Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe use of the term 'imperial presidency' in South Korea refers to the fact that the country's 1987 constitution grants the state's highest office holder de facto imperial powers with regard to domestic and foreign policy making. This version of the term therefore differs from Arthur M. Schlesinger's usage in the US context, which was critical of the discretionary powers exercised by US presidents in efforts to subvert the checks and balances of the US Constitution. Concentrating political power in the South Korean presidency severely curtails the work of the other political institutions, including its parliament (the National Assembly). Every time the presidency changes hands, the leadership structures of all other public institutions are subjected to major restructuring according to political loyalty, which interrupts their routine functioning. Overall, the presidency in its current form is dysfunctional and works as a barrier against democratic deepening. This article examines why lengthy debate over South Korea's imperial presidency has so far failed to result in comprehensive constitutional reform.

This article examines Corona crisis policies in Germany between January 2020 and March 2022. During this period, Corona crisis management can be analytically disaggregated into four different time periods. Each stage of policy-making included steadily growing authoritarianism combined with unclear objectives and erratic communication. Throughout the entire period, policy-making was driven by a closed community of advisors linked to government-financed research institutes, while other groups of experts were excluded from deliberation and decision-making. The almost single-minded emphasis on the rapid rollout of mRNA 'vaccines', i.e. efforts to 'solve' the crisis by way of pharmaceutical intervention, results currently in the imposition of a new form of authoritarian statehood, namely a 'biosecurity state'. The three substantial chapters in this paper (II-IV) will discuss, in turn, how actors, ideas, and institutions affected German government policies since the start of the Corona crisis. It is argued that Germany's closed style of policy-making under crisis conditions severely undermines the norms and values of liberal democracy.

Seit 1951 ist der Bundespräsident in Österreich der einzige direkt durch das Volk gewählte politische Repräsentant. In diesem Artikel wird die österreichische Bundespräsidentenwahl 2022 zum Anlass genommen, die Bedeutung dieses Staatsamts zu evaluieren. Zunächst wird die politische Pfadabhängigkeit des Amtes des Bundespräsidenten in der Ersten- (1919-1934) und Zweiten Republik (seit 1945) dargestellt (Abschnitt II). Dann werden die konstitutionellen Machtressourcen des Bundespräsidenten erklärt (Abschnitt III) und die Beziehungen zwischen der Bundespräsidentschaft und den anderen Bereichen des politischen Systems erläutert (Abschnitt IV). Im Abschnitt V wird der Bundespräsidentschaftswahlkampf 2022 als Fallstudie mit Hilfe soziologischer Konzepte von Pierre Bourdieu untersucht. Es wird gezeigt, wie die sechs Kandidaten in ihrer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Amtsinhaber Alexander Van der Bellen unterschiedliche Formen des "politischen Kapitals" wie z.B. Habitus, Lebensstil, Medienzugang und Themenwahl strategisch einsetzen. Die Schlussfolgerung des Artikels ist, dass die Pfadabhängigkeit der Bundespräsidentschaft insgesamt bestätigt wurde, d.h. der "Rollenverzicht" des Amtsinhabers Van der Bellen setzte sich auch 2022 gegen Forderungen nach einer "Rollenexpansion" durch.

AbstractThe German federal election of 2021 reshuffled Germany's party‐political hierarchy, but left the six‐party system intact. For the first time since 2002, the SPD narrowly overtook the CDU/CSU to become the party with the largest vote share. The Greens and the FDP also gained votes while the CDU/CSU and the Left party suffered high losses and the AfD minor losses. Crucially, party system continuity coexists with severe challenges for German policy makers, namely regional and global insecurity, decline in the country's infrastructure and social coherence, as well as the highly divisive management of the Covid crisis. While the electorate still focusses mostly on social protection and economic security, it is unclear whether Germany's political class can deliver on such expectations in a multi‐crisis context. Crucially, technocratic updating at the expense of liberal democracy and constitutional order will worsen rather than improve the current situation.

The unification of the two Yemeni states?the northern Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the southern People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), respectively?in 1990 has been a resounding failure. Merging the tribal-dominated northern and state-party dominated southern regimes meant increasing the number of factions competing for access to state resources to satisfy material and security needs of their respective networks of influence. In particular, efforts at growing the resource base of the unified state after 1990, by means of an expansion of oil and gas exploration and extraction, raised the revenue base of the state in an unsustainable manner. Such growth in national oil and gas rents increased rather than decreased competition over state authority to control the spoils. The major subsequent events, such as the 1994 civil war, the 2004-2010 "Saada wars" against the Houthi movement, the Yemeni version of the "Arab Spring" in 2011, the failure of the National Dialogue Conference (March 2013-January 2014), and the start of the Saudi and Emirati bombing campaign and subsequent ground war in Yemen since March 2015 all triggered major clashes between different factions of the Yemeni state bureaucracy, army, and civil society. On each of these occasions, efforts to freeze out some Yemeni actors produced escalating conflict between the remaining factions instead of a winning coalition that could have reestablished a degree of stability. The article explains how local, regional, and global factors have jointly overwhelmed the Yemeni actors, and how foreign intervention has led to the further deterioration of the pre-existing national crisis.

The unification of the two Yemeni states–the northern Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) and the southern People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), respectively - in 1990 has been a resounding failure. Merging the tribal-dominated northern and state-party dominated southern regimes meant increasing the number of factions competing for access to state resources to satisfy material and security needs of their respective networks of influence. In particular, efforts at growing the resource base of the unified state after 1990, by means of an expansion of oil and gas exploration and extraction, raised the revenue base of the state in an unsustainable manner. Such growth in national oil and gas rents increased rather than decreased competition over state authority to control the spoils. The major subsequent events, such as the 1994 civil war, the 2004-2010 "Saada wars" against the Houthi movement, the Yemeni version of the "Arab Spring" in 2011, the failure of the National Dialogue Conference (March 2013-January 2014), and the start of the Saudi and Emirati bombing campaign and subsequent ground war in Yemen since March 2015 all triggered major clashes between different factions of the Yemeni state bureaucracy, army, and civil society. On each of these occasions, efforts to freeze out some Yemeni actors produced escalating conflict between the remaining factions instead of a winning coalition that could have reestablished a degree of stability. The article explains how local, regional, and global factors have jointly overwhelmed the Yemeni actors, and how foreign intervention has led to the further deterioration of the pre-existing national crisis.

This article analyzes Germany's policy-making in response to the Corona crisis between January 2020 and March 2021. Two theoretical perspectives are advanced. The first concerns how the government's imposition of a 'state of emergency' affects liberal democratic policy-making resulting in the closure of deliberation in favor of top-down imposition. The second perspective looks at different types of policy learning under crisis conditions. The central thesis is that Germany's emergency regime failed to facilitate effective policy-making since it closed down venues in which policy learning could occur. Thus, the state of emergency combined authoritarianism and inefficiency. A variety of explanations are advanced to clarify causes for the sluggishness of the German federal, regional, and local government levels to meet Corona-related challenges.

AbstractThe global threat of the coronavirus pandemic has forced policy makers to react quickly with totally new policy‐making approaches under conditions of uncertainty. This article focuses on such crisis‐driven policy learning, examining how the experiences of China and South Korea as early responder states influenced the subsequent coronavirus crisis management in Germany. The first reaction of the German core executive was the quick concentration of decision‐making power at the top of the political hierarchy. Asserting the prerogatives of the executive included the radical simplification of the relationship between politics, law and science. State actors took emergency measures by recourse to a single piece of legislation—the 'infection protection law' (Infektionsschutzgesetz)—overriding other elements of the legal order. They also limited the government's use of scientific expertise to a small number of advisors, thereby cutting short debates about the appropriateness or otherwise of the government's crisis measures. Finally, German actors failed to understand that some of the earlier Chinese and Korean responses required a precondition—namely public willingness to sacrifice privacy for public health—that is absent in the German case.

AbstractGermany's Christian Democrats have started preparing for the time after Angela Merkel. After ten years as German chancellor facing a weak opposition, Merkel unexpectedly split the country in late 2015 and early 2016 because of her 'open border' policies that allowed more than 1 million refugees and migrants to rapidly enter Germany. Her management of the subsequent crisis was largely considered a failure and her party suffered a series of dramatic election defeats. Reacting to the negative electoral feedback, and in particular the breakthrough of the rightist and anti‐immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Christian Democratic Union organised an intra‐party contest to replace Merkel as party leader. Three candidates with different political profiles, Annegret Kramp‐Karrenbauer, Friedrich Merz and Jens Spahn, contested the election. By voting for Kramp‐Karrenbauer, the CDU membership voiced support for maintaining a large‐scale political coalition based on efforts to find compromises between different party wings and social and cultural interests.

Germany's Christian Democrats have started preparing for the time after Angela Merkel. After ten years as German chancellor facing a weak opposition, Merkel unexpectedly split the country in late 2015 and early 2016 because of her 'open border' policies that allowed more than 1 million refugees and migrants to rapidly enter Germany. Her management of the subsequent crisis was largely considered a failure and her party suffered a series of dramatic election defeats. Reacting to the negative electoral feedback, and in particular the breakthrough of the rightist and anti‐immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Christian Democratic Union organised an intra‐party contest to replace Merkel as party leader. Three candidates with different political profiles, Annegret Kramp‐Karrenbauer, Friedrich Merz and Jens Spahn, contested the election. By voting for Kramp‐Karrenbauer, the CDU membership voiced support for maintaining a large‐scale political coalition based on efforts to find compromises between different party wings and social and cultural interests.

This article reexamines the track record of German unification after three decades. The focus is placed on economic issues, while cultural, social, and geopolitical dimensions are dealt with more briefly. Following the introduction, Section II briefly examines the history of Germany's national division and the East German political events in late 1989 and early 1990 that produced the unification of the two Germanies on 3 October 1990. Sections III to V subsequently discuss the major political and economic events during the Kohl, Schröder, and Merkel Chancellorships, respectively.
Section III focuses on the high political and social costs of the initial economic disruption in the East due to the near single-minded focus on the rapid privatization of the former GDR enterprises. In Section IV, the negative feedback of the economic shock is discussed, namely high unemployment, the fiscal crisis of the welfare state, and the demographic collapse in the East. Section V sketches how the Great Recession of 2007-2008, the subsequent Euro currency, and the southern EU states' debt crises collectively crowded out the topic of intra-German reconciliation. The emerging overall picture advanced in Section VI is that a combination of muddling through, routinization (here also termed as "reconciliation by accident"), and policy failure most adequately describes the outcome of Germany's unification experience.
Finally, Section VII puts forward some policy suggestions for Korean audiences deriving from the German case. It is argued that the geopolitical situation of the two Koreas is fundamentally different. Thus, South Korea's main focus must be placed on patient inter-Korean engagement, focusing on conflict prevention while also engaging with all relevant external stakeholders.

Dieser Artikel analysiert die in der "Zeitschrift für Geopolitik" zum Thema "Eurasien" veröffentlichten Artikel, die während der NS-Zeit bis zur Einstellung der Monatsschrift veröffentlicht wurden (1933-1944). Dabei werden besonders die von Herausgeber Karl Haushofer und seinen Mitautoren vertretenen Ideen zu einem kooperativen Verhältnis zwischen NS-Deutschland und der Sowjetunion und die Rolle Japans in Ostasien diskutiert. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass die in der Zeitschrift veröffentlichten Artikel ein realistisches Bild der globalen Kräfteverhältnisse dieser Epoche vermittelten und dabei die Leser vor Krieg zwischen NS-Deutschland und den USA bzw. der Sowjetunion klar gewarnt wurden. Der Artikel diskutiert auβerdem Überschneidungspunkte zwischen den geopolitischen Ansichten von Haushofer und anglo-amerikanischen Autoren wie Halford J. Mackinder und Nicholas J. Spykman. Im Fazit wird gezeigt, dass zeitgenössische Ideen über die Rolle Eurasiens in der Weltpolitik, besonders die Frage der strategischen Bedeutung der Küstenzonen Eurasiens, auch in Analysen des 21. Jahrhunderts Anstöβe zu kritischem geopolitischen Denken geben können.

This paper analyses the Syrian conflict since 2011 in the context of the larger Middle East, focusing on local, regional and global actors. The first section highlights some geopolitical and historical factors regarding Syria. The second part outlines post-Cold War US and Israeli strategic debates on Syria and the Middle East. It is argued that US policy in the Syrian conflict since 2011 underlines the continuing significance of US-led regime change agendas as initially associated with the so-called "neoconservatives" and near unconditional US backing of Israel's regional strategic objectives. The third section examines how local conflicts in Syria, since mid-March 2011, became transformed into a lengthy global war over world order during which the US challenged Russia's long-standing geopolitical patronage of Syria's political leadership. The interaction between military and political factors and the manner in which the "crisis narrative" was managed in the Western media system is also sketched. Finally, the fourth section focuses on the theory of "peripheral realism" and offers a discussion of this theory's concept of state hierarchy applied to the Middle Eastern context. It is suggested that the war in Syria serves to destroy the existing regional state hierarchy and regional states' potential capacity for upward mobility in the global state system.

This paper analyses the Syrian conflict since 2011 in the context of the larger Middle East, focusing on local, regional and global actors. The first section highlights some geopolitical and historical factors regarding Syria. The second part outlines post-Cold War US and Israeli strategic debates on Syria and the Middle East. It is argued that the behavior of the US in the Syrian conflict since 2011 underlines the continuing significance of US-led regime change agendas as initially associated with the so-called 'neoconservatives' and near unconditional US backing of Israel's regional strategic objectives. The third section examines how local conflicts in Syria, since 18 March 2011, became transformed into a lengthy global war over world order during which the US challenged Russia's long-standing geopolitical patronage of Syria's political leadership. The interaction between military and political factors and the manner in which the crisis narrative was managed in the western media system is also sketched. Finally, the fourth section focuses on the theory of 'peripheral realism' and offers a discussion of this theory's concept of state hierarchy applied to the Middle Eastern context. It is suggested that the war in Syria serves to destroy the existing regional state hierarchy and regional state's potential capacity for upward mobility in the global state system