Suchergebnisse

On 16 September 2023, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – all three states led by military regimes – decided to establish a new regional organisation, the Alliance of Sahel States (Alliance des Etats du Sahel – AES). This move was prompted by the worsening of the crisis within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 2023, a crisis that reached its peak to date with the announcement by the three AES members on 28 January 2024 of their withdrawal from ECOWAS, a regional organisation set up back in 1975. In a socio-political context in which the role and functions of the state, the extent of state powers and the way in which they are exercised are increasingly being called into question, new forms of political and social organisation are developing. These are also influenced by the current geopolitical developments in the changing world order. At the same time, states and societies and the ongoing regional integration processes are facing major new challenges. Within ECOWAS, conventional ideas of state and society, values and structures are coming up against growing tendencies towards a new understanding of statehood and sovereignty. In the West Africa/Sahel region, new processes of nation-building and state-building are under way, underpinned by efforts to renew social cohesion and to integrate the 'vital forces of the nation' – a concept cited increasingly frequently in these countries – as comprehensively as possible. These developments call for a realignment of German and European foreign and development policy. The political and social conditions and expectations of the partners in the West Africa/Sahel region are currently undergoing profound transformation. They need to be aligned with the content and interests of the value-based foreign policy advocated by Germany – in line with the principle of a 'partnership between equals'. Any appraisal of the future developments and integration of the dynamics that determine them must take account of the various integration processes, which are particularly diversified and run in parallel in this region. Adopting a comparative perspective, this paper provides an overview of the various regional organisations in the West Africa/Sahel region. It analyses the potential of each of them in terms of their development prospects and sustainability. In addition to the critical relationship between ECOWAS and the AES, it also examines the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), the Integrated Develop-ment Authority of the Liptako-Gourma Region (Autorité de Liptako-Gourma – ALG) and the G5 Sahel, which is currently being dissolved. If the partnership between Germany and Europe on the one hand and the West African and Sahel states on the other is to be continued, it will be vital to adopt a pragmatic approach and maintain a political dialogue with all the partners. The states in this region are extremely important to Europe's future development. Moreover, it is only through communication based on mutual respect underpinning cooperation in the economic and development sectors that the growing influence of political powers such as Russia and Iran – whose ideas, interests and values are not in line with the Western Atlantic model of democracy governed by the rule of law – can be curbed effectively.

State fragility has remained a pressing challenge for international security and development policymakers for more than two decades. However, international engagement in fragile states has often failed, in part due to a lack of understanding about what constitutes state fragility. Established quantitative models usually rank fragile states on one-dimensional scales ranging from stable to highly fragile. This puts states characterised by very different problems and dimensions of fragility into the same "box". Moreover, categorisations such as "fragile", "weak", "failed" or "collapsed" are increasingly rejected in the Global South, thereby hampering international development and security cooperation. The "Constellations of State Fragility" model, developed at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), provides a more differentiated model to measure state fragility. It assesses state fragility along three continuous dimensions, assuming that state fragility is a continuous trait that affects all states to some degree: authority, capacity and legitimacy. These dimensions are not aggregated into a one-dimensional index. Instead, the model detects typical constellations across these dimensions. In so doing, it also accounts for the fact that states can perform very differently in different dimensions. Our analysis yields three main insights about what constitutes state fragility and how it can be addressed: first, state fragility, illiberalism, repression and human rights violations are interrelated; second, state fragility is not unique to the Global South, with negative trends also occurring in the Global North; and, third, differentiated, multi-dimensional models offer better starting points for addressing state fragility than one-dimensional ones. We conclude with four policy recommendations: • Improve analytical capacity by adopting a differentiated view of state fragility: International security and development policymakers would benefit from more fine-grained, differentiated assessments of state fragility. In addition, country-specific assessments of the specific local power constellations in which fragile state institutions are embedded are needed for devising adequate, context-sensitive measures. • Connect measures to address fragility with democracy protection and the protection of human rights: Illiberalism, human rights violations and repression correlate with state fragility. This also suggests that there is a close relationship between autocracy, autocratisation and fragility. Accordingly, measures to address fragility, democracy support and efforts to protect human rights must be better connected. This also implies doing "no harm to democracy" (Leininger, 2023, p. 2). • Identify conditions under which state-building can (or cannot) be pursued: It would be fruitful if international security and development policymakers engaged in thorough discussions about the conditions under which state-building can be pursued. Where existing state institutions are legitimate, they should be supported. However, donor coherence and the capacity (and political will) of donors to commit resources to fragile states and to engage long-term are also important preconditions. State-building is both a costly and a long-term endeavour. • Learning across world regions: Patterns of state fragility can be highly similar, despite geographical distance. In particular, rising illiberalism and increasing attacks on civil liberties are global phenomena. Hence, policy decision-makers and civil society organisations (CSOs) seeking to counter fragility should engage in mutual learning across the North/South divide.

This policy brief discusses the new geopolitical and geo-economic context and its significance for the Global South and the development policies of Western actors. The systemic confrontation between China and the USA, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also the seizure of power through a military putsch in Niger, among other places, show: The environment for global cooperation efforts has become much more difficult. Actors in the Global South are no longer just participants on the sidelines of geopolitical conflicts, but are taking an active role. Western countries and Russia make strong efforts to woo them. At the same time, China and India in particular aspire to leadership roles as leaders for the Global South. The following points are of particular importance: (1) The changes in the international system have given the Global South as a group (despite the enormous differences between the actors in this group) a new impetus of identity – similar to the West. It is noteworthy that this North/South bloc formation makes other possible commonalities less pronounced. This applies above all to the attempt – which has been less success-ful so far – to strengthen the identification of open democratic systems as a mark of belonging. For many debates and alliances, the identification "Global North/South" is formative. Formation of North and South camps is not helpful for finding international solutions. Approaches to counteract entrenched bloc formations and to create effective formats for exchange and understanding are therefore important. (2) From the perspective of Southern actors, the existing international order is a deeply unjust system that primarily protects the interests of the West, and especially those of the USA. Political offers from the West that do not really lead to structural changes are unlikely to arouse interest in the Global South, and will instead favour counter-designs – be they from China with its claim to leadership for the Global South or Russia. (3) In principle, the development policy of OECD actors has important potential to help shape the realignment of relations with the Global South. The policy field is, on the one hand, a proof of international credibility (among other things, fulfilment of international obligations) and, on the other hand, an approach that makes it possible to work with operational means on international problems in the first place. (4) Western development policy is likely to face further difficult situations with risks of escalation and failure (such as Niger and Afghanistan) in the face of multiple tensions in developing regions. Development policy should reflect the geopolitical context even more consciously in strategy and action. The defining geo-political context harbours the danger that the original development policy task – sustainable development of the partner countries – will be overshadowed. (5) Overall, it should be an important concern to rethink how international burden-sharing for development and climate finance agendas is organised. Here, it is important to consider both the actors from the Global North and those from the Global South.

"A new history of liberalism which argues that liberalism has been predicated on definite morality and should be viewed as an attempt to encompass both fear and hope. Liberalism, argues Alan Kahan, is the search for a society in which people need not be afraid. Freedom from fear is the most basic freedom. If we are afraid, we are not free. These insights, found in Montesquieu and Judith Shklar, are the foundation of liberalism. What liberals fear has changed over time (revolution, reaction, totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, poverty, and now populism) but the great majority of liberal thinkers have relied on three pillars to ward off their fears and to limit the concentrated power that causes fear: freedom, markets, and morals, or, to put it another way, politics, economics, and religion or morality. Most liberal thinkers emphasize one or two pillars more than another, but it is typical of liberalism down to the Second World War to rely on all three, although there were always minority voices who preferred to stand on only one leg. After WWII, "thin" procedural/market liberals, who wanted to strip any moral or religious basis or purpose from liberalism, dominated "thick" liberal moralists, who thought liberalism needed a moral basis and/or goal. It is the political contention of this book that liberalism is most convincing as program, language, and social analysis when it relies on all three pillars, and that the relative weakness of liberalism at the end of the twentieth century had much to do with neglect of the moral pillar of liberalism. Its historical contention is that for much of the past two centuries it did rely on all three pillars. But Kahan also argues that liberalism is not only a party of fear. It is also a party of hope, or the party of progress. Many of the contradictions typical of liberalism derive from the seemingly contradictory effort to encompass both hope and fear. If in case of conflict fear often trumps hope for liberals (loss aversion applies in politics as much as in economics), and utopia is subject to indefinite postponement, progress in personal autonomy and development has always been at the heart of liberalism. Liberals typically support their hopes on the same three pillars of freedom, markets, and morals which they use to ward off their fears. Nevertheless, in one respect those historians and political theorists who identify liberalism with laissez-faire economics are not wrong. It is characteristic of liberalism then that it bases its hopes not on the state but on civil society, which for liberals is the common source of a free politics, a free market, and of morals. Alan S. Kahan is Professor of History at the Université de Versailles. His previous books include Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls (Oxford 2015), Alexis de Tocqueville (Continuum Books) and Mind vs Money: The War Between Intellectuals and Capitalism (Transaction Publishing, 2010)"--

"The measurement infrastructure for the production of economic statistics in the United States largely was established in the middle part of the 20th century. As has been noted by a number of commentators, the data landscape has changed in fundamental ways since this infrastructure was developed. Obtaining survey responses has become increasingly difficult, leading to increased data collection costs and raising concerns about the quality of the resulting data. At the same time, the economy has become more complex and users are demanding ever more timely and granular data. In this new environment, there is increasing interest in alternative sources of data that might allow the economic statistics agencies to better address users' demands for information. Recent years have seen a proliferation of natively digital data that have enormous potential for improving economic statistics. These include item-level transactional data on price and quantity from retail scanners or companies' internal systems, credit card records, bank account records, payroll records and insurance records compiled for private business purposes; data automatically recorded by sensors or mobile devices; and a growing variety of data that can be obtained from websites and social media platforms. Staggering volumes of digital information relevant to measuring and understanding the economy are generated each second by an increasing array of devices that monitor transactions and business processes as well as track the activities of workers and consumers. Incorporating these non-designed Big Data sources into the economic measurement infrastructure holds the promise of allowing the statistical agencies to produce more accurate, more timely and more disaggregated statistics, with lower burden for data providers and perhaps even at lower cost for the statistical agencies. The agencies already have begun to make use of novel data to augment traditional data sources. Modern data science methods for using Big Data have advanced sufficiently to make the more systematic incorporation of these data into official statistics feasible. Indeed, the availability of new sources of data offers the opportunity to redesign the underlying architecture of official statistics. Considering the threats to the current measurement model arising from falling survey response rates, increased survey costs and the growing difficulties of keeping pace with a rapidly changing economy, fundamental changes in the architecture of the statistical system will be necessary to maintain the quality and utility of official statistics. This volume presents cutting edge research on the deployment of big data to solve both existing and novel challenges in economic measurement. The papers in this volume show that it is practical to incorporate big data into the production of economic statistics in real time and at scale. They report on the application of machine learning methods to extract usable new information from large volumes of data. They also lay out the challenges-both technical and operational-to using Big Data effectively in the production of economic statistics and suggest means of overcoming those challenges. Despite these challenges and the significant agenda for research and development they imply, the papers in the volume point strongly toward more systematic and comprehensive incorporation of Big Data to improve official economic statistics in the coming years"--

""This book is straight-forward, no-nonsense information for how to start a successful company. Read it!" --Barbara Corcoran, investor/shark on ABC's reality hit Shark Tank"The ideas in this book are key to creating the kind of enterprise that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the future. The goal of entrepreneurship is to reduce the risk of failure as detailed in this book." --Nolan Bushnell, inventor of Pong(r) and founder of Atari(r)"Kudos!! One Simple Idea for Startups & Entrepreneurs is brilliant !! A must read for those that have the courage to dive into their dreams. This is a true Road Map for those that have the passion to achieve their Freedom. Truly something that I wish would have been there for me 33 years ago." --Russ Hornsby, toy industry veteran, 2010 Toy of the Year award winner in seven different countries, and creator of hit toys ZhuZhu Pets(r), XiaXia Pets(r), DeGeDar(r) and others"I took one of those simple ideas and turned it into a company that now has its products in over 35,000 doors of retail distribution. With One Simple Idea for Startups & Entrepreneurs, Stephen gives us the tools we need to take an idea from your Head to the Store shelf." --Todd Basche, inventor of Word Lock(r), the #1 selling word combination lock"Any inventor or entrepreneur who wants to make money without risking hundreds of thousands in design, manufacturing, warehousing and distribution would be well served to take advantage of the practical wisdom offered up in Stephen's most recent work, One Simple Idea for Startups & Entrepreneurs." --Ron Hazelton, former home improvement editor for ABC's Good Morning America and leading authority in the do-it-yourself home improvement field"One Simple Idea for Startups and Entrepreneurs is a MUST read. The process is broken down into steps that makes it simple to follow and gives you a roadmap to Success." --Gene Luoma, Inventor of Zip-It Clean(r)"Advice is everywhere but good advice is very rare. Stephen Key' One Simple Idea for Startups & Entrepreneurs is the exception." --Steve Greenberg, author of Gadget Nation and co-host of Food Network's television program Invention Hunters"Stephen's a trailblazer in what is now widely accepted as the emerging field of frugal innovation." --Patrick Raymond, Invention Expert for Huffington Post, creator of InventionScore(r), and co-host of Invention Hunters on Food Network"Stephen Key is the real deal. Without his knowledge and willingness to share it, I would not have been able to successfully bring my own product to market. Now readers of One Simple Idea for Startups & Entrepreneurs have the same opportunity to benefit from an education in startups and just how true it is that all it takes is persistence and one simple idea." --Nancy Tedeschi, inventor of SnapIt Screw&[trademark symbol] and prize winner of the WalMart Get on the Shelf contest"--

Big philanthropy was born in the United States in the early twentieth century. The Russell Sage Foundation received its charter in 1907, the Carnegie Corporation in 1911, and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. These were strange new creatures -- quite unlike traditional charities. They had vastly greater assets and were structured legally and financially to last forever. In addition, each was governed by a self-perpetuating board of private trustees; they were affiliated with no religious denomination; and they adopted grand, open-ended missions along the lines of "improve the human condition." They were launched, in essence, as immense tax-exempt private corporations dealing in good works. But they would do good according to their own lights, and they would intervene in public life with no accountability to the public required. From the start, the mega-foundations provoked hostility across the political spectrum. To their many detractors, they looked like centers of plutocratic power that threatened democratic governance. Setting up do-good corporations, critics said, was merely a ploy to secure the wealth and clean up the reputations of business moguls who amassed fortunes during the Gilded Age. The social policy ideas of the new foundations were shaped by their understanding of modern research-based medicine, especially germ theory. Scientists aimed not simply to alleviate symptoms but to discover the nature of a disease, isolate the pathogen, then develop and administer a cure. Private philanthropies planned to do the same for such social ills as poverty and illiteracy: sponsor research on a problem, finance the design of a remedy, and pay for implementation (sometimes with the addition of public funds). The foundation trustees seemed unaware that social problems are too multifaceted, too historically rooted, and too entangled in politics and the economy to conform to the medical model. Of course, the new general-purpose foundations didn't focus exclusively on social issues. They funded the "hard" sciences, projects in international relations, and more. But rooting out social problems was one priority. One hundred years later, big philanthropy still aims to solve the world's problems -- with foundation trustees deciding what is a problem and how to fix it. They may act with good intentions, but they define "good." The arrangement remains thoroughly plutocratic: it is the exercise of wealth-derived power in the public sphere with minimal democratic controls and civic obligations. Controls and obligations include filing an annual IRS form and (since 1969) paying an annual excise tax of up to 2 percent on net investment income. There are regulations against self-dealing, lobbying (although "educating" lawmakers is legal), and supporting candidates for public office. In reality, the limits on political activity barely function now: loopholes, indirect support for groups that do political work, and scant resources for regulators have crippled oversight. Because they are mostly free to do what they want, mega-foundations threaten democratic governance and civil society (defined as the associational life of people outside the market and independent of the state). Adapted from the source document.

Anti-globalist riots in Seattle in 1999 & the global anti-war demonstrations in 2003 not only made their way to the news headlines, but also received renewed academic attention. This article seeks to outline the differences between the traditional social movements & the new social movements. The first part of the article addresses the definition & classification issues of social movements. It also presents a comparison of three theoretical approaches (rational choice, Marxism & social constructivism) towards the phenomenon of social movement. The author concludes, that advocates of all three approaches present certain valuable insights on the causes & effects of this phenomenon. The second chapter of the article outlines presents trends & problems in the research of the social movements. It is argued that researchers of this subject face basically the same problems as all social scientists, first of the problems of comparability & the limits of qualitative methods. On the other it is assessed that new tools of quantitative analysis, information technologies significantly enhance the possibilities of research. By combining different theoretical approaches the author then seeks to outline the criteria of what could be the constitutive elements of the new social movements as opposed to the traditional ones. It is concluded that the new social movements can only exist in the postmodern or post-materialist societies where the questions of physical survival or national liberation are replaced by the questions of quality of life & self-expression. The new movements are also transnational in nature & their goals are usually universal (ecology, peace, rights of animals) rather than national (independence) or individual (employment, salary etc.). The new movements mobilize around collective identity & common values while the traditional movements mobilize around common goals of social or economic changes. The organization mode of the new movements is usually horizontal & the role of the leaders is rather limited while in the case of traditional movements the organization structure is strictly hierarchical & the role of the leader is essential. Finally the new movements are less prone to violence & rely more on the new technologies of communication & information. Building on the criteria outlined in the second part of the article, the final chapter discusses the case of Lithuania. It is concluded that the number & activities of the new social movements in Lithuania are very scarce. The most significant among such movements is the feminist movement, which is indeed rather active, & even have established ties with international feminist network. Traditional movements (in particular farmers, nationalists & neo-nazists, are still abundant in Lithuania. The authors argues that such imbalance between traditional & new movements could be a cause for concern as the number & activity of the new social movements is a good indicator of the maturity of the civil society in a country. The conclusion of the article reiterates the importance to continue the research of the phenomenon of the social movements. The warning of Ortega Y Gaset voiced in 1932 about the danger of the masses that have the supreme power in their hands is still relevant. Adapted from the source document.

After four years of a so-called "Rainbow" coalition, which had the support of the Socialists (red), the Liberals (blue), & the Greens, the electorate rewarded the first two political families & inflicted a crushing defeat on the Greens. The latter lost nearly 60% of their electorate, which had occurred only once before to a political party since the introduction of universal suffrage in Belgium in 1919. The outcome of the elections is fairly similar in the three regions of the country. In Flanders, the Socialists progress by more than 8%, reaping the benefits of the alliance formed with "Spirit." Half of the Socialists' progress can be attributed to this effect. The advance of the Liberal VLD is more modest (some 2.5%), but it followed on excellent previous results. With some 25% of the vote, the VLD, which is the first party in Flanders, has reached an absolute high. Conversely, the Christian Democrats of the CD&V slightly regress, thereby continuing a downward trend. These results take them to their historical low, & make them into Flanders' third party, with some 21.9% of the vote. Agalev, the Green party, no longer has any representation in parliament & falls back from 11 to 3.85%. The far Right, the Vlaams Blok, continues its advance & reaches 17.86%, an increase of 2.5%. In Wallonia too, one observes a significant advance of the Socialists. The PS remains the first party in the South of the country with 36.39% of the vote, progressing by 7%. It exceeds all its results of the previous 12 years, without however reaching its earlier highs. The Liberals of the Mouvement Reformateur (MR) gain 3.65% & are at their historical high with 28.38% of the vote. The Christian Democrats, under the denomination CDH (Centre democrate humaniste) slip back by some 1.5%, but this decline is almost equivalent to the result of a dissident list of the CDH, which had wanted to maintain "Christian" as a reference. This doesn't alter the fact that the Christian Democrats have also reached their all time low. The Greens, Ecolo, lose some 57% of their vote & stand at 7.45%. In contrast with 1999, one observes a slight advance of the Front National, a far Right party, that only obtained 5.56% of the vote however. With the exception of an increase in the French & a decline in the Flemish vote, the Brussels districts show the same characteristics as the two other regions of the country; a very significant advance of the Socialists, a slight increase in the Liberal vote, the collapse of the Greens; the status quo of the Christian Democrats & an advance of the far Right with almost 2%. The 2003 election therefore seems to be a correction on the 1999 one, where the advance of the Greens had been amplified by the dioxine food scare. But the width of the swing makes it into one of the elections where the volatility of the vote will have been the highest. 8 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

IN HIS INTRODUCTION to the book, Goldstein describes his intended audience as 'Straight people who know little about the queer community, and gay people who know even less about the progressive tradition.' His 'main aim is to reach those who aren't aware of the rich connections between radical thought and queer sensibility.' The other, presumably less desirable audience for the book is composed of 'heterosexuals willing to acknowledge their anxieties about homosexuality.' If Paglia and Sullivan do exert a disproportionate media influence, I think part of the reason can be traced to statements like this. They would never make this kind of implied demand on their heterosexual readership. One could argue that this reluctance illustrates their fundamental allegiance to the status quo; mostly, though, it attests to a healthier relationship to the non-gay world than Goldstein's. There is room for adversarial politics, but to view every heterosexual as a candidate for deprogramming and reeducation, to assert the necessity of their '[examining] their anxieties,' is to invite an oddly legitimate kind of backlash. WHAT LITTLE controversy The Attack Queers has managed to stir up has centered on Sullivan's charges that Goldstein deliberately misquotes and misrepresents his work. Aside from Sullivan's desire to protect his reputation--a couple of the misquotations are pretty egregious--most of the quibbling is probably moot. Goldstein specializes in a kind of pugilistic and peremptory journalism; his style isn't particularly balanced or scholarly. (Sullivan isn't exactly fair with his ideological opponents, either.) Goldstein doesn't engage Sullivan's or Paglia's work on its own terms; he's too busy sliding from slyly decontextualized quotations to their imagined cultural or social significance to bother. This approach yields insights about these writers' popular appeal, but it isn't rigorous or fair-minded enough to serve as the scorched-earth indictment of their work he seems to intend. And because he never quotes his targets at length and doesn't offer up a bibliography, it is almost impossible to put his citations in context. Just a little digging, however, shows a surprising disregard for accuracy. Goldstein is writing about the limitations assimilation puts on gay identity; his claim is that liberal society's increased tolerance is conditional, part of a bargain, and that the gay-baiting theatrics of a Sullivan or Paglia are the ultimate fulfillment of this Faustian pact. Their public disloyalty to the gay community and their acceptance of the social and sexual status quo is, he argues, the same thing demanded of all homosexuals, writ large. The 'attack queers' are popular because their loyalty is to their predominantly heterosexual audience and not to some conception of a gay community; their tithe is paid out by routinely 'attacking' their homosexual peers. And although Goldstein never explicitly states this, throughout the book he keeps insinuating that their ultimate loyalty is to their careers and the fulfillment of their own ambitions. Reading The Attack Queers, one begins to wonder if Goldstein isn't perhaps more outraged by the homocons' success than he is by their ideas.

Branimir Altgayer was the most prominent Croatian of German nationality in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but he was especially so during the period of the Independent State of Croatia. Altgayer was born December 8, 1897 in the town of Przekopane (Galicia), where his father (born in Osijek) served as an Austro-Hungarian cavalry lieutenant. Altgayer spent his childhood in Slavonia, where he was brought up in a Croatian cultural atmosphere. After completing Croatian public school in Kutjevo and Croatian Gymnasium in Osijek and Zemun, he attended an Austro-Hungarian cavalry cadet school in Moravia between 1912 and 1915. He was an officer (ensign) in the Austro-Hungarian army (after 1915) until the end of the first world war, serving on the Russian, Rumanian, and Italian fronts. He was wounded twice and decorated several times. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes he was a cavalry captain (first class) of the Royal army. Following four years of service, he resigned. He worked at various civilian occupations for a time, but returned to the military between 1924 and 1927. He was very active in the cultural and political life of the German minority of Osijek and Slavonia. He was selected to the united council of the German minority association, the Kulturbund of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund), in December 1934. He was a prominent representative of the so-called Renewal movement (Erneuerungsbewegung), a radical current in the Kulturbund. Following a conflict between the old leaders of the Germans in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Renewalists which occasioned a split in the Kulturbund, Altgayer and the Renewalists are ejected from the Kulturbund for insubordination. At the beginning of 1936 he established a cultural and charitable organization for Germans of Slavonia in Osijek (Kultur-und Wohlfahrtsvereinigung der Deutschen in Slavonien). In January, 1939, he became a regional leader (Gauobmann) of the Germans in Slavonia (following the re-admittance of the Renewalists to the Kulturbund at the end of 1938). In early 1939, he leaves the Yugoslavian Radical Union, whose city councilor he was in Osijek, and joins the Croatian peasant party. After the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941, he was named leader of the German National Assembly for the NDH (Volksgruppenführer). From December 1941 he was director of state for the presidency of the NDH, but after January 1943 he was secretary of state for the same, and he was likewise promoted to the rank of reserve colonel in the Ustasha army. He was decorated by Leader of the Ustasha Dr. Ante Pavelic with the title "knight". For a short time in mid-1943 he went to the Eastern Front. At the end of the second world war he was deported to Yugoslavia from Austria by the British. In 1950, the district court of Zagreb sentenced him to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out May 15, 1950. The investigative material of the Office of State Security (UDB-a) concerning Altgayer, especially the transcript of the trial from 1949, is an excellent source of information about the German minority in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the thirties and during the period of the Independent State of Croatia. (SOI : CSP: S. 638)

An analysis of the amounts & kinds of foreign news carried in the prestige papers of the US & South Amer attempting to determine the volume & categories of foreign news, the proportional allocation of foreign news on a day-to-day basis among the major world areas, & to make a cross-cultural comparison of foreign news treatment by the US press with that of the press in selected South Amer countries. It was assumed that the distribution of foreign news would indicate the relative values assigned to it by Ed's & correspondents & that the quantity & kind of newspaper coverage given to diff world areas would constitute an index of maximum reader exposure. A sample of 30 week days was drawn from the calendar for the 3-month period beginning Jan 1 & ending Mar 31, 1959. 15 papers for the dates sampled were analyzed. News pertaining to the following 6 world areas was measured & classified: the US in the South Amer press); South Amer (in the US press), Western Europe, the Middle East, the USSR & its Eastern European satellites, & China. A 6th category was assigned to internat'l news. The New York Times foreign news for the same period was analyzed for comparative purposes. The 7 South Amer dailies published a daily (mean - average) of 133 column inches of foreign news pertaining to the 6 world areas. The 7 US dailies published a (mean - average) of 62 column inches daily, & The New York Times published 219 column inches each each day. The South Amer newspapers published an R of 50 column inches of news daily about the US, while the US newspapers published an (mean - average) of 2.5 column inches a day about all of South Amer. South Amer papers published 1 more column each day of news of other world areas (in addition to that from the US) than the US papers. The latter gave more attention (45.2%) to news of Western Europe &the USSR (37.0%). Communist China received the least amount of space in both. %'s to the contrary, volume measures showed that South Amer readers were exposed to almost 2x the amount of news from Western Europe that US readers were. Circulation size was found to bear a moderately positive relationship to the volume of foreign news carried by US newspapers, but a moderately negative relationship to the volume carried by South Amer newspapers; rank diff coefficients between circulation size & volume of foreign news were +.36 for the former & -.35 for the latter. (mean - average) number of pp & column inches of foreign news showed a more definite relationship, the coefficients being +.57 for the US papers & +.81 for the South Amer papers. The (mean - average) number of pages published daily by the US papers was about double that of the South Amer papers (50 to 27 pages). Despite diff's among individual newspapers there was a striking similarity in the relative proportions of coverage by world areas & by subject matter suggesting 2 determinants: (1) the similarity in the way the news was reported, & (2) the existence of common or similar definitions of news values. AA.