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Internationale militarische Einsatze der Gegenwart sind Stabilisierungseinsatze, Peacekeeping-Missionen, humanitare Hilfe, Post-Konflikt-, Peace- und Nationbuilding-Operationen und Operations Other Than War, aber auch Peaceenforcement-Missionen und Kriegseinsatze. In dieser Vielfalt militarischer Einsatze, die als ‚Hybridisierung’ der Streitkrafte verstanden werden kann (Kummel 2010a: 178), spiegelt sich das Konzept der menschlichen Sicherheit, das seit Mitte der 1990er-Jahre im Fokus der Friedens- und Sicherheitspolitik steht und die physische und psychische Unversehrtheit des Individuums uber die staatlich-territoriale Sicherheit stellt (vgl. etwa Debiel/ Werthes 2005). Dabei ist menschliche Sicherheit explizit mehr als nur „mannliche Sicherheit“ (Ulbert 2008: 52). Gender-Sensibilitat und ein „embedded feminism“ (Unmussig 2011: 6) sind somit nicht nur zentrale Elemente der ISAF-Mission in Afghanistan, sondern mittlerweile elementare Bestandteile moderner Friedens- und Sicherheitspolitik geworden.

The main objective of this book has been to review the theoretical, political and societal implications of participatory governance. Before turning to the latter two of these, let us first try to come up with some preliminary theoretical conclusions. We have found participatory governance to be located somewhere between theories of democratic government and theories of governance. On the one hand, participatory governance makes mandatory an extension of the theory of democracy taking account of both the format and the logics of the new type of polity shaping the European political space. Klaus-Dieter Wolf’s discussion of the legitimacy of governance beyond the state brought us towards the idea that the specific milieu of governance beyond the state is more conducive to deliberative democracy than to majority voting. However, the question of how to operationalize the idea of deliberative democracy is far from being solved. On the other hand, the notion of participatory governance has confronted us with the need to change our ideas about citizenship. More precisely, the transition from a traditional context of democratic control towards a context which almost unavoidably suffers accountability deficits involves a parallel transition from the concept of citizen to something else. At this point, we have elaborated on the notion of holder as the collective embodiment of participatory governance arrangements at the European and at other levels.

Since the mid-1990s, lifelong learning has become an extremely fashionable concept. Of course, the idea is not a new one. One leading British adult educator was already writing in 1920 on the topic of “education as a lifelong process” (Basil Yeaxlee, quoted in Field 2000, 5). Yet although there is a long standing recognition that learning is a process that continues beyond formal schooling, the level of interest in lifelong learning has shot up since the early 1970s, and in particular since the late 1990s. This development has primarily been associated with policy debate rather than academic interest, and above all it has been fostered by international policy forums. Key founding texts of the first wave of interest in lifelong education include the famous Faure report, published by UNESCO in 1972 (Faure 1972), which was followed by a series of national governmental measures, particularly in Europe, Australasia, Canada and Japan. The second wave of interest was marked by a plethora of major policy documents, starting with the European Commission’s white paper on competitiveness and employment (CEC 1994), followed shortly by further publications from the European Union (CEC 1995, CEC 2000) as well as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 1996) and the Group of Eight (G8 1999). Once more, the publications of these international policy forums were rapidly followed by a wide range of national policy documents, all of which placed lifelong learning at their centre.

In July 2001 the EU Commission (200la) launched its long-announced White Paper on Governance. By that time, the conference where drafts of the contributions to this volume have first been presented had passed for almost one year. While discussing in Florence, we hardly had an idea about the salience the governance topic would have assumed only a couple of months later. Until then, it had mainly occupied the research agendas of a handful of political scientists in only some of the member states of the Union. Our project, indeed, was only in part related to the Commission’s initiative. The timing of this book, hence, is a mere coincidence. Whether it represents a more or less happy one has to be judged by the reader. Now, after the White Paper being published and after the rather unexpected noise it has triggered in and outside Brussels, it seems clear that, incidentally, we have caught the right moment with this present publication.

The Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (COM (2001) 428) is as remarkable for what it says as for what it does not say. In combination, the emphases and the omissions seem to reflect a vision that is defined by the institutional self-interest of the Commission and its opposition to Member States and, at the same time, by a remarkable lack of concern about the real challenges confronting the Union and its Member States. I realize that this may appear to be an unfair judgement since the authors sought to avoid issues requiring amendments of the Treaty that might come on the agenda of the next Intergovernmental Conference (or Constitutional Convention). But even if recommendations were to be limited to changes permissible under the Treaty, they still could have been developed in the context of an unconstrained analysis of the challenges the Union must face.

This article for the GIO-Journal proposes a perspective rooted in functional equivalence for the analysis of post-bureaucratic reforms that partly shift the organizational absorption of uncertainty to formal interactions of their members. Postbureaucracy tries to conceptualize organizational and societal changes throughout the second half of the 20th century. Agile management frameworks that multiply interactions between members of an organization can be treated as a phenomenon of postbureaucratic organizing. Drawing on systems theory this paper examines how postbureaucratic reforms trigger new uncertainties and how they are tackled by agile concepts of management. We will illustrate this by analyzing the agile concepts Scrum and Holacracy and show how relocation triggers new needs for formalization. Doing this we will focus on how interdependencies of communication in systems of interaction are centered in different dimensions. This paper advocates for a perspective on postbureaucracy in terms of functional equivalence to grasp the connection between the renouncement of formalization and the emergence of new needs for formalization., Dieser Beitrag in der Zeitschrift GIO schlägt eine äquivalenzfunktionalistische Perspektive auf postbürokratische Reformen vor, die Teile der Unsicherheitsabsorption von Organisationen in Interaktionssysteme verlagern. Postbürokratie versucht, organisationale und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts auf den Begriff zu bringen. Auch aktuelle agile Managementkonzepte lassen sich der Postbürokratie zuordnen und zeichnen sich unter anderem durch eine Multiplikation von Interaktionen aus. Mithilfe der Theorie sozialer Systeme untersuchen wir wie neue Unsicherheiten in Organisationen durch postbürokratische Reformen entstehen und von agilen Managementkonzepten bearbeitet werden. An den agilen Konzepten Scrum und Holacracy wird gezeigt, dass diese Verlagerung neuen Formalisierungsbedarf produziert. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Zentrierungen kommunikativer Interdependenzen in Interaktionen in der Sach‑, Zeit- und Sozialdimension. Der Beitrag plädiert für eine äquivalenzfunktionalistische Perspektive auf Postbürokratie, die den Zusammenhang von Formalisierungsverzicht in Organisationen und neuen Formalisierungsbedarfen als funktionalen Leistungszusammenhang begreift.

The paper attempts to reflect on some aspects of the interplay between direct democracy, representative democracy and minority rights. It particularly focuses on direct democracy in different sub-national legal and political frameworks. It applies a comparative approach in assessing direct-democratic instruments as a mechanism for institutional change and as a governance tool for participatory political decision-making. This given the fact that both direct and representative democracy are constituent parts of the democratic principle. The relationship between direct democracy and representative democracy is thus to be considered as complementary. After a brief theoretical note, the paper introduces the case study of South Tyrol. Against the background of the failed referenda in South Tyrol in 2009, the paper analyses some precedents of differing natures, all of which present some hints that help to highlight the delicate relationship between direct democracy, representative democracy and minority rights, ranging from considerations on multinational federations (Switzerland and Belgium) to general considerations on the nature of direct democracy in classical federations (Austria, Germany). The paper does not intend to favor or disfavor direct democracy, but wants to raise some questions. The paper overall argues that direct democracy and the protection of minority groups are not a priori incompatible, provided that politics is conducive to its use and that certain technical precautions (e.g. legal guarantees) are put into place.

Elements of direct democracy at the local level does exist in Denmark, but it is little known, because no formal rules regulate this aspect of political life, because results from popular initiatives and referendums are not recorded in official statistics, and because few syste¬ma¬tic analyses have been published. This paper, accordingly, has an explorative nature and asks two basic questions: What is the current state of direct democracy at the local level in Denmark, and what are the prospects for a further development of direct democracy at the local level in Denmark? The paper is based on a couple of MA theses, a few articles in books and periodicals, a public report, and results from opinion polls conducted in 2000 and 2005.

This paper examines the employment of women and men at the macro level, with a particular focus on developing countries. Much of the research and policy development on gender equality in employment has been focused on micro and meso level measures to enable women to compete with men on an equal basis, including measures to improve women's access to education and training, credit, land and other assets; and measures to reform the governance of markets to create a “level playing field” (see, for example, World Bank 2001; 2006). Such measures are important, but this paper argues that they are not sufficient. To the extent that they are successful, they will simply redistribute some jobs from men to women. This will reduce gender gaps, but not in a way that meets the United Nations objective of “full and productive employment and decent work for all”. There needs to be an expansion of the number of decent jobs, as well as an improvement of women's access to them. This requires supportive macroeconomic policies.

The aim of this paper is to explore the emergence of local parties. Local parties, as opposed to the local chapters of national parties, are defined as political organisations that run candidates at elections, organise themselves and are active, only in a certain territory. The paper first presents a theoretical framework that provides concepts to grasp the problem of local parties. Then, the institutional and political settings of the specific case of the paper, Hungary, are presented. The exploration begins with an overview of the electoral performance of local parties. The next section continues with bivariate and multivariate analyses with the aim to better understand the factors that contribute opportunities and resources to local parties. Local parties are then analysed through the prism of a survey of local political organisations. The paper concludes with some tentative findings.

The paper deals with independent local lists in Croatia, in both analytic and theoretical way. At the beginning, the development and current state of local self-government and local political system in Croatia are described. Data on the independent local lists' participation and success during the 2005 general local elections are presented and analysed. Four theoretical approaches are proposed for an interpretation of the results: system, transition, neo-institutional and democratisation theory. None of them can alone explain the results in a satisfatory manner. That is reason why the author proposes a composite theoretical frame, which can explain the role and influence of a broader relevant context on the independent local lists' election success. Certain theoretical hypotheses are generated and to some extent verified in this paper. The advantages of the independent local lists and certain success factors of such lists are identified. Additional theoretical work and empirical verification are needed. Both qualitative insights and quantitative research can be useful.

In democratic theory and practice, direct democracy always marks a basic contrast to representative democracy, offering citizens greater opportunities for participation and “more democracy”. Both in theory and practice, major justifications for direct democracy are derived from deficits in representative systems and from the theoretical limitations of liberal democracy. The more general attempts at criticizing liberal-representative democracy have been provided by authors who developed theories of participatory democracy (Pateman 1970; Bachrach dt. 1970). When the debate on expanding democratic participation began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many contributions to the theory of participatory democracy did not elaborate on direct democracy as a form of extended participation. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that theories of participatory democracy, in which the main general normative justifications which also apply to direct democracy have been put forward, should be the natural ‘home base’ of direct democracy. It is not, however, the purpose of this paper to repeat these patterns of justifications, which are well known (summaries in Butler/Ranney 1994: 11 ff.; Schmidt 2000: 358 ff.). Neither will the literature with a primary focus on direct democracy be discussed here (overviews of the subject: Mockli 1994; Schiller 2002). I will, rather, look at more general theories of participatory democracy and ask how they deal with direct democracy. Do we find considerations of functions, institutional structures and models of direct democracy as instruments of participation? And what can be learnt about qualitative aspects and in relation to possible designs of qualified institutions of direct democracy? It will not be possible to present a full picture of these aspects, but rather some representative observations, including attempts to explain why approaches to democratic participation are surprisingly hesitant about direct democracy. One general reason may be that direct democracy is often perceived only as a mechanism for a popular decisive vote with a majoritarian character. We will examine whether, on the other hand, direct democracy is or can be also viewed in a broader perspective as an institution covering a complete decision-making process, from setting the agenda for an issue to the final referendum vote. In the paper, some basic conceptual elements of participatory democracy will first be recalled. Secondly, we will look at the principles of democracy in the version of Robert Dahl and James Fishkin. A third section will give a short account of Barber’s “strong democracy”. Section four looks into different segments of theory deriving from the concept of participatory democracy, in particular the deliberative democracy approach, leading to some conclusions about the relations and distances of such theories to direct democracy as a participatory institution.

What is the state-of-the-art in conflict transformation theory? Does a theory of conflict transformation already exist, and if so, what are its main foundations? Can practitioners rely on this theory to guide their practice? Can analysts make use of it to understand the dynamics of conflict and to assess the effects of intervention?\ud \ud This paper aims to identify what is distinctive about conflict transformation theory and practice, as well as to identify its key dimensions. We need such a theory of conflict transformation if we are to have an adequate basis for the analysis of conflicts, as well as for devising appropriate responses to them and evaluating the effects of these responses. The paper argues that such theories need to be continually adjusted in response to the changing nature of conflicts, and that current theories must be adapted in order to take proper account of the globalisation of conflicts, and that current theories must be adapted in order to take proper acocunt of the globalisation of conflicts and conflict interventions. \ud \ud The first section of the article distinguishes conflict transformation theory from theories of conflict management and conflict resolution. It explores some of the principal conflict transformation approaches in more detail, and then asks whether they add up to a coherent body of theory. Following this, it suggests a shift from theories of conflict to theories of conflict-in-context, arguing that in the context of globalisation our anlyses of conflict must give proper consideration to the social, regional and international context. We need to consider both the factors that promote peacebuilding and those that exacerbate conflict at these different levels over an extneded time period from before the outbreak of violent conflict to well after its resolution. Within the broader setting, this section thus attempts to extend Galtung's and Azar's theories of conflict formation to theories of conflict transformation. It also proposes a framework of five types of conflict transformation, which should be useful as a basis for planning and assessing intervention in conflicts. \ud \ud The second section of the article discusses current developments in conflict transofrmation practice as they have occurred in the four principal kinds of practice - that of governmental and intergovernmental representatives, of development agencies, of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and of local parties and groups within the conflict setting. The issues involved in coordinating intiatives between these differetn groups are also discussed.\ud \ud The final section of the paper discusses conflict transformation as a potential seed for change, requiring change both in the peacebuilder as well as in the societey in conflict.

This paper deals with East German youngsters’ attitudes toward democracy. The focus of the analyses will not be on the attitudes themselves, but rather on the paths of influences that parents have on their adolescent children’s political attitudes toward the democratic system. Parents’ political attitudes are generally seen as exercising great influence on the development of the political identity of their children; and indeed, surveys show a high congruence between the political attitudes of parents and those of their children (for reviews see Wasmund 1982; Geisler 1996). The main question, however, is how these congruences emerge, e.g., what causes these congruences. To deal with this question, this paper analyzes the paths of intergenerational transmission of political attitudes from parents to their children, using the longitudinal data set from the Brandenburg sample of adolescents, their fathers, and their mothers.

Over the past few years, numerous conferences have been held and studies written on the relationship between Ukraine and the European Union. As it became clearer that Ukraine was a late reformer with highly instable political institutions and murky finances, analysts and Western policymakers became increasingly preoccupied with the notion of Ukraine as risk to the West. It became fashionable to write about Ukraine as begetting weapons of mass destruction, illegal migration, organized crime and its corollaries (traffic in drugs and women), diseases (HIV and tuberculosis) and environmental pollution.2 The events of 11 September have reinforced the preoccupation of EU policy makers with security-related issues, further detracting from Eastern Europe and related processes of integration. This paper, in contrast, argues that taking hard and soft security issues as the starting point for the analysis of Ukrainian-EU relations is misguided and will not amount to a viable basis for long-term policymaking. Hence, the paper takes an integrationist perspective and considers the internal developments of Ukraine as the major determinants for its opportunities to integrate into European structures. The paper will propose various scenarios for the future of Ukraine, before putting the EU’s policy towards Ukraine under scrutiny. Finally, it will sketch out policy recommendations intended to deepen interdependence between Ukraine and the EU.

The United States and Canada are becoming increasingly integrated with each other economically. The details need not be rehearsed here; the evidence is obvious. Whether Canada can retain a degree of social, cultural, and political distinctiveness is an issue that sparks heated Canadian debate. On the political front, Canadian distinctiveness is arguably reinforced by the fact that our federal and provincial governments still operate within the British parliamentary framework, which means that the institutional nature of the political process is quite different on each side of the border. At the local level, however, Canadian institutions and practices have historically been more influenced by the United States than by Britain. One would expect, therefore, that in this age of increasing American-Canadian economic integration, the systems of local government in the two countries would remain similar, or become even more so. The objects of this paper are to show that the opposite is the case and to explain why. This then is a paper about diverging structures and practices in local government, with an emphasis on the governance of large cities.

Historical data on the measures of democracy are needed for various purposes. Researchers testing hypotheses on democratic peace or domestic civil peace need such data (for example, Ray 1995; Hegre et al. 1997). The same concerns researchers exploring the relationship between democracy and economic development, or seeking causal explanations of democracy and democratization (Hadenius 1992; Karvonen 1997; Midlarsky 1997, Vanhanen 1997). Researchers have formulated various ways to measure democracy, or some aspects of democracy, since the 1950s, but it has been difficult to agree on the measures of democracy and democratization. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new dataset on the measurement of democracy and to compare it with some alternative dataseis. The Freedom House ratings of political rights and civil liberties since 1973 and the Polity project’s democracy and autocracy scales over the period 1800–1998 provide the most interesting points of comparison. The dataset introduced in this paper covers nearly all independent countries during the period 1810–1998.1

The paper represents an attempt to construct a partial concept of the emergence and maintenance of an environmental movement under critical conditions — the collapse of state socialism and transition to wild capitalism accompanied by a systemic crisis of society and its basic values. The underpinning of the proposed concept is the idea that an environmental movement as a collective social actor is reproduced in interactions with a context of different kind and scale. The more the movement’s contexts become turbulent and hostile, the stronger its shift from the production of collective actions towards the reproduction of its own organizations and networks. The paper examines the major elements of this reproduction process: key values, the type of social reflection, the nature of the resources and the mode of their mobilization, the space of economic, social and political opportunities, the degree of the integration of the movement’s organizations into global organizations and networks.

Even if national differences indeed exist, similarities rather than differences come to mind when the structure of local government in the Nordic countries is considered. By ‘Nordic countries’ we refer to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, even if Iceland generally is considered as part of the Nordic ‘family’ of countries. In this first part of the paper, we shall consider some of the similarities mentioned before, and discuss to which extent they contribute to making local government in the Nordic countries distinct from the rest of Europe (or other industrialized nations). The focus of this paper will be on aspects of historical and institutional kind. Later on we will return to the problems of policy formation or governance. One first observation in this respect may be that the differences in operational modes are larger than those having to do with the structure of local government itself.

The transition from Communism has had important implications for the position of young people in education and the working world. However, there are important differences emerging between different post-Communist countries. This paper explores the changing experiences of school and work amongst young people in Poland — a more “successful” transition country — with Ukraine, a less “successful” one. The paper explores four axes of change: changes in the relationship between education and work, changes in the relationship between private and public sector employment; changes in the role of the informal economy; changes in social structure. Young people emerge paradoxically as group which is both advantaged and disadvantaged by the changes.

There are two ways to outline perspectives for cross-national research within this volume: a) papers on results of studies on a national level which could or should be replicated in other countries; b) papers on projects or project proposals which include a comparative dimension and are still in the process of applying for funding or looking for partners in other countries. Our presentation belongs to the latter category. We shall present a project proposal with the working title “The English Language in the Media Worlds of European Youth”; in addition to the theoretical framework of this project, we shall report first results of a pilot study in Germany.

The paper examines the plebiscites that were held in Carinthia in 1920 and in Odenburg in 1921. The two plebiscites can be seen as an expression of the principle of self-determination as proclaimed by US President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points. The complexities of this concept, which today form part of international law, are weighed against the principle of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of states. The plebiscites in Carinthia and Odenburg provide interesting case studies in support of the argument that disputes over borders in ethnically mixed areas can be managed through the means of direct democracy. The author attempts to prove that the two referenda which were complemented by legal safeguards ensuring the protection of minority rights in the areas concerned greatly contributed to de-escalating the conflicts which broke out between the newly founded Republic of Austria and her neighbours Hungary and the Kingdom of the Southern Slavs in the wake of World War I. In addition to stabilizing the war-torn region, the plebiscites can also be seen as an early realization of the concept of good governance long before this idea entered the political vocabulary.

The German constitution grants participation as a basic democratic right. But the complexity of modern society makes it hard for citizens to select the relevant information to make an individual judgment. Journalism is supporting the process of public deliberation. But is this actually possible when it comes to courtroom journalism in Germany? The paper suggests a typology of courtroom journalism and discusses its status as a public institution between justice, the media and public relations. The author argues that due to its specific nature and due to the self-perception of journalists courtroom journalism is easy to influence.

Direct democracy as a concept and in practice comprises many institutional varieties. It has its origin in differing historical developments and structural conditions which may have influenced these institutional forms and their relations with the environment of political systems at large, particularly of representative democracy. Beyond individual historical cases, more general patterns of emerging direct democracy can explain how the dynamics of a political process have been linked to specific institutional features. In a typological approach the paper identifies three basic models of emergence of direct democracy: deep internal conflict, national independence, and system transformation, and their possible links to some typical profiles of direct democracy design. In a first illustration we will discuss the positions of minorities in different institutional settings of direct democracy and how they relate to various emergence models.

Approximately 100 years after the first inspection of the concept of ethnocentrism by William Graham Sumner (1906), it is still en vogue in the scientific research. For example, if one googles “ethnocentrism”, one gets about 426,000 hits, thousands of papers, and many definitions in different fields of sciences ranging from medicine to philosophy. However, the core idea of ethnocentrism is almost the same in all fields.

The comparison between court trials and a theatre play is an old one – and in fact a lot more than a mere comparison. Carrying out a trial is in itself a performance as well as a battle. Drawing insights from the work of German scholar Cornelia Vismann the paper deals with the effects that arise from this double nature of play and battle. A court trial does not reconstruct the actual delict as much as it renarrates it, thereby creating an own reality. It is a widespread misunderstanding that a trial focuses a sentence: the main issue is the trial as play, there are but a few situations where the battle disposition rules and dominates the perception. This has significant consequences for the intended influence that the use of Litigation-PR tries to evoke.

Many scholars consider that the European integration model could be a future model for cross-Strait integration, with regard to the integration of China and Taiwan. However, very few authors have discussed this issue in a systematic way, by examining the nature of EU integration with reference to its legal institutions, the reasons why China and Taiwan should adopt the European model and how it could be implemented. This paper places this discussion within a systemic framework by recognizing the European integration model as a legal model, founded on different legal theories, concepts, principles and legal instruments, and arguing that the adoption of such a model would be a form of legal transplant.

This paper focuses on the use of referendums that decide on the future status of a given territory: namely whether or not such a territory will become independent. I first identify two fundamentally different sub-types of such a referendum: the referendum-as-a-weapon, which is a device used by political elites to augment their own powers, and the referendum-as-a-solution, which is a device agreed to by all sides as part of a conflict resolution process. Empirical evidence appears to show that the referendum-as-a-weapon is more frequently used in a non-democratic context. Moreover, the referendum-as-a-solution is rarely used after a period of violent conflict, despite its potential for conflict resolution. Using examples from the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia, I argue that, far from being a solution to fundamental conflicts within society, the referendum-as-a-weapon, when used to decide the status of a given territory, can often exacerbate such conflicts. I conclude that if such a referendum is held in deeply divided societies in which state institutions are weak and the state’s capacity to maintain a monopoly over the use of force is challenged, there is a high risk of civil war.

This story of petty traders seeking markets across the border between Azerbaijan and Georgia is typical for border regions and also for post-socialist economic formations. Azerbaijani traders were known during late socialism in the former Soviet Union (SU) as having a special inclination and even talent (if not disrepute) for engaging in petty trade and informal economy and for travelling to many parts of the Soviet republics, from Moscow to Vladivostok. Caroline Humphrey (2002, chapter 4) and Georgi Derlugian (2005: 150-154) write that Azerbaijani traders were specialized in trading certain agricultural products or sold illegal products such as alcohol during the late socialist era and immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (see also Yalcin-Heckmann 2010). In this paper we focus on their activities primarily across the Azerbaijani-Georgian border. Nino Aivazishvili has worked in a border region in Northwest Azerbaijan and Lale Yalcin-Heckmann has been studying petty-trade and scales of trade in Agstafa, a West Azerbaijani small town, also close to the Georgian border.

This article analyzes the function of referendum campaigns as a feature of agenda setting for minority issues. Theorists of direct democracy have often argued that people’s rights show indirect effects in addition to the mere results of popular votes. Thus, popular votes are not only decision-making processes, they also have indirect effects on the political system, most notably the activation of a public debate about social issues. The present study therefore investigates the agenda-setting function of referendums by examining the media coverage of minority interests in direct democratic campaigns. The methodological basis is a systematic and standardized content analysis of 1013 newspaper articles, which cover three popular votes on eased naturalization rules in Switzerland between 1983 and 2004. Thus the paper does not look at media effects on voting behaviour, but on minorities’ chances of articulating their interests and their mediation through public communication in referendum coverage, no matter what the outcome of the vote may be. Our results show that (1) the presentation of the pros and cons of referendums on minority issues favours the position of minorities, as the media show sympathy with their concerns and do not generate feelings of cultural separateness; (2) minority rights are still an issue primarily of the major political actors; (3) media coverage of referendums functions as a means of agenda setting for migrants and conveys their affairs in quite a positive way, even though the electorate ultimately decided against the minority position; (4) the mediation of minorities’ interests through public communication can be expected to be fair.

Judges, state prosecutors and lawyers use media reports about their lawsuits very intensively and expose themselves to accordant influences. Most important sources are local papers at the seat of the court. Media reports about criminal proceedings with their attendance have a strong influence on themselves and especially on lay judges, the accused, victims, witnesses etc. This influence is reflected in the courtroom atmosphere and the degree of penalty. Prosecutors and lawyers should use this influence and practice an active information policy.

Litigation PR takes place in the conflict areas between media and law. By comparing the "legal" and the media framework conditions in the U.S. and Germany, the question whether litigation PR practiced in the U.S. can be transferred to Germany can be clarified. The paper describes relevant features of U.S. law and the U.S. media, that are crucial for the development and the characteristics of litigation PR. These are class actions, punitive-damages, pre-trial discoveries and the jury system on the one hand and special interest channels and journalistic standards of the U.S. media on the other hand.

According to the functionalist argument, party systems that show moderate fragmentation, high institutionalization and rather low polarization are more conducive to democracy than others. This hypothesis is systematically tested in four country cases in Francophone West Africa that share many historical, social and economic characteristics but differ in their level of democratization, thus providing an at least approximate most-similar-systems design that is best suited to isolating the impact of party-system characteristics. The employment of pertinent and innovative indicators for the three dimensions of party systems reveals that the central hypothesis must be rejected. At best, four indicators confirm the assumptions, while 13 show no relationship and five show inverse findings. The case with the most favourable fragmentation and institutionalization values, Niger, has in between experienced a substantial decline in democracy. The paper concludes that the link between party systems and democracy is, at least in Africa, less simple and straightforward than the literature suggests.

There exist different linguistically, culturally and politically associated definitions and semantic meanings of the term “internationalism”. Internationalism in Olympic education has a very different meaning compared to Internationalism of Olympic education. As far as internationalism is concerned as a part of Olympic education or as an element in Olympic education, the nature or the body of knowledge of Olympic education is the topic. Internationalism of Olympic education means the geographical wide-spread diffusion and implementation of Olympic education programmes in different cross-cultural settings of learning and education. The topic of this paper is internationalism in Olympic education which means: to investigate how far a certain approach of internationalism has become a part of Olympic education concepts.

This paper on Slovenia's local referendums deals with a basic paradox: Slovenia is one of the leading countries in terms of the number of national referendums, but at the same time it is grouped in the class of countries with a low rate of local referendums.

This paper is concerned with gender and academe in Britain, and considers the new public management (NPM) and its impact on the ways in which women and men academics negotiate their daily working lives. An assessment is timely as managerial techniques and ideas have been in favour in Britain’s public sector from the late 1970s (Hood 1995), with this periodisation significant. It marked the opening of an era labelled Thatcherism that, like its Reaganite counterpart in North America, heralded the rise of a new discourse of neo-liberalism in world affairs (Harvey 2005). The linking of politics and economics, to energise a moribund right wing political conservatism in Britain with a dynamic Hayekian economics that favoured market competition and a politics of choice (MacPherson 1980), led to an emphasis on individualism and inequality and, according to some academic commentators (Leys 2001), a debilitation of public services.

Contemporary rhetoric in German science politics makes clear that women should and do have the same chances than men to reach high positions in universities and research organisations. (Mainly male) Elites in science politics seem to have understood that they have to act for promoting e/quality and excellence in the German science system. In 2006 the leading organisations in the German system of science and higher education signed a paper called “Offensive for Equal Opportunities of Female and Male Scientists” aiming to increase the participation of women in high positions in science and universities and to improve gender equality during the following five years clearly recognizable. They call their initiative ‘Gender-Alliance’ and put some activities to gender equality into action.

In this paper we will focus on the question of how conditions for gender ascriptions and the subsequent social relevance of gender in science are changing in light of research assessments as part of a general process of restructuring science. Specifically, we will aim our attention at what has been stated as the decreasing significance of the profession and, in this connection, the rising influence of the organizational logic of action – a development that has been tagged the “organizational turn” (e.g. Glaser/Lange 2007; Klatezki/Tacke 2005; Oevermann 2005; Schimank 2005, Musselin 2006).

The majority of European universities have undergone a management reform that emphasises economic efficiency. This could be expected to offer opportunities for implementing top-down measures to promote equal opportunities for women and men working in academia. Applying these measures in practice turns out, however, to be difficult, especially in a university context. In this paper, I draw on my practical experience as the Equal Opportunities Officer at the University of Zurich and on my research on setting up a Gender Studies Graduate School to derive four insights that should be taken into account when considering ways to promote equal opportunities in an academic environment: 1. Pay attention to the “power of veto” in academia; 2. Remember nothing will happen without bottom-up support; 3. Take into account the power of tacit knowledge; and 4. Discover how particular gender equality strategies are accepted in a given context or considered a matter of taboo in everyday gender knowledge, and then combine these findings with scientific gender knowledge.

This paper will critically examine the latent normative content of approaches to difference in political theory via their conceptions of community and culture. I argue that it is particularly important and interesting to do so in the context of ‘Canadian political theory,’ at least in respect to its dominant strand – here I have the pioneering work of Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor and the wide landscape of their philosophical legacy in mind – because it is widely regarded as being at the leading edge of international scholarship on multiculturalism and accommodation of minorities in Western polities.

Thomas Pogge has recently argued that the capability approach cannot be justified, and that John Rawls’s social primary goods way of thinking about the metric of justice that is superior to the capability approach (Pogge 2003). The burden of this paper is to respond to his objections drawing on issues that arise when thinking about distribution and equality in education. We should say at the outset that we do not have a strong view about which of the approaches is superior, all-things-considered. Sometimes the language of capabilities better illuminates what matters than does the language of primary goods. And frequently both approaches are hard to apply.

Comparative research that relies on sampling procedures has to deal with the problem of validity and reliability of estimates derived from a chosen sample. Social scientists are not only interested in level estimates such as mean values, but also in (causal) effects estimates as in regression type models. Thus, estimates based on these theoretical explanatory models also underlie the problems of validity and reliability. Usually researchers deal with one sample for each study of interest and implicitly rely on the adequacy of the reported parameters. In cases, where the researcher have the chance to control the whole sampling and data cleaning procedures, i.e. the field of primary data generating research, this paper will not add much at first hand. In other cases, where the researcher relies on secondary data sources that are available publicly or by other contracts, the researcher cannot control the sampling and data cleaning process ex posteriori. This problem becomes specifically important in cross-national research but may also be applied to other fields. This contribution is targeted at applied researchers to realize an easily accessible method for cross-validation based on actual empirical data, i.e. it does not make use of artificially created data and does not involve complex algorithms (cf. application in Beckers 2008). In cross-national survey research, which is the research field of application discussed here, the aim is to compare countries in order to gain knowledge about both similarities and differences and the generalities and specificities of social mechanisms (Meulemann 2002; 2008; 2009).

The majority of social work practitioners are women and there are specific gender hierarchies in the profession. Conceptions of social problems, the strategies to cope with complex and problematic situations as well as social work practice are all determined by gender perceptions and by the construction of gender differences (Gruber/Froschel 2001: 13). How do these findings correspond with social work course contents at universities respectively at universities of applied sciences, where in Germany the majority of social workers are educated? In this paper I will outline a discussion about the relevance of gender perspectives in social work curricula, starting with the influence of women’s projects and feminist social work on the Diploma programmes. Two developments in European policy could the process of integrating gender perspectives and “Gender Studies“ into Social Work Education get moving: The Amsterdam treaty (1997) which made the concept of Gender Mainstreaming binding to all EU-Member States, and the Bologna-Declaration (1999) and following Communiques, which bind member states to adapt their systems of higher education and to create a European space for Higher Education. The article focuses the question if and how the Bologna process and the reform of the course programmes are seen as a chance for implementing gender topics into the courses of study on the basis of two surveys undertaken in 2004 and 2008.

This paper builds on earlier work which has explored differences between traditions in relation to teaching and learning. It outlines the development of an approach to the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to support learning and teaching based on the notion of Didaktik analysis. The focus is on the design of teaching situations, pedagogical activities and learning environments which aims to address the what, why and how of ICT use. Discussion focuses on the nature of design, the conception of teaching as a design profession, subject didactics as design science and Didaktik design for technology supported learning as a generic field of didactics which is applicable across the range of specific subject didactics. The role of research is discussed at a range of levels from the macro to the micro involving consideration of its role at the course or curriculum level. These ideas form the basis of an Integrative Didaktik Design (IDD) framework, and an example of the application of this philosophy and approach to development of ICT for learning in the field of teacher education at a national level is presented.

Issues are at the core of the political process.1 In a democracy at least, people need to be able to know of them and to participate in decision-making and the political deliberations about them (Dahl 1998). This paper aims at clarifying the nature of European issues. The reader might wonder why one could be concerned about this topic. However, there is a widespread misconception in much of the literature and in public discourse. According to that, European issues are those that are “about” Europe. I argue, however, that European issues are all those that are subject to EU legislation, no matter whether they are about, say, the future decisionmaking rules in the European Council or unemployment. This conceptual stretch has important implications for analyses of the democratic quality of the EU political process.

There is an ongoing renewal of interest in civic education (CE) in many developed countries with democratic constitutions. In this regard, school is viewed, and CE in particular, as a key element in the process of political socialization of a democratic citizen. This paper, in its first part, gives an overview of policy and state-of-the-art of CE in the EU countries. In the second part, it refers to results of a research project in Croatia, which focuses on comparative analysis of national curricula in compulsory schools in the eleven European countries. Furthermore, it discusses the questionable impact of CE on pupils. In its third and closing part, the author, in addition to summarizing the established facts on policies and curricular aspects of CE, reflects on the importance of extra-curricular aspects of CE, and also on the relationships between CE and history teaching in view of the emergence of the contemporary multicultural Europe.

This paper is devoted to the early stage of the post-communist transformation in Ukraine, when the country was trying to launch the democratic transition preceded by some authoritarian transitional forms of rule such as restrictions on freedom of speech, so called “socialist pluralism”, quotas for Communists at the first parliamentary alternative elections, inadequate and late legislation on freedom of organization etc. During the most of that time Ukraine was a part of the USSR. Thus the problem appears, when the exploration of this residual, temporary post-communist authoritarianism in the country should start. I have chosen a compromise point of departure: the year 1990, imbued with political activity. In that year Ukraine still had a status of a union republic but had already adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty and had held first semi-democratic election to its legislative body – Verkhovna Rada, which at that time was undergoing the transformation to a parliament of Western type. The end of the period under consideration will be the year 1994, when the second election to Verkhovna Rada took place marking the beginning of the more-or-less serious reforms in the economy and the intensification of the constitution building process.

The work described in this paper was conducted in the second Work Package (WP) of the SOCOSE project, jointly pursued by researchers in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and The Netherlands. The first work package served the assembly of information on labour market developments in general and on strategies to combat unemployment. Among these strategies, the knowledge about and implementation of outplacement counselling were key elements.

In this essay I proceed as follows. Its first part provides a conceptual map by which we can locate the various symptoms of political malaise and disenchantment, which beset, as it is widely perceived, political life and political developments even in established liberal democracies (and a fortiori in new ones). The second part proposes to invert the chain of causation that is widely used in empirical political science as a model of analysis. Rather than proceeding from opinions to behavior to institutional viability, I propose here, in an admittedly speculative mode, to proceed in a top-down perspective from institutional patterns to the observable “enactment” of institutions and the perceived opportunities, incentives, expectations they inculcate in citizens and finally the opinions, habits, and attitudes people exhibit and which are in turn registered and analyzed by the methods of survey research. In the third and final part of the paper, I propose a taxonomy of the various sorts of “failure of citizenship” (or deficient modes of its practice) that we encounter within established democracies of the OECD world. I conclude with a few remarks on the hypothetical impact of disaffection upon the liberal democratic regime form.

This paper attempts to summarise some English research findings related to educational inequality, particularly in inner urban schools. It documents how differences related to relative poverty are reflected in patterns of educational attainment as revealed by national tests results. It considers and evaluates how the issue of educational inequality in England has been tackled.