European legislation is an often studied topic of research into decision rules, since it provides for a large number of different rules and the interaction of different voting bodies. However, research on European Integration concentrates on the choice rather within than of rules. Relative...

This paper asks two questions. First, why are party voters less favourable towards specific EU policies than party elites? Second, how does political representation of EU preferences actually work, is it an elite- or a mass-driven process? The data-sets of the European Election Studies 1979 and...

Although it can be inferred from the behavior of parties and candidates that these political actors attribute the mass media a substantial potential for direct influences on citizens' political decisions, few studies have so far been able to demonstrate that such a potential for influence really...

Die Frage nach der Existenz eines bereits vorhandenen oder die Chance für ein genuines europäisches Parteiensystem steht im Mittelpunkt dieses Arbeitsberichtes. Ausgegangen wird von einem Policy-orientierten Ansatz, der postuliert, daß zum Zustandekommen eines europäischen Parteiensystems...

Supranationality is the normative principle animating European Community law. It says, roughly, that a supranational community eliminates disadvantages that arise for persons as a consequence of the co-existence of nation states. In the course of the integration process, this principle has been...

The paper proposes an empirical examination of the consequences of educational expansion and reform in four European countries in terms of school-leavers' labour market chances. The empirical analyses focus on the returns to higher education on the one side and vocational qualification as...

"Over the last two decades, youth unemployment emerged as one of the major problems of many contemporary European societies. As educational achievement is regularly claimed to prevent labour market exclusion, this paper explores the educational stratification of unemployment in early labour...

The paper builds on a French-German comparison on how individuals education and their social class position are related to each other. Labour force surveys from the early 1970s and 1990s are used as the empirical basis. We analyze patterns of occupational stratification by education from three...

In comparative family policy research there has been a growing need for comparative data and information on family policies in individual countries. Existing data sources are not sufficient, because they are too highly aggregated and do not focus on the family in specific terms. This has been...