Aktuelle Publikationen

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dc.contributor.author: da Conceição-Heldt, Eugénia

Ist das Bundesverfassungsgericht, wie oft behauptet, ein weitestgehend unabhängiger Akteur im Regierungssystem der Bundesrepublik? Wir zeigen erstmals, in welchem Ausmaß die öffentliche Meinung einen systematischen Einfluss auf Entscheidungen des Gerichts ausübt. Unsere Evidenz basiert auf der Analyse abstrakter Normenkontrollen und Bund-Länder-Streitigkeiten von 1974 bis 2010. Je stärker die Antragsinhalte der Opposition durch die öffentliche Meinung unterstützt werden, desto eher entscheidet das Bundesverfassungsgericht im Sinne der Opposition. Zwei Mechanismen, die diese Korrelation vermitteln könnten, werden abschließend diskutiert. Obwohl das Gericht nicht blind dem Mehrheitswillen der Öffentlichkeit folgt, berücksichtigt es zu seiner Legitimation die Akzeptanz seiner Entscheidungen.

Building relationships is crucial for satisfaction and success, especially when entering new social contexts. In the present paper, we investigate whether attempting to improve others’ feelings helps people to make connections in new networks. In Study 1, a social network study following new networks of people for a 12-week period indicated that use of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) strategies predicted growth in popularity, as indicated by other network members’ reports of spending time with the person, in work and non-work interactions. In Study 2, linguistic analysis of the tweets from over 8000 Twitter users from formation of their accounts revealed that use of IER predicted greater popularity in terms of the number of followers gained. However, not all types of IER had positive effects. Behavioral IER strategies (which use behavior to reassure or comfort in order to regulate affect) were associated with greater popularity, while cognitive strategies (which change a person’s thoughts about his or her situation or feelings in order to regulate affect) were negatively associated with popularity. Our findings have implications for our understanding of how new relationships are formed, highlighting the important the role played by intentional emotion regulatory processes.

This article investigates collective team identification and team member alignment (i.e., the existence of short- and long-term team goals and teambased reward structures) as moderators of the association between task and relationship conflicts. Being indicators of cooperative goal interdependence in teams, both moderators are hypothesized to mitigate the positive association between the two conflict types. Findings from 88 development teams confirm the moderating effect for collective team identification, but not for team member alignment. Moreover, the moderating role of collective team identification is found to be dependent on the level of task conflict: It is more effective in decoupling task and relationship conflicts at medium as compared with high or low levels of task conflict.

This paper investigates the effects of perceived primary service and perceived servicescape on customer satisfaction in theatres. According to a questionnaire study, among n=2897 theatregoers in 12 German-speaking theatres, factors pertaining to the perceived primary service are most influential on customer satisfaction (in particular, the perceived artistic quality, followed by visitors’ emotional and cognitive response to the performance). Contrariwise, factors pertaining to the perceived servicescape (i.e. seating and view; other customers’ behaviour) are only of minor relevance for customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the influence of both perceived primary service quality and perceived servicescape quality on customer satisfaction is subject to moderating individual factors, such as visitors’ theatrical competence and their motivation for attending a theatre performance.

Der Beitrag skizziert die Reformpolitik im schwedischen Sozialstaat und analysiert die Gründe, Formen und Konsequenzen der Austeritätspolitik. Die Privatisierung des Sozialstaates schreitet in Schweden weiter voran und geht einher mit einer Entstaatlichung der Fiskal- und Schuldenpolitik. Diese Politik des privatisierten Keynesianismus impliziert eine zunehmende gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit. Damit bestätigen die schwedischen Erfahrungen die Wirksamkeit eines Trilemmas der Dienstleistungsökonomie nach Iversen und Wren.

This paper analyses the counter-terrorism systems in Spain and Poland. This comparative study looks at legal, institutional, and conceptual solutions. In particular, criminal legal regulationsand various institutions fighting terrorism are analysed, as are the main goals and tasks of these bodies.The paper shows the scale of terrorist incidents and evolution of terrorist threats in both countries.

This paper investigates spatial associations between environmental change and violence in Darfur. Long-term variations in the geographical distribution of water and vegetative resources can foster migration from areas with decreasing levels of resource availability to areas with increasing levels. Rising ethnic diversity and resource competition can, in turn, escalate the risk of violence in areas of high in-migration. This paper employs a multimethod approach to investigate this hypothesis. Qualitative evidence is used to demonstrate the plausibility of the argument for the case of Darfur. The quantitative analysis is based on information retrieved from satellite imagery on long-term vegetation change and the spatial distribution of attacks on villages in the early phase of the civil war (2003–2005). The findings indicate that violence has been more likely and intense in areas that experienced increasing availability of water and vegetative resources during the 20 years prior to the civil war.

Wer profitiert von Reformen des Zuschnitts von Bundesministerien? Dieser Artikel erklärt Veränderungen im Ressortzuschnitt als Ergebnis eines Verteilungskonflikts bei der Koalitionsbildung, der von der Koalitionsarithmetik und den thematischen Schwerpunkten der Koalitionspartner dominiert wird. Statistische Analysen sämtlicher Kompetenzverschiebungen seit 1957 zeigen, dass Ministerien von quantitativ unterrepräsentierten Koalitionspartnern sowie Ministerien mit hoher elektoraler Salienz eher Kompetenzen hinzugewinnen. Die Kompensation unterrepräsentierter Partner erfolgt über die Stärkung wenig salienter Ministerien. Die Politik des Ressortzuschnitts hat weitreichende Implikationen für die Koalitionsforschung, die Policyforschung und die Analyse institutioneller Reformen in der Exekutive.

This article provides a detailed analysis of individual preferences towards public financial aid to students from low-income families. Who favours/opposes such aid? What are the determinants of the respective preferences? I argue that three sets of factors jointly shape these preferences: materialistic self-interests, political attitudes, and the status quo of the higher education subsidy systems by generating positive feedback-effects. Results of multilevel ordered logit models utilizing the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data for up to 22 countries over two decades indicate that self-interest matters: students strongly favour subsidies as do their parents, while those paying for the spending and those not expecting to benefit oppose such aid. Moreover, political attitudes are important: Supporters of redistribution and of increased public education spending in general, as well as leftwing voters, are much more likely to support students. On the macro-level, the findings suggest that positive feedback-effects exist: in countries with generous subsidy systems, public support for subsidies is higher. This article is the first to systematically analyse preferences towards higher education subsidies across countries and time and demonstrates how positive feedback-effects increasingly lock-in countries’ tuition-subsidy paths, making the systems resistant to (radical) change. As such, it speaks to the literature on the political economy of skill formation, the welfare state, public opinion and the public opinion–policy link.

Recent developments at its borders have reasserted the question whether and how the European Union (EU) should further its integration in the domain of foreign and security policy. Especially, the unfolding of the Ukraine crisis has led many observers, politicians and pundits alike, to put the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), as well as its major sub‐component, the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), back onto the agenda.1 The EU's (foreign policy) decision to offer and encourage an Association Agreement was a decisive element in triggering the internal turmoil in Ukraine; as events were unfolding, the degree and kind of involvement of the EU in the crisis was subjected to political debate; and the behaviour of Russia, which elicited concern in many Eastern European countries for their own security, posed security and defence questions the EU had not been confronted with since the rise of international terrorism, if ever. As the issue of European defence gains salience politically, the European public's preferences regarding this issue gains relevance as well. What are the determinants of public support for European defence, and what do citizens want it to look like, specifically?

Change initiatives entail a high risk of failure if leaders cannot convey the underlying sense to employees. However, the effectiveness of leader sensegiving depends on external as well as internal factors. Moderators of the leader sensegiving process represent a critical but underexplored factor of sensegiving during organizational change. We derive a theoretical model of contextual factors by reviewing existing sensegiving literature. Drawing on information-processing theory, we highlight the influence of crucial moderators at the organizational and individual levels during two phases of the sensegiving process: in the first phase, moderators affect how leaders set up sensegiving; in the second phase, moderators affect how employees engage in sensemaking. The moderators in the first phase are (a) schema consistency at the organizational level and (b) legitimate power at the individual level. During the second phase, the moderating effect of (c) schema consistency at the organizational level and (d) employee emotions at the individual level is explored. We contribute to literature by demonstrating how moderators affect sensegiving during organizational change at two phases of the process and providing a multi-level perspective by distinguishing between moderators at the organizational and individual levels.