Suchergebnisse

In political theory, the subject of tax morale is closely linked to issues of citizenship and civic duties. Research on tax morale, however, is still rather underdeveloped in political science. In this article, we systematically compare a rational considerations approach with an approach focusing on the influence of community orientations on an individual's tax morale. We expect that contexts varying with the existence and duration of communist rule have caused systematic differences in terms of the motivation for tax morale. Multilevel analyses based on data taken from the fourth wave of the World Values/European Values Survey (1999/2000) confirm our expectations that socialization under communist rule strengthens the relevance of community orientations in explaining an individual's tax morale and reduces the impact of rational considerations. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright, the International Political Science Association.]

About 20 years after the German reunification the article examines which contents are associated with the ideological labels of "left" and "right" by both East and West German citizens, using survey data from 1991, 1997/8 and 2007. Furthermore, it discusses the inner German dynamics that lead to the current perception of these expressions. Distributive and socio-economic issues for instance are on the increase for the term "left", whereas associated qualities of the opposite term fluctuate without showing a clear trend. While East and West Germans have similar understandings of "left", there is a significant difference in what respondents attribute to "right": In the eastern part of the country people more often refer to issues of extremism in their statements, whereas a more heterogeneous picture can be drawn in West Germany. As both groups have converged in their understandings of the label "left", their conceptions of "right" have increasingly drifted apart over the last decade, showing the flexibility of the scheme in regard to its contents. Adapted from the source document.