In discussions of citizenship law and concepts of nationhood, Germany has served scholars as a paradigm of ethno-cultural exclusivity. Until recent legislative changes, Germany adhered to the ius sanguinus principle where citizenship is acquired almost exclusively through German ancestry. This...

The approach of governments to public information has changed from a rather traditional press release policy - based on interpersonal exchanges between politicians and journalists - to a professionalized and specialized process of strategic communication controlling the flow of news. In the...

This paper reports preliminary findings generated by a German-Israeli research project on the production and consumption of media by and for ethnic and minority communities. It discusses questions of social integration of ethnic minorities and mass media with respect to dilemmas of identity...

Die deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen unterscheiden sich zu denen zwischen Deutschland und anderen Staaten Mittel- und Osteuropas durch die vergleichsweise dichten nichtstaatlichen Kontakte vor 1990. Die zügige Normalisierung der deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen nach dem Zusammenbruch des...

Given the amount of suffering in the world, do we have the capacity to provide the necessary humanitarian assistance? Assuming that this is the case: are both the governments and the populations willing to carry that burden in the future as they have done in the past? In order to answer these...

Using data from the ‘German-Polish Elite Study’, the paper presents findings as to how the German ‘positional elite’ thinks about the changing political significance of the border between Germans and Poles. Three dimensions of current ‘political boundary making’ are considered:...

Humanitarian assistance is a growing policy-field, where the humanitarian nongovernmental actors gained a new, politically influential role. These actors have established networks in order to increase and facilitate cooperation and coordination mechanisms among them. This study identifies a...

Die Verabschiedung des Statuts zur Errichtung eines Ständigen Internationalen Strafgerichtshofes (International Criminal Court, ICC) im Juli 1998 in Rom hat eine neue Ära in der internationalen Strafgerichtsbarkeit eingeleitet. Wenn auch bislang schon Globalisierungstendenzen auf eine...

Im vorliegenden Arbeitspapier werden die Einstellungsveränderungen der Ostdeutschen zur Demokratie und zur gesellschaftlichen Mitwirkung untersucht. Im Unterschied zur öffentlichen Diskussion, die den Ostdeutschen mangelnde Akzeptanz demokratischer Prinzipien unterstellt, wird in der...

In analyzing regime transition as an open-ended process, the paradigmatic approach of the paper provides an alternative to teleological schemes of the transition to democracy. The process of regime transition, regardless of the regime type itself, includes several stages, such as the breakdown...