Suchergebnisse

"Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit den Herausforderungen der Gewerkschaftsarbeit in Spanien; einem Land, das derzeit mit weitreichenden Eingriffen in Arbeits- und Gewerkschaftsrechte konfrontiert ist. Unter Rückgriff auf den 'Strategie Unionism'-Ansatz wird argumentiert, dass die beiden großen spanischen Gewerkschaften - CCOO und UGT -lange Zeit vor allem auf institutionelle und strukturelle Machtressourcen zurückgegriffen haben, während bei der Einsetzung von Organisations- und Bündnismacht Nachholbedarf besteht. Die fehlende Nutzung dieser beiden Machtressourcen sowie das ständige Schwanken der Gewerkschaften zwischen der Strategie des sozialen Dialogs auf der einen Seite und der Strategie der Opposition auf der anderen Seite werden, neben den widrigen ökonomischen und politischen Verhältnissen im Land, als (Mit-) Ursachen für die derzeitige Schwäche der spanischen Gewerkschaften angesehen." (Autorenreferat)

This dissertation addresses the political economy of the Common Fisheries Policy and investigates how traditional concepts can hinder the success of the European fisheries management. The first paper focuses on the institutional set-up of the decision-making process. This process is modeled as a dynamic non-cooperative game in discrete time. It is shown that due to the uncertainty in the annual TAC setting the optimal feedback strategy for the impatient decision-makers is to set inefficiently high TACs in Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium. According to this theoretical analysis, the institutional set-up of the decision-making process itself promotes inefficient TACs. A binding commitment between the two groups of decision-makers to a long-term management plan could lead to a more sustainable fisheries management. The second paper is concerned with an empirical analysis of the distribution of bargaining power between different interests groups in the TAC decision-making of the European Union. The process is modeled as a cooperative game between two players with different interests regarding TACs. The estimation results show that the player representing interests of the fishing industry has the stronger bargaining position compared to the player representing conservation interests. The analysis also shows that scientific recommendations have a greater influence in the bargaining when the underlying data is of good quality. The conclusion is that effective TAC management requires both, a sound scientific assessment and a stronger inclusion of scientific advice. The third paper investigates the regional trade-offs of different management options of a multi-species management in the Baltic Sea. An ecological-economic model of the Baltic Sea is developed simulating the stock dynamics of interacting population in order to investigate a set of different strategic management options. The profits for each country participating in the Baltic fishery differ between the management options. We show that the inflexibility of TAC distribution according to the principle of relative stability can lead to regional inequality in future profits. A reallocation of profits is required to achieve a concordant agreement on strategic multi-species management goals. The fourth paper examines the efficiency of different segments of the Baltic trawler fleet in order to evaluate whether quota trade between vessels of different countries could improve the situation. The distance function approach is used to derive an equation to estimate the efficiencies of different fleet segments. Data for different vessel length categories for different countries is used. The estimation reveals significant asymmetries in the efficiencies between countries. Allowing for quota trade in the Baltic fleet could improve the overall efficiency. Such a transnational quota trading system would enable the fleet to coordinate its fishing activities far more flexible than under the fixed allocation of TACs according to the principle of relative stability.

The tragic events in the 1990s in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Kosovo, and the crisis in Libya in 2011 have triggered a fundamental rethinking of the role and responsibility of the international community. It is now accepted that while individual states continue to bear the primary responsibility to protect their populations against genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes within their boundaries, the international community should step in when the state is unable or unwilling to provide such protection. The principle of the Responsibility to Protect, or RtoP, reflects this recognition, and provides the normative basis for involvement of the international community in cases of mass atrocities.This thoughtful work is a major contribution towards clarifying what RtoP can offer, moving from principle to practice, and spanning the disciplines of international law, international relations, and moral philosophy

Keywords: Communication Rights; Disability; Europe; Canada; Policy; Telecommunications; United Nations; Convention; Equality; DiscriminationAbstract: In 2000, 191 of the United Nations' member states adopted a number of goals to target major concerns to the global human family to be achieved by the year 2015. It was hoped that the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs) were to "foster collaborative action to reduce poverty, improve health and address educational and environmental concerns around the world's most pressing development problems" (United Nations, 2010). Yet, while the MDGs tackled a variety of crucial needs at the international level (including health, poverty, maternal health, environment, gender equality, child mortality and education). Unfortunately, they have not included the monitoring and evaluation of rights of persons with disabilities; a segment of the world population that is considered to be representing the largest minority in the world. Communication scholars (Thomas, 2005; Lee, 2008) have underscored the importance of "global advocacy" concerning extending communication rights to empower these groups. Nonetheless, it was argued, the communication rights movement has so far focused mainly on debates on issues such as media ownership, regulations within cultural industries, intellectual property rights and failed to prioritize the need to assert the rights of persons with disabilities. Along these lines, and adopting in underscoring the relationship between citizenship and disability rights, this paper aims to analyze, from a communication rights perspective, the significance of underscoring the need to "include" the persons with disabilities to the enforcement and protection of their rights. Specifically, we examine the implementation of the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Canada and Europe. Particularly it argues that while the Convention has certainly contributed to a re-emphasis of rights of persons with disabilities and had a positive and reformative effect on disability legislation and policy narratives in both the international and national spheres, it remains to be assessed to what extent its provisions will be translated into policy at a national and regional level. After all, such enforcement is related to a great extent to the social and cultural structure in a given society.

At the end of 2014, a right-wing populist movement named PEGIDA emerged in Germany, starting in Dresden. Whereas branches of this movement disappeared within a few months all across the country, the movement in Dresden persists. This article seeks to uncover the attitudes behind this movement. Derived from literature regarding the voting of right-wing populist parties in Europe we built an analytic model considering group-focused enmity, political disenchantment, distrust in media, right-wing attitudes, fears of extremism, foreign domination as well as of economic decline, as conceivable predictors of support for PEGIDA. With a time lag of twelve months, we conducted a two-wave web survey with inhabitants of Dresden within a representative, recruited, online panel. Our results show that the most important factors driving the support for PEGIDA are hostility against foreigners, fears of foreign domination, distrust in the media and right-wing attitudes. However, political disenchantment and fears of economic decline do not play a role in explaining the support for PEGIDA.