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These proceedings contain the papers and posters of the International Conference on e-Learning (EL) 2019, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society and co-organised by the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, in Porto, Portugal, July 17-19, 2019. The EL 2019 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning. The conference accepted submissions in the following seven main areas: (1) Organisational Strategy and Management Issues; (2) Technological Issues; (3) e-Learning Curriculum Development Issues; (4) Instructional Design Issues; (5) e-Learning Delivery Issues; (6) e-Learning Research Methods and Approaches; and (7) e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning. [Individual papers are indexed in ERIC.]

These Proceedings include 26 addresses and papers on culture and civilization in German-speaking countries. Papers on politics and culture in Switzerland, East and West Germany, and Austria begin the book. These papers were written by Gerhard Weiss, Franz Lehner, Eduard Adler, Sonja Elm and Karl Borchard. Three sections on teaching culture and civilization include articles on beginning language classes, images of women in German culture textbooks, culture in art, German dialects and teaching of medieval German civilization. These papers were written by Henri Chabert, Fritz Konig, Marion Clay, John ter Haar, James Sandrock, Karen Bahnick and Ford Parkes. A section on German-American heritage discusses the German influences in Iowa and the effects of Americanization on certain German immigrants, in papers by Robert Clark, James Dow, Alan DuVal and Patricia Herminghouse. Four papers by Donald Ruhde, Werner Will, Karl Odwarka and Gerhard Brinkmann deal with school reforms in West Germany. Special area studies of Austria, Switzerland and East and West Germany are presented, in papers by Donald Whitnah, Jurgen Koppensteiner, Gerald Neumann, Rudolf Kunzli, Victor Peters and Suitbert Gammersbach. Nine of the papers are in German. (CHK)

The paper focuses on a specific category of institutions that are, it has been suggested, characteristic of Germany?s ?semisovereign state?, namely ?parapublic institutions?. Parapublic institutions are a heterogeneous group, united by the fact that they bridge the gap between the public and private sectors, and that they carry out important policy functions. Furthermore, they combine a high degree of autonomy in policy making (under a general supervision of the government, which rules out interfering in details), with a high level of expertise. The paper asks how these institutions have coped with the double challenges of German unification and European integration over the 15 years since Katzenstein?s original analysis. Three detailed case studies of parapublic institutions that have been centrally affected by these changes form the core of the paper: they are the Treuhandanstalt (the agency charged with the task of privatisation of the East German state-owned economy), the Bundesbank (the central bank that lost many of its former tasks to the European Central Bank) and the Federal Employment Office (which was challenged substantially after a policy scandal in 2002). The case studies form the basis for assessing the performance of parapublic institutions in a changing environment and help to answer the question whether they can still fulfil their function as ?shockabsorbers? in the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper asks whether Peter Katzenstein’s model of ‘semisovereign’ governance, first published in 1987, can still adequately account for policy developments in immigration and integration policy in Germany. It finds that although the policy field has evolved considerably, and that the institutional configuration has changed dramatically, policy outcomes remain incremental, in that policy change is rare and gradual. The paper also asks whether semisovereign governance is an asset in this field, as originally postulated by Katzenstein, or whether it has become a liability, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to analyze the transformations in party finance and party finance legislation in Germany and Italy. Specifically, I will ask what factors are responsible for the differences between the German and the Italian party finance (and party finance legislation). My argument is as follows. Differences between German and Italian party finance reflect differences in the party finance legislation enacted in the two countries, and that these legislative differences are a result of how the German and the Italian Constitutional principles were interpreted and implemented in the two countries. In the first part of the paper I present data concerning the transformation of party finance in Germany and Italy. I show that while in Germany the revenues generated by membership fees and state subventions have increased in both absolute and relative terms, in Italy the opposite has occurred. Meanwhile, the revenues generated by state subventions have increased in absolute as well as in relative terms. Building on this discussion, in the second part of this paper, I provide an explanation for these differences. I argue that the constitutionality of party finance legislation and public subventions to party finance is a necessary consequence of parties’ constitutional relevance. Building on this discussion, I show that the way in which the German Parliament translated the constitutional principles into actual legislative dispositions is very different from the way in which the Italian Parliament did so and that these differences in translation account for the differences between the financial outlook of the German parties and that of the Italian ones. In the third, and final part of the paper, I will draw some conclusions as to the significance of my findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to map the limits of the geopolitical imaginary in post-Cold War Germany. The research for this paper is a first cut into a broader investigation into the reasons for the absence of a geopolitical renaissance, despite a strong German tradition of Geopolitik. While the early 1990s saw a number of publications on new opportunities for German geopolitical interests, these publications never seemed to have had a significant impact on the politically relevant discourse. The present paper will provide a brief analysis of these publications and the representations of geo-political space found in them. As such, they are taken to outline the expanded space of geopolitical imagination in post-Cold War Germany. In a second move, the paper will trace the actual contours of the German government’s emerging post-cold war discourse, 1989-1994. The paper will pay particular attention to this discourse’s geographic spatialization and the government’s attempts to continuously anchor Germany’ in the West, thus foregoing any reconsideration of German foreign policy’s Weltbild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network services reforms in the EU have stimulated a large new political science literature which tracks changes in national or sectoral institutional structures or policy making processes. This literature is strangely silent concerning the impact of these changes on the regulated firms. Taking its starting point in the telecommunications sector this paper examines whether the divergent administrative structures of Oftel and RegTP result in differences in market access and consumer protection in the German and UK telecommunications sectors. The paper concludes that these markets operate in a similar fashion because of the implementation of detailed EU directives. However, EU telecommunications directives do not regulate takeovers, which constitute a key aspect of telecommunications trade. Access to foreign telecommunications markets frequently takes place through takeovers. Divergent market structures in Germany and the UK shape very different perceptions of what an EU takeover directive should contain. Germany has changed some of its legislation to become more like the UK but these changes have made Germany more vulnerable to takeovers and to threats to its traditional ways of structuring its market. Germany’s new sense of vulnerability put a damper on Germany’s enthusiasm for an EU takeover directive while the UK wholeheartedly supported the proposal [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many papers use regression discontinuity (RD) designs that exploit "close" election outcomes in order to identify the effects of election results on various political and economic outcomes of interest. Several recent papers critique the use of RD designs based on close elections because of the potential for imbalance near the threshold that distinguishes winners from losers. In particular, for U.S. House elections during the post-war period, lagged variables such as incumbency status and previous vote share are significantly correlated with victory even in very close elections. This type of sorting naturally raises doubts about the key RD assumption that the assignment of treatment around the threshold is quasi-random. In this paper, we examine whether similar sorting occurs in other electoral settings, including the U.S. House in other time periods, statewide, state legislative, and mayoral races in the U.S., and national and/or local elections in a variety of other countries, including the U.K., Canada, Germany, France, Australia, India, and Brazil. No other case exhibits sorting. Evidently, the U.S. House during the post-war period is an anomaly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is it to become a citizen? Over the last ten years, the US and the German governments have been vociferously advocating for naturalization as a mechanism for social inclusion and national security. But how do immigrants perceive becoming a citizen? This paper explores what being a citizen means to immigrants in New York and Berlin. Through intensive interviews, thick description and using grounded theory, I unearth how new naturalized citizens think and live citizenship in their everyday lives. I question the importance of the developmental model that has been the standard understanding of naturalization for the last hundred years. I discover that naturalized citizens engage specific citizenship frames to explain what citizenship is to them and why they naturalized. These frames include a benefit seeking, a claims making, a hyperpolitical/ bureaucracy avoidance, a circumstance securing and a developmental approach to understanding what citizenship means. I compare the thoughts, opinions and experiences of permanent residents and naturalized citizens in New York and Berlin, two cities with receptive policies toward immigrants located in countries with polar opposite citizenship policies. Based on the data, the paper includes policy prescriptions for how to think about naturalization as a policy goal, how to make it more meaningful and more likely to achieve the ends desired by the respective governments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the diplomatic engagement of the EU3 (Germany, France and the UK) with Iran, in the context of growing regional and international concerns about the Iranian uranium enrichment programme and Tehran's perceived regional hegemonic ambitions. Drawing on the academic literature on coercive diplomacy/strategic coercion, this paper examines EU3 negotiating strategy and that of Tehran, focusing on three key elements: demands, threats and time frame. The central argument is that the Iran case is a unique, if not anomalous example of coalitional coercive diplomacy, in which the states engaging in diplomatic negotiations lack either the military capabilities or political will to threaten coercion, and the states making threats are not engaged in diplomacy. Nonetheless, the Iran issue provides an interesting case-study which highlights the possibilities and limitations of coalitional coercive diplomacy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the failures of a preventive war strategy in the case of Iraq, preventive military action has not been fully discredited in wider policy and political circles. The 2006 National Security Strategy reiterates the Bush administration’s commitment to the preventive war option in principle, while a number of military analysts, think tank pundits, and presidential candidates from each major party, continue to treat preventive war as a viable strategic option to address future power shifts. This is particularly evident in the debate over how to address Iran’s nuclear program, reflected in the insistence of many policymakers, analysts, and political leaders that “all options” â€" including preventive attack â€" must remain “on the table.” Given this enduring interest in preventive war, scholars must continue to critically examine the difficult calculus involved in thinking through this policy choice.This paper argues that a severe shortfall in most analyses of the preventive war option is created by heavy emphasis on raw military variables in calculations of likely costs and benefits of launching a preventive war. Short shrift is given to another dimension of preventive war that is at least as important, and in some cases more important, than the military dimensions: the political costs of initiating war in the absence of overt aggression by the target state. Previous studies have noted two types of political costs of initiating preventive war. The need to generate and sustain domestic political support for preventive war in the absence of overt aggression or a clearly imminent threat from the target state can be an insurmountable obstacle to executing the option, or perhaps politically debilitating in the long run. At the international level, initiating preventive war without broad multilateral support can have a costly ripple effect across many issue areas. Yet there is a third type of cost that has not been developed in the preventive war literature, a cost that follows from the political effects of preventive war within the domestic political system of the target state. The likely domestic response within the target state to what its leaders can portray as unprovoked aggression will be nationalist hostility and support for revanchist armed conflict. To the degree that the goals of a preventive attack include a more stable post-conflict order and acceptance of the status quo by the target state, this backlash must be treated as a potentially severe cost of the preventive war option itself, an effect that ultimately negates the rationale for conducting the preventive attack in the first place.To explore this political cost, the paper presents a counterfactual study of what is perhaps the critical, and certainly the most widely cited, case of a power shift that did not, yet which many assert should have, motivated a preventive war in response: the rise of German power in the mid-1930s. Building on a recent burst of interest in counterfactual analysis among international relations scholars, the paper demonstrates that, despite being unorthodox methodologically, it is an essential method for studying any preventive war, either proposed or actual, both historical and in the future. And using the logic developed in the paper on the political effects of preventive war within the target state, the case study advances the provocative claim that a preventive war against Germany in the mid-1930s would not have allowed the Allies to avoid the horrendous costs of the war in Europe that the Nazi regime eventually unleashed. Moreover, an allied preventive war would have rendered the goal of creating a more progressive international order that included Germany as a status quo power extremely unlikely. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper which addresses the variance in the loss of functional control among states, citing Germany and the U.S. as example is presented. It gives focus on the outsourcing of military functions, which is said to be accompanied by a loss of control over the use of force. The strategies formulated by both countries resemble each other particularly when it comes to addressing the functional dimension of control on the political and social levels.

Political parties seek power in order to accomplish their goals. Raw electoral power is commonly used as an indicator of political party power. However, such a distinction fails to capture the complexity of how parties move from setting goals to achieving them. Scholars such as William Riker (Riker 1962) and Michael Leiserson (Leiserson 1968) view political parties as power-seekers, yet power for them is not limited to electoral results or votes but extends to the overall picture of parties holding positions of influence both in the foreground of representative government but also importantly in the background as strategists, advisors, agency chiefs, and other appointed positions. Parties and their members often work to occupy a variety of positions that may appear less than prominent as they work behind the scenes at building their social capital and enabling their policy agenda. Even though scholars have traditionally presented policy-seeking as a supplementary goal to office or vote-seeking (Axelrod 1970; Lijphart 1984; Luebbert 1986), this paper suggests that policy and outcomes are frequently the focus of parties as they realize that back channels can provide the ability to accomplish policy goals. This paper examines the role of power and positioning as parties work toward goal attainment. It considers both intra-party competition and cooperation as parties work toward their desired policy outcomes. It argues that effective parties are critically aware of their relationship to other parties in their party system as they craft their platform and strategy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the experimental findings of the motivated reasoning literature to numerous election studies in the U.S., Britain, and Germany. Conclusions inform both the information processing and campaign effects literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests electoral balancing models using data from German state election. The main finding - midterm losses in German state elections only occur under unified government - supports electoral balancing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining elections and government formation in Germany one can distinguish roughly three time periods: a ?formative? period lasting until about 1960, a period of stable two-and-a-half party competition with a limited number of coalition patterns in which the FDP played a crucial role, lasting from about 1960 to 1979, and a period beginning in about 1980 which has been characterized by party de-concentration and more complex coalition formation patterns. While the three periods generally apply to both the national and sub-national (Land) levels there are several important exceptions. For example, in terms of national government-formation patterns one could make the case that the second period did not end until 1998 when, with the inclusion of the Greens in the governing coalition, for the first time since 1960 a party other than the traditional three was represented in the federal government. In this paper we shall examine more closely elections and government formation in the latter two time periods and at both the national and sub-national levels in order to determine whether government formation patterns at one level have basically just been replicated at the other level and whether there has been a change over time in that regard. This will be followed by a closer look at the FDP’s ?hinge? role in coalition formation at the national and Land levels. Has the FDP’s role diminished over time? Have the Free Democrats formed coalitions with the same partners at the national and sub-national levels? Or have they formed governing coalitions in the L?nder that deviated from the national government in terms of party composition? Has the rise of the Greens adversely affected the FDP’s ?opportunity structure,? that is, have the Free Democrats been less often in a position to be the majority-maker (purely in terms of numbers) for either CDU/CSU or SPD? Thus, we will also briefly assess the Greens? potential role as a ?hinge? party and the relationship between that role and the formation of deviant/innovative coalitions at the Land level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will challenge the common myth that Westphalia was the birth of a new secularizing order in Europe. I will instead explore John Bossy's idea that the birth of the modern state represented a "migration of theholy" from the church to the state. I will draw on the historical work of Heinz Schilling and others to show that confessionalization was not solved by Westphalia but was itself deeply implicated in the creation of the modern state, and I will explore the implications of this for contemporary political theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing turnout in Germany local council elections is of special importance. First, voting is still the most important form of citizens' participation in local politics. Second, there has been a „dramatic" decline in local turnout during the past decade. Third, local government in Germany differs strongly. This variety allows for comparative analyses of institutional differences and their effect on local turnout, holding constant the national context. The question in this paper is: Do local institutions like the electoral systems, the importance of the local councils vis-à-vis the mayors, the combined election of local council and European parliament elections, or national parties affect turnout in German local council elections? The question is answered by using data for more than 10,000 communities from eleven German states between 1998 and 2002. The results show only effects from different electoral systems, which, however, have to be cross-checked by further analyses using other points of time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the proposition that small parties have disproportionate bargaining power under proportional representation. It presents both simulation results and case studies of Germany and Israel. We find that small parties have disproportionate influence only when the number of parties is very small. As the number of parties climbs above 4, influence tends toward proportionality. Furthermore, large party bias is far more likely than small party bias. Proportional representation elections may produce a surprisingly "majoritarian" political dynamic. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central concepts in political science is representation. It has been studied under theoretical as well as empirical lines of inquiry, both developing their own notions of the subject. Largely missing, however, is the actors' own perspective on this subject: how do politicians and citizens conceptualize political representation? In this paper, I will outline in what ways complex ideas like political representation can be studied empirically by discussing, first, general features of political concepts understood as cultural concepts. Second, I will ask how they match the methodology and methods of interpretive political science. Third, by using parts of my own study on actors concepts of political representation in Germany and the United States, the potentials of this approach will be considered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the "official stories" of political party finance in the United Kingdom and Germany to explore similarities and differences in the ways that party financing affects democratic governance. It looks at the 2 biggest parties in each of these countries, and asks what the patterns of giving may indicate about the motivations of the donors. this cross-national comparison highlights the British patterns of what looks like donors' pursuit of selective benefits, with a few donors giving at very high levels, with the governing party reaping disproportionate rewards, and with few donors giving across the political spectrum. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of new party systems involves very different dynamics from the transformation of established party systems in that politicians do not just try to win votes but also employ a wide range of coordination strategies to makes votes count for efficiently. These strategies include legal restrictions on party formations, changes in electoral vote counting procedures, pooling of seats through party switching and various electoral coalition arrangements. The paper shows how such strategies affect the coordination choices of voters and in doing so shaped the formation of Germany's postwar party system ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Europeanisation' has become a focal point of discussion in European integration studies. Although the term is used in different ways to describe a variety of phenomena, its meanings have usually been restricted to (in a strict sense) political processes, i.e. domestic political changes caused by European integration. Most studies have emphasised topdown dynamics inherent in this particular notion of Europeanisation, whereas bottom-up and/or transnational processes and attempts to analyse their interplay have entered the debate only recently. Our paper seeks to contribute to this debate by focusing on what we describe as the 'societal/trans-national' dimension of Europeanisation: Europeanisation dynamics within a societal context (football) with a considerable degree of transnationalisation. Through analysing five cases of Europeanisation within the realm of German football, we not only want to shed some light on an under-researched field of study for political scientists interested in 'Europeanising' mechanisms. We also aim at exploring the applicability of Europeanisation concepts derived from the analysis of political contexts to other areas of social interaction in order to capture hitherto neglected processes. Opening up the field in the societal/transnational direction should add to the awareness of the complexity of Europeanisation processes, but it may also incorporate the consciously perceived 'Europeanised' life worlds of European citizens into the academic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]