The 1990s have witnessed unprecedented attempts at privatizing state owned enterprises in virtually all OECD democracies. This contribution analyzes the differences in the privatization proceeds raised by EU- and OECD-countries between 1990 and 2000. It turns out that privatizations are part of...

Social justice in health care insurance relates to both, the utilisation of services and the financing of the system. With respect to the latter, in its World Health Report 2000 the WHO promoted a concept of fair financing that asks for contributions to health care financing that are...

This paper uses the findings of a very recent major international research collaboration on the impact of federal arrangements on the development of the welfare state to explore the possibilities of progress beyond Europe's present diversity of nation-state welfare standards. These findings -...

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 contributes to the ongoing quest for a European public sphere understood as a structural transformation of national media debates. The process of Europeanization has a vertical and a horizontal dimension: an increased focus on the EU as well as more attention for other European...

Internationale Organisationen (IO) sind in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu wichtigen Akteuren im Bildungsbereich avanciert. Die Erforschung der Rückwirkungen von internationalen Bildungsaktivitäten befindet sich aber noch in ihren Anfängen. Im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit steht deshalb eine...

Civil society participation has become a buzzword in the debate about the legitimacy and accountability of international governance. Many organizations, prominently among them the World Trade Organization (WTO), have come under considerable pressure to open up their policy-making process towards...

1980s in Germany, Britain, France and Italy suggests a convergent and consistent process of homogenisation driven chiefly by institutional mimetic isomorphism. This new 'organisational settlement' is increasingly shaped by the structural autonomisation of individual service delivery units. This...

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the gradual nationalization of political authority that was typical for much of the State's history since the seventeenth century has come to a standstill and given way to the denationalization of political authority. Non-state actors acquire...

The existence of a European public sphere, a public network of exchange of opinions and ideas on political issues, has come to be seen as a prerequisite for the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. The paper conceptualizes the Europeanization of the national public spheres as a gradual...