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Previous empirical research on democracy and global warming has mainly questioned whether democracy contributes to climate protection. However, there is no consensus in the theoretical literature on what institutional traits of democracy are crucial for climate policy. Thus, results based on indices that summarize multiple democracy quality dimensions could be misleading, as their effects could balance each other out or hide the relative importance of each institutional trait. This article examines whether the analysis of the effects of democracy quality dimensions, measured by separate indicators, contributes to a better understanding of cross-national variance in climate policy compared to the focus on the regime type difference, measured by democracy quality measures. Compared to earlier research, the results indicate that the positive effect of democracy on commitment to climate cooperation depends on the realization of political rights. We find little to support the claim that democracy quality dimensions matter for climate policy outcomes. The main implication of our findings is that it could be fruitful to use more disaggregated democracy measures for the analysis of substantive research questions.

International law is generally considered to be a good thing. With important exceptions, such as Critical Legal Studies, scholarship in both International Relations (IR) and International Law (IL) reinforces this 'nice law' assumption and therefore overlooks or underestimates the law's negative aspects. In contrast, this article assumes the power of international law to examine how international law can have effects that are unintended, unhelpful, or even perverse. In particular, I argue that international law distorts policy- and decision-making processes in liberal democracies by eroding personal responsibility and decreasing accountability; legal expertise and legal virtues crowd out important virtues of statecraft and prudence while shrinking our capacity for sophisticated moral and political thought; and an excessive focus on law can lead to suboptimal foreign policy outcomes. Rather than law being a bad thing per se, I examine the significant strategic and moral limits of international law. This raises the need to lower our expectations of international law, carefully examine the relationship between power and international law, and political responsibility and legal ethics, and more fully embrace our own personal responsibility. The article closes by suggesting a research programme on the dark sides of international law from various theoretical perspectives.

Cover -- 1 Erkenntnistheoretischer und naturwissenschaftlicher Befund, Grenzen von Wachstum und Technik und die Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit tradierter westlicher Lebensformen -- A. Problemstellung: Jenseits von Finanzkrise, Flüchtlingskrise, Arbeitsmarkt, Kriegen, Renten, Demographie - und zu ihrer Basis -- B. Westliche Wirtschafts- und Lebensformen: nicht dauerhaft und weltweit durchhaltbar? -- I. Probleme und empirische Grundlagen: Ressourcen- und Senkenprobleme - insbesondere, aber nicht nur der Klimawandel

This article reviews the concept of citizen participatory governance or citizen participation in public policy-making, a new mode of institutional arrangement increasingly becoming popular in many industrialized democracies. The governance of citizen participation may take different forms, and past studies used different terms in describing the concept. This article take a brief look at various forms of citizen participation (citizen participation in budgeting, collaborative governance, public-private partnership, and citizen coproduction of public service) and explain their concepts as demonstrated in prior research. In a nutshell, this article conclude that these various forms of citizen participation are not well conceptualized in the past literature and calls for future research in this research area with growing importance.

"Turkey's Ergenekon investigation is the largest and most extensive legal process in the history of the republic. It is also one of the most divisive. For many people, it represents an historic moment to rid the country of the armed forces' retrogressive political influence. For others, though, it is part of the government's attempt to extend its control of the judiciary, the media and intelligence services. The stakes are high. Both the proponents of the inquiry and its opponents claim that the very future of democracy is imperilled. Having set out the background to the case and highlighted its main features, this paper reviews the Turkish's public's response in what is an increasingly polarised debate." (author's abstract)

Main description: Echternkamp analysiert die Deutungen des Krieges in seiner Endphase und in der Besatzungszeit, die Selbstbilder soldatischer Erfahrungsgemeinschaften sowie die Neuerfindung der bundesdeutschen Soldaten. Die Kontroversen um Weltkrieg, Wehrmacht und Wertorientierung waren kein Hemmnis, sondern ein dynamisches Element jenes Prozesses, der die demokratisch-pluralistische Nachkriegsordnung in Westdeutschland legitimiert hat.