Hertie School Research Repository
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Internationalization and Changes in Tax Policy in OECD Countries
No full textThis article examines the role that economic and political factors played in tax reform in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1986 to 1990. Some writers argue that economic integration forced states to reform their tax systems. The authors' findings indicate that economic openness had an indirect effect on the level of change in marginal tax rates. The institutional structure of a country was most important—countries that had only one veto player or only one institution or party whose approval was necessary for a bill to become law enacted more sweeping reform than states that had more than one veto player. These results suggest that even when international or domestic economic factors might dictate a change in policy, reform will not be as sweeping in countries in which agreement among several institutions and/or parties is necessary
A new doctrine on the block? The European Court of Human Rights and the responsible courts doctrine
No full textHuman Rights discourse and domestic Human Rights NGOs
No full textTurkish domestic human rights organizations (HROs) have played a major role in developing a human rights discourse by using human rights as an interpretive framework to criticize, resist, and reform domestic political, social, and economic arrangements. This chapter contends that since 1986, domestic Turkish HROs have been major actors in the development of a domestically grown human rights perspective in Turkish politics. They have introduced framing issues as human rights issues and paved the way in fostering a culture of minimum guarantees and protections that any individual ought to enjoy within the Turkish political community
Higher level vocational education: The route to high skills and productivity as well as greater equity? An international comparative analysis
No full textThis international comparative analysis of higher level vocational education examines devel-opments across five countries: England, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the USA. The au-thors consider how current developments address two key policy concerns: an emphasis on high skills as a means of achieving economic competitiveness and raising productivity; and the promise of increasing access for students hitherto excluded from higher education. We address these questions in relation to specific country contexts, in order to highlight similarities and differences in developments within the European arena and in a wider global context. We locate our analyses in an understanding of the different political and socio-economic conditions within different countries, which render particular reforms and innovations both possible and realiza-ble in one context, but almost unthinkable in another. We argue for the need to recognize and embrace diversity in provision, while using comparison across countries as a means of chal-lenging taken-for-granted assumptions of how things are and what is possible within individual country contexts. Such comparative analysis is a prerequisite for answering questions of policy transfer and learning from others
Developing Advanced Work-Based Higher Education – What Germany and the U.S. Can Learn from Each Other
No full textThe Governance of Decentralised Cooperation in Training Systems: A Review and Conceptualisation
No full textCollective training systems are based on the cooperation of multiple public and private stakeholders in order to work. However, such cooperation is not self-sustaining and depends, for instance, on public policies, capable intermediary organisations and shared logics of action. In this conceptual paper, we first review the political economy literature on cooperation in collective skill formation and find that it has given insufficient attention to the systematic comparative analysis of cooperation at the decentralised level as well as the actual social practices of cooperation. The paper then develops a multidisciplinary analytical framework that allows future research to examine decentralised cooperation at the regional, sectoral and occupational levels more systematically. This framework is grounded in a synthesis of three strands of empirical research on vocational education and training, namely the comparative political economy literature on governance, corporatism and coordination, institutional labour and societal economics as well as the educational science literature
European Integration as Compromise: Recognition, Concessions and the Limits of Cooperation
No full textThe role of compromise in EU politics has been widely recognized by scholars and practitioners alike. At the same time, the systematic conceptual, analytical and normative study of compromise has remained an exception. This is surprising, given that the study of compromise can be linked to three broader questions at the heart of integration: (1) How does the EU accommodate diversity? (2) What makes supranational rule normatively justifiable? (3) Who or what defines the limits of cooperation? Against this backdrop, this article sheds light on the concept of compromise, on the role of compromise in legitimizing supranational governance and on the limits to compromise in the European polity. I argue that the EU – a divided, multilevel and functionally restricted polity – is highly dependent on the legitimizing force of ‘inclusive compromise’, which is characterized by the recognition of difference. This is true for horizontal or micro‐level relations between political actors (where compromise works through concessions as well as justification, perspective‐taking and empathic concern in a process of ‘procedural accommodation’), and for vertical or macro‐level relations between systems of governance (where compromise works through ‘constitutional compatibility’). Given the legitimizing force of inclusive compromise, I subsequently identify the limits to such agreements and, thus, to supranational cooperation; I argue that these limits are issue specific and depend on where the costs of cooperation are borne. The article concludes by outlining routes for follow‐up empirical research
The Convention on the Future of Europe and the development of integration theory: A lasting imprint?
No full textThe Convention on the Future of Europe not only attracted public and political attention, but quickly reached centre-stage in the academic debate about European integration. Six years after the Convention was set up, this article asks whether this flourishing field of research chiefly permits insights into an idiosyncratic institution, or whether the Convention served as a catalyst for more enduring developments in integration theory. Arguing in favour of the latter, the article demonstrates that EU scholars have used the Convention to refine our theoretical understanding in three areas: (1) domestic preference formation; (2) international negotiations; and (3) deliberative democracy and constitutional design. The reviewed literature follows a predominant trend in integration theory, namely to 'import' established approaches from comparative politics, international relations and democratic theory rather than to theorize the Union's nature and the process of supranational integration as a single case. In turn, some of the contributions discussed below generate conceptual, methodological and theoretical insights that could be 'exported' back into political science more generally
