{"title":"Aline Bartenstein. 2021. The Concept of Solidarity: Energy Policy in the European Union","authors":"Andreas Grimmel","doi":"10.1007/s12286-022-00516-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-022-00516-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"57 1","pages":"177 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"52782252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parties and their environmental problem perceptions—Towards a more fundamental understanding of party positions in environmental politics","authors":"J. Pollex, Lars E. Berker","doi":"10.1007/s12286-022-00515-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-022-00515-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"15 1","pages":"571 - 591"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"52781906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public health and democratic governance: COVID-19's impact on South Africa's democracy.","authors":"Dirk Kotzé","doi":"10.1007/s12286-023-00557-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12286-023-00557-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The research is motivated by the need to determine the impact of South Africa's COVID-19 regulations on its quality of democracy. It takes into account the interests of individual (liberal) rights in competition with the state's interests of public security. Theoretical assumptions, based on classical democratic theories, which rely on the separation of powers and checks-and-balance principles, were used. The South African government architecture is assessed, especially in the context of accountability and oversight requirements. For this purpose, the relationship between the legislature and executive is most relevant. The South African government decided on a state of disaster to manage the pandemic, but it is contrasted with a state of emergency as the constitutional alternative. Its implementation, especially the institutional framework used for it, is analysed. The role of Parliament during the pandemic is used as an important test of the quality of democracy. The conclusions are that South Africa's democratic principles did not degenerate during the pandemic, as concluded by Freedom House, but the pandemic's major impact was on the quality of democracy. The state of disaster's institutions, for example, were not those prescribed by legislation. Moreover, Parliament's involvement in the state of disaster's decision-making was limited. The 2021 local government election, on the other hand, was judged free and fair and its outcomes have been implemented without any public challenges. The main negative outcome is the public's trust deficit in the ANC government's use and abuse of pandemic regulations.</p>","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"16 1","pages":"733-752"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9989571/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45504043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Governance under the Covid-19 pandemic: comparative perspectives on Germany and Hungary: Special section \"Democratic Health in the Corona Pandemic. The Corona Pandemic as a Trigger or Amplifier of Democratic Erosion?\"","authors":"Christian Schweiger","doi":"10.1007/s12286-022-00546-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12286-022-00546-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>By adopting a comparative approach between different regime types, the paper concentrates on Germany and Hungary as case studies for the comparative analysis of the effects the pandemic has had on national governance in the two countries which most strongly represent the growing cleavage between the EU's liberal Western core and the <i>illiberal</i> Central-Eastern periphery. Methodologically the analysis follows the Most Different Systems Design and examines to what extent the Covid pandemic has functioned as a potential catalyser for the weakening of democratic governance in formerly solid democratic political systems and/or as an accelerator of democratic backsliding in hybrid regimes. For this purpose, the paper examines the process and the content of legislation passed domestically to contain the effects of the pandemic. The analysis shows that even under the stronger coordination of executive decision-making between the federal and regional government level, the foundations of legislative and judicial scrutiny remained resilient during the pandemic in Germany's multi-level polity, while in Hungary central government has used the pandemic to substantially expand its executive powers at the expense of legislative and judiciary powers.</p>","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"16 1","pages":"663-685"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9773679/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48816021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Soziale Ungleichheiten in der politischen Partizipation junger Menschen und die Rolle der Digitalisierung","authors":"R. Renner","doi":"10.1007/978-3-658-39527-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39527-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78935708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studying politics at the local level in Germany: a tale of missing data.","authors":"Klaudia Wegschaider, Martin Gross, Sophia Schmid","doi":"10.1007/s12286-022-00551-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12286-022-00551-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What are the strategies of political parties in multi-level government systems and how do voters respond to these strategies? At the national and state level, many researchers have worked with data from party manifestos, candidate lists, party press releases, parliamentary questions, and parliamentary speeches. At the local level, these standard components of the political science toolbox are not available to researchers in many countries-including Germany. The absence of these data means that politics at the local level remains chronically understudied. In this research note, we draw attention to the dearth of data when studying local politics and the questions that we cannot answer as a result. Specifically, we document our failed attempt to collect local party manifestos in smaller municipalities which would have been the basis for an analysis of political parties' strategies in response to the lowering of voting ages in local elections in German states. We point to examples from other countries that show that it does not have to be this way.</p>","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"16 1","pages":"753-768"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9841949/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47178620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Democratic health in the corona pandemic. The corona pandemic as a trigger or amplifier of democratic erosion or autocratization?","authors":"Marianne Kneuer, Stefan Wurster","doi":"10.1007/s12286-023-00558-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12286-023-00558-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"16 1","pages":"615-634"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10052220/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46038170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alexia Katsanidou, Marianne Kneuer, Felix Bensmann, Dimitar Dimitrov, Stefan Dietze
{"title":"Limitations of democratic rights during the Covid-19 pandemic-exploring the citizens' perception and discussions on dangers to democracy in Germany.","authors":"Alexia Katsanidou, Marianne Kneuer, Felix Bensmann, Dimitar Dimitrov, Stefan Dietze","doi":"10.1007/s12286-023-00556-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12286-023-00556-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The governments' mitigation measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented in our post-war history. For overcoming this crisis, citizens were expected to act in compliance with these measures in order to control the spread of the virus and keep public health systems functional. This call for protecting the public health at the same time confronted citizens with several and severe limitations of their democratic freedoms and rights: confinement, restriction on freedoms of movement, religion, specific provisions for public protest and finally also limitations to the right of education by school closures. This paper analyzes how citizens perceive the threat the COVID-19 pandemic and especially the mitigation measures posed for democracy. We assume that pandemic waves and pandemic fatigue have an impact on the perception of threat. To see the overall societal picture, we exploit a large-scale archive of online discourse on Twitter out of which we extract democracy-related discourse with the same temporal and geospatial coverage for our investigation. From that data source, we apply computational methods to extract time series data reflecting aggregated opinions and their evolution over time concerned with the correlation of attitudes towards democracy. We them move deeper using a longitudinal panel survey we conducted in November/December 2020, March/April 2021, and July/August 2021. to have a view of the relationship between citizens' socio-economic status and basic political attitudes. Our multi-method analysis bases on the German case and covers the period from December 2020 to August 2021.</p>","PeriodicalId":44200,"journal":{"name":"Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft","volume":"16 1","pages":"635-661"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9927050/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46154468","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}