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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 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.
Objective: The study investigates the relationship between perceived loneliness and the individuals' attitude whether voting is a civic duty. With that, it is the first study to shed light on the mechanism linking perceived loneliness to voting behavior.
Methods: Two independent, cross-sectional, and representative datasets from Germany (n = 1641) and the Netherlands (n = 1431) are analyzed.
Results: The regression results and effect decomposition techniques show that loneliness is associated with reduced intention to vote as well as a lower sense of duty to vote. The effect of loneliness on voting behavior is partially mediated through a reduced sense of duty.
Conclusion: Loneliness is associated with political disengagement. The study provides empirical evidence that the relationship between loneliness and turnout is partially mediated through sense of duty. This showcases that lonely individuals tend to feel detached from society and are less likely to feel obligated to participate in the electoral process.
This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in the traditional theory of political representation and constructivist theory on representation by focusing on the authorization of claims. It seeks to answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations and tracing claims through the claim-making process. Different participatory democratic innovations are selected - providing various claims and taking place in different institutional contexts, i.e., (elected) members of the Council of Foreigners Frankfurt; individual citizens in participatory budgeting procedures in Münster; and citizen’s associations elected politicians in the referendum campaign in Hamburg. We first analyze the claims raised by the different claim-makers to identify their claimed constituency eligible to authorize claims. In the second step, we focus on the authorization by the claimed constituency and the relevant decision-making authority. The article finds that claim-making in democratic innovations is fractured and incomplete. Nevertheless, this is not the reason to dismiss democratic innovations as possible loci of representation; on the contrary, seen through the prism of claim-making, all representation – electoral and nonelectoral – is partial. Focusing on the authorization of claims in democratic innovations provides novel inferences about the potential and limits of democratic innovations for broadening democratic representation.
Allen Buchanan argues that a particular set of false factual beliefs, especially when part of a comprehensive ideology, can lead persons to develop ‘morally conservative’ convictions that stand in the way of realising justice even though these persons have a ‘firm grasp of correct principles of justice and a robust commitment to their realisation’. In my remarks, I raise some questions concerning the core argument: How ‘firm’ can a grasp of principles of justice be if a person is blind to the realities of injustice? And how ‘sincerely committed’ to justice can such an injustice-insensitive person be? Alternatively: How firm is that grasp or commitment if one has a radically pessimistic view about human nature so that one does not believe that (egalitarian) justice can or could ever be realised? Secondly, I ask: If such ideologies or false beliefs are in play in reproducing injustice, do they not also ‘mask’ existing injustices?
Rule in International Relations is increasingly observed as an empirical phenomenon and academically conceptualized. This book describes rule in International Relations using four practice-theoretical dimensions. A method is developed to analyze rule from a practice-theoretical point of view - the Practice Analysis of Rule (PAR). The argumentation is followed that resistance is an important dimension of rule, which enables the researcher to understand the quality of rule. However, the empirical analysis of resistance as an indicator of rule does not allow for the analysis of subtle forms of rule sufficiently, which can have grave consequences in international relations. Therefore, to make this possible, the symbolic dimension is formulated after Bourdieu. In the following, three practice-theoretical dimensions are developed and a methodical approach is presented. Resistance is described as a practice-theoretical dimension. Based on actor-network-theory materiality is described a dimension of rule. At last, iterability is described as dimension of rule which can show the repeatability of practices. It can thus indicate the extent of consolidation of rule in each case. Through the analysis of an empirical case using the four practice-theoretical dimensions the researcher will be enabled to analyze transnational relations of rule in a theory guided and history sensitive manner.
Angesichts globaler Krisendiagnosen setzen einige Aktivist*innen nicht primär auf Reformen innerhalb der bestehenden Verhältnisse – sie träumen von einer komplett anderen Ordnung. Oftmals ziehen sie sich deswegen aus bestehenden Institutionen und dem Alltag der Mehrheitsgesellschaft zurück. Anstelle von Eskapismus kann es sich bei ihrem Rückzug aber auch um radikalen Widerstand handeln. Philip Wallmeier stellt ein Netzwerk an Aktivist*innen in den Mittelpunkt seiner empirischen Studie, die zwischen den frühen 1970er Jahren und der Jahrtausendwende in den USA in »Kommunen«, »intentionale Gemeinschaften« und »Ökodörfer« zogen. Die Analyse zeichnet die historischen Veränderungen nach und beschreibt anschaulich, welche Widersprüche sich in der Praxis für die Aktivist*innen bei dem Versuch ergaben, alternative Lebensformen zu entwickeln, um so die Verhältnisse grundlegend zu transformieren.
Scholars and international organizations engaged in institutional reconstruction converge in recognizing political corruption as a cause or a consequence of conflicts. Anticorruption is thus generally considered a centrepiece of institutional reconstruction programmes. A common approach to anticorruption within this context aims primarily to counter the negative political, social, and economic effects of political corruption, or implement legal anticorruption standards and punitive measures. We offer a normative critical discussion of this approach, particularly when it is initiated and sustained by external entities. We recast the focus from an outward to an inward perspective on institutional action and failure centred on the institutional interactions between officeholders. In so doing, we offer the normative tools to reconceptualize anticorruption in terms of an institutional ethics of ‘office accountability’ that draws on an institution’s internal resources of self-correction as per the officeholders’ interrelated work.
Some realists in political theory deny that the notion of feasibility has any place in realist theory, while others claim that feasibility constraints are essential elements of realist normative theorising. But none have so far clarified what exactly they are referring to when thinking of feasibility and political realism together. In this article, we develop a conception of the realist feasibility frontier based on an appraisal of how political realism should be distinguished from non-ideal theories. In this realist framework, political standards are feasible if they meet three requirements: they are (i) politically intelligible, (ii) contextually recognisable as authoritative, and (iii) contestable. We conclude by suggesting that our conception of realist feasibility might be compatible with utopian demands, thereby possibly finding favour with realists who otherwise refuse to resort to the notion of feasibility.
Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the “democratization of tax enforcement,” by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes.
The article “Ganging up on Trump? Sino-German Relations and the Problem with Soft Balancing against the USA”, written by Sebastian Biba, was originally published Online First without Open Access. After publication in volume 25, issue 4, pages 531–550 the authors decided to opt for Open Choice and to make the article an Open Access publication. Therefore, the copyright of the article has been changed to © The Author(s) 2021 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. The original article has been corrected.
Ahlhaus, Svenja (2020): Die Grenzen des Demos. Mitgliedschaftspolitik aus postsouveräner Perspektive
(2021)
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.
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.
China’s law to control international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has sent shockwaves through international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society and expert communities as the epitome of a worldwide trend of closing civic spaces. Since the Overseas NGO Management Law was enacted in January 2017, its implementation has seen mixed effects and diverging patterns of adaptation among Chinese party-state actors at the central and local levels and among domestic NGOs and INGOs. To capture the formal and informal dynamics underlying their mutual interactions in the longer term, this article employs a theory of institutional change inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s distinction between rules-in-form versus rules-in-use and identifies four scenarios for international civil society in China – “no change,” “restraining,” “recalibrating” and “reorienting.” Based on interviews, participant observation and Chinese policy documents and secondary literature, the respective driving forces, plausibility, likelihood and longer-term implications of each scenario are assessed. It is found that INGOs’ activities are increasingly affected by the international ambitions of the Chinese party-state, which enmeshes both domestic NGOs and INGOs as agents in its diplomatic efforts to redefine civil society participation on a global scale.
Background: This study investigates the willingness of men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) to use HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Research in the HIV/AIDS field typically relies on clinical and epidemiological studies, thereby often excluding social dimensions of the illness as well as factors explaining its prevention. The current study analyzes HIV-prevention through an interdisciplinary theoretical approach. It aims to comprehensively understand the mechanisms associated with the willingness to take PrEP among MSM in terms of psychological, social, behavioral, cultural, and demographic factors. Methods: We analyze data from the survey “Gay Men and AIDS” conducted in Germany in 2013 prior to market approval for PrEP. Analyses were performed using the statistical software SPSS 25.0, while results were visualized using the R programming language. Results: We find that perceived risk of infection, social norms (anticipated HIV-stigma), practices (e.g. regular condomless sex), and socio-demographic factors (young age, being single) all have a positive effect on the willingness to take PrEP, while education reveals a negative, and income no effect. Conclusions: Results indicate that beyond well-established socio-psychological mechanisms of health behavior, social factors play a crucial role in understanding the willingness of PrEP uptake. This study enriches existing health behavior theories with sociological concepts such as social norms and social practices.
In contrast to Japan and the “dragon economies,” the Philippines has not been able to partake in the “Asian Economic Miracle.” In short, the Philippines does not classify as a developmental state which exercises strategic industrial policies as traced in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. In fact, even its Southeast Asian neighbors Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia had economically outdone the Philippines by the 1980s even though their prospects were much worse than those of the Philippines in the 1950s. And while the Philippine economy has been experiencing an upsurge in recent years, it is still significantly lagging behind regional standards—especially with regard to industrial development. From a political economy perspective, it is of key interest in how far the Philippine state has been contributing to this subpar development. In order to explore the ongoing Philippine development dilemma, the study thus offers a comprehensive analysis of the Philippines’ industrial policies, based on distinct government–business relations and patterns of social embeddedness. In addition to assessing the Philippines’ industrial policies and their embeddedness in general, two of the Philippines’ main export industry sectors—textile/garments and electronics—are examined. In this manner, the study contributes to the analysis of the political economy of economic development in the Philippines and provides insights on the prospects and limits of industrial policy in the Southeast Asian context.
Laut C.S. Peirce ist der abduktive Schluss das einzige logische Verfahren, das in der Lage ist, neue Erkenntnisse einzuführen. Dieser funktioniert in etwa so, dass auf Basis eines bereits bestehenden, jedoch unbewusst verwendeten, Regel- bzw. Vorwissens etwas Neues, bislang Unbekanntes, generiert wird, indem eine Ähnlichkeitsrelation bzw. eine Differenz zwischen Alt und Neu erzeugt wird. Damit scheint bei der Abduktion das einsam handelnde und denkende Subjekt die zentrale Instanz der Entstehung des Neuen zu sein.
Aus soziologischer Sicht von Interesse ist dabei, welche, hier zu unterstellende, tragende Rolle der soziale Austausch bei dieser Erkenntnisgenese überhaupt spielt, wenn, dem abduktiven Schluss zufolge, das monologisch handelnde Individuen über quasi „eingelagerte“ Erkenntnis-Instinkte, wie Peirce sagt, verfügt. Die Rolle des anderen im sozialen Austausch würde dadurch jedoch hinfällig oder zumindest randständig.
Der logische Ausweg, um den anderen als konstitutiver Bestandteil der Erkenntnisgenese zu integrieren, besteht in der These, dass interagierende Individuen sich auf eine Art und Weise wechselseitig identisch sein müssen. Ähnlichkeitsbezüge herstellen zu können würde dadurch primär zu einem Produkt der Interindividualität und nicht zu jenem einzelner Individuen.
Um diese These zu prüfen, werden in einem ersten Schritt Peirce’ Theorien zur Abduktion untersucht. Im Weiteren sollen aber auch soziologische Erkenntnistheorien und interdisziplinäre Ansätze, wie die der (Social) Neuroscience, auf die Möglichkeit einer interindividuellen Verquickung im Sinne des wechselseitig Identisch-Seins untersucht.
In einem letzten Schritt wird die berechtigte Frage gestellt, wie denn überhaupt Erkenntnis erzeugt werden kann, wenn Individuen sich differenzlos identisch gegenüberstehen. Dabei wird die These vorgeschlagen, dass Differenz dadurch eingespielt wird, indem Subjekte sich nie dieselbe Raumzeitstelle teilen. Die am Individuum gebundene Fähigkeit, Unterschiede bzw. Ähnlichkeitsbezüge erkennen zu können (Abduktion), wird somit erst durch Praxis selbst möglich.
Abschließend sollen durch forschungsübergreifende Überlegungen Konsequenzen aus diesen Thesen gezogen werden.
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.
Der Übergang von der Schule in die Ausbildung oder in das Studium ist ein entscheidender und wegweisender Schritt in der Bildungsbiografie von jungen Menschen. Der dabei vollzogene Übergangsprozess hat sich im Laufe der vergangenen Jahrzehnte deutlich verändert und zunehmend individualisiert. In diesem Zeitraum haben sich auch die Anforderungen und Verhältnisse auf dem Ausbildungs- und Arbeitsmarkt vor allem durch die Expansion des Dienstleistungsbereichs verändert. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es, die Entwicklung des Übergangsprozesses in Form der Dauer und der absolvierten Stationen vom Verlassen der Schule bis zum Beginn der beruflichen oder akademischen Erstausbildung vor dem Hintergrund der Zunahme an Arbeitskräften im Dienstleistungssektor bei westdeutschen Jugendlichen im Zeitraum zwischen 1971 und 2012 zu untersuchen. Dies wurde auch getrennt nach Schulabschlussgruppen überprüft. Im Rahmen der Ergebnisse zeigte sich, dass ein gestiegener Anteil an dienstleistungstätigen Arbeitskräften auf dem Arbeitsmarkt in der Zeit zwischen 1971 und 2012 keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Dauer und die absolvierten Stationen des Übergangs hatte. Dies galt unabhängig vom erreichten Schulabschluss. Die vorliegenden Erkenntnisse dienen als Anstoß dafür, den Übergangsprozess von der Schule in die Ausbildung genauer zu betrachten und hierbei gegebenenfalls weitere potenzielle Einflussfaktoren einzubeziehen.
Ausgehend von der Forschungsfrage „Wie wird im Lebensmittelhandel mit und an Verpackungen gearbeitet?“ erörtert die kumulative Dissertation „Schwierigkeiten und Potentiale der Verpackungsvermeidung – Eine Arbeitsethnographie im Lebensmittel-handel“ Handlungsspielräume für einen nachhaltigeren Umgang mit Verpackungen. In einer ethnographischen Analyse unterschiedlicher Arbeitssettings, werden die Herausforderungen in den alltäglichen Arbeitspraktiken des dominanten verpackungsbasierten Lebensmittelsystems genauso betrachtet wie die Schwierigkeiten der radikalen Transformation dieser Praktiken. Ich argumentiere, dass Verpackungen kein passives Objekt sind, vielmehr sind sie durch ihre Materialeigenschaften und Bedeutungen sowohl an der Stabilität des Arbeitsalltags als auch an der Dynamik von Transformationsprozessen entscheidend beteiligt. Artikel I (Plastic Packaging, Food Supply, and Everyday Life. Adopting a Social Practice Perspective in Social-Ecological Research) behandelt die Potentiale eines praxistheoretischen Forschungszugangs für die Erforschung von Plastikverpackungen im Speziellen und sozial-ökologischen Problemen im Allgemeinen. Anhand von konkreten Forschungsbeispielen erörtern wir im Artikel zwei mögliche praxistheoretische Zugänge zur Beziehung von Praktiken und materiellen Entitäten, die eine sozial-ökologische Systemperspektive je nach Fragestellung sinnvoll ersetzen können. Im Netzwerk-Ansatz konzipieren wir Materialität als Element in heterogeneren Netzwerken aus Praktiken um die Diversität im alltäglichen Umgang mit Infrastrukturen, Technologien und Dingen erforschbar zu machen. Mit dem Nexus-Ansatz fokussieren wir auf die Wechselwirkungen zwischen Alltagspraktiken und ihrer räumlich-materiellen Umgebung um die infrastrukturelle Rolle von Verpackungen zu ergründen. Artikel II (Making Food Manageable - Packaging as a Code of Practice for Work Practices at the Supermarket) greift den im Artikel I diskutierten Netzwerk-Ansatz auf und befasst sich empirisch mit der Frage „Wie wird im Lebensmittelhandel mit Verpackungen gearbeitet?“. Der Artikel erläutert die Schwierigkeit der Verpackungsvermeidung anhand einer ethnographisch/praxis-theoretischen Analyse und präsentiert zentrale Funktionen von Verpackungen im Supermarkt. An konkreten empirischen Beispielen in zentraler Arbeitsbereiche wie Produktpräsentation, Warenlogistik und Ladenrepräsentation zeige ich die Vielfältigkeit von Verpackungsfunktionen jenseits von Marketing oder technischer Schutzfunktionen. Das beinhaltet die Platzierung und Aufbereitung der Produkte im Regal, die Evaluation von Produktqualitäten und Quantitäten von Warenströmen sowie die Repräsentation zentraler Qualitäten eines guten Supermarktes. Praktische Verpackungsvermeidung erfordert eine Reflektion solcher Verpackungsfunktionen. Artikel III (Negotiating attachments to plastic) behandelt die Frage „Wie wird im Lebensmittelhandel an Verpackungen gearbeitet?“ durch die trans-sequentielle Analyse eines Innovationsprozesses zur Plastikvermeidung in einem deutschen Bio-Großhandel. Im Artikel diskutiere ich die Schwierigkeit grundlegender Innovationen der Verpackungs-vermeidung durch die Erläuterung ganz praktischer Veränderungsbarrieren und Widerstände der Veränderung von normalisierten Objektbeziehungen und Nutzungs-praktiken. In der Analyse der dynamischen Beziehungen (Attachments) von Arbeiter*innen und Plastikfolie (bzw. ihrer Substitute) zeige ich, dass „etwas loswerden" ein unzureichender Ansatz ist, wenn es darum geht, nicht-nachhaltige Plastiknutzungen zu transformieren. Verpackungsvermeidung gelingt eben nicht durch ein „Befreien“ menschlicher Handlungsmacht von nicht nachhaltigen Objektabhängigkeiten, vielmehr geht es darum, das Zusammenspiel von Verpackungen und Arbeiter*innen in konkreten Praktiken neu zu gestalten. Artikel IV (How to Apply Precycling: Unpacking the Versatility of Packaging in Networks of Food Supply Practices) greift schließlich die zentralen Erkenntnisse der ethnographischen Analyse auf und diskutiert die Folgen für sozial-ökologische Transformationsprozesse. Die Ergebnisse aus den beiden ethno-graphischen Fallstudien (Artikel II, III) werden zusammengeführt und anhand der Perspektive des Netzwerk-Ansatzes (Artikel I) diskutiert. Ich konkretisiere damit die Potentiale einer praxistheoretischen Herangehensweise für die soziologische Analyse der Verpackungsnutzung und die Entwicklung von praktischen Precycling-Strategien zur systematischen Verpackungsmüllvermeidung.
This dissertation analyses the degrees and trajectories of financialisation in the region of South-Eastern Europe. It modifies and applies an eclectic comparative framework for comparing the degrees of financialisation across time and space on different levels. The thesis finds that from the turn of the century until the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, most South-Eastern European countries have increased their degree of financialisation on the different levels, especially on the levels of household, international financialisation and partly the financial sector. Financialisation of non-financial companies is barely existing. After the financial crisis, financialisation is revealed to stagnate in the region. In a second step, the dissertation conducts three case studies on extreme cases: financial sector financialisation in Bulgaria, international financialisation in Serbia and non-financial company and household financialisation in Croatia. Their trajectories are exposed to be mainly driven by deregulation, changed practices by foreign banks, the privatisation of public goods and the liberation of capital controls. The dissertation serves to geographically enlarge the research of financialisation to a peripheral region of the Global North and to add to the discussion on comparative financialisation approaches.
This dissertation explores the breadth and variation of authoritarian counter-terrorism strategies and their legitimacy-related origins to challenge prevailing assumptions in Terrorism Studies. Research and analysis are conducted in the form of a Structured Focused Comparison of domestic counter-terrorism strategies in two electoral autocracies. The first case is Russia’s domestic engagement against a mix of ethno-separatist and Islamist terrorism emanating from its North Caucasus republics between 1999 and 2018. The second case is China’s engagement vis-à-vis a similar type of terrorism in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region between 1990 and 2018.
The comparison shows that, contrary to prevailing assumptions, the two strategies differ immensely from one another while containing significant if not predominant non-coercive elements. It further shows that the two strategies are closely related to the two states’ sources and resources of legitimacy, both in their original motivation to tackle the terrorist threat and in the design of counter-terrorism strategies. Drawing on David Beetham’s theory of The Legitimation of Power and on the Comparative Politics, Terrorism Studies and Civil War literatures, the dissertation explores the influence of five sources and (re)sources of legitimacy on the two counter-terrorism strategies: responsiveness, performance legitimacy, ideology, discursive power and co-optation. While governmental discursive power is discarded as a source of variation, findings are significant with respect to the influence of ideology and performance legitimacy. Reliance on ideology or related patterns for legitimation raise vulnerability to terrorism and constrain or facilitate the adoption of communicative and preventive measures that accommodate the grievances of potentially defective or even violently terrorist groups. Performance legitimacy is a key motivator in counter-terrorism and an influence on certain types of counter-terrorism policies. Responsiveness and co-optation are identified as potential sources of variation, based on idiosyncratic concurrence with policy choices.
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.
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.
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.
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 conclusion.
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.
With the significant disconnect between the collective aim of limiting warming to well below 2°C and the current means proposed to achieve such an aim, the goal of this paper is to offer a moral assessment of prominent alternatives to current international climate policy. To do so, we’ll outline five different policy routes that could potentially bring the means and goal in line. Those five policy routes are: (1) exceed 2°C; (2) limit warming to less than 2°C by economic de-growth; (3) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation only; (4) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation and widespread deployment of Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs); and (5) limit warming to less than 2°C by traditional mitigation, NETs, and Solar Radiation Management as a fallback. In assessing these five policy routes, we rely primarily upon two moral considerations: the avoidance of catastrophic climate change and the right to sustainable development. We’ll conclude that we should continue to aim at the two-degree target, and that to get there we should use aggressive mitigation, pursue the deployment of NETs, and continue to research SRM.
Large companies are increasingly on trial. Over the last decade, many of the world’s biggest firms have been embroiled in legal disputes over corruption charges, financial fraud, environmental damage, taxation issues or sanction violations, ending in convictions or settlements of record-breaking fines, well above the billion-dollar mark. For critics of globalization, this turn towards corporate accountability is a welcome sea-change showing that multinational companies are no longer above the law. For legal experts, the trend is noteworthy because of the extraterritorial dimensions of law enforcement, as companies are increasingly held accountable for activities independent of their nationality or the place of the activities. Indeed, the global trend required understanding the evolution of corporate criminal law enforcement in the United States in particular, where authorities have skillfully expanded its effective jurisdiction beyond its territory. This paper traces the evolution of corporate prosecutions in the United States. Analyzing federal prosecution data, it then shows that foreign firms are more likely to pay a fine, which is on average 6,6 times larger.
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.
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...
The sixth sanction package of the European Union in the context of the aggression against Ukraine excludes Sberbank, the largest Russian bank, from the SWIFT network. The increasing use of SWIFT as a tool for sanctions stimulates the rollout of alternative payment information systems by the governments of Russia and China. This policy white paper informs about the alternatives at hand, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Careful reflection about these issues is particularly important, given the call for an “Economic Article 5” tabled for the next NATO meeting. Finally, the white paper highlights the need for institutional reforms, if policymakers decide to return SWIFT to the status of a global public good after the war.
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.
Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, den Wohnungsbau der letzten 15 Jahre im Frankfurter Europaviertel mit Hilfe David Harveys Raumökonomie des Kapitals zu betrachten. Dazu wird der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern sich die im Europaviertel zu betrachtenden Urbanisierungs- und Investitionsprozesse mit Hilfe Harveys gesellschaftstheoretischer Raumökonomie erklären lassen. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wird eine Recherche und Analyse diverser Datenquellen aus Wissenschaft, Medien und Politik vorgenommen. Die Analyse der Quellen zeigt, dass Harveys an Karl Marx angelehnte Theorien der Urbanisierung des Kapitals und einer ‚uneven geographical development‘ aufschlussreiche Erklärungsmöglichkeiten für die Investitionsprozesse vor Ort liefern können. Die Betrachtung findet dabei auf einer makroökonomischen Ebene statt und bezieht die Finanzialisierung von Immobilien sowie die Miete von Wohnraum als mögliche Aspekte zur Sicherstellung der Kapitalzirkulation ein.
Der Diskurs über Integration und Integrationsmechanismen fand seinen Beginn in der Migrationsforschung, deren Anfänge bis in die erste Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts zurückreichen . Innerhalb dieses Feldes fanden immer wieder Wandlungen der Ausgestaltung des Begriffs der Integration statt, da die theoretischen Konzepte in unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen sowie historischen Kontexten entstanden sind bzw. entstehen. Heute existiert eine Vielzahl an theoretischen Perspektiven auf Integration, die eine hohe Heterogenität und auch Interdisziplinarität aufweisen. Generell zeigt sich somit, dass, wenn von Integration gesprochen wird, nicht wirklich klar ist, was unter dem Begriff zu verstehen ist. Die vorliegende Arbeit macht es sich somit zur Aufgabe, den Begriff der Integration und damit verbundene Zielvorstellungen aus Sicht der Akteurinnen und Akteure in Sportorganisationen zu beleuchten. Dafür wird eine Studie im Mixed-Methods-Design durchgeführt, die eine fragebogenbasierte Umfrage, explorative Interviews mit Vereinsvorständen und vertiefende Leitfadeninterviews mit Vereinsmitgliedern umfasst. Ein besonderer Fokus der Gruppenvergleiche liegt dabei auf Personen mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund, um die Perspektive von Personen mit Migrationshintergrund selbst in den Diskurs einbringen zu können. Da sich subjektive Sichtweisen auch aufgrund weiterer Faktoren unterscheiden können, werden außerdem Zusammenhänge zwischen sozialstrukturellen Merkmalen sowie Merkmalen der Vereine und subjektiven Sichtweisen auf Integration untersucht.