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Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 16.5% of global yearly CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions (Twine 2021: 3) and thus partially causal for the corresponding climate change, and its disastrous consequences for millions (Romanello et al. 2023: 1-2). At the same time, animal agriculture restricts and damages the bodily autonomy of animals regularly (Hampton et al. 2021: 28) which could be unethical depending on the underlying ethical theory. The policy option of veganism by law is, nevertheless, rarely considered. The definitions of veganism range from an individual ethic of the abstention from consuming animal products to a political philosophy calling for the abolition of animal agriculture (Mancilla 2016: 1-3). Because veganism through the cessation of animal agriculture could be the policy solution to the aforementioned issues concerning the rights of present and future generations affected by climate change and the rights of animals, I explore arguments for and against the implementation of veganism by law.
Although a veganized agriculture would provide 52% of the required emission reductions for the 2°C target of the Paris climate accord (Eisen and Brown 2022: 6), and could allow for greater animal welfare, current policies of many governments promote the opposite. For example, 82% of the subsidies of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy are routed towards the production of animal products and animal feed (Kortleve et al. 2024: 1-2). Moreover, for American adults the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2020: 96) promotes the consumption of 720ml of cow milk or other dairy per day and recommends a protein intake through meat and eggs between 652 g and 936 g per week.
In this bachelor thesis I outline the current state of animal agriculture, its emissions and the associated harm towards animals and humans. The empirical findings are dissected ethically with a consequentialist approach and a deontological approach. The ethical analysis concerning the decisions of individuals is then converted into a political philosophy regarding the duties of states towards present and future generations and animals including corresponding policy implications.
The normative argument is mainly based on the example of industrialized animal agricul-ture, the area where most of the interaction between animals and humans occurs. Nevertheless, other sectors where animals are used for human consumption or entertainment are discussed in less detail, in order to analyze the arguments for veganism by law.
In short, using the recommended political argument structure of Abel et al. (2021: 6) the following hypothesis acts as the basis for the political and philosophical discussion and is revised where necessary:
Moral claims: The state should protect present and future generations and animal rights.
Empirical claims: Animal agriculture is a major contributor to climate change and its corresponding effects and violates the wellbeing of animals regularly.
Conclusion: The state should enforce veganism by law.
Am 18. Juni wird Jürgen Habermas, der die Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften der Goethe-Universität nachhaltig geprägt hat, 95 Jahre alt, und dazu sendet unsere wissenschaftliche Community, der er nach wie vor aktiv angehört, die herzlichsten Glückwünsche. Bis heute ist Habermas’ wissenschaftliche und intellektuelle Stimme national und international eine der meistgehörten, und wir wünschen von Herzen, dass es noch lange so bleiben möge.
In this paper, we use the “gender as a social structure” framework to assess macro-, interactional-, and micro-level mechanisms explaining the stalled revolution in gender ideologies. Using the European Values Study 2008 data and latent class analysis, we look at the spread of gender ideologies and examine their association with national levels of gendered ascription of work and care roles, work–family compatibility, social inequality and societal affluence, individual characteristics, and cross-level interactions with gender and education in 36 (post-)industrialized countries. By including a large number of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern European countries, we provide a new and comprehensive picture of the gender ideology landscapes of Europe, reflected in two unidimensional classes—egalitarian and traditional—and four multidimensional classes, covering more than 60 percent of respondents—family oriented, choice egalitarian, intensive motherhood, and neotraditional. By modeling key features of macro-level variation, we show how the spread of gender ideologies is associated with distinct contextual conditions. We consolidate previous findings on multidimensional gender ideologies, which were based on fewer countries.
Coercion or privatization? Crisis and planned economies in the debates of the early Frankfurt School
(2023)
The 1930s–1940s underwent profound structural economic and political turmoil following the collapse of the nineteenth century liberal market economies. The intellectual debates of the time were dominated by the question of whether Marx’s theory of the tendency of rate of profit to fall was true, or what consequence could be imagined in the survival of capitalist societies. Placed in the middle of such debates was also the reorganization of national productions into war economies. By means of reconstructive analysis, the paper provides a critical overview of the debates that took place within the circle of the Frankfurt School during those years. It also advances an interpretive thesis suggesting that remedies to capitalist crises of the time turned state powers into privatized, illiberal coercive entities. Coercion and privatization reinforced each other. This general tendency is well illustrated by the famous Pollock-Neumann debate. These intellectuals expressed views not only intended to shed light on the historical period of time, but also to formulate long-term considerations on the authoritarian trends embedded in our contemporary democracies. Through historical reconstruction, the paper’s aim is to identify a long-term structural thread of transformation starting from the transformation of the German economy in 1930s and touching upon post Second World War problems of states’ restructuring along privatization/coercion divides.
The paper presents the findings of two recent books on the financial history of the Frankfurt School: Jeanette Erazo-Heufelder, Der argentinische Krösus: Kleine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule, 2017, and Bertus Mulder, Sophie Louisa Kwaak und das Kapital der Unternehmerfamilie Weil. Ein Beitrag zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Frankfurter Schule, 2021 (Dutch original 2015). In contrast to the “court histories” of the school, the two authors tell the story of the money that brought the school to life and secured its existence throughout a turbulent period of history. At the center of the books are individuals who have been sidelined until now or even completely ignored by the literature on the Frankfurt School: on the one hand, Felix Weil, who founded and financed the Institute of Social Research and, on the other hand, Erich A. Nadel and Sophie L. Kwaak, two employees of the holding company who managed the accounts of the Weil family and the Institute’s foundations and were responsible for protecting the assets from being seized by Nazis. The books’ thick descriptions induced the author of the present paper to consider an alternative perspective on the Frankfurt School by contemplating Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock as playing confidential games with Weil and others.
Aim: Replicate the analysis conducted by Prof. Dr. Alexander W. Schmidt-Catran (Goethe University Frankfurt), Prof. Dr. Malcolm Fairbrother (Umea University), and Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Andreß (University of Cologne) that was published in a special issue on Cross-National Comparative Research in the German academic journal Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie in 2019. Result: Almost all calculations, tables and graphs from Schmidt-Catran et al. (2019) could be replicated sufficiently well in R.
Highlights
• Family structure transitions decrease academic school track attendance among children of less educated parents.
• Children of highly educated fathers in single-mother families also have lower outcomes.
• Reduced income and increased exposure to poverty are relevant mediators.
• There is no cumulative disadvantage linked to a further transition to a stepfamily.
• Previous parental separation does not affect educational outcomes for children residing with a highly educated stepfather.
Abstract
Recent research has documented that the effect of parental separation on children’s educational outcomes depends on socioeconomic background. Yet, parental separation could lead to a stable single-parent family or to a further transition to a stepfamily. Little is known about how the effect of family structure transitions on educational outcomes depends on the education of parents and stepparents, and there has been limited empirical research into the mechanisms that explain heterogeneity in the effects of family transitions. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and models with entropy balancing and sibling fixed effects, I explore the heterogeneous effects of family transitions during early and middle childhood on academic secondary school track attendance, grades and aspirations. I find that family transitions only reduce the academic school track attendance among children of less educated parents living in stepfamilies or with a single mother after parental separation, and among children of highly educated fathers living in single-mother families. The mechanisms that partly explain these effects relate to reduced income and exposure to poverty after parental separation. The findings underscore the importance of considering the stepparent's educational level, indicating that the adverse consequences of parental separation on educational outcomes are mitigated when a highly educated stepfather becomes part of the family. Overall, these findings align more closely with the resource perspective than the family stability perspective.
Research around the “glass escalator” demonstrates that men receive promotions faster than women in women-dominated occupations. However, it remains unclear how overall establishment composition affects the glass escalator. We use German longitudinal linked employer-employee data (LIAB) between 2012 and 2019 to examine how occupational and establishment gender composition shape gender differences in promotions to management. Establishment gender composition moderates the glass escalator, meaning women's mobility disadvantages in women-dominated jobs are most pronounced in men-dominated establishments. We hypothesize that changing occupational status is a central mechanism: When occupations mirror the composition of the establishment, their status increases locally. Higher occupational status offsets lower leadership expectations attributed to women and increases women's promotion odds relative to their male colleagues.
Recent research finds that Muslim girls increasingly have in-group friendships in adolescence, while Muslim boys remain more open to interreligious friendships. This gender gap mirrors established findings of female Muslims’ lower involvement in interreligious romantic relationships, which is attributed to gendered religious norms. In this study, we examine whether gendered religious norms also contribute to the emerging gender gap in Muslim youths’ interreligious friendship-making. Building on the literature on intergroup dating, we identify religiosity, parental control, and leisure time activities as key factors through which religious norms may not only constrain Muslim girls’ intergroup romantic relationships, but also their interreligious friendships. We also examine the contribution of gendered experiences of religious discrimination and rejection by non-Muslims to religious friendship-making. We study 737 Muslim youth from age 11–17 with six waves of longitudinal German data and find that religiosity, parental control, and leisure time activities all contribute to the emerging gender gap in interreligious friendship-making. Religiosity is associated with more in-group friendships, but only rises among Muslim girls in adolescence, not among boys. By contrast, parental control increases among both genders, but it only constrains girls’ interreligious friendships. Muslim girls’ declining participation in clubs also is associated with fewer interreligious friendships. Gendered experiences of religious discrimination and rejection do not contribute to the gender gap. Jointly, these factors explain one third of the emerging gender gap in interreligious friendship-making. This finding suggests that gendered religious norms not only limit interreligious romantic relationships but also interreligious friendships of Muslim girls.
Coming of voting age. Evidence from a natural experiment on the effects of electoral eligibility
(2024)
In recent years, several jurisdictions have lowered the voting age, with many more discussing it. Sceptics question whether young people are ready to vote, while supporters argue that allowing them to vote would increase their specific engagement with politics. To test the latter argument, we use a series of register-based surveys of over 10,000 German adolescents. Knowing the exact birthdates of our respondents, we estimate the causal effect of eligibility on their information-seeking behaviour in a regression discontinuity design. While eligible and non-eligible respondents do not differ in their fundamental political dispositions, those allowed to vote are more likely to discuss politics with their family and friends and to use a voting advice application. This effect appears to be stronger for voting age 16 than for 18. The right to vote changes behaviour. Therefore, we cannot conclude from the behaviour of ineligible citizens that they are unfit to vote.
For some years, the German public has been debating the case of migrant workers receiving German benefits for children living abroad, which has been scandalised as a case of “benefit tourism.” This points to a failure to recognise a striking imbalance between the output of the German welfare state to migrants and the input it receives from migrant domestic workers. In this article I discuss how this input is being rendered invisible or at least underappreciated by sexist, racist, and classist practices of othering. To illustrate the point, I will use examples from two empirical research projects that looked into how families in Germany outsource various forms of reproductive work to both female and male migrants from Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of othering developed in feminist and postcolonial literature and their ideas of how privileges and disadvantages are interconnected, I will put this example into the context of literature on racism, gender, and care work migration. I show how migrant workers fail to live up to the normative standards of work, family life, and gender relations and norms set by a sedentary society. A complex interaction of supposedly “natural” and “objective” differences between “us” and “them” are at work to justify everyday discrimination against migrants and their institutional exclusion. These processes are also reflected in current political and public debates on the commodification and transnationalisation of care.
Der Beitrag bietet eine Einführung in das Thema „Vertrauen als Topos der Plattformregulierung“. Dazu wird in einem ersten Schritt das allgemeine Verhältnis zwischen dem sozialen Tatbestand „Vertrauen“ und dem Recht als das einer komplementären, wechselseitigen Wirkungsverstärkung beschrieben. Im Hinblick auf die vertrauensfördernde Rolle des Rechts wird in einem zweiten Schritt zwischen der Funktion des Vertrauens bzw. der Vertrauenswürdigkeit als Tatbestandselement einer Vorschrift und den hieran geknüpften Rechtsfolgen unterschieden. Auf der Basis dieser Grundlagen gibt der Aufsatz in einem dritten Schritt einen Überblick über Bezugnahmen auf „Vertrauen“ in der deutschen und europäischen Plattformregulierung seit 2015. Hierzu zählen sektorale Regelungen gegen Hasskriminalität und Desinformation sowie zum Schutz des Urheberrechts, die 2022 in den horizontal angelegten Digital Services Act mündeten, der ein insgesamt „vertrauenswürdiges Online-Umfeld“ gewährleisten soll. Viertens stellt der Beitrag ein abstrakt-analytisches Konzept des Vertrauens vor, das sich gut zur Analyse der aufgezählten Vertrauensbeziehungen und ihrer rechtlichen Regelungen eignet. Ein abschließender Ausblick deutet die Proliferation des Vertrauenstopos als Ausdruck einer Vertrauenskrise im digitalen Zeitalter. Die erstrebte Vertrauenswürdigkeit des Online-Umfelds bildet ein normatives Minimum, das über gesetzliche Verhaltenspflichten und Privilegien für vertrauenswürdige Akteure der Zivilgesellschaft erreicht werden soll. Ob dies gelingt und überhaupt wünschenswert ist, ist freilich offen. Die juristische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Topos des Vertrauens in der Digital- und Plattformregulierung hat gerade erst begonnen.
This paper studies the intergenerational effects of parental unemployment on students’ post-secondary transitions. Besides estimating the average treatment effect of parental unemployment on transition outcomes, we identify the economic, psychological or other intra-familial mechanisms that might explain any adverse impact of parental unemployment. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and propensity score matching estimators we find that paternal unemployment has an adverse impact on the likelihood of entering tertiary education, whereas maternal unemployment does not. We also find that the magnitude of the effect depends on the duration of unemployment. Even though we are unable to fully account for the underlying mechanisms, our mediation analysis suggests that the effect of paternal unemployment is not due to the loss of income, but relates to the negative consequences of unemployment for intra-familial well-being and students’ declining optimism about their academic prospects.
Die Auswirkungen der syrischen Flüchtlingskrise auf den zivilgesellschaftlichen Sektor im Libanon
(2021)
Die vorliegende Dissertation analysiert die Auswirkungen der syrischen Flüchtlingskrise auf den zivilgesellschaftlichen Sektor im Libanon, in Anbetracht einer historisch engverwurzelten Beziehung zwischen dem Libanon und Syrien. Die Dissertation wird von dem Interesse geleitet, die Rolle der lokalen zivilgesellschaftlichen NROs zu erforschen, die sich mit syrischen Flüchtlingen im Libanon befassen, und versuchen, die Leere des schwachen bzw. minimalistischen libaneischen Staatensystems zu füllen.Es wird untersucht, welche Effekte der syrische Konflikt auf die zivilgesellschaftliche Landschaft im Libanon gehabt hat und wie sich der Zufluss von internationaler Gelder auf die Aktivitäten dieser lokalen NROs sowie auf ihrer Beziehungen zu den libanesischen Staatsbehörden auf nationaler und lokaler Ebene ausgewirkt hat.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this crisis. To investigate this issue, we analyze how experiences and concerns vary across living arrangements along two dimensions that may be associated with social disadvantage: loneliness and care. In doing so, we employ quantitative text analysis on open-ended questions from survey data on a sample of 1,073 individuals living in Germany. We focus our analyses on four different household structures: living alone, shared living without children, living with a partner and children, and single parents. We find that single parents (who are primarily single mothers) are at high risk of experiencing care-related worries, particularly regarding their financial situation, while individuals living alone are most likely to report feelings of loneliness. Those individuals living in shared houses, with or without children, had the lowest risk of experiencing both loneliness and care-related worries. These findings illustrate that the living situation at home substantially impacts how individuals experienced and coped with the pandemic situation during the first wave of the pandemic.
My aim in this paper is to make the debates about epistemic injustice fruitful for an analysis of trust in the knowledge of others. Epistemic trust is understood here in a broad sense: not only as trust in scientific knowledge or expert knowledge, but also as trust in implicit, positioned and experience-based knowledge. Using insights from discussions of epistemic injustice, I argue for three interrelated theses:
1. Questions of epistemic trust and trustworthiness cannot be answered with reference to individual virtue alone; rather, they have a structural component.
2. The rationality of epistemic trust must be analyzed against the background of social structures and social relations of domination.
3. Epistemic trust is (also) a political phenomenon and epistemically just relations depend on political transformation processes that promote equality.
The resurgence of populism and the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic have consolidated an appeal to the language of trust and distrust in the political arena, but any reference to these notions has often turned into an ideological and polarized debate. As a result, the possibility of developing an appropriate picture of the conditions for trust in politics has been undermined. To navigate the different demands for trust raised in the political arena, a notion of political trust must cover two partially unfulfilled tasks. One is to clarify what trust means when referring specifically to the political context. The other is to connect political trust to other notions that populate the debate on trustworthiness in the political arena - those of rational, moral, epistemic, and procedural trust. I will show how the political categories I use to define the scope of a political notion of trust function as normative leverages to develop politics-compatible versions of rational, moral, procedural, and epistemic trust.
Over the last three decades, countries across the Andean region have moved toward legal recognition of indigenous justice systems. This turn toward legal pluralism, however, has been and continues to be heavily contested. The working paper explores a theoretical perspective that aims at analyzing and making sense of this contentious process by assessing the interplay between conflict and (mis)trust. Based on a review of the existing scholarship on legal pluralism and indigenous justice in the Andean region, with a particular focus on the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador, it is argued that manifest conflict over the contested recognition of indigenous justice can be considered as helpful and even necessary for the deconstruction of mistrust of indigenous justice. Still, such conflict can also help reproduce and even reinforce mistrust, depending on the ways in which conflict is dealt with politically and socially. The exploratory paper suggests four proposition that specify the complex and contingent relationship between conflict and (mis)trust in the contested negotiation of pluralist justice systems in the Andean region.
The article studies civil wars and trust dynamics from two perspectives. It looks, first, at rebel governance during ongoing armed conflict and, second, at mass mobilisation against the regime in post-conflict societies. Both contexts are marked by extraordinarily high degrees of uncertainty given continued, or collective memory of, violence and repression.
But what happens to trust relations under conditions of extreme uncertainty? Intuitively, one would assume that trust is shaken or even substantially eroded in such moments, as political and social orders are questioned on a fundamental level and threaten to collapse. However, while it is true that some forms of trust are under assault in situations of civil war and mass protests, we find empirical evidence which suggests that these situations also give rise to the formation of other kinds of trust. We argue that, in order to detect and explain these trust dynamics in contexts of extreme uncertainty, there should be more systematic studies of: (a) synchronous dynamics between different actors and institutions which imply trust dynamics happening simultaneously, (b) diachronous dynamics and the sequencing of trust dynamics over several phases of violent conflict or episodes of contention, as well as long-term structural legacies of the past. In both dimensions, microlevel relations, as well as their embeddedness in larger structures, help explain how episodes of (non-)violent contention become a critical juncture for political and social trust.
Wo und warum es verdeckten Widerstand in demokratischen Gesellschaften gibt, erkundet ein neuer Sammelband des Instituts für Sozialforschung. Ein Gespräch mit den Herausgeber:innen Ferdinand Sutterlüty und Almut Poppinga über die Verbindung von Widerstand, Würde und das gemeinsame Pflanzen von Bäumen.
Die Soziologin Carlotta Giustozzi hat sich in ihrer Dissertation mit den Folgen von Marginalisierung auf dem Arbeitsmarkt für soziale Teilhabe beschäftigt. Aus den Ergebnissen ihrer Arbeit hat sich unter anderem die Frage ergeben, inwiefern ein gesellschaftlicher Fokus auf Vollzeiterwerbsarbeit schädlich für Individuum und Gesellschaft sein können.
This paper challenges widespread assumptions in trust research according to which trust and conflict are opposing terms or where trust is generally seen as a value. Rather, it argues that trust is only valuable if properly justified, and it places such justifications in contexts of social and political conflict. For these purposes, the paper suggests a distinction between a general concept and various conceptions of trust, and it defines the concept as a four-place one. With regard to the justification of trust, a distinction between internal and full justification is introduced, and the justification of trust is linked to relations of justification between trusters and trusted. Finally, trust in conflict(s) emerges were such relations exist among the parties of a conflict, often by way of institutional mediation.
Auf Grundlage von acht Interviews und der Methodologie der Objektiven Hermeneutik geht diese professionssoziologische Studie sequenzanalytisch folgender Forschungsfrage nach:
„Inwieweit werden die Selbstbilder der Zootierpflegenden durch den Umgang mit Tieren bestimmt und welche expliziten oder auch impliziten Berufsphilosophien lassen sich bei ihnen finden?“
In den analysierten Interviewtranskripten spielen im erzählten Selbstverständnis der Befragten die Auswirkungen der täglichen Mensch-Tier-Interaktionen eine zentrale sinnkonstituierende Rolle. Aus den Interaktionen mit Tieren (mit entsprechenden kognitiven Fähigkeiten) entwickeln Zootierpflegende eine intuitive Hermeneutik und oft eine von Fachkundigkeit getragene Du-Evidenz, die ihnen auf einer prä- und paraverbalen Ebene ein Verstehen des tierlichen Gegenübers ermöglicht. Dieses Verständnis lässt sich weder auf naive Anthropomorphisierungstendenzen zurückführen noch gut Dritten vermitteln, da es sich auf einer unmittelbaren Erlebnisebene realisiert. Diese intuitive Hermeneutik stellt eine zentrale Kompetenz der Zootierpflegenden dar und prägt die Selbstbilder der Zootierpflegenden maßgeblich.
Ein solcher Phänomenzusammenhang lässt sich soziologisch bisher nur schwer erfassen, da unter anderem die Frage nach tierlicher Akteurschaft die Disziplin spaltet und nach wie vor eine konzeptionelle Konfusion auslöst. So wird sie beispielsweise in der sinnverstehenden Soziologie bisher nur in Form von „Als-Ob“-Ansätzen angegangen. (Wiedenmann)
Um die in den Analysen herausgearbeiteten Phänomene einordnen zu können, wird in dieser Arbeit ein sozial-theoretisches Fundament ausgebreitet, welches das Sinnverstehen ‚tiefer hängt‘, also für solche situierten, vorsprachlichen, präsymbolischen Stimmungen und Empfindungen öffnet, die für basalste Verständnisse unter anderem zwischen Tieren und Menschen kandidieren.
Diese Konzeption erhellt einige Grenzbereiche der Sinnstrukturiertheit sozialer Wirklichkeit, indem sie aufzeigt, wie sich das Kontinuum von natürlicher wechselseitiger Wahrnehmung (Georg Herbert Mead und Daniel Stern) hin zur kulturellen Sinnstrukturiertheit (Oevermann) soziologisch erschließen und verstehen lässt. Demnach können sich aus den unmittelbaren Interaktionen zwischen empfindungsfähigen Lebewesen in wechselseitiger Affektabstimmung Protosinnstrukturen realisieren, welche wiederum erst die Bedingung der Möglichkeit von Vermittlung darstellen.
Die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit ermöglichen ein tiefgehendes Verständnis des bisher oft verkannten Kompetenzprofils der Zootierpflegenden und darüber hinaus lässt sich in Bezug auf die tierliche Akteurschaft mit dem entwickelten Ansatz der immer wieder erhobene menschliche Exklusivitätsanspruch auf Sinn, Bewusstsein und Identität aus einer soziologischen Perspektive hinterfragen.
This paper contributes to the clarification of the concept of “typicality” discussed in contemporary philosophy of physics by conceiving the nomological status of a typical behaviour such as that expressed in the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a “minutis rectis law”. A brief sketch of the discovery of “typicality” shows that there were ideas of typical behaviour not only in physics but also in sociology. On this basis and in analogy to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is shown that the nomological status of sociological laws such as Gresham’s Law can also be conceived as “minutis rectis laws”.
Disagreement among philosophers over the proper justification for political institutions is far from a new phenomenon. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that there is substantial room for dissent on this matter within democratic theory. As is well known, instrumentalism and proceduralism represent the two primary viewpoints that democrats can adopt to vindicate democratic legitimacy. While the former notoriously derives the value of democracy from its outcomes, the latter claims that a democratic decision-making process is inherently valuable. This article has two aims. First, it introduces three variables with which we can thoroughly categorise the aforementioned approaches. Second, it argues that the more promising version of proceduralism is extrinsic, rather than intrinsic, and that extrinsically procedural accounts can appeal to other values in the justification of democracy without translating into instrumentalism. This article is organised as follows. I present what I consider to be the ‘implicit view’ in the justification of democracy. Then, I analyse each of the three variables in a different section. Finally, I raise an objection against procedural views grounded in relational equality, which cannot account for the idea that democracy is a necessary condition for political legitimacy.
Streitpunkt Hochschulranking
(2012)
Seit den 90er Jahren werden auch in Deutschland Hochschulen und Fakultäten in Form von Rankings bewertet. Dabei werden anhand bestimmter Kriterien – z.B. Leistungen in Forschung und Lehre, Ausstattung oder Entwicklungsperspektiven – Ranglisten erstellt.
Hochschulrankings sind als Informationsquellen für Studierende, Wissenschaftler, Unternehmen und Hochschulpolitik immer wichtiger geworden. Zugleich schwelt seit einiger Zeit ein heftiger Streit über die generelle Aussagekraft von Rankings. Methodische Mängel und unzulässige Interpretationen der Daten seien zu beklagen, so die Kritiker. Einige Fakultäten und sogar ganze Hochschulen haben sich bereits aus bestimmten Rankings ausgeklinkt. Die Befürworter der Rankings wiederum sehen in diesen Austritten eine Gefahr für die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der deutschen Hochschulen.
Wir haben speziell zu einem der wichtigsten Rankings zwei Standpunkte eingeholt. Frank Ziegele, Geschäftsführer des Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung (CHE), verteidigt das CHE Hochschulranking, Prof. Sighard Neckel, Soziologe an der Goethe-Universität, kontert mit seiner Kritik.
Dieser Beitrag reflektiert und ergänzt die aktuelle Diskussion über die Empfehlungen des Wissenschaftsrats zur Weiterentwicklung der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung. Wir richten dabei den Blick auf die vom Wissenschaftsrat attestierten Schwachstellen im Bereich empirisch-analytischer Methoden und erläutern ihre Auswirkungen auf Interdisziplinarität, Internationalität und Politikberatung der deutschen Friedens- und Konfliktforschung. Wir argumentieren, unter Verweis auf den Bericht des Wissenschaftsrats, dass eine breitere Methodenausbildung und -kenntnis von großer Bedeutung für interdisziplinäre und internationale Zusammenarbeit, aber auch für die Politikberatung ist. Zukünftige Initiativen innerhalb der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung sollten die Methodenvielfalt des Forschungsbereichs angemessen berücksichtigen und einen besonderen Fokus auf die Ausbildung im Bereich empirisch-analytischer Methoden legen, um das Forschungsfeld in diesem Bereich zu stärken. Unser Beitrag entspringt einer Diskussion innerhalb des Arbeitskreises „Empirische Methoden der Friedens- und Konfliktforschung“ der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Friedens- und Konfliktforschung.
Vernetzung macht Cluster erfolgreich : erste Studie für die Metropolregion RheinMain erschienen
(2013)
This review analyses the aesthetic engagement with Nazi atrocities during WWII and belonging in post-war Germany as presented in Nora Krug’s graphic novel Heimat: A German Family Album. The authors employ Marianne Hirsch’s concept of ‘postmemory’ as an analytical tool that helps them locate the complex historical and emotional contexts from which this graphic novel receives its impulses. The concrete scenes from the novel are presented and subsequently related to the field of memory and postmemory scholarship. Wider critical debates on how aesthetic articulations of past atrocities influence the next generations of ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ are examined, to ask: What does it mean to inhabit memories of ghostly narratives about perpetrators and how does it form a feeling of post-home?
This paper considers ways in which rulers can respond to, generate, or exploit fear of COVID-19 infection for various ends, and in particular distinguishes between ‘fear-invoking’ and ‘fear-minimising’ strategies. It examines historical precedent for executive overreach in crises and then moves on to look in more detail at some specific areas where fear is being mobilised or generated: in ways that lead to the suspension of civil liberties; that foster discrimination against minorities; and that boost the personality cult of leaders and limit criticism or competition. Finally, in the Appendix, we present empirical work, based on the results of an original survey in Brazil, that provides support for the conjectures in the previous sections. While it is too early to tell what the longer-term outcomes of the changes we note will be, our purpose here is simply to identify some warning signs that threaten the key institutions and values of democracy.
The COVID-19 pandemic has both highlighted and exacerbated global health inequities, leading for calls for responses to COVID to promote social justice and ensure that no one is left behind. One key lesson to be learnt from the pandemic is the critical importance of decolonizing global health and global health research so that African countries are better placed to address pandemic challenges in contextually relevant ways. This paper argues that to be successful, programmes of decolonization in complex global health landscapes require a complex three-dimensional approach. Drawing on the broader discourse of political decolonization that has been going on in the African context for over a century, we present a model for unpacking the complex task of decolonization. Our approach suggests a three-dimensional approach which encompasses hegemomic; epistemic; and commitmental elements.
We live in tragic times. Millions are sheltering in place to avoid exacerbating the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. How should we respond to such tragedies? This paper argues that the human right to health can help us do so because it inspires human rights advocates, claimants, and those with responsibility for fulfilling the right to try hard to satisfy its claims. That is, the right should, and often does, give rise to what I call the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve embodies a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Contra critics, we should not reject the right even if it cannot tell us how to ration scarce health resources. Rather, the right gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of fulfilling everyone’s basic health needs.
The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting countries across the globe. Only a globally coordinated response, however, will enable the containment of the virus. Responding to a request from policy makers for ethics input for a global resource pledging event as a starting point, this paper outlines normative and procedural principles to inform a coordinated global coronavirus response. Highlighting global connections and specific vulnerabilities from the pandemic, and proposing standards for reasonable and accountable decision-making, the ambition of the paper is two-fold: to raise awareness for the justice dimensions in the global response, and to argue for moving health from the periphery to the centre of philosophical debates about social and global justice.
The first case of COVID-19 infection in Africa was recorded in Egypt on 14 February 2020. Following this, several projections of the possible devastating effect that the virus can have on the population of African countries were made in the Western media. This paper presents evidence for Africa’s successful responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and under-reporting or misrepresentation of these successes in Western media. It proceeds to argue for accounting for these successes in terms of Africa’s communitarian way of life and conceptions of self, duty, and rights; and that a particular orientation in theorizing on global justice can highlight the injustices inherent in the misrepresentation of these successes and contribute shared perspectives to formulating a framework of values and concepts that would facilitate the implementation of global policy goals for justice. The paper is thus grounded in a rejection of the insular tenets of theorizing prevalent in the global justice debate and to persistent inclinations in Western scholarship to the thinking that theorizing in the African context that draws inspiration from the cultural past has little to contribute to the quest for justice globally. On the contrary, it argues that reflexive critique of cultural history is a necessary source of normative ideals that can foster tolerant coexistence and a cooperative endeavour toward shared conceptions of justice in the contemporary world.
Introduction
(2022)
The policy studies literature is divided on how information processing takes place in policy processes. Punctuated equilibrium theory claims that policymakers tend to process information disproportionately, giving more weight to some incoming signals than to others. By contrast, thermostatic models of policymaking argue that policymakers respond in a more proportionate way. In this paper, we analyse information processing in the adoption of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) under the European Union’s (EU) Common Fisheries Policy. Based on a novel measure for the proportionality of information processing, it shows that over time TACs have become more closely aligned with incoming signals about fish stocks. This development can be explained through a combination of changing discourses around fisheries conservation and institutional adjustments in EU fisheries policy. This analysis has implications for the debate between punctuated equilibrium and thermostatic models of policymaking and our understanding of the effectiveness of EU fisheries policies.