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The main focus of the presented paper is to investigate whether the concept of bonding and bridging social capital can be reasonably specified by categorizing voluntary associations according to their constitutive goods, i.e. purposes, and whether this conceptualization will also hold for empirical analysis in the realm of political participation. The empirical findings both for East and West Germany show that memberships of voluntary associations which are conducive either to bonding or bridging social capital indeed affect generalized trust, norms and some forms of political participation differently. By this means, underlying causal structures are revealed. In the future, we might be better able to answer systematically which associations account for which effects on different aspects of social capital and on political participation by applying this concept to empirical research. However, me must concede that the application of the presented concept does not always yield consistent East-West German results. Besides, empirical analyses reveal that norms, as another component of social capital, exert comparably deviating effects on generalized trust and on the inspected scopes of political action, thus stressing the need for differentiation, too. Moreover, an impressive linkage of political trust to some components of social capital can be disclosed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is time to reassess what the transition has meant for the women of Eastern Germany. Specifically: what has been the impact of transferring social systems from a social democratic regime to a conservative regime? How have the changes affected employment, fertility, gender identity and political participation a generation later? It is expected that welfare regime change will have a significant impact in a number of ways. .x000d..x000d.A: Social regime change will correlate with less labor force participation of women. B: Due to the current necessity and desirability of employment, it is expected that transformation from a social democratic welfare regime to a conservative one will correlate with lower fertility rates in eastern Germany. C: It is predicted that the implementation of the West German welfare regime has led East German women to view themselves and their role in society more like women in western Germany. D: Unification will lead to greater feelings of female efficacy in East Germany. Women in East Germany will mobilize to regain benefits lost with welfare regime change. .x000d..x000d.Research is based on extensive literary analysis as well as 4 months fieldwork in the former GDR. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there have been questions about the developmentâ€"or lack thereofâ€"of civil society in post-Communist countries. Civic participation in Eastern Germany, for example, has been minimal; rare instances have featured less desirable engagement of the extreme right. The increase in political engagement in the Eastern German village of Heinersdorf would appear to follow this latter trend, but upon closer investigation, it becomes clear that the motivations and discourse are different in this case. What may be similar, however, is the ultimate outcomeâ€"a shift in attitudes and views towards the right of the political spectrum. The case of Heinersdorf tells a number of storiesâ€"of persistent identity conflicts between East Germans and West Germans, of the development of civil society in a community where networks were previously very weak, of trust and democracy, and ultimately of extremist thinking and how it might develop. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]