Bøger i Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft serien

The book focuses on the traditional view of party-voter representation, parties and their respective positions, and party systems as central actors, the role of governmental institutions as well on policy inputs, outputs, and outcomes and the agenda setting process. The fundamental characteristics of the political actors such as political parties and the party system and their ideological composition are dealt with. The role governmental institutions play in the policy making process are exemplified covering the characteristics of the agenda-setting power and the consequences for the government¿s survival. The results of these mechanisms are analyzed while focusing on some classical policies of comparative research such as social and environmental policy.

This book examines the role of scientific expertise in minimum wage policy making in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It finds that scientific research is an important part of the public discourse on minimum wages in all three countries. Newspapers frequently cite scholars and research institutions, providing their readers with a good sense of how scientific research evaluates the effects of minimum wages. How often this happens depends on the context. Most importantly, newspapers from the United States cite researchers more frequently than newspapers from the two European countries. The book also shows that scientific research influences the policy preferences of political actors such as trade unions, political parties, and government agencies. The influence is based on policy-oriented learning. It is strong in Germany and the United Kingdom, and weaker in the United States. In both cases, cross-country differences are found to be related to different styles of using scientific expertise in the three countries.

This study has two central research questions: Do democracy profiles affect policy performance?

Das staatliche Instrument der Allgemeinverbindlicherklärung von Tarifverträgen (AVE) vermag Flächentarifsysteme zu stabilisieren, weil es die Tarifbindung auf nicht-organisierte Unternehmen ausdehnt. Doch was geschieht mit dem Instrument unter dem zugenommenen Druck, Systeme der Lohnfindung umzubauen? Der Autor beleuchtet den institutionellen Wandel der AVE und untersucht die Interessen von Arbeitgebern und Gewerkschaften an der staatlichen Stützung der Tarifpolitik mittels AVE. Das Buch trägt dadurch zu einem besseren Verständnis für die Stabilität und den Wandel der europäischen Tarifsysteme bei.

By studying the influence of the two main external actors in post-Soviet space, the EU and Russia, this study contributes to the increasing body of literature that studies the causes of democratic recession and authoritarian backlash in post-Soviet states and the role of regional actors in these processes.

In diesem Buch wird der Whole-Nation Bias, eine für die ländervergleichende Forschung hochrelevante Verzerrungsproblematik, erstmals einer empirischen Untersuchung sowie einer umfangreichen theoretischen Exploration unterzogen. Im theoretischen Teil des Buches erfolgt eine konzeptionelle Ausdifferenzierung des Whole-Nation Bias. Außerdem skizziert Felipe Böttcher das Zustandekommen, mögliche Erscheinungsformen sowie die Konsequenzen dieser Verzerrungsproblematik. Die empirische Erfassung hat schließlich zum Ziel, die Magnitude in unterschiedlichen staatlichen Kontexten quantifiziert darzustellen. In einer umfangreichen Datenerhebung wurden dazu 6.150 Indikatorwerte für 410 Regionen in 18 föderalen Staaten berechnet und so die Demokratiequalität sowohl auf der subnationalen als auch auf der nationalen Ebene dieser Länder erfasst.

Modern political parties assume different roles, contemporary leaders can more heavily influence politics, governments face new constraints and new collective bodies continue to form, propose new ways of participation and policy making, and attract citizens and activists.

The contributions to this edited volume discuss constitutional politics in 20 Central and Eastern European countries. The country chapters describe all constitutional amendments and new constitutions after the first post-communist constitution-making, all failed amendment attempts, and the political discourses about constitutional politics.