Suchergebnisse

"In diesem Artikel werden die Institutionalisierung der Politikwissenschaft in Slowenien (1961-1989) und der Einfluß der rezenten politischen Demokratisierung auf die (weitere Entwicklung der) Disziplin diskutiert. Zunächst wird die Legitimation der Disziplin mit den damit verbundenen Defiziten im Kontext des früheren sozialistischen Selbstverwaltungssozialismus hervorgehoben. Die Politikwissenschaft hatte danach - mit einiger Verzögerung - zwar einigen Einfluß auf den Demokratisierungsprozeß, dessen Praxis seinerseits aber zu einer nachhaltigen Veränderung der Disziplin führte. In diesem Zusammenhang wird die aktive Rolle der Slowenischen Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft seit 1989 ebenso beschrieben wie auch Veränderungen des Konzepts von 'politics' in der slowenischen Politikwissenschaft, von Forschungsstrategien und des universitären Curriculums, die neue Organisationsstruktur von Forschung und Lehre und die Europäisierung wie Internationalisierung der Disziplin behandelt werden." (Autorenreferat)

ABSTRACTWhy do students enroll in political science courses? I conducted an experiment designed to test the appeal of three possible motivations: students might hope to develop valuable skills, look for a better grasp of current events, or expect a deeper understanding of how the world works and their place within it. The experiment involved visiting several sections of Introduction to American Government courses. In each section, I advertised a political science course offered in the following semester. However, I varied the way in which the course was described and subsequently tracked whether students enrolled in it. I find that highlighting opportunities to develop skills does not have a significant effect on enrollment. In contrast, emphasizing "how the world works" is most effective at increasing enrollment. Qualitative evidence suggests that students are attracted to this type of course because it offers the opportunity for personal development and growth.

Die Regulierung eines Marktes ist das Ergebnis eines komplexen Prozesses, der sowohl von politischen als auch wirtschaftlichen Kräften beeinflusst wird. In drei sich ergänzenden Essays wird die Frage ökonometrisch untersucht, wie die Wirkungen und die Leistungsfähigkeit von Regulierungen neu zu bewerten sind, wenn die betroffenen Unternehmen ihrerseits die Regulierung beeinflussen können. Der erste Teil behandelt die Liberalisierung des Markteintritts im Mobilfunkmarkt in OECD Ländern in den neunziger Jahren. Insbesondere wird analysiert, wie politische und bürokratische Institutionen und die politische Umgebung im Deregulierungsprozess gewirkt haben. Hier werden relevante, "stilisierte Fakten" herausgearbeitet: Länder mit Mehrheitswahlsystemen, rechenschaftspflichtigen Regulierungsbehörden und rechtsorientierten Regierungen haben den Liberalisierungsprozess stärker vorangetrieben, während Länder mit einer Consensus-Demokratie, einem Präsidialregime, einer Koalitionsregierung und einem starken ex-monopolistischen Anbieter eher weniger oder langsamer dereguliert haben. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit konzentriert sich auf das strategische Verhalten der Unternehmen und auf die Frage, inwieweit dieses Verhalten von der politischen und bürokratischen Umgebung beeinflusst wird, in der die Unternehmen operieren. Diese Problematik wird anhand des US-amerikanischen Mobilfunkmarkts am Ende der achtziger Jahre empirisch untersucht, wobei die Beziehung zwischen der Entscheidung über das Regulierungssystem und die Preisentscheidungen der Unternehmen im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung steht. Es wird gezeigt, dass es den Unternehmen durch Ihre Lobbyingaktivitäten gelang, die Wahl des Regulierungssystems zu beeinflussen. Überprüft man die so getroffene Selektion, dann zeigt es sich, dass die Regulierung zwar im allgemeinen in die gewünschte Richtung gearbeitet hat, aber nicht sehr signifikant wirkte. Das Lobbying mancher Unternehmen war hierbei so erfolgreich, dass gerade solche Märkte nicht reguliert wurden, in denen es am effektivsten gewesen wäre. Im dritten Essay zusammen mit Astrid Jung wird die Beziehung zwischen dem Marktverhalten von Unternehmen und ihren Spenden an politische Parteien untersucht. Die empirische Analyse findet eine signifikante, starke und negative Verbindung zwischen Lobbyingausgaben und der Fähigkeit der Unternehmen Marktabsprachen abzuschließen. Das Ergebnis ist ein Hinweis darauf, dass geheime Absprachen auf dem Produktmarkt eine stärkere Gleichschaltung der politischen Ziele unter den Unternehmen fördert und damit weniger Lobbying nötig ist, um die so koordinierte Ziele zu erreichen. ; Regulation, like many other policy decisions, results out of a complex process that is shaped by political as well as economic forces. Therefore, regulatory decisions must be endogenized when studying their impact on the market outcome. This thesis offers various econometric approaches to study this issue. In the first contribution, I analyze how a country's political and bureaucratic institutions, as well as its political environment, affect the entry liberalization of the mobile telecommunications industry in OECD states during the 1990s. I found that majoritarian countries, countries with more accountable regulators, and countries with right-wing governments liberalized more intensely, whereas countries with consensus-type of democracies, a presidential regime, coalition rather than one-party governments, and a strong incumbent firm liberalized less. Next, I focus on the firms' strategic behavior and analyze how this is influenced by the political and regulatory environment. I use data from the U.S. mobile telecommunications industry in the late 1980's, which can be seen as a natural experiment because of its particular market and regulatory structure. The second essay studies the relation between the choice of a regulatory design and firms' pricing behavior. I show that, through their lobbying activities, firms endogenously influence the price-regulatory regime under which they operate. Accounting for this endogenous selection, price regulation is observed to decrease cellular tariffs. However, regulation is not particularly effective in reducing prices because firms prevent it from occurring where it would be mostly successful. In the final contribution together with Astrid Jung, we investigate the link between firms' political decision, i.e. their lobbying expenditures, and their product market conduct. The relationship between collusion and the industry's lobbying expenditures is strongly significant and negative: Higher lobbying expenditures foster a more competitive industry and collusive conduct reduces firms' contributions to the political system. The interpretation is that, if firms' political goals are not perfectly aligned, collusion in the product market reduces industry's total campaign contributions by enhancing firms' coordination in lobbying.

Examining a key puzzle in the study of electoral violence, this study asks how elites organize violence and why ordinary citizens participate. While existing theories of electoral violence emphasize weak institutions, ethnic cleavages, and the strategic use of violence, few specify how the political incentives of elites interact with the interests of ordinary citizens. Providing a new theory of electoral violence, Kathleen F. Klaus analyzes violence as a process of mobilization that requires coordination between elites and ordinary citizens. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork in Kenya, including hundreds of interviews and an original survey, Political Violence in Kenya argues that where land shapes livelihood and identity, and tenure institutions are weak, land, and narratives around land, serve as a key device around which elites and citizens coordinate the use of violence. By examining local-level variation during Kenya's 2007-8 post-election violence, Klaus demonstrates how land struggles structure the dynamics of contentious politics and violence.

My dissertation examines whether and how elections in Africa's emerging democracies support political accountability. Elections in developing countries often fail to meet acceptable standards of fairness, and this in turn can result in protest, violence, and fragility. Prior studies argue that ethnic fragmentation may produce these outcomes, but an "ethnic headcount" election in many African countries does not yield any one group's winner-- candidates must appeal to voters beyond their co-ethnics. I take a different approach and argue that Africans utilize a diverse set of information sources beyond ethnicity, including cues about performance and policy preferences, to demand accountable representation. In spite of these attempts, politicians frequently curtail legitimate electoral practices through corrupt manipulation of the vote, particularly when they perceive voters are likely to unseat them. Fraud creates incentives for violence between government security forces and opposition party supporters, activating a security dilemma between and within communities that encourages further fighting. Using the case of Kenya's 2007-08 election crisis, I test my argument focusing on three substantive areas : voting behavior, electoral fraud, and electoral violence. In Kenya, the fraudulent 2007 election sparked protests and wide-spread violence resulting in 1,500 deaths, 700,000 displaced people and the reversion of democratic progress. Contrary to standard accounts, my findings demonstrate that Kenyans supported well- performing candidates, regardless of their ethnicity. But commitment problems guaranteeing a free and fair race and a lack of an independent third party electoral commission to support a credible electoral process allowed for wide- spread rigging. Fraud instigated post-election protest and generated violence between party supporters, security forces, and communities. Ethnic fragmentation on its own did not cause this outcome. Novel data for my dissertation come from an exit poll, household surveys, election forensics, event count violence data, and ethnographic research from two years of fieldwork

The soc'ization function performed by the basic pol'al sci course is to reinforce pol'al identifications & inclinations toward pol'al involvement. When compared to their peers, pol'al sci students are distinguished by their greater interest in pol & predispositions toward pol'al activity. These orientations are maintained by the exposure to the courses. In addition, the pol'al system is perceived as more open to the student's intended involvement. Major outcomes of the basic pol'al sci course are not to widen the scope of pol'al participation but to confirm earlier processes of pol'al soc'ization. AA.

Panel data are a very valuable resource for finding empirical solutions to political science puzzles. Yet numerous published studies in political science that use panel data to estimate models with dynamics have failed to take into account important estimation issues, which calls into question the inferences we can make from these analyses. The failure to account explicitly for unobserved individual effects in dynamic panel data induces bias and inconsistency in cross-sectional estimators. The purpose of this paper is to review dynamic panel data estimators that eliminate these problems. I first show how the problems with cross-sectional estimators arise in dynamic models for panel data. I then show how to correct for these problems using generalized method of moments estimators. Finally, I demonstrate the usefulness of these methods with replications of analyses in the debate over the dynamics of party identification.

Discussion begins by identifying three dimensions of the Internet revolution related to social science teaching & research: the growth of scholarly resources available in electronic format, hypertext, & concept formation. The implications of the information revolution for the traditional environment of scholarly research are considered, critically assessing the potential & limits of hypertext language when applied to the social sciences. Attention is then given to the Hyperpolitics project, a software platform for concept development on the Web. Four steps making use of hypertext that result in the construction of concept matrices are described: (1) selecting keywords, (2) selecting references, (3) linking keywords, & (4) linking matrices.