Since late eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the concept of civil society has increasingly assumed a transnational dimension that has given rise to political debates and attracted scholarly interest. This paper provides a research report and a historical overview of the emergence and...

Öffentliche Fahrradverleihsysteme haben Konjunktur: Mehrere große Systeme wurden in den letzten Jahren in europäischen Großstädten aufgebaut (u.a. Paris und Barcelona) – in Deutschland bisher jedoch nicht in vergleichbarem Umfang. Um auch den Aufbau von Fahrradverleihsystemen in...

Interventions based solely or partially on humanitarian grounds are rare; but, over the course of the last two decades, they have become increasingly common phenomena of international politics. Nevertheless international relations theories have thus far not been able to adequately account for...

The paper investigates effects of host-country orientation and cultural difference of migrants on their socio-economic integration in Germany, using SOEP data for the years 1988-2006. We analyze unemployment and employment durations of male and female migrants, as well as transitions from...

Considering several main types of dynamic contests (the race, the tug-of-war, elimination contests and iterated incumbency fights) we identify a common pattern: the discouragement effect. This effect explains why the sum of rentseeking efforts often falls considerably short of the prize that is...

Countries differ in their governmental architectures and in the rules that describe the allocation of tasks, rights and duties across the various levels of government. In this paper, we present a short and selective survey of the development of the theory of optimal allocation of rights and...

This contribution provides a brief overview and discussion of the role of experiments in economics. It is argued that economic experiments have convinced economists and the public of the existence of phenomena that have been outside the scope of economics. The success of these experiments is...

A number of European initiatives aim to create a European educational space, including vocational training and higher education. Following the logic of difference, we ask whether, despite their different institutionalization, these two sectors in France and Germany react similarly to the...

In this report, we investigate the situation of workers who also care for an elderly parent in Germany. The study is based on qualitative, in depth interviews with care givers who are at least part time employed. The interviews aimed at detecting constrains and resources available to workers...

This paper examines to what extent the classification of the American welfare state as "residual" squares with the empirical facts. Section I describes key features of American social policy developments. The U.S. system is clearly dominated by public provisions for welfare among which social...