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The paper seeks to conceptually develop the notion of gender mainstreaming through a systematic comparison with the equal rights approach that preceded it. It takes as an example the agricultural policy arena in Germany, comparing the development of pension rights for farmwomen in the early 1990s to the implementation of gender mainstreaming at the turn of the century. Experts charged with implementing gender mainstreaming have argued that the notion is conceptually unclear and leads to confusion in its application. Movement activists, in addition, have charged that gender mainstreaming has become an excuse to cut funding for programs that favor women. The observations of these feminists show that the implementation of gender mainstreaming takes place and gains meaning in political contexts. Gender mainstreaming has become a new, unique site of gender politics. The paper will survey organizational theory to develop propositions about gender politics in the German agricultural ministry and its political environment. In particular it will probe the following questions: -How do the organizational discourses on equal pension rights differ from those on gender mainstreaming? -How do organizational networks charged with implementing equal pension rights differ from those charged with implementing gender mainstreaming? -In these organizational discourses and networks, how are gender hegemonies and gender hierarchies reconstructed? The purpose of the paper is to employ an outsider’s perspective and a political science perspective to assess the significance of gender mainstreaming for feminist movement politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the East Bloc crumbled and Germany was reunified in 1990, it promised countries such as Poland that it would act as their advocate in the EU, pushing the EU to admit them. Did Germany keep its word? What mix of motivations drove it? This paper will show that, while Germany saw itself as pursuing European goals, it also was driven by national foreign policy and domestic goals. Expansion strengthens Germany--both by promoting its reconciliation with the East and by strengthening Germany’s central role in the union. Yet Germany has reason to fear low-priced competition from its neighbors. As the EU prepares to take on new members in 2004, the accession negotiations offer a rich field for studying the mix of European and national interests in the new Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1999, Germany’s reformed citizenship laws permitted the naturalization of some 350,000 ethnic Turkish/Kurdish long-term immigrants in the country. As new German voters, this group now represents about 1 percent of the electorate. But by 2006, the next time German voters will elect a national government, Germany’s political parties expect this voting bloc to double, which will significantly influence the outcome of national elections. This author proposes that despite a 70 percent rate of support among the ethnic Turkish/Kurdish Germans in favor of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, it will be the Free Democrats who will garner a significant percentage of the Turkish/Kurdish vote by 2006. The author intends to evaluate the transformative political impact of the ethnic Turkish/Kurdish vote on Germany’s political landscape. A primary focus in this paper will be on changes in public discourse regarding issues such as business development, immigration, and multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning from the past to shape a better future usually involves scanning history for instructive patterns or successful policies that can be transferred into the present. In this paper, I discuss a social movement that took a different ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-Cold War military reforms in Britain, France and Germany have been characterized by patterns of convergence in the objectives, instruments and institutional forums of defense policy, but by divergence in temporality. These patterns of convergence and divergence cannot be fully explained by cultural approaches. Neither can they be explained solely by a focus on the role of 'international structure', as neo-realism posits, although the post-Cold War distribution of capabilities is driving Britain, France and Germany towards policy convergence. Instead the analysis builds upon the insights of neo-classical realism and its emphasis upon 'state power' by demonstrating the important intervening role played by domestic material power relationships in incentivizing figures within the core executive to respond to systemic power shifts. The paper argues that in Britain and France 'executive autonomy' in defense policy, resulting from the unitary state, weak linkages between defense and social policy subsystems and formal powers of the core executive in defense has allowed policy leaders to focus on the 'national interest' and convergence with 'systemic imperatives'. In Germany the federal system and linkages between social and defense policy circumscribed 'executive autonomy' in defense policy and incentivized an acute concern within the core executive about the domestic political ramifications of convergence with systemic imperatives, leading to the temporal management of reform, producing short-medium term policy stasis. Culture emerges not so much as a cause of action as instrumental and a resource for policy leaders in the domestic political and temporal management of reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a draft of a chapter that will be included in the forthcoming edited volume entitled, "The Social Construction of Climate Change." The chapters in the volume present a number of potentially fruitful avenues for analyzing the "social construction of climate change." This paper focuses on the early framing of climate change as a political problem at the international level and the associated normative debates that emerged related to how states should respond to the threat. It then evaluates how the international framing of the problem and the normative debates were translated into the domestic political processes of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The early domestic framing of the problem had profound effects on the political debates in all three countries and played a major role in shaping the degree to which emergent international norms were translated into the domestic policy debates. The paper seeks to explain how and why the political framing of climate change evolved at the international and domestic political levels and explores the consequences of these changes for climate policy in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the opponents and proponents of nuclear power have long recognized radioactive waste disposal as the industry's "Achilles' heel." Industry proponents have tended pushed for more rapid approval of permanent repositories, in the expectation that this will reduce public fears of nuclear power, while opponents have tended to obstruct them, lest the waste problem consequently appear "solved"--a strategy we call "constructive procrastination." In this paper, we compare the experiences of Germany, where constructive procrastination appears to have worked for the moment, with that of Finland, where the strategy failed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]