Die bayerische Landtagswahl vom 14. Oktober 2018: Signal für nachhaltigen Wandel auch im Bund?

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer-Olaf Schultze

The outcome of the election marks a deep shift not only in Bavarian politics but also corresponds to Germany’s ongoing restructuring of its electorate and the changing configuration of its party system at large: (1) The two catch-all parties suffered dramatic losses of more than ten percentage points; the conservative CSU lost its parliamentary majority in the state legislature, tallying less than 40 percent, the social-democratic SPD even less than ten percent of the total vote . (2) The voting behaviour is characterised by high volatility and processes of polarisation, caused by growing cleavages between town and country, between the generational as well as religious divides and the ongoing occupational differentiation in the electorate . Ideologically, these divides correlate with liberal and cosmopolitan mind-sets and (post-)modern urban lifestyles, the main electoral base of the Green party, on the one hand versus the more conservative and traditional rural electorates on the other . Their influence on the newly formed coalition between the CSU and the “Free Voters” will be more pronounced, while the populist and in part anti-pluralist electorate rallies behind the right-wing AfD . (3) In Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse, the Green party has now replaced the SPD as the main electoral contender of the Christian-democratic parties; it remains to be seen whether their electoral fortunes can be extended to the northern and eastern parts of the country in the near future .

Author(s):  
Cem Özatalay ◽  
Gözde Aytemur Nüfusçu ◽  
Gülistan Zeren

The use of blood money by powerful people during the judicial process following different kinds of homicides (workplace homicides, state homicides, gun homicides and so on) has become commonplace within the neoliberal context. Based on data obtained from five cases in Turkey, this chapter shows, on the one hand, how the use of blood money serves as an effective tool in the hands of powerful people to consolidate power relations, particularly necropower, as well as the relationship of domination, which rests upon class and identity-based inequalities. The analysis indicates that the blood money offers made by powerful people allows them to minimize potential penalties within penal courts and also to keep their privileged positions in the social hierarchy by purchasing the ‘right to kill’. On the other hand, the resistance of the oppressed and aggrieved people to the subjugation of life to the power of death is analysed with a particular focus on the role of power asymmetries between perpetrators and victims and their unequal positions in the social hierarchy. This conflictual relationship, which we qualify as an expression of necrodomination, offers novel insights into Turkey’s historically shaped system of domination.


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingolfur Blühdorn

Following the end of their government coalition with the Social Democratic Party, German Green Party leaders spoke of "a dawn of new opportunities" for Alliance 90/The Greens. They wanted to capitalize on the strategic opportunities afforded by Germany's new five-party system and on the unexpected rise of climate change in public debate. Shortly before the 2009 federal election, however, the party's "new opportunities" seem rather limited. Selectively focusing on one particular explanatory factor, this article contrasts the Green's neo-radical eco-political position as it has emerged since 2005 with the ways in which environmental issues are addressed by the currently popular LOHAS (Life of Health and Sustainability) consumer movement. It suggests that the German Greens may have paid too little attention to the ongoing reframing of the environmental issue in public discourse and that this has impaired their prospects for a swift return to government office.


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Decker ◽  
Lazaros Miliopoulos

Right-wing extremist and populist parties operate in a rather difficult social and political environment in Germany, rendering notable electoral success fairly improbable, especially when compared to other European countries. The main reason for this is the continuing legacy of the Nazi past. Nevertheless the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) managed to gain substantial votes in recent Land elections and became the leading force in the right-wing extremist political camp. Its success is attributable to rightwing extremist attitudes in some parts of the electorate in connection with a widespread feeling of political discontent. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the NPD will be able to transform these attitudes into a viable ideological basis for two main reasons. On the one hand, maintaining a neo-Nazi ideology makes the NPD unattractive to many potential voters. On the other hand, given its internal power struggles and severe financial problems, the party may be unable to meet its challenges in organizational terms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-255
Author(s):  
Benoît Challand

Abstract The article argues that the social life of racialization in Tunisia can be traced back to colonial norms and that one cannot speak of racialization in isolation of class differentials, elements that arose historically with the spread of the tandem colonialism-capitalism in North Africa. From a direct form of racialized violence leaving Muslim Tunisians on the low end of the colonial social ladder of worth, salaries, and the right to life, one moved to a more symbolic form of violence, with the south of the country quasi-racialized as less valuable than the urban coastal areas around Tunis and the Sahel in contemporary Tunisia. In a polity that reached independence more than six decades ago, one can witness the perpetuation of a north-south divide that dates back to the colonial times; but a historical reading of racialized brutality can help us recognize a distinct tradition of activism, in particular trade union activism around the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) and protests in the southern part of the country, such as the one that led to the ousting of dictator Ben Ali in 2011. Through a discussion of diachronic forms of racialization, the article suggests that Giorgio Agamben's focus on juridical issues of exception is partly misleading, for many forms of exception arise outside of the realm of emergency.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 809-836
Author(s):  
Rubén Compagnucci de Caso

This study is about “legal acts”, which is a division of “the general aspects of private law. Most of the Civil Codes in the 20th and 21st centuries which include these general aspects, dedicate several of their articles to rule on said matter and determine in this way their nature, require-ments and effects .An example of all this are the Civil Codes in Germany (BGB), Brazil, Mexico, Switzerland among other countries. The new Civil and Commercial Code in force in Argentina since Au-gust 1st, 2015 deals with this matter in Book I, Title V, Chapter I (articles 257 to 264).Acts are external events within the social reality which have the power to alter or modify the surrounding environment. In this context, their analysis and study only apply to those actions or facts of a juridical nature and are therefore of interest to the law. All this makes it necessary to take a stand in order to explain when and why an event either natural o human is to be considered a “legal act”. To give an answer to this question, there are two opposed theories on the subject and some other irrelevant opinions. In this present, it has been intended to define and clarify the main points of both theories. One idea sustains that a legal act is the one which has in itself the character and the ability to achieve a goal, that is, the legal effect. This leads to defining it as the causal event of logical connection making it possible to get said legal effect then becoming a quality of the object itself. This theory is called “traditional” or “causative”. The second theory, supported by most of the Italian lawmakers and well spread in the modern doctrine considers that the legal acts themselves do not have a particular virtue but that their legal or juridical character is given by the fact that they are presupposed to have fulfilled all sta-tutory requirements. All this has been called fattispecie or “regulating factual presuppositions” by the Italian lawmakers.When a rule or law understands that to have a legal consequence it is necessary to do one or more acts, said acts become legal acts. For example , the birth or the death of a person is a “natural” act, but in most legislations the person who is born has the right to acquire, and the deceased to transfer their estate to their heirs. Other aspects have also been considered, in particular the classification of the legal acts, and the most important is the one which distinguishes natural acts from human acts which are tho-se where a human being takes part and with the expression of their will can do what are simply called “legal acts” or “legal transactions”.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott A. Anderson

This essay differentiates two approaches to understanding the concept of coercion, and argues for the relative merits of the one currently out of fashion. The approach currently dominant in the philosophical literature treats threats as essential to coercion, and understands coercion in terms of the way threats alter the costs and benefits of an agent’s actions; I call this the “pressure” approach. It has largely superseded the “enforcement approach,” which focuses on the powers and actions of the coercer rather than the perspective of the coercee. The enforcement approach identifies coercion with certain uses of the kinds of powers that agents need to accumulate and wield in order to be able to make significant, credible threats. Though there is considerable overlap extensionally in the instances of coercion recognized by the two approaches, the enforcement approach encompasses some uses of power to coerce that do not involve threats (in particular some direct uses of physical force). It also circumscribes which threats should be counted as coercive, though notably it provides a picture of coercion that is non-moralized in its essentials. While there may be specific purposes for which a pressure account is to be preferred, I argue that the enforcement approach better describes how coercion works, and elucidates factors that are often tacitly assumed by pressure accounts. It also is more useful for explaining the social and political significance of coercion, and why coercion is thought to have the implications commonly associated with it. In particular, I argue that it helps us understand why uses of coercion are in general a matter of ethical significance, why state authority depends on commanding a monopoly on the right to use coercion, and why being coerced may reasonably provide one a defense against being held responsible for actions one is coerced into taking.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mr Sofyardi

With the ever-increasing number of people and the labor force on the one hand, and the limited employment opportunities on the other hand have resulted in an imbalance between supply and labor demand. If this problem is not resolved successfully, it can have adverse impacts in the social, economic, political, and security fields. The handling of employment issues can only be successful if based on good manpower planning. Therefore, the immediate problem faced is how to find the right balance between the growth of the labor force and the employment opportunities in the development process. It is therefore necessary to projection the provision of manpower in relation to the business of creating employment opportunities in the future


Author(s):  
Anna Serebrennikova

The development of information society and the corresponding technologies raises to a new level the tasks of counteracting crimes committed using such technologies, and of minimizing damage from them. The growth in the scale of new types of crime is a cause of worry for the society and the authorities, and especially for criminologists, as the penetration of criminals into the virtual environment and their mastery of new technologies acquire dangerous forms, change criminal motivation and, at the same time, to some extent stimulate the development of information and telecommunication technologies. The growing sophistication of the tasks of preventing and counteracting hi tech crimes makes it necessary to critically assess the current criminological methods and to make an attempt to go beyond the known «common» methods of neo-classical criminology. The development of the digital criminology concept cannot be reduced to an aggregate of pioneer technological methods developed on the basis of mathematical modeling, i.e. computer processing of quantitative and qualitative parameters of crimes, mathematical detection of different dependencies (on time, place and other variables), it could and should be understood in a wider sense: on the one hand, it should influence the new criminological paradigm, and on the other - it should develop within its boundaries. The modern information-analytical sphere in the work of law enforcement bodes includes the use of digital criminological instruments within the programs of crime prevention, mathematical methods of analyzing crimes, profiling, etc. Their aggregate is generally applicable to criminological analysis and prediction, however, it does not have the most cutting edge theoretical basis that corresponds to the tasks of counteracting crimes of the digital world; it is now being formed on the basis of criminological neo-classics, the advances of the social sciences and the humanities, digital criminology. The predictions of new industrial revolutions include a rapid acceleration of the pace of technological development, a systemic transformation of production and management, which will not only stimulate a global rise in the living standards, but will also increase inequality and, consequently, will provide an impetus to crime. These aspects should be taken into consideration when predicting future development of digital criminology, whose theories should be based on the conceptual models of social development of the near future. Social consequences of the predicted new industrial revolutions will inevitably become new common determiners of the crimes of the future, as it always happened in the past.


2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 273-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjarke Nielsen

There has been much debate on ‘culturespeak’ and the politics of culture, but the bureaucratic articulation of specific representations of culture has not received much attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this article presents a double take on bureaucracy. On the one hand, I focus on the outcome of UNESCO’s bureaucracy: UNESCO promotes an all-inclusive culture perspective for ‘We the Peoples of the United Nations’, but there are limits to tolerance in this culture ideology. On the other hand, I focus on the social and pragmatic adaptation to the bureaucratic field and towards UNESCO’s keywords, as they are embedded with institutional authority in everyday practice. In conclusion, I briefly situate UNESCO’s culture ideology in relation to questions of recognition and redistribution.


Author(s):  
Jean-Michel Bonvin ◽  
Francesco Laruffa

This chapter compares the role of education policy in social investment and the capability approach. Based on an analysis of the document 'Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes' adopted by the European Commission in 2012 (and cited in the 'Social Investment Package'), we argue that the role of educational policy in social investment is mainly that of fostering the right skills for the flourishing of the economy and thus of improving people's productivity as workers. In contrast, the capability approach allows emphasizing the contribution of education not only to workers' employability but also to citizens' autonomy as well as to democratic citizenship. From this viewpoint, the capability approach could improve the normative basis of social investment, allowing to broaden the perspective on education policy beyond the one centred on human capital that currently informs social investment.


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