Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (4) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (4)
Keywords
- comparative analysis (4) (remove)
This article problematizes the assumption that national policies have a direct impact on youth participation at the local level and analyses the relationships between local forms of youth participation and local and national policies. Relying on data from a EU project funded under the HORIZON 2020 programme, the article focuses on formally institutionalized settings of youth participation and elaborates local constellations of youth participation in six European cities. These constellations may be referred to as regimes of youth participation as they reflect wider structures of power and knowledge that influence the way in which young people’s practices in public spaces and their claims of being part of society are recognized. However, the analysis reveals that rather deducing it from the model of welfare regimes, such a typology needs to be developed starting from the local level and should consider the ways in which different relationships between local youth policies and national welfare states affect youth participation.
The aim of the present article is to provide a comparative analysis between two important works of German and Hungarian literature on the background of the theory of Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of archetypes. Both works (the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse and the drama Erstwhile Solace [Ősvigasztalás] by Áron Tamási) approach the theme of the search for identity as well as for the absolute and the divinity, with the focus on the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Motifs such as androgyny, shadow or dream, the issue of polarity and unity form common points of contact between the two analysed literary works.
Within the last decades, western democracies have experienced a rise of inequality, with the gap between lower and upper class citizens steadily increasing and a widespread sentiment of growing inequalities also in the political sphere. Against this background, and in the context of the current “crisis of democracy”, democratic innovations such as direct democratic instruments are discussed as a very popular means to bring citizens back in. However, research on direct democracy has produced rather inconsistent results with regard to the question of which effects referenda and initiatives have on equality. Studies in this field are often limited to single countries and certain aspects of equality. Moreover, most existing studies look at the mere availability of direct democratic instruments instead of actual bills that are put to a vote. This paper aims to take a first step to fill these gaps by giving an explorative overview of the outputs of direct democratic bills on multiple equality dimensions, analyzing all national referenda and initiatives in European democracies between 1990 and 2015. How many pro- and contra-equality bills have been put to a vote, how many of those succeeded at the ballot, and are there differences between country groups? Our findings show that a majority of direct democratic bills was not related to equality at all. Regarding the successful bills, we detect some regional differences along with the general tendency that there are more pro- than contra-equality bills. Our paper sheds new light on the question if direct democracy can serve as an appropriate means to complement representative democracy and to shape democratic institutions in the future. The potential of direct democracy in fostering or impeding equality should be an important criterion for the assessment of claims to extend decision-making by citizens.
A tale of two seasons: The link between seasonal migration and climatic niches in passerine birds
(2020)
The question of whether migratory birds track a specific climatic niche by seasonal movements has important implications for understanding the evolution of migration, the factors affecting species' distributions, and the responses of migrants to climate change. Despite much research, previous studies of bird migration have produced mixed results. However, whether migrants track climate is only one half of the question, the other being why residents remain in the same geographic range year-round. We provide a literature overview and test the hypothesis of seasonal niche tracking by evaluating seasonal climatic niche overlap across 437 migratory and resident species from eight clades of passerine birds. Seasonal climatic niches were based on a new global dataset of breeding and nonbreeding ranges. Overlap between climatic niches was quantified using ordination methods. We compared niche overlap of migratory species to two null expectations, (a) a scenario in which they do not migrate and (b) in comparison with the overlap experienced by closely related resident species, while controlling for breeding location and range size. Partly in accordance with the hypothesis of niche tracking, we found that the overlap of breeding versus nonbreeding climatic conditions in migratory species was greater than the overlap they would experience if they did not migrate. However, this was only true for migrants breeding outside the tropics and only relative to the overlap species would experience if they stayed in the breeding range year-round. In contrast to the hypothesis of niche tracking, migratory species experienced lower seasonal climatic niche overlap than resident species, with significant differences between tropical and nontropical species. Our study suggests that in seasonal nontropical environments migration away from the breeding range may serve to avoid seasonally harsh climate; however, different factors may drive seasonal movements in the climatically more stable tropical regions.