Suchergebnisse

'Die Analyse von acht nationalistischen Parteien im EU-Parlament zeigt, dass sich diese nicht nur in der Fraktion 'Identität, Tradition, Souveränität' (ITS) zusammenfanden, sondern auf verschiedene parlamentarische Gruppen verteilt sind. Die EU kritisieren sie auf der Basis ihres ethnischen Nationsmodells. Dies ist sowohl für die Innen- auch für die Außenpolitik relevant: entlang von Kriterien wie Abstammung, Konfession oder Muttersprache wird ein Großteil der Bevölkerung eines Landes zu Nationsangehörigen bestimmt, während der Rest - unabhängig vom Besitz der Staatsbürgerschaft - von der nationalen Gemeinschaft ausgeschlossen bleibt. Außenpolitisch wird dieses Nationsmodell relevant, wenn diese Kriterien zur Legitimation einer Änderung von Staatsgrenzen herangezogen werden, innerhalb derer die als ethnische Gemeinschaft definierte Nation auch politisch vereint werden soll. Die Studie legt verschiedene Strategien dar, wie europäische Demokratien auf die Herausforderungen des Nationalismus reagieren können. Hierzu gehört die Politik der Antidiskriminierung und Gleichbehandlung im Einklang mit der Europäischen Charta der Grundrechte, eine Fortsetzung der Politik des interkulturellen Dialogs, ein kritischer Umgang mit historischen Determinismen und Kontinuitätsthesen, ein offener Diskurs über die Kohäsionskraft des politischen Nationsmodells, eine Auseinandersetzung mit Themen, die sich nationalistische Parteien auf ihre Fahnen geschrieben haben, und die Entwicklung von Alternativen zur Stärkung des sozialen Zusammenhalts. All jenen Organisationen, die eine Politik der ethnischen Ausdifferenzierung, Ausgrenzung und Diskriminierung betreiben oder auf Kosten benachbarter Staaten bzw. Regionen Grenzrevisionen einfordern, muss entgegengetreten werden.' (Autorenreferat)

Over the past 50 years organ transplantation has become an established worldwide practice, bringing immense benefits to hundreds of thousands of patients. The use of human organs (hereinafter â?~organsâ?T) for transplantation has steadily increased during the last two decades. Organ transplantation is now the most cost-effective treatment for end-stage renal failure, while for end-stage failure of organs such as the liver, lung and heart it is the only available treatment. Click here to download PDF 806kb You can read a summary of the document here

The insular usage of media sources is a common tool for populist actors to position themselves in relation to the social mainstream and to hold up their claim of creating a counter public. In this article, we traced these dynamics by analysing differences in the insularity of right-wing populist parties' source repertoires compared to other parties, i.e., the exclusivity of the sources used by populist politicians. By analysing the linking practices of parliamentarians in seven EU countries and Switzerland on Twitter we were able to test the impact of political and media context on these practices. In a second step, we asked to what extent the insularity of sources allows us to draw conclusions on the insularity of topics, i.e., whether right-wing populists used a broad or narrow topic agenda. Our key findings: In countries with high levels of media trust and low levels of polarization, the populist source repertoire features a comparatively low insularity, except for politically marginalized populist parties that use more insular sources. Regardless of the insularity of source use, right-wing populist parties in almost all countries feature a high degree of topic insularity, making a narrow topic agenda the cross-national characteristic of right-wing populist communication.

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Since the Treaty of Lisbon, the desire of parliaments to adapt to their new powers has led to a new wave of Europeanization (Hefftler et al. 2015). However, the Early Warning System (EWS) and the Political Dialogue with the Commission only constitute one small part of parliamentary scrutiny for regional parliaments, which still largely rely on traditional tools such as mandates, debates and questions. Therefore, this paper studies a traditional mechanism of scrutiny, parliamentary questions, in order to understand the degree of Europeanization of regional parliaments and their interest in different parliamentary functions more fully. The study shows that the Europeanization of traditional scrutiny mechanisms is progressing slowly, but also that the proportion of MPs who ask EU-related questions is now relatively high. The vast majority of these MPs are not members of the European Affairs Committee. The main functions of parliamentary questions are a representative function and information function. Finally, the focus and content of parliamentary questions show that regional parliaments do indeed have a distinctive territorial approach to EU affairs.

Intro -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1 Introduction -- 1.1 Purpose of the Book -- 1.2 State of Research -- 1.3 The Representative Puzzle -- 1.4 Outline of the Book -- References -- 2 Theoretical Framework -- 2.1 The 'Standard Account' of Parliamentary Representation and EU Politics -- 2.2 National Parliamentary Representation in the EU: The Concept of This Study -- 2.3 Whom and How to Represent in EU Politics? -- 2.4 Summarizing the Theoretical Approach -- References -- 3 Data and Methodology -- 3.1 Selection of Countries, Topics, Parliamentary Debates and Interview Partners -- 3.1.1 Comparison Across Countries and Topics -- 3.1.2 Parliamentary Debates and Interview Partners -- 3.2 Data Collection: Representative Claims Analysis and Qualitative Interviews -- 3.2.1 Representative Claims Analysis -- 3.2.2 Qualitative Interviews -- 3.3 Data Evaluation: Regression Analyses and Typology of MPs -- 3.4 Dependent Variables and Data Structure -- References -- 4 Focus and Style of Representation in EU Politics -- 4.1 The Purpose of This Chapter -- 4.2 Focus of Representation: Whom to Represent in EU Politics? -- 4.3 Style of Representation: How to Represent in EU Politics? -- 4.4 Focus and Style of Representation: Whom and How to Represent in EU Politics? -- 4.5 Conclusions -- References -- 5 Explaining MPs' Representative Behavior in EU Politics -- 5.1 The Purpose of This Chapter -- 5.2 Institutional and Party Strategic Factors -- 5.2.1 Left-Right and EU Party Positions -- 5.2.2 Governing Responsibility and European Experience -- 5.2.3 Topic and Position in Claims-Making -- 5.2.4 Committee Membership and Governing Responsibility -- 5.2.5 Catch-All Parties vs. Single-Issue Parties -- 5.3 Operationalization -- 5.3.1 Dependent Variables -- 5.3.2 Independent Variables -- Regression of Focus of Representation.

AbstractThe role of national parliaments in EU matters has become an important subject in the debate over the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. Yet despite a remarkable increase in parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, the added value in terms of democratic legitimacy will remain limited if citizens are not aware of their activities. Given that citizens mainly experience politics through the media, the aim of the paper is therefore to explore whether and under what conditions parliamentary involvement in EU matters is visible in national newspapers. The paper draws on two quantitative datasets covering parliamentary EU activities and relevant newspaper articles in seven Member States between 2010 and 2013. Results suggest that the efforts of active parliaments pay off. In addition, conflict within government coalitions over EU issues and greater salience of EU politics in public opinion increase coverage while, surprisingly, both public and parliamentary euroscepticism do not.