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Die neue Frauenfrage
(2013)
Priorität: Geringverdiener
(2013)
Obsessed with the preservation of national unity and homogeneity, the Turkish state has since its inception had little tolerance for Kurdish demands for greater legal recognition and a measure of autonomy. However, its 1987 decision to give its citizens the right to petition the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to enhance its chances for membership to the European Union (EU) obliged the state to confront, at the transnational level, the Kurdish demands for human rights protection and equal treatment. The cases taken to the ECtHR by Kurdish civilians revealed that cloaked in the language of ‘war on terrorism’, the Turkish military had committed egregious violations including the forced displacement of civilians , the destruction of property, the burning of forests, as well as extra-judicial killings, disappearances and torture. Turkey’s EU candidacy increased the existing international pressure on the government to revise its mode of dealing with the insurgency and with Kurdish political and cultural demands more generally. The EU demanded
that Turkey first and foremost execute the ECtHR’s judgments on Kurdish issues, but also grant the Kurds limited linguistic rights in order to fulfil minority rights protection as part of the membership accession criteria. Yet, as argued in this chapter, although there has been some improvement, the problem has not been eradicated nor has there been any substantive change in government policy on the Kurdish question.
Severe economic and financial market crises exacerbate collective action problems and thus trigger challenges to legitimacy in democracies. The article presents a typology of decision-making modes in economic policy-making in normal times and crisis times. It shows that problems of time-inconsistency in combination with high uncertainty over re-distributive implications lead to an “ad-hoc-technocratization” of economic policy-making. The separation of decision-taking from input-based legitimacy-procedures is relevant for scholars of democracy because the redistributive implications of crisis policies are high. The “democratic deficit” of crisis policies is thus not a symptom of “Post-Democracy” but of the specific context arising in an economic crisis.
Aufbruch in die Euro-Union
(2013)
Trotz der offensichtlichen sozialpolitischen Relevanz und großen medialen Aufmerksamkeit des Phänomens Kinderlosigkeit sind das Ausmaß, die Ursachen und die Konsequenzen der Kinderlosigkeit in Deutschland bislang unzureichend untersucht worden, mit der Folge, dass in öffentlichen Debatten eine unkritische Verwendung irreführender, wenn nicht falscher Angaben über Kinderlosigkeit vorherrscht. Das Ziel des Bandes besteht vor diesem Hintergrund darin, das Phänomen der Kinderlosigkeit in Deutschland analytisch differenziert zu durchdringen und belastbare Daten und Ergebnisse über das Ausmaß und die Struktur, die Ursachen und Folgen von Kinderlosigkeit zu präsentieren.
Hintergrund
Je niedriger der soziale Status von Müttern und Vätern, desto höher ist die Verbreitung von Gesundheitsstörungen und Krankheiten bei ihnen selbst und auch bei ihren Kindern. Für Strategien der Gesundheitsförderung ist es entsprechend wichtig, Eltern mit niedrigem Sozialstatus stärker als bisher einzubeziehen.
Ziel
Da Eltern mit den bisherigen freien Angeboten nur sehr schwer erreicht werden können, wird in diesem Beitrag analysiert, auf welchen Wegen Elternbildungsprogramme über die Settings Kindergarten, Schule und Jugend- und Familienhilfe in die Lebenswelt aller Familien verbindlich eingebunden werden können.
Ergebnis
Am Beispiel von drei unterschiedlichen Elternbildungsprogrammen („Lions-Quest“, „STEP“ und „U-Boot“) wird im Rahmen einer formativen Evaluation analysiert, auf welche Weise diese Einbindung gelingen kann. Am Beispiel des STEP-Elterntrainings wird nachgewiesen, dass durch ein in die Settings eingebettetes Angebot mehr Mütter und Väter aus sozial benachteiligten Familien erreicht werden können als mit einem nicht institutionell verankerten Angebot.
Young women, and not young men, acquire the privileged diplomas offered by the educational system, and it is they who obtain the more promising career prospects. In this paper, we seek to identify factors that account for the declining school performance of boys and young men. After reviewing and analysing the international literature on gender and education, we integrate various explanatory approaches into a comprehensive socialisation model. The model focuses on the developmental tasks young men face during adolescence. Our central thesis is that the declining school performance of young men cannot be fully explained by their failure to cope with the developmental task ‘qualification’. Rather, the three other central clusters of developmental tasks – ‘social attachment’, ‘regeneration’, and ‘participation’ – have to be incorporated. The crucial implication is that supporting young men at school will show only limited results. Rather, to improve the school performance of young men, it is also necessary to address their deficits in coping with the other developmental tasks.
In einem Aufsatz in der Zeitschrift „Die Deutsche Schule“ habe ich in Heft 4 des Jahrgangs 1988, also vor 25 Jahren, „Thesen zur strukturellen Entwicklung des Bildungs-
systems in den nächsten fünf bis zehn Jahren“ zur Diskussion gestellt. In diesem Beitrag fasse ich im ersten Teil die Thesen in ihrer Essenz zusammen, sodass die Kernaussagen zu Strukturentwicklungen deutlich werden. Es handelte sich nicht nur um feststellende Thesen, die eine Einschätzung bestehender Trends und eine Prognose künftiger Entwicklungen beabsichtigten, sondern auch um normative Aussagen mit dem
Charakter von Handlungsempfehlungen an die Bildungspolitik, die eine Reaktion auf die zu erwartenden Trends vorschlugen. Im Zentrum stand das Postulat, ein „Zwei-Wege-Modell“ für das Schulsystem zu etablieren, indem neben dem Gymnasium eine Integrierte Sekundarschule aufgebaut wird. Im zweiten Teil konfrontiere ich die Thesen mit der heutigen Realität und stelle die Frage, ob die vor einem Vierteljahrhundert formulierten Trendfortschreibungen und Entwicklungsprognosen richtig waren. Im dritten Teil schreibe ich die Thesen zur strukturellen Entwicklung des Bildungssystems auf der Basis des Jahres 2013 fort.
Im Zusammenhang mit der Diskussion über das Für und Wider des dreigliedrigen Schulsystems in der Bundesrepublik machte der Autor dieses Artikels in den 1970er Jahren den Vorschlag, Haupt-, Real- und Gesamtschulen zu integrierten Sekundarschulen zusammenzufassen, mit eigenen Oberstufen auszustatten und dem Gymnasium gleichzustellen. Dieser Artikel zeichnet die wissenschaftliche und politische Diskussion zu diesem "Zwei-Wege-Modell". Die Analyse zeigt, dass nach anfänglicher vehementer Ablehnung im Zuge der Vereinigung der beiden deutschen Staaten eine schrittweise Annäherung an das Modell erfolgte. Die Gründe werden unter anderem in der Stärkung der international ausgerichteten empirischen Bildungsforschung und dem dadurch entstandenen Druck gesehen, Bildungsgerechtigkeit herzustellen. Hinzu kommen gestiegene Qualifikationsanforderungen sowie demografische Faktoren. Es wird die These vertreten, dass es sich hierbei um unumkehrbare Entwicklungstrends handelt und sich das Zwei-Wege-Modell mittelfristig in allen 16 Ländern durchsetzen wird.
Youth protest, sometimes accompanied by riots, in a number of
European countries over the last few years repeatedly trigger the question whether similar forms of protest can be expected in the near future from young people in Germany as well. While any, often spontaneous eruption of (violent) protest, can never be predicted with certainty, we argue, based on an analysis of the last Shell Youth Studies (cf. Shell Deutschland 2002, 2006, 2010), that it is rather unlikely to happen in Germany, indeed that if anything this likelihood has decreased over recent years. We identify three explanations for the – compared to a range of other European countries – striking acquiescence of the current young generation in Germany: 1. A range of institutions that keep young Germans in the education system until they finally find employment, 2. a strong culture of pragmatic individualism, and 3. a strong distrust of political parties.
Based on three in-depth case studies, the study analyzes how and why Chinese enterprises partner with governments in cooperative ventures which aim to simultaneously achieve poverty alleviation objectives and establish profitable business ventures in rural areas. The analysis draws out specific characteristics of three government-business partnerships in China, which vary in terms of governance structure, resource complementarity and incentives. The findings show that in this state capitalist system, outcomes of government-business partnerships depend on firms having unique resources and capabilities that serve particular policy objectives of the government. By the same token, in order to make partnerships attractive to firms, national and local governments must hold the keys to unique resources needed by enterprises looking to do business in low-income markets. The cases further illustrate that, in order to build and maintain successful government-business partnerships over time, the alignment of incentives plays an important role. In sum, complementary resources and well-aligned interests between firms and governments help to explain why some government-enterprise partnerships are more successful than others.
This paper analyzes the determinants of Chinese government support for methanol automobile fuel development. At the national level, a preference for low carbon alternatives, ongoing bureaucratic restructuring, and profitability concerns of the national oil companies (NOCs) help to explain a lack of support for methanol fuel. At the local level, a short-term and localized view of industry development explains why some governments actively promote methanol fuel through local standardization, subsidies, and management of NOC opposition. The case of methanol fuel illustrates how local governments with strong, embedded interests have filled in the national-level policy vacuum on this issue. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the evolving central–local relations in China and hold lessons for alternative fuel adoption efforts underway in many parts of the world.
Why do policies often seem to converge across countries at the same time? This question has been studied extensively in the diffusion literature. However, past research has not examined complex choice environments, especially where there are many alternatives. This article fills this gap in the literature. I show how Fine and Gray’s Competing Risks Event History Analysis can be used to tease apart the causes of policy convergence. I apply the method to an examination of the reasons why, from the mid-1990s to 2007, many countries created independent deposit insurers. I find an interaction between international recommendations and regional peers’ choices, particularly in the European Union. However, convergence appears to slow under the particular conditions of a banking crisis, regardless of how well independence is promoted. Possibly due to electoral incentives, democracies seem to have been more likely to create independent insurers. Ultimately, I demonstrate how competing risks analysis can help enable future research on policy choices, complementing methods previously applied in political economy.
Barriers to increasing energy efficiency: Evidence from small- and medium-sized enterprises in China
(2013)
This paper analyzes financial, informational and organizational barriers to energy efficiency investments for small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. Its findings are based on a survey of 480 SMEs in Zhejiang province, and complemented by semi-structured interviews with enterprises contained in the survey sample. Responses reveal that only a minority of SMEs in China actively perform energy saving activities at a significant level. The survey data suggest, further, that informational barriers are the core bottleneck inhibiting energy efficiency improvements in China's SME sector. Financial and organizational barriers also influence a company's energy saving activities, with interview-based evidence stronger than statistical evidence. The interviews point out three additional barriers to energy saving activities: the role of family ownership structures, lax enforcement of government regulations and the absence of government support as well as a lack of skilled labor. More than 40% of enterprises in the sample declared themselves unaware of energy saving equipment or practices in their respective business area, indicating that there are high transaction costs for SMEs to gather, assess, and apply information about energy saving potentials and relevant technologies. One policy implication of the study is that the Chinese government could play a more active role in fostering the dissemination of energy-efficiency related information in the SME sector.