What is the scope for autonomous action of the European Commission? Its independence is much more contentious than that of the European Court of Justice, which is generally considered quite autonomous. While the literature on the Commission focuses predominantly on its ability to use its...

In the course of completing the Single European Market the liberalization of telecommunications is a key issue. A central question is how public policy and market mechanisms can be combined to achieve a regulatory structure that strikes a balance between public service and advanced business...

Gerichte treffen politische Entscheidungen. Folglich kann Rechtsprechung als politischer Prozess untersucht werden, in dem Interessen, Ideen und Machtressourcen eine Rolle spielen. Britta Rehder untersucht den Beitrag des Bundesarbeitsgerichts zur Entstehung und Entwicklung des deutschen...

Neue Kommunikationstechnologien, Internet, Gentechnik - drei Beispiele, die zeigen, dass Technik ein wesentlicher Faktor des Wandels moderner Gesellschaften ist. Wann, warum und wodurch können neue Technologien bestehende Strukturen und Regeln destabilisieren und soziale Veränderungen...

What is the impact of business interest groups on the formulation of public social policies? This paper reviews the literature in political science, history, and sociology on this question. It identifies two strands: one analyzes the political power and influence of business, the other the...

Illegal markets differ from legal markets in many respects. Although illegal markets have economic significance and are of theoretical importance, they have been largely ignored by economic sociology. In this article we propose a categorization for illegal markets and highlight reasons why...

The role of macroeconomic policy in the different varieties of capitalism has been largely ignored. Recent contributions to the literature have argued that nonliberal economies should be expected to have less accommodating (i.e., less countercyclical) macroeconomic policies than liberal...