Despite of their methodological and practical significance mixed-methods-designs have so far largely been neglected by political science. In this working paper, we elaborate a mixed-methods-design combining qualitative methods, such as expert interviews and document analysis, and quantitative...

This paper analyzes the importance of governance of international organizations (IOs) to Swiss policy making in the field of education. The focus is on the Bologna Process driven by the European Commission, and the 'Programme for International Student Assessment' (PISA) of the Organization for...

Far-reaching transformations in Swiss education were pushed in the last decade by two prominent international initiatives, namely the 1999 Bologna process and the OECD's PISA study starting in 2000. To what extent and in which way were these soft governance initiatives able to trigger Swiss...

Public policy shapes the lives of individuals, and even more so if they depend on state support. But to what extent can well-being differences between individuals living in different European states be traced back to the specific national public policy designs? This paper tests the intervening...

This paper analyses the effect of unemployment insurance generosity and active labour market policy on reemployment stability in Europe. Using EU-SILC and OECD data, we conduct discrete time survival analyses with shared frailty specification to identify policy effects at the micro and macro...

Die EWU-Schuldenkrise macht gemeinsame Aktionen der Gläubigerstaaten zur Rettung der Schuldnerstaaten erforderlich. Dies war von einigen Ökonomen schon bei der Einführung des Euro befürchtet worden. Einen Keil zwischen die Mitgliedsländer treibt das auf die einzelne Nation gerichtete Denken...

Im Sonderforschungsbereich 597 (TranState) wird seit 2003 der Wandel von Staatlichkeit in der OECD-Welt des ausgehenden 20. und beginnenden 21. Jahrhunderts untersucht. Ausgangspunkt und Vergleichsmaßstab ist dabei der demokratische Rechts- und Interventionsstaat – im Folgenden DRIS – der...

Das Arbeitspapier richtet sich an alle, die einen Einstieg in die Sozialpolitikforschung suchen und bietet einen Überblick über die zentrale Konzeptionen, Theorien und Wirkungen von Sozialpolitik. Sozialpolitik war von jeher ein schillernder Begriff und entzieht sich einer allumfassenden...

What is the nature of the European Union? Does it have the characteristics of a state, and if so, which? We employ a single imagea poster that won a Marshall Plan competition in 1950to examine the various legal perspectives of the EU that have emerged over the past six decades. Created as a...