Suchergebnisse

The European Union (EU) represents an emerging opportunity structure refining societal actors' chances to get access to and influence over policymaking. While research has mainly focused on lobbying within the legislative arena, we provide evidence that competition policy can also be understood as a venue of interest group politics by taking the case of European football. The specific institutional features of competition policy have the potential to increase probability of access and lower costs for political action for certain interest groups, but also to limit potential benefits from interest group politics. Professional football players and clubs in Europe have used competition policy procedures as an avenue to challenge the supremacy of governing bodies such as UEFA in the game's organizational structures. Whilst managing some impact in terms of policy, the challengers have attained only moderate influence in football's sectoral governance. Adapted from the source document.

"Der Beitrag widmet sich dem Verhältnis zwischen der Europäischen Union (EU) und dem sich wandelnden globalen Regime geistiger Eigentumsrechte. Anknüpfend an das 'second image reversed'-Konzept begreifen die Autoren die EU nicht nur als politisches Subjekt, das die internationalen Verhandlungen zum geistigen Eigentumsrecht prägt, sondern fragen, ob der 'download' dieser neuen internationalen Regelungen auch die EU-Politiken beeinflusst. Sie nehmen an, dass das entstehende internationale Regime des geistigen Eigentumsrechte die EU beeinflusst, weil es die bestehenden binnenstaatlichen Beziehungen zwischen den Akteuren ändert, indem es die Ziele der Akteure verändert, binnenstaatliche Machtgleichgewichte verändert und Legitimitätsvorstellungen modifiziert. Die zentrale These der Autoren ist, dass der Einfluss der internationalen Regime zum geistigen Eigentumsrechts auf die EU davon abhängt, ob die jeweiligen Normen technokratisch umgesetzt werden können, so dass auf diese Weise eine Unterstützerkoalition geformt und Widerstand der Mitgliedstaaten vermieden werden kann. Die beiden Fallstudien unterstützen dieses Argument. Verhandlungen über internationale Eigentumsrechtsregime lösten Prozesse des Politiklernens aus, die vor allem die Europäische Kommission betrafen. Zudem veränderten die Verhandlungen und Vereinbarungen die Kosten-Nutzen-Kalkulationen innerhalb der EU, da sie eine Generalisierung strengerer Eigentumsrechte und besserer Durchsetzungsmechanismen boten. Schließlich legitimierten die internationalen Institutionen einen Modernisierungsansatz im Bereich der geistigen Eigentumsrechte und eröffneten der Kommission die Möglichkeit, neue Kompetenzen für die EU zu akquirieren. Allerdings sind die Mechanismen, mit denen internationale Institutionen die EU beeinflussen, nur effektiv, wenn die ausgelösten Veränderungen technokratisch umgesetzt werden können." (Autorenreferat)

Sport and sport consumption represent highly gendered spheres. Accordingly, sport spectatorship and fandom have been predominantly male. Recently, however, a trend towards a 'feminization of sport crowds' within European soccer has been detected. The piece of research presented here focuses on the concept's quantitative dimension and aims to provide empirical evidence on long-term trends in female sport consumption and team identification studying trends for the German national soccer team over a 12-year period. The results suggest that the feminization of soccer reflects not only inauthentic consumerism but also increased team identification. Moreover, consistent age effects might be interpreted as indicating that the detected trends relate to changes in gender roles attitudes.

Over 30 years ago, Eric Browne and Mark Franklin demonstrated that parties in a coalition tend to receive portfolio payoffs in almost perfect proportionality to their seat share. Even though this result has been confirmed in several studies, few researchers have asked what the underlying mechanism is that explains why parties receive a proportional payoff. The aim of this paper is to investigate the causal mechanism linking party size and portfolio payoffs. To fulfil this aim, a small-n analysis is performed. By analysing the predictions from a statistical analysis of all post-war coalition governments in 14 Western European countries, two predicted cases are selected, the coalitions that formed after the 1976 Swedish election and the 1994 German election. In these case studies two hypotheses are evaluated: that the proportional distribution of ministerial posts is the result of a social norm, and that parties obtain payoffs according to their bargaining strength. The results give no support to the social norm hypothesis. Instead, it is suggested that proportionality serves as a bargaining convention for the actors involved, thus rendering proportional payoffs more likely. Adapted from the source document.

Professional athletes increasingly use their popularity to speak out about political topics off and on the field. However, only few studies explore how audiences react to political speech in elite sports. Existing research has tended to focus on very few high-profile cases, usually in the United States, such as Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest. Going beyond single cases, this paper investigates factors that systematically influence public support for elite athletes' political activism. We integrated a vignette experiment into a survey of the German population ( N = 1002). Using multi-level regression models, we analyze how public support for athlete's political acts varies with political topics, the specific political action carried out as well as the local reference of the issue in question. Moreover, we also compare the level of public support for political actions between athletes and non-athlete celebrities. Findings indicate that support is subject to conditions: Athletes receive more support when their critique refers to political topics abroad (as opposed to domestic topics) and when non-disruptive actions are chosen, for example, expressions of opinion instead of boycotts. The specific message has the strongest influence on support: actions and statements that express a progressive political claim for stricter environmental protection receive more support compared to a rather conservative claim for border security. Findings add to the state of knowledge by showing which forms of political activism meet with broad acceptance and which are likely to polarize audiences.