Suchergebnisse

This paper focuses on the public diplomacy (PD) practices of the EU that is confronted with two distinct challenges. First, the EU aims to reform its external action in order to become a global power and leader in the changing multipolar world. Second, it purports to fight the ongoing economic crisis that not only weakens the actual global capabilities of the EU, but damages its international image and reputation as a power and a leader. The paper assumes the potential of EU PD tools in meeting these challenges and tests this assumption in one case study of international public opinion on the EU in its immediate neighbourhood (Ukraine). Importantly, the study confronts an additional challenge: EU PD is described in the relevant literature to be a disjointed, under-resourced and overlooked policy area.

As the rational choice model of "policy" proliferates in "policy studies," the social sciences, modern governments, organizations, & everyday life, a number of anthropologists are beginning to develop a body of work in the anthropology of public policy that critiques the assumptions of "policy" as a legal-rational way of getting things done. While de-masking the framing of public policy questions, an anthropological approach attempts to uncover the constellations of actors, activities, & influences that shape policy decisions, their implementation, & their results. In a rapidly changing world, anthropologists' empirical & ethnographic methods can show how policies actively create new categories of individuals to be governed. They also suggest that the long-established frameworks of "state" & "private," "local" or "national" & "global," "macro" & "micro," "top down" & "bottom up," & "centralized" & "decentralized" not only fail to capture current dynamics in the world but actually obfuscate the understanding of many policy processes. 1 Appendix, 72 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2005 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Prior research has failed to attend adequately to the ways in which state-level political actors in the USA think about and relate to public opinion. While some research has considered how political actors, such as legislators and state agency staff members, assess public opinion on penal issues, that body of research has been limited both conceptually and methodologically. This article argues that an enterprise perspective on policy making combined with a constructionist perspective on public opinion have the potential to deepen our understanding of penal policy making. To that end, descriptive data from interviews with a wide range of political actors in New York State are considered for what they indicate about the dynamics of public opinion construction, assessment, and use among political actors engaged in penal policy making.

Internetnutzung.

Themen: Kenntnis von öffentlichen Internetzugangsmöglichkeiten in der
Wohngegend (in der Bibliothek, im Gemeindezentrum, im Rathaus, in der
Post, bei der Arbeitsagentur); Internetzugang im Haushalt; Gründe für
fehlenden Internetzugang im Haushalt; Art des Internetzugangs (z.B.
ISDN, ADSL, via Kabel-TV oder WAP); Anzahl der Internetnutzer im
Haushalt; monatliche Kosten des Internetzugangs, Kostenentwicklung im
Vergleich zum Vorjahr sowie Gründe für gesunkene bzw. gestiegene
Kosten; Nutzungsorte für das Internet; Zeiten der Internetnutzung;
Nutzungshäufigkeit; aufgetretene Sicherheitsprobleme bei der
Internetnutzung (Virenbefall, Missbrauch der Kreditkartennummer, Spam);
Häufigkeit privater Einkäufe im Internet (Waren oder Dienstleistungen);
Art der aufgetretenen Probleme bei Interneteinkäufen sowie Art der
Lösung dieser Probleme; durchgeführte Behördenkontakte via Internet
(Informationssuche, E-Mail-Anfrage, Formularversand z.B.
Steuererklärung, Kfz-Registrierung); Häufigkeit der elektronischen
Behördenkontakte; Schwierigkeiten, Internetseiten in der Muttersprache
des Befragten zu finden sowie präferierte Inhalte, die in der
Muttersprache abrufbar sein sollten (Gesundheit, Wissenschaft, fremde
Kulturen, Reiseinformationen, Übersetzungen ausländischer Zeitungen,
geschäftliche Informationen).

Demographie: Geschlecht; Alter; Alter bei Ende der Ausbildung;
berufliche Position; Anzahl der Personen ab 12 Jahren im Haushalt;
Region; Ortsgröße.

AbstractThis article reports on a survey study comparing the general public's attitude towards nudging to its attitude towards the traditional tools of government: information, subsidies, taxes and mandates. The study was based on responses from a representative sample of the adult Swedish population. In separate evaluations, the respondents rated how positively or negatively they perceived a set of specific policy tools, traditional and behavioral, across different policy goals. Overall, information and subsidies were more positively perceived than the other types of policy tools, nudging included. Respondents' attitudes towards the policy tools were partly explained by individualistic ideological views, whether they agreed with the intended policy goals, and certain socio-demographic variables. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed.

Comprising three volumes of contributions from expert authors from around the world, The SAGE Handbook of Political Science aims to frame, assess and synthesize research in the field, helping to define and identify its current and future developments.

This short response presses further on considerations about the N of cases and so-called qualitative and quantitative evidence in political research. I ask whether Dowding's critique of the claims of causal process-tracing is relevant to case studies as they appear in real-life political science. I argue that choosing a case is an integral part of performing a case study and case studies in reality are always situated within research designs that are attentive to a case's relationship to others. Dowding's work in my view could be complemented by a further elaboration of its pragmatic implications for how we consider and favour certain approaches to sampling and types of data in our field. In widening the debate, I ask why systematic reviews and meta-analyses are conspicuous by their absence in political science. Finally, I return to a discussion of what this means for disciplinary culture and cumulative advancement of disciplinary knowledge.