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The effects of the demographic challenge will change the nature of politics and the emphasis of political sectors over the next 20 years, especially on a local level. This calls for new ways of thinking, new social skills and a new frame of awareness to allow for sustainable development. The community of Illingen in the Saarland, a town of 18,000 residents, has not denied the demographic change, but has accepted it. It shows how the populace, politics and administration have been confronted with inconvenient truths in a participation process. The process of strategically aimed, participative development planning allows for flexible responses to new situations – even to new suggestions in governmental arrangements. For the first time we can empirically support the claim that demographic change can be controlled using an integrated development concept.

This study focuses on the "European city" model and its impact on urban policies, emphasising city centre housing as a central issue. The urban renaissance as it is discussed in literature will also be reconsidered, as this study seizes on these two subject matters and explores their relation looking at Berlin's historic city centre as the study area. The development of Berlin's historic city centre as a housing location since 1990 is analysed showing how in four phases the change of this area from a marginal populated urban frontier to one of Berlin's most favoured and expensive housing locations has developed using the "European City" as a development model.

The introductory article of the book outlines the project EUCOWE 'Working Times and Operating Hours in Europe'. In the context of this project, a survey of companies on working and operating hours was conducted in six European countries - France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Germany, in 2003. The project EUCOWE is the first representative and standardised European company survey that covers companies of all categories and sizes, as well as all industrial sectors. Theoretical aspects of the comparative measurement of operating hours are discussed. Aims, methods, and progression of the project are presented, and the six empirical chapters of the volume are summarised. (IAB)

In this article, the relationship between operating hours and working time models, depending on company size, is investigated. The focus of the study, which is based on data from the project EUCOWE 'Working Times and Operating Hours in Europe', is on the question of specific patterns in the utilisation of different working time models aimed at the disconnection and increased flexibility of working and operating hours in small and medium-sized enterprises, as compared to large establishments. Also, further company characteristics such as the establishment's independence, industrial sector, and competitive orientation, are taken into account. Furthermore, country-specific differences in the organisation of operating hours in the investigated countries (Germany, Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands) are demonstrated. (IAB)

This article provides the first international comparison of the duration and composition of operating hours in the service sector, which was conducted within the project EUCOWE 'Working Times and Operating Hours in Europe'. The specific structures of the service sector are exposed, and the theoretical discussion of measurement of operating hours in the service sector is retraced. Using descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses, it is shown how company size, country-specific factors, and working time patterns impact on the duration and composition of operating hours in the various branches of the service sector. Therein, it is differentiated between trade and company-related, social and person-related, and public and private-business services. (IAB)

"Migration from the new member states of the European Union (EU) has accelerated in the course of the EU's eastern enlargement. About 250,000 persons per annum moved from the eight new member states (NMS-8) who joined the community in 2004 into the EU-15 during the first three years following enlargement, and another 150,000 per-sons from Bulgaria and Romania during the same period of time. This migration took place despite a real convergence of per capita GDP levels. In this context, this chapter addresses two questions: first, does real convergence of GDP mitigate migration pressures? Second, what is the impact of migration on convergence and labour markets?; We find, first, that the real convergence of per capita GDP levels can reduce migration levels, but only to a limited extent under reasonable assumptions on real GDP convergence. Second, we find that migration itself supports the convergence of per capita GDP levels, wages and unemployment rates. In the long run, the GDP of the enlarged EU will, however, increase by some 0.6 per cent if 4 per cent of the population of the new member states emigrates into the EU-15. In particular the GDP of Ireland will increase by more than 4 per cent and that of Austria, Germany and the UK by about 2 per cent. These gains dwarf those of a further integration of goods and capital markets. The main winners are the migrants themselves: their income increases by more than 100 per cent. While natives in the sending countries tend to gain on average, the aggregate impact on the income of natives in the receiving countries is neutral or even negative. However, migration has only a negligible impact on the convergence of native income levels between the East and the West. The unemployment rate increases in the immigration countries by less than 0.1 percentage points, but blue-collar workers are particularly affected. Their earnings net of taxes and transfers might decline by 0.2 per cent in the receiving countries at the given skill composition of the workforce from the new member states." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

The main explanatory variables used to analyze the transformation of state social ist societies are elite circulation and renewal. It is contended that, while the transformation may be elite-led, transformation should be analyzed as a revolutionary process promoted by, and favoring, class interests. It is hy pothesized that the transformation of the postcommunist countries has involved a process in which endogenous and exogenous class forces have played a major role. The absence of (economic) civil society under state socialism gave rise to a deficient ascendant capitalist class. Viewing capitalism as an international system, political elites acting in the international arena, through an alliance with exogenous elites, activated a move to markets and privatization. In the post-communist period, class in equality and tension have risen. The weakness of civil so ciety is a consequence of an undeveloped incumbent bourgeois class, which in turn limits the effectiveness of class rule. The rapid forms of imposed economic and political change, involving the dislocation of the social structure, have weakened the formation of an oppositional class consciousness. The inclusion of counter-elites into the political system (the "elite settlement") ensuring a form of political management represses ideological opposition and further limits the rise of class consciousness.

Die Autoren geben zunächst einen kurzen Überblick über die Forschungsliteratur zum allgemeinen Wesen sozialer Probleme, zur Wahrnehmung sozialer Probleme bei Jugendlichen und zu ihrem Wissensstand über militärische und sicherheitspolitische Themen. Sie berichten anschließend ausführlicher über die Ergebnisse aus dem "Biannual Attitude Survey of Students" (BASS), in welchem nach den Terroranschlägen des 11. September drei Gruppen von US-amerikanischen Studenten im Frühjahr 2003 befragt worden sind: College-Studenten, Kadetten des "Reserve Officer Training Corps" (ROTC) und Absolventen der Militärakademie. Die vorgestellten Ergebnisse beziehen sich jeweils auf die verschiedenen Kategorien von Gemeinschaft, Nation und Welt und die Wahrnehmung sozialer und militärischer Probleme in diesen Bereichen. (ICI).