Archive Page 17

Brazil will win the World Cup 2010

Published June 1, 2010 Politics , Publications 4 Comments

Who will win the Football World Cup 2010? This is one of the most pressing questions today – even beyond the world of sports. This article offers a prognostic model that goes far beyond Franz Beckenbauers answer on the question: What is your prognosis for the game? “Yes good, there is only one possibility. Victory, Draw or defeat”. Statistical Analyses reveals that – against popular opinions – political and economic, religious and psychological factors are explanatory and that Brasil will defeat Germany in the Final.

Table 1: Prognosis of results (checked by schedule)

World Champion Brazil
Runner Up Germany
3rd France
4th Italy
Quarter Finals Netherlands, England, Spain, Argentina
Last 16 Portugal, Serbia,  South Africa, Greece, Cameroun, USA, Paraguay, Switzerland

Based on a complex model, a team of social scientists at the Institute of Political Science of the University Tuebingen, predicts that Brazil will defeat Germany in the Finals of the 2010 Football World Cup. The model takes into account football related variables (participation and success in previous world cups, FIFA rankings, UEFA Coefficients and others) as well as political and economic (GDP per capita, GINI-Coefficient, HDI, Freedom House Freedom in the World Index, number of registered players) and socio-geographic (ration of catholics, distance to London and Chichén Itza, Continent) variables. Factorial analysis, regressions and other statistical calculations reveal that there is a significant influence of non-football variables on success.

The whole study can be downloaded here (as it is in German, please ask me for more results in English)

Wintersemester 2009/2010 Wrap Up – Summersemester 2010 Outlook

Published April 7, 2010 Soße Leave a Comment

Wintersemester 2009/2010 was my first semester with five seminars to be taught. These were the Undergraduate Courses “Introduction to Political Science” and “Lehrforschungsprojekt 1”, the Graduate courses “Systems Theory in Social Sciences” and “International Political Economy” ; and a colloquium for exam candidates. Together with 5 hours of student advisory a week, this was a semester the workload of which I roughly underestimated. Especially the abpout 1200 pages of thesises that had to be corrected, lied heavily on my desk. Some still lie there uncorrected, but will be processed until next monday, when the Summersemester starts. Never the less I managed to attend the ECPR Joint Sessions in late March and to participate in a workshop on “Comparing Autocracies”. This was a inspiring experience, especially because continental-european and anglo-american research traditions a kind of clashed within the workshop. But still, all of them, in-depth case studies, small- and medium-n comparisions and large-n numbercrunching, are quite interesting and powerful in their way.

Summersemester 2010 will bring four seminars for me: “Lehrforschungsprojekt 2” and “Political Economy” at the undergraduate level and “Political Transformations: Democratic Regression” at the graduate level, and another colloquium. Especially the seminar on democratic regression will be an interesting one due to two reasons: first, it is a topic that is underresearched both empirically and theoretically, so that there remain many questions open and discussions will be quite hot and fruitful. Second, I will give this seminar together with Juan Albarracín, a collegue and good friend of mine, now living, researching and teaching in Cali, Columbia after finishing his Master here in Tuebingen.

Further Informations on the seminars in Political Science in Summersemester 2010 can be found at the campus-site of  Tuebingen University

Autoritäre Regime, Bürger Im Staat 1-2010

Published April 7, 2010 Authoritarian political systems , Autocracy , Politics , Publications Leave a Comment

Out now: The new Buerger im Staat, volume 1-2010 was published this week. The volume on authoritarian regimes contains thirteen articles on Autocracies in the Postsoviet Space, the Caucasus, South East Asia and China, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. They include both, comparative perspectives and case studies and adress different aspects of persistence, change and functional logics of autocracies

Content:

  • Einleitung (Siegfried Frech)
  • Die „dunkle Seite“ der Macht: Stabilität und Wandel autoritärer Systeme (Holger Albrecht / Rolf Frankenberger)
  • Autoritäre Systeme in den Nachfolgestaaten der Sowjetunion (Petra Stykow)
  • Institutioneller Wandel in Russland – Die Konsolidierung der Autokratie (Rolf Frankenberger)
  • Regimebeständigkeit und „Revolution“: Armenien und Georgien im Vergleich (Christoph H. Stefes)
  • Die Finanzkrise in China: Auswirkungen auf die Legitimität der Parteiherrschaft (Heike Holbig)
  • Autoritäre Regime in Südostasien: Persistenz und Wandel von Militärregimen (Marco Bünte)
  • Autoritäre Regime im Vorderen Orient: Herrschaftssicherung trotz Herrscherwechsel (Maria Josua)
  • Das Familienunternehmen Ägypten (Thomas Demmelhuber)
  • Die Modernisierung des Autoritarismus in den arabischen Golfstaaten (Michael Schmidmayr)
  • Autoritäre Regime im Afrika (Jörg Kemmerzell)
  • Politische Apathie als Antwort auf die Krise in Simbabwe (Beatrice Schlee)
  • Autoritarismus und Demokratie in Lateinamerika (Peter Thiery)
  • Kuba – Im Herbst der Patriarchen (Franziska Stehnken)

Chaos oder Kosmos?

Published April 7, 2010 Publications Leave a Comment

My dear collegue and and friend Daniel Buhr recently published his dissertation titeled “Chaos oder Kosmos? Die Koordination der Innovationspolitik des Bundes – Probleme und Lösungsansätze”. Within this book he analyses innovation policies in the German Innovation System. This case study illustrates the complex interdependences in one of the most important policy fields that derive not only from the embeddedness in the european multi-level system but also from the more or less fragmented field in the German federal system. The findings of the study imply that the future of innovation policies lies in a systemic approach, that is apt to integrate the diverse facettes of the policiy field and to enable a productive coordination. Within the given coordinated market economy in Germany, two potentially successful institutional solutions to the coordination problem are offered: 1) the concentration of competences within a newly established “Innovation Ministry”; or 2) the integration of competences through the creation of special cabinet commissions or  interministerial 2working groups coordinated by the “Kanzleramt”, i.e. a “Innovation Cabinet”.

ECPR Joint Sessions in Münster

Published March 21, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

From 22. to 26. March, the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops will take place in Münster, Germany. There will be 28 workshops on different areas of political research. The one I will participate at will be on “Comparing Autocracies: Theoretical Issues and empirical Analyses of Inpput/Output Dimensions”. This workshop is chaired by Patrick Köllner (GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies)  and Steffen Kailitz (Hannah Arendt Institute for rersearch on Totalitarianism). It aims at bringing togehther scholars of Autocracies to debate on different issues, adressing theoretical, conceptual approaches as well as empirical analyses of authoritarian rule in general and input/output relations in special.

I will have the opportunity to present a rather theoretical paper named “killing two birds with one stone. Systems Theory and Autocracies re-considered”. What I am proposing with the paper is that the rather fragmented and unsystematic research on Autocracies could profit from using the rather old-school approach of social systems developed for example by Talcott Parsons, David Easton and Gabriel Almond. My argument is that a revised and modernized re-reading of Parsons can offer fruitful insights into the functions, structures and exchange processes, i.e. the input/output dimensions, of autocracies. It offers a way not only towards deeper understanding of autocracies but also of conceptualizing them beyond the pitfalls of greyzones, mixed types and democracy as a normative frame of reference that often have been discussed. As Systems differ in terms of functional equivalents and societal interchange, there is no need of a discrete analysis of democracy and autocracy, as the distinct combination of structures and functions offers a typology that is both comprehensive and mutually exclusive. This opens the way of a re-conceptualization of autocracy as a genuine type of social system (not only political system) that is defined by its unique structural composition as well as original interchange systems. This implies that there has to be a two level analysis of autocracies: first on the societal level with structural composition and interchange processes between political system, economic system, integrative system and cultural system , and second on the sub-societal level with the structural composition and interchange processes within the political system.

Within the paper I argue that whereas in democracies adaptation is organized by the economy and goal attainment by the political system, in autocracies this is the other way round with the political system fulfilling the adaptive function and the economy delivering goal attainment (Interestingly they do not seem to differ with regard to the integrative and pattern maintainance functions). Thus special interchange relations are established (i.e. neo-patrimonialism, corruption).

I am really forward to the workshop, not only because I want to get feedback for my paper, but also because there are really interesting scholars from all over Europe and beyond.

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