Aktuelle Publikationen

This study introduces a theoretical model of how insurgency develops as a function of reactive mobilization. The theory extends a classic distance-decay model by incorporating Kalyvas’ typology of violence. It implies that geographic conditions crucially determine the accuracy of applied violence and thereby its public perception, which in turn determines the actors’ ability to mobilize. As a first test of these effects, I propose a new geographic indicator that expresses the spatial accessibility of a country’s population for both central governments and peripheral insurgent movements. Two empirical implications of the theory are tested with a large-N data set on outcomes and casualties in insurgencies. The new indicator is significantly associated with both military outcomes and the number of casualties in insurgencies since 1970 and strengthens statistical predictions.

This article examines the effectiveness of UN peacebuilding missions in democratizing war-torn states, emphasizing those missions that include democracy promotion components in their mandates. Based on a multinominal logistic regression, we reveal that democratization is significantly more likely if a UN peacebuilding mission is deployed. Furthermore, regimes categorized as more liberal at the outset have an increased risk of revealing antidemocratization trends over the post-war period. Oil wealth impedes democratization and clear victory of one conflict party makes regime transitions more likely, yet in both directions. Descriptive statistics suggest that an increase in the mission’s capacities may be conducive to democratization.

This study examines the role of European integration as a potential source of income inequality in countries of the European Union. We distinguish between both economic and political integration and identify theoretical mechanisms that link the two to rising levels of inequality. The empirical analysis draws on time-series-cross-section data covering 14 European Union member states for the time period 1999–2010. In particular, we make use of a newly available dataset that measures individual degrees of integration across different dimensions. Our main finding is a positive association between political integration and inequality on the one hand as well as a nonassociation between economic integration and inequality on the other hand. This suggests that the recent trend toward inequality at the European Union national level is at least partly related to deepening political integration at the supranational level.

We extend theories on charismatic leadership by investigating the influence of prior company performance on subordinates’ attributions of chief executive officer (CEO) charisma within companies of different sizes and ownership structure. First, we use an experimental design to examine the effects of prior company performance on attributions of CEO charisma. Second, in a field study with 69 companies we replicate the experimental finding and show that this relationship is moderated by the size of the company such that the relationship between prior company performance and attributions of CEO charisma is significant only in large companies. We find no evidence, however, that the ownership structure of a company could strengthen or weaken this relationship.

Recent research has established that employment risk shapes social policy preferences. However, risk is often conceptualized as an alternative measure of the socio-economic status. We show that employment risk and socio-economic status are distinct, crosscutting determinants of social policy preferences. More specifically, we analyze the policy preferences of high-skilled labor market outsiders as a cross-pressured group. We first establish that labor market vulnerability has spread well into the more highly educated segments of the population. We then show that the effect of labor market vulnerability on social policy preferences even increases with higher educational attainment. We conclude that that labor market risk and educational status are not interchangeable and that the high skilled are particularly sensitive to the experience of labor market risk. Thereby, our findings point to a potential cross-class alliance between more highly and lower skilled vulnerable individuals in support of a redistributive and activating welfare state. Thus, they have far-reaching implications for our understanding of both the politicization of insider/outsider divides and the politics of welfare support.

Viral marketing seeks to maximize the spread of a campaign through an online social network, often targeting influential nodes with high centrality. In this article, we analyze behavioral aspects of influential users in trust-based product reviews communities, quantifying emotional expression, helpfulness, and user activity level. We focus on two independent product review communities, Dooyoo and Epinions, in which users can write product reviews and define trust links to filter product recommendations. Following the patterns of social contagion processes, we measure user social influence by means of the k-shell decomposition of trust networks. For each of these users, we apply sentiment analysis to extract their extent of positive, negative, and neutral emotional expression. In addition, we quantify the level of feedback they received in their reviews, the length of their contributions, and their level of activity over their lifetime in the community. We find that users of both communities exhibit a large heterogeneity of social influence, and that helpfulness votes and age are significantly better predictors of the influence of an individual than sentiment. The most active of the analyzed communities shows a particular structure, in which the inner core of users is qualitatively different from its periphery in terms of a stronger positive and negative emotional expression. These results suggest that both objective and subjective aspects of reviews are relevant to the communication of subjective experience.

Public hearings are frequently used on all levels of government to systematically collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. The methods currently employed measure knowledge utilization in this context by means of citation analysis of edited articles and/or reports that summarize the information shared at these meetings. By combining citation analysis and social network analysis, this article develops a methodology that can be used to capture citations in transcripts of public hearings that precede these reports. In order to demonstrate its strengths and weaknesses, the method is utilized to analyze the 2009 hearings that informed the 2010 House of Commons Transport Committee report on developing the capacity of major roads in the United Kingdom to meet the country’s strategic transport needs. The research shows a good degree of consistency between two independent coders who employed this method to distinguish citations from non-citations and classify the data. It is concluded that the method can be utilized to reliably measure knowledge utilization at public hearings, and that it can be employed in conjunction with research that focuses on measuring citations in memos, briefings, articles or reports integrating some of the evidence given at these meetings.

Häufig ist bei internationalen Krisen, Konflikten und Friedenseinsätzen die Erfahrung zu machen, dass für die Bevölkerung vor Ort die eigene Sicherheit an erster Stelle steht. Ohne sie kann es keine wirtschaftliche Betätigung und langfristige Entwicklung geben, regieren Unsicherheit und Angst. Deshalb setzen die Vereinten Nationen und andere internationale Organisationen schon seit den sechziger Jahren auch Polizeikräfte in ihren Friedensmis-sionen ein. Nach einem anfänglich guten Engagement ist die Beteiligung aus Deutschland dabei seit dem Jahr 2000 rückläufig. Der Beitrag untersucht die Gründe für die deutsche Zurückhaltung bei internationalen Polizeimissionen und welche bürokratischen und ideologischen Hindernisse überwunden werden müssten, um dem eigenen Anspruch nach mehr außenpolitischer Verantwortung gerecht zu werden.

This article analyzes academic discourses on Hizb u-Tahrir ai -Islami (after this HT) in various disciplines, provides an overview of media frames applied to HT in German, British and Kyrgyz quality newspapers, and examines the differences between the conclusions of scholars and mass media representations of HT. The introductory section of the paper briefly presents a group of selected authors and texts, illustrates the importance of drawing parallels between academic and journalistic discourses on HT, and explains the choice of the countries used in the study. The methodological section specifies the questions, sources and methods of research. Finally, there is a detailed presentation and discussion of the findings, followed by a summary of the conclusions.