor tax competition, while countries with a large tax base prefer tax co-operation. Second, co-operation is difficult as a consequence of specific characteristics of the collective action problem involved. The actors face a prisoners’ dilemma. Both explanations have their limits. The first approach is not very good at predicting actual policy preferences of governments and the second approach dismisses the fact that the EU offers cooperative institutions that should be able to resolve a dilemma. The paper refines these explanations such that the theory fits better the empirical positions of EU governments and their problems of finding an agreement.
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(2005): Die Prognosegüte von Wahlbörsen und Meinungsumfragen zur Bundestagswahl 2005 Politische Vierteljahresschrift. 2005, 46(4), pp. 674-681. ISSN 0032-3470. Available under: doi: 10.1007/s11615-005-0307-9
Die Gegenüberstellung von Wahlbörsenresultaten und Meinungsumfragen gehört zu den Ritualen, die in der Berichterstattung über Wahlen nach Bekanntgabe der Resultate einsetzen. Doch viele dieser Analysen beziehen sich nicht auf eigentliche Vorhersagen. In diesem Aufsatz stellen wir einen ähnlichen Vergleich an, beziehen uns aber auf Prognosen, die wir vor dem Wahlausgang für die Bundestagswahl 2005 errechneten. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Wahlbörse Wahl$treet auch 2005 besser abschnitt als die kommerziellen Institute. Angesichts der außergewöhnlich großen Prognosefehler besonders der Umfrageinstitute diskutieren wir überdies im Licht der Social Choice-Theorie, welche Auswirkungen fehlerhafte Umfragen auf Wahlentscheidungen haben.
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(2005): Structural Power and Public Policy : A Signaling Model of Business Lobbying in Democratic Capitalism Political Studies. 2005, 53, pp. 43-64. Available under: doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2005.00516.x
This paper develops a signaling model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalist societies to analyze the conditions that lead to a powerful political position of business. Proceeding from the traditional dichotomy of structural economic determinants versus business political action, our model predicts the conditions under which elected political decisionmakers modify their policy pledges to accommodate business political preferences, or override business lobbying messages and honor their pledges. Our results show that the structural power of business over public policy is contingent on two variables: the size of reputation costs of business in relation to its material costs of lobbying; and the ratio of the policymaker s reputation constraints from policy commitments and campaign pledges to the electoral costs arising from adverse effects of policy. We evaluate our model using case studies of business lobbying on environmental and financial services regulation in Britain and Germany.
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This research aims to investigate the relationship between Top Management Team (TMT) demographic diversity and financial firm performance of German companies by using empirical quantitative analysis methods. After having outlined major lines of thought and concepts and proposing a theoretical model, the empirical section tries to uncover a negative curvilinear relationship between three demographic diversity variables (age, firm tenure, TMT tenure) and firm performance. Therefore a sample including companies of the German DAX and MDAX is used. Using regression analysis for the complete sample and subsamples - separated by environmental conditions - the results do not as strongly as hypothesized favour a negative curvilinear relation. A detailed analysis is given thereafter. The influence of outliers as well as possible flaws in the data and the model are outlined. This work is special with regards to the hypothesized relationship as well as the sample.
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(2005): Global Players : Die Auswärtige Kulturpolitik Frankreichs, Großbritanniens, Italiens, Portugals und Spaniens MAASS, Kurt-Jürgen, ed.. Kultur und Außenpolitik : Handbuch für Studium und Praxis. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005, pp. 291-300. ISBN 3-8329-1404-8
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dc.contributor.author: Lutzmann, Eva
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(2005): The Holocaust as division-of-labor-based crime-evidence and analytical challenges : [Introduction to: Networks of Nazi persecution : bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust] FELDMAN, Gerald D., ed., Wolfgang SEIBEL, ed.. Networks of Nazi persecution : bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust. Oxford [u.a.]: Berghahn Books, 2005, pp. 340-360. War and genocide. 6. ISBN 1-57181-177-X
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dc.contributor.author: Feldman, Gerald D.
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(2005): Wertorientierungen und Parteipräferenz FALTER, Jürgen W., ed. and others. Wahlen und Wähler : Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2002. Wiesbaden: VS Verl. für Sozialwiss., 2005, pp. 309-338. ISBN 3-531-14137-6
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Räumliche Modelle beschreiben Wählerpräferenzen als Funktion der Standpunkte von Parteien in politischen Sachfragen (d.h. ihrer Positionen im politischen Raum). Die beiden prominentesten Modelle in der empirischen Forschung zu Wählerverhalten sind das klassische Distanzmodell und sein Herausforderer, das Richtungsmodell von Rabinowitz und Macdonald. Im Rahmen des Distanzmodells wird angenommen, dass Wähler eingipflige Präferenzen über Punkte im politischen Raum besitzen. Das Richtungsmodell geht dagegen von einem Vektorraum aus, d.h. einem Raum in dem der Nullpunkt nicht beliebig ist, sondern einen bedeutsamen Referenzpunkt für den Wähler bei der Verortung von Parteien darstellt. Weiterhin geht das Richtungsmodell davon aus, dass Wähler monotone Nutzenfunktionen (Präferenzen) über den Policy-Raum besitzen. Die Einführung des Richtungsmodells führte in der Literatur zu einer teilweise heftigen Debatte darüber, welches Modell die „richtige“ Erklärung von Wählerpräferenzen bzw. der Wahlentscheidung bietet. Im Kern dreht sich die Debatte hauptsächlich um methodische Fragen, wie die Erklärung von Wählerpräferenzen vs. Zustimmung (Support) einzelner Parteien, die Verwendung wahrgenommener vs. mittlerer Parteipositionen sowie die Annahme interpersonaler vs. intrapersonaler Nutzenvergleiche. Zur Behebung der Unzulänglichkeiten der bisherigen Ansätze schlage ich die Verwendung des Rank Ordered Logit (bzw. Exploded Logit) Verfahrens vor. Anhand von Daten zweier deutscher Wahlstudien teste ich die Güte beider Modelle in der Vorhersage von Parteipräferenzen, unter Kontrolle von Parteineigung. Meine Ergebnisse zeigen, dass das Distanzmodell sowohl in einzelnen als auch simultanen Modelltests besser abschneidet als das Richtungsmodell von Rabinowitz und Macdonald. Darüber hinaus teste ich ein drittes Modell, das davon ausgeht, dass Wähler eingipflige Präferenzen über einen Raum politischer Richtungen (d.h. einen Vektorraum) besitzen. Dieses Modell, welches erstmals von Matthews und später auch von Merrill und Grofman vorgeschlagen wurde, ist in der empirischen Forschung bisher kaum zur Anwendung gekommen. Mit seiner Hilfe lassen sich empirisch die Eigenschaften von Präferenzen (eingipflig vs. monoton) von Eigenschaften des politischen Raumes (Punkteraum vs. Vektorraum) trennen. Es zeigt sich, dass das Matthews-Richtungsmodell etwas besser abschneidet als das Richtungsmodell von Rabinowitz und Macdonald, aber nicht besser als das klassische Distanzmodell. In einem simultanen Test aller drei Modelle ist das Richtungsmodell von Rabinowitz und Macdonald das einzige, das keinen signifikanten Beitrag zur Erklärung von Parteipräferenzen mehr liefert. Die Ergebnisse interpretiere ich als deutlichen Beleg dafür, dass Wählerpräferenzen eingipflig sind, d.h. der Prozess der Präferenzbildung folgt dem Prinzip der Nähe im politischen Raum. Darüber hinaus deutet die Robustheit des Matthews-Modells gegenüber dem Distanzmodell darauf hin, dass eine angemessene Konzeption des politischen Raumes (und damit ein angemessenes Konzept räumlicher Nähe) auch Richtungselemente beinhalten muss. Anders ausgedrückt, scheint es als sei die Position des Ursprungs (bzw. Nullpunkts, Referenzpunkts) im politischen Raum nicht beliebig, wie es das klassische Distanzmodell unterstellt, sondern eine bedeutsame Größe in der Präferenzbildung des Wählers. Rabinowitz und Macdonald weisen also zu Recht auf den Richtungscharakter politischer Sachfragen hin. Ihre Idee monotoner Wählerpräferenzen gegenüber eingipfligen Nutzenfunktionen lässt sich jedoch nicht durch empirische Ergebnisse stützen.
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(2005): Pension reform in Germany and Austria : system change vs. quantitative retrenchment West European Politics. 2005, 28(3), pp. 569-591. ISSN 0140-2382. Available under: doi: 10.1080/01402380500085830
This article first outlines the differences in outcome of pension reform in Germany and Austria. The 2001 German pension reform cut benefits very little, but it started a system changing transformation process by strengthening the second (occupational pensions) and third pillar (private pensions). The 2003 Austrian pension reform, pushed through against major opposition from the labour unions, contains very few elements of policy innovation, but benefits have been cut back much more significantly than in the German case. The paper explains the difference in outcomes (system change in Germany, retrenchment in Austria) by looking at the structure of political institutions. The federal government in Austria is much less constrained by formal veto players than the German government, which had to engage in extensive coalition-building to get the pension bill through the second chamber of parliament. Therefore the influence of informal veto players (mainly unions) was much higher in Germany. The impact on the reform outcome was the positive discrimination of occupational pensions and less severe cuts in the benefit levels. The concluding thesis is that for successful and long-term sustainable welfare state reform, a small number of formal veto players is a valuable resource. A large number of formal veto players is an obstacle to retrenchment reforms, although it might encourage policy innovation, because political actors will look for other policy venues to increase their leverage.
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(2005): Koen, Lenaerts; Van Nuffel, Piet: Constitutional law of the European Union [Rezension] European Law Review. 2005, 30, pp. 586-587
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(2005): Domesticated Eurocrats : Bureaucratic Discretion in the Legislative Pre-Negotiations of the European Union Acta Politica. 2005, 40(1), pp. 1-27. Available under: doi: 10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500092
This article examines the discretionary power of national governments in EU policy making, focusing on the preparatory stage of European legislation. We assess the conditions under which the ministry in charge of the pre-negotiations is able to withstand attempts of domestic stakeholders to change the national bargaining stance. Our case studies and multivariate regressions on 15 legislative proposals show that the overall conflict between domestic stakeholders and pressure from powerful interest groups make such changes more likely. Parliamentary actors and parties do, conversely, not possess much power in these often technical deliberations. Although governments and their bureaucracies have to yield in some situations, they possess ample discretion in the average decision-making process. We illustrate our findings with a comparative case study on the controversial attempt by the Commission to regulate the usage of PVC softeners in toys.
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(2005): Lernstrategien und Lernerfolg im Studium : zur Validierung des LIST bei berufstätigen Studierenden Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie. 2005, 37(1), pp. 17-26. Available under: doi: 10.1026/0049-8637.37.1.17
Das von Wild und Schiefele (1994) vorgestellte Inventar zur Erfassung von Lernstrategien im Studium (LIST) wird an einer Stichprobe von N = 577 berufstätigen Studierenden vier unterschiedlicher Hochschulen untersucht. Die von Wild und Schiefele angenommene Struktur der kognitiven, ressourcenbezogenen und metakognitiven Lernstrategien wird hier erstmals faktorenanalytisch überprüft. Darüber hinaus wird erstmals die dreifaktorielle Struktur der metakognitiven Lernstrategien mit dem LISTInventar nachgewiesen. Schließlich sind im Sinne einer Außenvalidierung des LIST Zusammenhänge zwischen Lernstrategien und Lernerfolg der Studierenden nachweisbar.
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(2005): Compliance, Communication and Competition : Patterns of EU Environmental Policy Making and Their Impact on Policy Convergence European Environment. 2005, 15(2), pp. 114-128. ISSN 0961-0405. Available under: doi: 10.1002/eet.376
Responsibility for environmental policy making in Europe has shifted to the EU level to a remarkable extent. Considering that many of the EU measures aim at levelling the playing field between member states and even achieving the harmonization of national policies, one might expect far-reaching convergence of environmental policy in Europe, but there are a number of domestic and policy-specific factors diverting the path from reaching convergence. In this contribution we are interested in the specific effects of different patterns of European governance on domestic environmental policies. In this respect, we are particularly interested in the scope of national institutional change and cross-national convergence of regulatory institutions. We distinguish between three ideal typical governance patterns: (1) prescriptive governance based on the compliance of national implementers with legally binding EU rules, (2) communicative governance based on information exchange between regulatory agents across national levels arranged in a EU legal or institutional framework and (3) competitive governance based on competition between national administrative systems to achieve EU requirements. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
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(2005): The contested council : conflict dimensions of an intergovernmental EU institution Political studies. 2005, 53, pp. 403-422. Available under: doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2005.00535.x
Recent research has tried to uncover the political space in which the Council of Ministers of the European Union decides. Rather than the left-right conflict or a cleavage between governments with national and supranational attitudes, this article shows that a redistributive dimension, decisively shapes the interactions in this most important legislative body of the European Union. In contrast to extant studies, we employ ex ante rather than ex post preference data and rely on correspondence analysis as a means to identify the underlying dimensions of contestation. The article concludes with an empirical investigation of how enlargement will affect the emerging political space within the European Union. Our quantitative analysis suggests that the gulf between net-contributors and net-receivers will further deepen.
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Weil umstritten ist, was Demokratie überhaupt bedeutet, bedarf es auch in etablierten Demokratien permanenter Legitimationsbemühungen. Thilo Raufer geht der Frage nach, wie in der Bundesrepublik die demokratische Ordnung durch die politischen Repräsentanten legitimiert wird und welche Ideen von Demokratie dabei zum Tragen kommen. Anhand von Einzelfallanalysen (u. a. Reden von Norbert Geis, Wolfgang Thierse und Wolfgang Ullmann) arbeitet er Legitimationstypen – d. h. Alltagstheorien der Demokratie – heraus. Er zeigt, dass die Idee legitimer Demokratie in der Bundesrepublik nicht auf die größtmögliche Beteilung des Volkes abzielt, sondern vor allem auf die Bewahrung der Ordnung und auf die Einrichtung von beherrschbaren und kontrollierbaren Entscheidungsverfahren.