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Recombinant DNA technology is an essential area of life engineering. The main aim of research in this field is to experimentally explore the possibilities of repairing damaged human DNA, healing or enhancing future human bodies. Based on ethnographic research in a Czech biochemical laboratory, the article explores biotechnological corporealities and their specific ontology through dealings with bio-objects, the bodywork of scientists. Using the complementary concepts of utopia and heterotopia, the text addresses the situation of bodies and bio-objects in a laboratory. Embodied utopias are analyzed as material semiotic phenomena that are embodied by scientists in their visions and emotions and that are related to potential bodies and to future, not-yet-actualized embodiments. As a counterpart to this, the text explores embodied heterotopias, which are always the other spaces, like biotechnological bio-objects that are simulated in computers or stored in special solutions.
Das Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht verankert rechtlich Vorstellungen über Zugehörigkeit und bestimmt wer vollumfängliche Rechte in einer Gesellschaft hat und wer nicht. Jahrzehntelang wurde Migration in Deutschland als etwas temporäres betrachtet. Im Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht galt bis zur Reform 1999/2000 weitgehend das „ius sanguinis“, das Abstammungsrecht, das auf einem rassistischen und völkischen Staatsverständnis beruht. Diese Reform bedeutete somit mehr als eine reine Gesetzesänderung. Sie war eine Anerkennung Deutschlands als Einwanderungsland und die Veränderung der Vorstellung deutscher Identität. Als Reaktion entbrannte infolge der Reformpläne eine hitzige, rassistische Debatte in der Öffentlichkeit über ebendiese Fragen, die unter dem polarisierten Schlagwort „Doppelpass“ verhandelt wurde. Es war die lauteste migrationspolitische Debatte dieser Zeit.
Kurze Zeit vor Beginn dieser Debatte war die rechtsterroristische Gruppe „Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund“ (NSU) abgetaucht, um einem Haftbefehl zu entgehen. Der NSU war ein deutsches, neonazistisches Netzwerk, in dessen Mittelpunkt drei Terrorist*innen standen. Sie verübten über einen Zeitraum von zwölf Jahren eine rassistische Mordserie an neun Personen türkischer, kurdischer und griechischer Herkunft sowie drei Sprengstoffanschläge auf migrantische Orte und ermordeten eine Polizistin. Den ersten ihrer Sprengstoffanschläge begingen sie nur einen Monat nach der Unterzeichnung der Reform. Wenige Monate nach dem Inkrafttreten des Gesetzes begannen sie mit dem Anschlag auf Enver Şimşek ihre rassistische Mordserie.
Diese Arbeit untersucht anhand der Struktur der Historisch-Materialistischen Politikanalyse das Migrationsregime um die Staatsangehörigkeitsreform von 1999/2000 und wie der NSU darin verortet werden kann.
Die Kontextanalyse stellt auf der Grundlage einer Literaturrecherche die relevanten historischen und strukturellen Faktoren der Debatte sowie des NSU dar. Im nächsten Schritt werden mithilfe einer Analyse von Zeitungsartikel aus dieser Zeit die relevanten Akteur*innen identifiziert und in die vier Hegemonieprojekte neoliberal, sozial, linksliberal-alternativ und konservativ gruppiert. Darauffolgend wird der Ablauf der Debatte in vier Phasen darstellt und als Aushandlung der vier Hegemonieprojekte rekonstruiert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass kein Projekt sich vollumfänglich durchsetzen und Hegemonie erreichen konnte, sie jedoch unterschiedlich stark in den Medien repräsentiert wurden.
Im letzten Schritt betrachtet diese Arbeit Verbindungen dieser Migrationsregime-Analyse zum NSU. Sie kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass der NSU kein Akteur im Migrationsregime um die Staatsangehörigkeitsdebatte von 1998/99 war. Aufgrund der geringen Erkenntnisse über spezifische Meinungen des NSU zum Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht, können keine kausalen Beziehungen hergestellt werden. Dennoch zeigt diese Arbeit Gemeinsamkeiten in den Weltbildern, Annahmen und migrationspolitischen Zielen des NSU, des konservativen Hegemonieprojektes sowie Teilen der Bevölkerung auf. Dadurch wird ein Beitrag dazu geleistet den NSU als Produkt und Teil der deutschen Gesellschaft zu begreifen.
Under pressure? : "Querdenken" - Kollektivierung als Praxisproblem einer Bewegung unter Druck
(2021)
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht eine lokale Telegram-Chatgruppe der Corona-Protestbewegung „Querdenken“ hinsichtlich deren Kollektivierungspraktiken. Das Erkenntnisinteresse liegt darin, zu untersuchen, wie die Gruppe in einer Zeit, in der durch häufige Demonstrationsverbote hoher Druck von außen auf sie einwirkt, Gemeinschaft herstellt. Analysiert werden dabei symbolische Grenzziehungspraktiken sowie die Mobilisierung leerer Signifikanten und – um einen Blick auf Kollektivierung als Praxisproblem zu werfen – die Konflikte, die innerhalb der Gruppe herrschen. Dabei zeigt sich eine antagonistische Identitätskonstitutionslogik, die sich anhand der privilegierten Signifikanten Demokratie vs. Diktatur konstituiert. Diese entwickeln ihre identitätsstiftende Kraft vor allem in der Attribution zu verschiedenen Subjektpositionen, von denen ‚die Politik‘ die zentrale Abgrenzungsposition für die Querdenker*innen darstellt. Weiterhin zeigt sich, dass die strategischen Konflikte, die aus dem Druck von außen resultieren, kontextabhängig gleichermaßen zersetzende wie integrative Kräfte entwickeln.
Die Forschungsfrage dieser Arbeit untersucht die Veränderungen in der sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitischen Agenda von Bündnis 90/Die Grünen seit dem Ausbruch des Ukraine-Krieges 2022. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Grünen ihre Agenda angepasst haben, jedoch ihre politische Kultur beibehalten. Obwohl sie sich neuen sicherheitspolitischen Herausforderungen stellen, bleiben ihre pazifistischen Grundprinzipien erhalten. Es wurde eine Reihe von Veränderungen festgestellt, darunter eine verstärkte Unterstützung für militärische Maßnahmen, jedoch bleibt die Priorität bei nicht-militärischen Ansätzen wie Diplomatie und humanitärer Hilfe. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Grünen eine pragmatischere Betrachtung der Sicherheitspolitik angenommen haben, ohne ihre grundlegenden Werte zu verlieren. Die Erkenntnisse dieser Arbeit bieten eine Grundlage für zukünftige Forschungen zur Entwicklung der sicherheitspolitischen Agenda der Grünen und zur öffentlichen Wahrnehmung dieser Veränderungen.
By comparing two distinct governmental organizations (the US military and NASA) this paper unpacks two main issues. On the one hand, the paper examines the transcripts that are produced as part of work activities in these worksites and what the transcripts reveal about the organizations themselves. Additionally, the paper analyses what the transcripts disclose about the practices involved in their creation and use for practical purposes in these organizations. These organizations have been chosen as transcription forms a routine part of how they operate as worksites. Further, the everyday working environments in both organizations involve complex technological systems, as well as multi-party interactions in which speakers are frequently spatially and visually separated. In order to explicate these practices, the article draws on the transcription methods employed in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis research as a comparative resource. In these approaches audio-video data is transcribed in a fine-grained manner that captures temporal aspects of talk, as well as how speech is delivered. Using these approaches to transcription as an analytical device enables us to investigate when and why transcripts are produced by the US military and NASA in the specific ways that they are, as well as what exactly is being re-presented in the transcripts and thus what was treated as worth transcribing in the interactions they are intended to serve as documents of. By analysing these transcription practices it becomes clear that these organizations create huge amounts of audio-video “data” about their routine activities. One major difference between them is that the US military selectively transcribe this data (usually for the purposes of investigating incidents in which civilians might have been injured), whereas NASA’s “transcription machinery” aims to capture as much of their mission-related interactions as is organizationally possible (i.e., within the physical limits and capacities of their radio communications systems). As such the paper adds to our understanding of transcription practices and how this is related to the internal working, accounting and transparency practices within different kinds of organization. The article also examines how the original transcripts have been used by researchers (and others) outside of the organizations themselves for alternative purposes.
Problematisiert wird, dass der Aufsatz von Revers und Traunmüller Erkenntnisinteresse und Positionalität der durchgeführten Forschung verschleiert. Eine Offenlegung wäre notwendig, um die Grundlagen der schwerwiegenden methodischen Probleme, der Fallauswahl und der unbelegten Behauptungen des Aufsatzes verstehen zu können. Im Widerspruch zu der falschen Annahme, dass Meinungsfreiheit grenzenlos sei und auch mit einer Freiheit einhergehe, andere zu diskriminieren, legt meine Replik die Notwendigkeit (siehe Grundgesetz und Gleichbehandlungsgesetz) dar, dass auch an den Universitäten Diskriminierungen aktiv vermieden werden müssen.
Methoden
(2020)
Rezension zu: Akremi, Leila, Nina Baur, Hubert Knoblauch und Boris Traue (Hrsg.): Handbuch Interpretativ forschen. Weinheim, Basel: Beltz Juventa 2018. 961 Seiten. ISBN: 978-3-7799-3126-3. Preis: C 49,95.
Voting advice applications (VAAs) are online tools providing voting advice to their users. This voting advice is based on the match between the answers of the user and the answers of several political parties to a common questionnaire on political attitudes. To visualize this match, VAAs use a wide array of visualisations, most popular of which are the two-dimensional political maps. These maps show the position of both the political parties and the user in the political landscape, allowing the user to understand both their own position and their relation to the political parties. To construct these maps, VAAs require scales that represent the main underlying dimensions of the political space. This makes the correct construction of these scales important if the VAA aims to provide accurate and helpful voting advice. This paper presents three criteria that assess if a VAA achieves this aim. To illustrate their usefulness, these three criteria—unidimensionality, reliability and quality—are used to assess the scales in the cross-national EUVox VAA, a VAA designed for the European Parliament elections of 2014. Using techniques from Mokken scaling analysis and categorical principal component analysis to capture the metrics, I find that most scales show low unidimensionality and reliability. Moreover, even while designers can—and sometimes do—use certain techniques to improve their scales, these improvements are rarely enough to overcome all of the problems regarding unidimensionality, reliability and quality. This leaves certain problems for the designers of VAAs and designers of similar type online surveys.
Das Promotionsvorhaben ist im Bereich der arbeitssoziologischen Forschung angesiedelt. Vor dem Hintergrund der Individualisierung im arbeitssoziologischen Feld, sowie der gestiegenen Bedeutung von Home Office aufgrund der Corona-Pandemie, widmet sich das Vorhaben dem Problemfeld der wahrgenommenen Ambivalenz von Home Office, sowie dem Zusammenhang zwischen Home Office und Individualisierung, und dessen Bedeutung und Auswirkungen für und auf das Individuum.
Als methodisches Verfahren dient hier zur Theoriegenerierung die Grounded Theory. Gegenstand der Analyse ist die mediale Darstellung. Als mediale Daten werden Zeitungsartikel mit der thematischen Fokussierung auf Home Office betrachtet. Die hier gewählte Darstellung des Vorgehens, ermöglicht es, das Vorgehen mit der Grounded Theory kleinteilig und kleinschrittig nachzuvollziehen und verstehen zu können.
Ziel der Studie ist es, Home Office in Bezug zur Individualisierung zu setzen und die grundsätzlichen Zusammenhänge innerhalb der Wahrnehmungen von Home Office und Individualisierung herauszuarbeiten, sowie im medialen Kontext allgemeine Darstellungen und Wahrnehmungen von Home Office zu erkennen und zu verdeutlichen.
Letztlich zeigt sich, dass die Gemeinsamkeit in der medialen Darstellung von Home Office darin liegt, dass eine Aushandlung über die Notwendigkeit von Handlungsvermögen erfolgt. Diese Aushandlung spiegelt sich in den Aspekten der Darstellung von Handlungsmöglichkeiten und Handlungsgrenzen wieder, sowie in der Darstellung der Notwendigkeit von Gestaltungsspielraum und/oder der Notwendigkeit von Grenzen für das Individuum.
Die im Laufe der Auswertung entwickelten Darstellungsformen ermöglichen hierbei, die differenzierten Standpunkte im Hinblick auf die Arbeitsweise Home Office erfassen zu können. Es wurden Formen gebildet, um die verschiedenen Blickwinkel voneinander abgrenzen zu können. Bei Betrachtung dieser Formen wird jedoch ersichtlich, dass sich die exakte punktuelle Verortung des Subjektes zwischen Fremdbestimmung und Selbstbestimmung im Hinblick auf die Zielsetzung des maximalen persönlichen und/oder wirtschaftlichen Erfolges aus medialer Perspektive als schwierig erweist.
Die in der Auswertung entwickelten Darstellungsformen verdeutlichen außerdem die Gleichbedeutung von Arbeitssphäre und Lebenssphäre für das Individuum in der medialen Darstellung. Gleichzeitig zeigen sie den Wunsch nach Freiheit, den Wunsch nach Grenzen, sowie den Wunsch nach Selbstverwirklichung, Gestaltung und Entlastung von Erwartungen auf.
Ausgehend von Scheffers Beschreibung Existentieller Probleme untersucht die Masterarbeit die Problembehandlung solcher. Dabei versucht sich der Autor an einer vorläufigen Begriffsdefinition Existentieller Apparate und untersucht im folgenden, wie sich diese von der Arbeitsweise, ihrer Struktur und anderer Merkmale von herkömmlichen Apparaten unterscheiden. Die Diskussion erfolgt anhand der Problembearbeitungskapazitäten von der Flüchtlingshilfe auf Lesbos, Impfzentren und der Fridays-for-Future-Bewegung, die jeweils für Sich genommen speziell nur im Kontext jeweiliger Existentieller Probleme existieren.
The thesis delves into two research questions, drawing from the 2022 Final Report of the Colombian Truth Commission. It critically examines historical power differentials originating from the colonial period, probing their role in legitimizing and perpetuating violence against ethnic groups, women, and individuals diverging from cisgender or heteronormative norms within Colombian society. Additionally, the research explores the pervasive influence exerted by the colonial legacy on the foundational structures of Colombian societal organization. Employing discourse analysis as its methodological approach, the thesis undertakes the task of deconstructing and reconstructing the Report, thereby elucidating emergent and contingent discursive meanings that situate coloniality within the realms of cognition, language, and affect. Emphasizing the presence of counter-hegemonic knowledge within the Report, the thesis integrates its findings into a robust theoretical and conceptual framework, facilitating a nuanced and systematic comprehension of the underlying causes of violence perpetrated against marginalized groups and the environment. These causes are intricately linked to the intertwined and hybridized power structures that have endured since the colonial era.
Power structures of Eurocentric origin, alongside mental constructs imposed by European invaders over centuries — such as anthropocentrism, racism, internal colonialism, heteropatriarchy, cisnormativity, and classism — were gradually naturalized and institutionalized within Colombian society. This process has been perpetuated through the state's reproduction of these patterns since the inception of Colombia as a nation-state. Consequently, hierarchical discursive constructions, posited as universal and self-evident, have marginalized certain groups and justified environmental degradation. While the internal armed conflict exacerbated these issues, it did not create them; rather, it intensified pre-existing violences, targeting individuals, communities, and their territories.
The thesis also underscores the portrayal of otherness within the modern-colonial world-system, rooted in principles of domination and subalternity, perpetuating colonial patterns of thought and action, reinforcing the hegemonic cosmovision. Notions of superiority and inferiority that predate the establishment of the Colombian nation-state have influenced social categories, subject positions, and identities, resulting in disproportionate, differential, and cumulative harm inflicted upon subalternized population groups. This contributes to a culture of 'justified' violence.
The research underscores the profound entrenchment of coloniality in the structures of Colombian society and the various inherent logics of violence within its conflicts. Coloniality, a comprehensive framework encompassing colonial patterns of thought and action, originating from the invasion and conquest of Abya Yala, continuously shapes the contemporary realities of societies in diverse (re-)configurations, leaving indelible imprints. The effects of these dynamics are manifold, ranging from the imperative of monogamous sexuality according to Judeo-Christian principles as a self-evident norm to the view of nature as a resource rather than a unit comprising both people and environment. In other words, colonial patterns are deeply embedded in all structures of society. A key recommendation emerging from this thesis is to underscore the imperative to recognize and question the persistence of colonial patterns in social and individual lives.
The research urges recognition and interrogation of these persistent colonial patterns in societal and individual structures, advocating for transformative paradigms that challenge conventional thought patterns and foster self-reflection among Colombians. The report, functioning as a political instrument, holds the potential to significantly contribute to the formation of subjectivities that break away from the epistemic schemes of modernity/coloniality. The research and its findings create a political space for questioning the universalist notion of the Eurocentric civilizing project, the scientific rationality of the universal subject, and the presumed neutrality of its forms of knowledge. This opens avenues for questioning, disputing, and transforming entrenched paradigms.
Aktuelle wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Sinnerleben Beschäftigter thematisieren vor allem die Problematik eines belastungsbedingten Sinnverlustes. Danach leiden immer mehr Beschäftigte darunter, ihre Arbeit nicht mehr als sinnvoll empfinden zu können. Eine solche Perspektive lässt allerdings die subjektiven Gestaltungsleistungen und Aneignungsformen von Arbeit aus dem Blick geraten. Diesen wendet sich der Beitrag zu, indem er danach fragt, inwieweit sich unterschiedliche Formen der Aneignung von Arbeit identifizieren lassen. Auf der Basis von Interviews mit vierzig hochqualifizierten Beschäftigten werden drei unterschiedliche Aneignungsmodi mit ihren inhärenten Ambivalenzen identifiziert. Jeder Modus steht für eine spezifische Sichtweise auf die eigenen Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten und für eine Form der primären Sinnzuschreibung in der Arbeit. Differenziert werden drei Idealtypen – „progressive Sinngestaltung“, „widerständige Sinnbewahrung“ sowie „pragmatische Sinnbewahrung“ –, anhand derer die Heterogenität und die Ambivalenzen der Aneignung professioneller Arbeit deutlich werden. Der Beitrag liefert so Erkenntnisse über die subjektiven Praktiken des Bedeutsam-Machens von Arbeit und trägt zur Erforschung des Zusammenspiels von Arbeit und Subjektivität bei.
Les Républicains in Frankreich, die Tories in Großbritannien, die österreichischen Christdemokraten: Parteien, die jahrzehntelang als feste politische Größe in ihren Ländern galten, haben einen rapiden Bedeutungsverlust erlebt, manche sind in Richtung des rechten Randes gerückt. Doch eine gemäßigt konservative Kraft rechts der Mitte ist notwendig für eine stabile und zukunftsoffene Demokratie.
Ahlhaus, Svenja (2020): Die Grenzen des Demos. Mitgliedschaftspolitik aus postsouveräner Perspektive
(2021)
In the 21st century, the division of housework remains gendered, with women on average still spending more time doing chores than their male partners. While research has studied why this phenomenon is so persistent, few studies have yet been able to assess the effect of gender ideology and socio-economic resources at the same time, usually due to data restrictions. We use data from the pairfam, a new and innovative German panel study, in order to test the effect of absolute and relative resources as well as his and her gender ideology on the division of housework. We employ a life course perspective and analyze trajectories of couples’ housework division over time, using multi-level random effects growth curve models. We find that an egalitarian gender ideology of both him and her significantly predicts more egalitarian division-trajectories, while neither absolute nor relative resources appear to have an effect on the division of housework over time. Furthermore, our results expand the literature by investigating how these processes differ among childless couples and couples who experience the first birth.
The intergenerational transmission of gender: paternal influences on children’s gender attitudes
(2022)
Objective: This study provides the first systematic longitudinal analysis of the influence of paternal involvement in family life—across childhood and adolescence—on the gender-role attitudes of children by the age of 14 or 15.
Background: Recent research suggests that, in post-industrial societies, paternal involvement in family life is increasing. Although previous studies of paternal involvement have considered paternal influences on children's cognitive or socio-emotional development, such studies have not yet addressed paternal influences on children's attitudes toward gender. Relatedly, previous studies on the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes have analyzed maternal influences, but have neglected the significance of paternal influences. This study engages both strands of the research by analyzing the effects of paternal behaviors on children's attitudes toward gender roles.
Method: Multivariate linear regressions models were estimated on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC); a survey with biannual observations over 10 years for 2796 children born between 1999 and 2000.
Results: Fathers' time spent on childcare during childhood was associated with gender-egalitarian attitudes in children by the age of 14 or 15. The most powerful predictor of children's gender-role attitudes, however, was the amount of time fathers spent on housework during children's adolescence, both absolute and relative to the amount of time mothers spent on housework. Fathers' unpaid labor at home was as relevant for children's gender-role attitudes as mothers' paid labor in the workforce. These results held after controlling for maternal domestic behaviors and for the gender-role attitudes of both parents.
Conclusion: Father involvement in childcare and housework during childhood and adolescence play an important role in shaping children's gender-egalitarian attitudes.
Children from upper-class families have better cognitive outcomes and fewer behavioural problems than those from working-class families. Previous studies highlighted that the class gap in child development is partially driven by differences in parenting styles, but they rarely looked at multiple, more specific dimensions of parenting, i.e., inductive reasoning, parenting consistency, warmth and anger. This study provides a systematic account of how parental social class shapes these four dimensions of parenting, and how these dimensions affect children’s cognitive outcomes and behavioural problems. Using high-quality, longitudinal data, and both hybrid models and the generalized methods of moments, this study reports two main findings. First, upper-class parents significantly differ from lower-class parents in two parenting dimensions, displaying more inductive reasoning and parenting consistency, but no relevant class differences are found in the two emotion-type dimensions of parenting (i.e., warmth and anger). Second, all four parenting dimensions have a strong impact on children’s behavioural problems, while they do not affect cognitive outcomes. An exception is consistency, the only dimension that affects both types of child outcomes. The study underscores the relevance of analysing parenting and child development from a multidimensional approach to better understand how upper-class parents transmit advantage to children.
After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fear-mongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal-democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.
In this article, I question the use of the notion of ‘constituent power’ as a tool for the democratization of the European Union (EU). Rather than seeing the absence of a transnational constituent power as a cause of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’, I identify it as an opportunity for unfettered democratic participation. Against the reification of power-in-action into a power-constituted-in-law, I argue that the democratization of the EU can only be achieved through the multiplication of ‘constituent moments’. I begin by deconstructing the normative justifications surrounding the concept of constituent power. Here I analyze the structural aporia of constituent power and question the autonomous and emancipatory dimension of this notion. I then test the theoretical hypothesis of this structural aporia of the popular constituent power by comparing it with the historical experiments of a European popular constituent power. Finally, based on these theoretical and empirical observations, I propose to replace the ambivalence of the concept of popular constituent power with a more cautious approach to the bottom-up democratization of European integration: that of a multiplication of transnational constituent moments.
Although scholars hypothesized early on that social belonging is an important predictor for voting behavior, its role for populist voting remains empirically ambiguous and underexplored. This contribution investigates how different aspects of social belonging, that is, quality, quantity, and perception of one's own social relationships, relate to electoral abstention and to populist voting on the left and right. Employing multilevel regression models using data from four waves of the European Social Survey, this study finds that all measures of social belonging foster turnout, but they exert an incoherent influence on populist voting depending on the party's ideological leaning. While social belonging plays a subordinate role for left populist support, strong social belonging reduces the probability to support populist parties on the right. With that, the study analysis offers a nuanced view on how different dimensions of social belonging relate to electoral behavior. By doing so, this study sheds light on what aspects of social belonging encourage, or inhibit, which form of “protest at the ballot box.”
In this article, we propose to develop a realist interpretation of political progress—that is, an analysis of what it means to achieve better conditions of life in society under political power according to realist standards. Specifically, we are interested in identifying the criteria according to which political realism defines a change in the status quo as a desirable change...
Public opinion towards welfare state reform: The role of political trust and government satisfaction
(2021)
The traditional welfare state, which emerged as a response to industrialization, is not well equipped to address the challenges of today's post-industrial knowledge economies. Experts and policymakers have therefore called for welfare state readjustment towards a ‘social investment’ model (focusing on human skills and capabilities). Under what conditions are citizens willing to accept such future-oriented reforms? We point at the crucial but hitherto neglected role of citizens’ trust in and satisfaction with government. Trust and satisfaction matter because future-oriented reforms generate uncertainties, risks and costs, which trust and government satisfaction can attenuate. We offer micro-level causal evidence using experiments in a representative survey covering eight European countries and confirm these findings with European Social Survey data for 22 countries. We find that trust and government satisfaction increase reform support and moderate the effects of self-interest and ideological standpoints. These findings have crucial implications not least because they help explain why some countries manage – but others fail – to enact important reforms.
Vor dem Hintergrund von Globalisierung und Migrationsbewegungen ist die Staatsbürgerschaft vermehrt der Frage nach der Rechtfertigung der Grenzen des Demos ausgesetzt. Prägend für die verfassungsrechtliche Definition dieser Grenzen war der ehemalige Bundesverfassungsrichter Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, der auch die Ablehnung der ersten Anläufe des Ausländer:innenwahlrechts mitverantwortete. Der vorliegende Aufsatz vollzieht vor diesem Hintergrund Böckenfördes Bild der Staatsbürgerschaft nach. Seine Konzeption umfasst dabei in erster Linie einen legalen Status. Im Zusammenhang mit Böckenfördes Auslegung des Demokratieprinzips bleiben die historisch-spezifischen Inhalte und Grenzen der Bürgerschaft darüber hinaus stets an die Integrationsmöglichkeiten und das Selbstverständnis gegebener, notwendig homogener politischer Einheiten gekoppelt. In der Konfrontation mit der Kritik exklusiver politischer Gemeinschaften zeigt sich dennoch eine weite politische Gestaltungsfreiheit innerhalb von Böckenfördes Konzept, andererseits aber auch die Grenzen eines Dialogs zwischen Staatsrechtslehre und jenen neueren normativen Modellen demokratischer Gemeinschaft.
Gender and attitudes toward welfare state reform: Are women really social investment promoters?
(2021)
This article contributes to the study of the demand side of welfare politics by investigating gender differences in social investment preferences systematically. Building on the different functions of social investment policies in creating, preserving, or mobilizing skills, we argue that women do not support social investment policies generally more strongly than men. Rather, women demand, in particular, policies to preserve their skills during career interruptions and help to mobilize their skills on the labour market. In a second analytical step, we examine women’s policy priorities if skill preservation and mobilization come at the expense of social compensation. We test our arguments for eight Western European countries with data from the INVEDUC survey. The confirmation of our arguments challenges a core assumption of the literatures on the social investment turn and women’s political realignment. We discuss the implication of our findings in the conclusions.
Zwei traditionelle Wirkungsbereiche von Intellektuellen, die politische Medienöffentlichkeit und das akademische Feld, unterliegen seit über drei Jahrzehnten anhaltenden strukturellen Veränderungen. Diese gelten vielfach als Ursache einer tiefen Krise oder sogar des Verschwindens der Intellektuellen. Doch um welche Veränderungen geht es dabei genau, und wie restrukturieren sie die gegenwärtige Rolle und Funktion von Intellektuellen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen entwickelt der Beitrag einen Ansatz, der die struktur- und erfahrungsbezogenen Bedingungen intellektueller Praxis fokussiert und historisch vergleichend analysiert. Um eine Vergleichsfolie zu gewinnen, wird die intellektuelle Praxis Theodor W. Adornos analysiert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Adorno die charakteristischen Widersprüche öffentlichen und akademischen intellektuellen Engagements methodisch aufrechterhielt, indem er eine Position des „Dazwischen“ reklamierte. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden seit den 1970er-Jahren forcierte strukturelle Veränderungen der Medienöffentlichkeit und des akademischen Feldes als Prozesse der „Vereindeutigung“ interpretiert, die eine widerspruchsaffine intellektuelle Praxis erschweren. In der Folge lassen sich eine ausgeweitete kommerzielle sowie eine eingeschränkte akademische Intellektuellenpraxis beobachten, die jeweils politisch wirksame Interventionen begrenzen.
Welfare is the largest expenditure category in all advanced democracies. Consequently, much literature has studied partisan effects on total and policy-specific welfare expenditure. Yet, these results cannot be trusted: The methodological standard is to apply time-series cross-section-regressions to annual observation data. But governments hardly change annually. Thus, the number of observations is artificially inflated, leading to incorrect estimates. While this problem has recently been acknowledged, it has not been convincingly resolved. We propose Mixed-Effects Models as a solution, which allow decomposing variance into different levels and permit complex cross-classification data structures. We argue that Mixed-Effects models combine the strengths of existing methodological approaches while alleviating their weaknesses. Empirically, we study partisan effects on total and on disaggregated expenditure in 23 OECD-countries, 1960-2012, using several measures of party preferences.
The debate on effects of globalization on welfare states is extensive. Often couched in terms of a battle between the compensation and the efficiency thesis, the scholarly literature has provided contradictory arguments and findings. This article contributes to the scholarly debate by exploring in greater detail the micro-level foundations of compensation theory. More specifically, we distinguish between individual policy preferences for compensatory social policies (unemployment insurance) and human capital-focused social investment policies (education) and expect globalization to mainly affect demand for educational investment. A multi-level analysis of ISSP survey data provides empirical support for this hypothesis. This finding provides an important revision and extension of the classical analytical perspective of compensation theory, because it shows that citizens value the social investment function of the welfare state above and beyond simple compensation via social transfers. This might be particularly relevant in today's skill-centered knowledge economies.
We cannot imagine a political system without opposition. Despite this crucial position in politics, political science has largely neglected to study oppositions. Attempting to fill this gap, this article analyses the institutional opportunities of parliamentary oppositions. It offers a parsimonious framework by distinguishing two dimensions of opposition influence: Some institutions enable oppositions to control governments, while others offer opportunities to present alternatives. A comparison of oppositions’ opportunities in 21 democracies shows that countries fall into four groups along these dimensions: In majoritarian democracies, weak control mechanisms are countered by excellent opportunities to publicize alternatives. Consociational democracies are characterized by strong control mechanisms, but provide only weak opportunities to present alternatives. Moreover, in Southern Europe, control mechanisms and opportunities to present alternatives are weak, while both are pronounced in Nordic Europe. The results are summarized in three indices that can easily be applied in future research examining oppositions and their power.
Cryovalues beyond high expectations: endurance and the construction of value in cord blood banking
(2022)
Cryopreservation attracts attention as a practice grounded in high expectations: current life is suspended for future use—to generate life, to save life, and to resurrect life. But what happens when high expectations in cryobanking give way to looming uselessness and the risk of failure? Based on ethnographic insights into the case of umbilical cord blood (CB) banking in Germany, this contribution investigates the liminal state of “non-failure.” Averting failure amid a lack of success in this field requires putting effort into the construction of value. The resulting practices and dynamics overflow generic stories of commercialization and instrumentalization of biological material and are best grasped as an expanded version of the recently coined notion of “cryovalue.” The long-term availability of cryopreserved CB facilitates the steady yield of social and economic capital beyond and after promise. Moreover, the value construction is reoriented from CB itself toward the socio-technical cryo-arrangements in which it is embedded. In exemplifying how it expands the understanding of the diversity of valuation and valorization practices, continuities, and economic endurance in cryoeconomies and bioeconomies, the paper advocates the study of their ambivalent and allegedly uneventful sites.
Studies of occupational sex segregation rely on the sociocultural model to explain why some occupations are numerically dominated by women and others by men. This model argues that occupational sex segregation is driven by norms about gender-appropriate work, which are frequently conceptualized as gender-typed skills: work-related tasks, abilities, and knowledge domains that society views as either feminine or masculine. The sociocultural model thus explains the primary patterns of occupational sex segregation, which conform to these norms: Requirements for feminine (masculine) skills increase with women’s (men’s) representation in the occupation. However, the model does not adequately explain cases of segregation that deviate from these norms or investigate the ways in which feminine and masculine skills co-occur in occupations. The present study fills these gaps by evaluating two previously untested explanations for deviations from the sociocultural model. The findings show that requirements for physical strength (a masculine skill) increase with women’s representation in professional occupations because physical strength skills co-occur with substantially higher requirements for feminine skills that involve helping and caring for others. These results indicate that the sociocultural model, and more generally explanations for how gender norms drive occupational sex segregation, can be improved by examining patterns of gender-typed skill co-occurrence.
Episodes of liberalization in autocracies: a new approach to quantitatively studying democratization
(2022)
This paper introduces a new approach to the quantitative study of democratization. Building on the comparative case-study and large-N literature, it outlines an episode approach that identifies the discrete beginning of a period of political liberalization, traces its progression, and classifies episodes as successful versus different types of failing outcomes, thus avoiding potentially fallacious assumptions of unit homogeneity. We provide a description and analysis of all 383 liberalization episodes from 1900 to 2019, offering new insights on democratic “waves”. We also demonstrate the value of this approach by showing that while several established covariates are valuable for predicting the ultimate outcomes, none explain the onset of a period of liberalization.