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This books provides basic information about the historical, ideological and legal foundations of the GDR, its political and economic and education system Not Reviewed

Das Buch macht mit den theoretischen Ansätzen der internationalen Kommunismus- und DDR-Forschung bekannt und entwickelt ein Analysekonzept für die politische Soziologie sozialistischer Systeme This book provides an overview of the theoretical concepts of comparative communism and provides an analytical framework for the political sociology of socialist systems

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 1986

Vor dem Hintergrund der politischen Entwicklung in der Sowjetunion analysiert dies Buch das Herrschaftssytem, die Funktionen des Staates und die Aufgaben des politischen Führungspersonals: der Kader in der DDR. This book provides an analysis of the political system and the power structure of the German Democratic Republic, based on an assessment of the historical and ideological developments in the Soviet Union. One central aspect is the recruitment and education and training of cadres in the political system and all sectors of society.

Cho and Gaines have recently criticized work by Burden and Kimball on split-ticket voting in the USA, suggesting that their estimates of the volume of such voting (derived using King's EI method) across Congressional Districts and States are unreliable. Using part of the Burden-Kimball data set, we report on a parallel set of estimates generated by a different procedure (EMax), which employs three rather than two sets of bounds. The results are extremely similar to Burden and Kimball's, providing strong circumstantial evidence for their conclusions regarding the impact of campaign spending and other influences on the volume of split-ticket voting

Erwartungen über den Wahlausgang haben einen festen Platz sowohl in Rational-Choice-Theorien des Wählerverhaltens als auch in stärker sozialpsychologisch orientierten Ansätzen. Die Bildung von Erwartungen und ihr Einfluss auf die Wahlentscheidung ist dabei jedoch ein noch relativ unerforschtes Gebiet. In diesem Beitrag werden anhand von Wahlstudien für Belgien, Österreich und Deutschland verschiedene Fragen der Erwartungsbildung und ihrer Auswirkungen untersucht. Zunächst wird die Qualität der Gesamterwartungen analysiert und verschiedene Faktoren identifiziert, die einen systematischen Einfluss auf die Erwartungsbildung haben. Im zweiten Schritt wenden wir uns den Einzelerwartungen über verschiedene Parteien und Koalitionen zu und finden eine moderate Verzerrung zugunsten der präferierten Parteien und Koalitionen. Dabei kann gezeigt werden, dass der Effekt des Wunschdenkens mit dem politischen Wissen und dem Bildungsgrad abnimmt. Schließlich werden in einem letzten Schritt zwei unterschiedliche Logiken für die Auswirkungen von Erwartungen getestet, das rationale Kalkül des koalitionsstrategischen Wählens zur Vermeidung der Stimmenvergeudung sowie der sozialpsychologisch begründete Bandwagon-Effekt. Das Ausmaß an politischem Wissen scheint dabei eine zentrale vermittelnde Variable zwischen den beiden Logiken zu sein.

This policy paper provides a reflection on the Joint Communication of the European Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign and Security Policy to the European Parliament and the Council “The EU and Central Asia: New Opportunities for a Stronger Partnership” (hereafter – the 2019 EU Strategy on Central Asia). The paper contains a general assessment, recommendations and a SEnECA Scorecard of the tasks set forth by the Strategy. It also gives a more detailed assessment of the Strategy’s third part – “Working better together” and offers recommendations on its implementation. The 2019 EU Strategy on Central Asia is a timely and necessary document during the period of changes in Central Asia. It is setting out a comprehensive approach and it signals a clearer understanding of the region, putting the emphasis on “working together” instead of “teaching how to live”. It also gives due attention to the expanding regionalisation trends and Afghanistan as a shared source of risks and opportunities. On the other hand, the strategy signals less ambitions compared to some expectations. The narrative of the EU’s approach is unclear since many tasks mentioned are rather general. Methods and tools for measurement and the underpinning financial resources for the implementation seem to fall short of the necessity. The potential of cooperation with the EU member states and like-minded external actors has not been sufficiently addressed. Also, insufficient emphasis on universal human rights upsets some in the EU and Central Asia, whereas too much emphasis on Afghanistan upsets others in the region. The aim of the SEnECA experts’ assessment is to support the implementation of the new strategy as constructively and concretely as possible., SEnECA - Policy Paper: Strengthening and Energizing EU-Central Asia Relations, vol. 14

The theory of strategic voting has been tested in experiments for elections in single member districts with three candidates or parties. It is unclear whether it can explain strategic voting behavior in a fairly common type of political system, multi-party systems with proportional representation, minimum vote thresholds, and coalition governments. In this paper, we develop a (non-formal) strategic voting game and show in a simulation that the model produces election scenarios and outcomes with desirable characteristics. We then test the decision-theoretic model in a laboratory experiment. Participants with a purely instrumental (financial) motivation voted in a series of 25 independent elections. The availability of polls and coalition signals by parties was manipulated. The results show that voters are frequently able to make optimal or strategic vote decisions, but that voters also rely on simple decision heuristics and are highly susceptible to coalition signals by parties.

The paper addresses two points: First, what is the effect of changes to the electoral system in Belgium and second, how do voters respond to the new electoral rules? If seat-maximization is the key link then this would lead to the prediction that parties that supported the change of the electoral system particularly the parties of the incumbent governing coalition (before the change took place for the 2003 election), should expect to fare better under the new rules than the old rules that translate votes into seats. The mechanical effects of the new electoral rules for 2003 when applied to the number of votes cast in 1995 and 1999 do have a small effect in the direction predicted by the theory. The governing parties together, particular the rancophone ones, can expect to fare better under the new rules than under the old rules. Regarding the second question, the number of Strategic Voters in a given district is typically predicted by the district magnitude, i.e. the number of seats that are awarded at the primary electoral district level. Contrary to previous studies there is strong evidence of strategic voting particularly within the small Belgian districts. This analysis further demonstrates that even the new incentives to cast a strategic vote through the need for every party to overcome 5% of the district vote share before gaining representation has already a systematic impact on the decision-making process of Belgium voters.

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU will lead to a partial re-design of the Union. Formal and informal coalitions within Europe are re-positioning themselves in order to shape this process. The Visegrád Four, i.e. the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, will be significantly affected by Brexit. Theoretically, they will gain influence on the European stage and could forma joint opposition to EU extensive regulatory and integration dynamics. The article analyses the increasing influence of the Visegrád Group and their political leverage in the European Council. The contribution also addresses current voting coalitions for the European Parliament in May 2019 and the changing constellation of the parliamentary groups after Brexit.

Coalition governments are the norm in many countries, even though voters can only cast their vote for an individual party, not a specific coalition. Some voters might nevertheless cast their vote in a way that maximizes the probability that a preferred coalition will be formed after the election. In the paper, we investigate the effect of coalition preferences and expectations on vote decisions, above and beyond the preferences for specific parties. We focus in particular on voters’ ability to form differentiated expectations about possible coalitions, the likelihood of a majority and the likelihood that the parties will be able to agree on a coalition. We report the results of a nationally representative survey conducted before the 2006 Austrian General Election. We collected detailed information about respondents' party and coalition preferences and expectations about the electoral outcomes. Green Party voters are used to demonstrate that the effect of coalition preferences depends on whether or not voters expect a coalition to succeed.

Our basic argument is that in multi-party systems we should not only analyze party preferences but also coalition preferences in order to explain voting behavior. We distinguish between coalition leaning and coalition preference and are interested in explaining under what conditions an explicit preference for a particular coalition of parties will be formed. Our hypothesis is that only for clearly identifiable pre-electoral coalition options we can expect to observe the formation of a coalition preference. We test this hypothesis with data from the German Federal election in 1998 and 2002. We find that parties sending clear coalition signals to the public are able to have an impact on individuals' decision-making process.