Five leading German political parties and their coalitions are evaluated with regard to party manifestos and results of the 2005 parliamentary elections. For this purpose, the party manifestos are converted into Yes/No answers to 95 topical questions (Relax the protection against dismissals?...

The paper contains both critical remarks on and constructive suggestions to Green Paper: Modernising labour law to meet the challenges of the 21st century of the European Commission (2006a) which promotes flexicurity policies, that is, relaxing the employment protection legislation while...

The analysis of interaction of flexibility and precariousness of work shows that the more flexible employment, the more it is precarious. For this purpose, two families of indices, of flexible work and of precarious work, are defined basing on the Fourth European Survey of Working Conditions...

The notion of flexicurity promotes the idea of compensation of labour market deregulation (= flexibilization) with advantages in employment and social security. The paper contains a brief history of the concept and its operational definition. To monitor effects of flexicurity policies in Europe,...

Aufgrund der Daten der Dritten Europäischen Umfrage für Arbeitsbedingungen wurde für den Vergleich europäischer Staaten ein zusammengesetzter Indikator der Arbeitsbedingungen aufgestellt. Die wichtigsten Forschungsergebnisse sind wie folgt: (a) die Ungleichheit zwischen europäischen Staaten...

The outcomes of the 2013 German Bundestag (federal parliament) are analyzed from the viewpoint of direct democracy. For this purpose, the party positions on 36 topical issues are compared with the results of public opinion polls, and the party and coalition indices of popularity (the average...

Reducing disparities among regions within European countries is the aim of European and national structural policies. In particular, a European grant contributes to the German governmental program for equalizing regional unemployment. The goal is to bring it down to the national average by...

The social security systems in 22 European countries are evaluated with a specially constructed indicator. It is based on a census-simulating model which combines both empirical (statistical) and normative (rule-based) approaches. The individual answers of unemployed on social security benefits...

Nach einer umfassenden Auswertung der Ergebnisse der Bundestagswahl 2005 hinsichtlich der Wahlprogramme bleibt die SPD die repräsentativste Partei Deutschlands, obwohl ihr Stimmenanteil nicht der höchste ist. Um dies zu zeigen, werden die Indikatoren der Popularität und der Universalität der...

The notion of flexicurity promotes the idea of compensation of labour market deregulation (= flexibilization) with advantages in employment and social security. To monitor effects of flexicurity policies in Europe, flexicurity indices are constructed from (a) scores of the strictness of...