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Copyright of Somnologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Gesunde Pflanzen is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper stems from historical and sociological literature according to which three stages of nation building can be distinguished historically in Europe: The first stage occurred in Western Europe (England and France), the second in Central and Southern Europe (Germany and Italy) and the third in Eastern Europe. This historical typology has been elaborated into a wide-spread sociological concept of three different concepts of nationhood: A state-nation, a cultural nation and an ethno-nation. The paper investigates the question of whether these different types can be found empirically, and if significant differences between Western and Eastern Europe exist in this regard. Analysing comparative survey data from the ISSP-programme National Identity of 1995, it is shown that neither this typology, nor the division between Western, Central and Eastern Europe can be shown. Instead, a functional-communicative and a traditional-ascriptive conception of nation are found. The first is supported by a majority of people all over Europe. Implications of this finding for the theory of nation building and for the prospects of European integration are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-seventies, Europe has gotten into a crisis profoundly affecting its social, economic, and political life. The manifestations of this crisis, however, have touched its nations in very different ways. In the more peripheral, southern and eastern regions, high levels of unemployment, fiscal crisis of the state, and environmental pollution are among the most urgent. In the more prosperous, central and northwestern nations, crisis phenomena are the threat of a splitting of the societies into those with secure, well-paid jobs and those without such jobs, declining birth rates, and dwindling confidence in public institutions among subsections of the population. In the main part of the paper, it is argued that for two reasons Europe constitutes, also in view of these different trends, a "macro-context" with outstanding opportunities for comparative research. There are two arguments for this: (1) the direct connections between its regions and nations are increasing more rapidly than ever before; (2) even if the differences within Europe are manifold, they are not so fundamental as to forbid comparisons at all. Rather, just this diversity of actual trends at the background of a common history and culture offers optimal possibilities for comparison. In order to make maximal use of these possibilities, however, one should include all countries into the comparison, not only specific subsets of nations. One must also be continually aware of the main lines of differentiation within Europe. Three main dimensions are distinguished in this regard: (1) level of socioeconomic development, related strongly to central or peripheral geographical location; (2) linguistic-cultural and denominational differentiations (distinguishing three large "culture areas": the northwestern, Anglosaxon-German, protestant; the southern, catholic-romance; and the eastern, orthodox-slavic; (3) political system (Western democratic and capitalist market societies; Eastern socialist societies). The paper concludes with some considerations and suggestions about strategies for comparative research simultaneously incorporating these three dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The university and the discipline of sociology have suddenly regained public attention in a number of European societies. They appear exposed to political evaluations that may lead to loss of financial support and of political esteem. This article tries to analyze these current debates by looking at both the university and sociology as historical projects. Nineteenth-century university reforms, which led to the current status and structure of this institution, was linked to the building of the nation-states; twentieth-century sociology showed a commitment to social policy and solidarity. If these political projects have now exhausted their historical mission, as some may claim, the institution and the discourse that were linked to them will similarly decay. Against this background, the paper discusses three possible options for the future of the university and of sociology. One may attempt to revive the ideas of nation-state and social policy together with the university and sociology; one may throw any such substantive orientation off and try to live by established procedures; or one may envisage a radical renewal of both the institutional and the intellectual project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental Sciences Europe is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Erwerbs-Obstbau is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Leviathan: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft (Springer Science & Business Media B.V.) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Leviathan: Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft (Springer Science & Business Media B.V.) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author analyses and defends the French referendum against Europe's new constitutional treaty. Even if the referendum was a disaster for the democratic legitimization of the EU, it had a significant democratic meaning, and hence came close to a first 'constitutional moment' of Europe. The referendum has made manifest the up-to-then latent crisis of legitimation. The crisis seems to be caused by new transnational relations of domination. A postnational soft Bonapartism is emerging. This new Bonapartism of the united executive bodies of Europe relies on a tremendous growth of informal power beyond state borders and beyond the law. The very political problem of Europe therefore is the re-legalization of informal power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where are the points of agreement and divergence in the positions of social democratic parties in Europe? This question stands at the centre of a survey on the European Economic and Social Model conducted in 17 European countries. On the abstract-programmatic level on some points there is considerable agreement, for example, on the demand for a strengthening of the social dimension of the European Union. Even on a number of concrete political projects there is unanimity within European social democracy (rejection of the country of origin principle in the liberalization of services). The normal case in relation to concrete political proposals is of course great heterogeneity of positions. This divergence can be explained by the dominance of "national" interests over the general party-political interest in a uniform position. These national interests are shaped on the one hand by inter-state distributional interests (net payers vs. net beneficiaries), and on the other hand by the degree of approximation of one's own welfare state and politico-economic model to the model of the core European states (the six founding states): it is only to be expected that a strengthening of the social dimension of the EU would lead to a transfer of this model to EU level. For this reason positions are very heterogeneous, particularly in the case of EU policies which touch on the foundations of national welfare state regimes. As an example we shall present the survey results on the proposals for a co-ordinated wage and employment policy, as well as the institutionalization of a common EU welfare state model. In this connection four groups of countries have crystallized: (i) The states of "old Europe" favor further socio-political integration, even if they must foot the bill as net payers, because they can expect an institutionalization of a welfare state model at EU level which is compatible with their own. (ii) The "cohesion states" (southern Europe plus Ireland) are also relatively open-minded because their own welfare state development has led to an approximation to the continental European model "from below" (iii) The "transition states" of Eastern Europe are rather skeptical because they fear a loss of competitiveness from further EU socio-political integration. (iv) The "euro-skeptics" (Scandinavia and the UK) are equally reluctant. This is due on the one hand to their being net payers, but on the other to the fact that the institutionalization of a common EU social model would go hand in hand with a far-reaching transformation of their own welfare state models. This would trigger conflicts over redistribution and jeopardize the functional integrity of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most significant consequences of the new immigration has been a dramatic growth in religious diversity on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States the new immigrant religions are contributing to the further expansion of an already vibrant American religious pluralism, which is incorporating all world religions in the same way in which it incorporated the old immigrant religions, Catholicism and Judaism. In the case of Europe, by contrast, immigrant religions and particularly Islam present a greater challenge to local patterns of limited religious pluralism and even more importantly to recent European trends of drastic secularization. Islam is perceived as ‘the other’ of Western secular modernity, an identification that becomes superimposed upon the older image of Islam as ‘the other’ of European Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on longitudinal data in the dimensions of state, economy and society it is analyzed to what extent European societies have certain features in common which distinguish them from the United States. For most social indicators the range of variation within the European Union is bigger than the gap between Europe and the U.S. Differences between countries with different institutional arrangements persist. In terms of employment and growth dynamics Scandinavian nations, which have similarly extended welfare states as Continental European countries, have performed similarly well as the Anglo-Saxon countries. Hence there are not only different social models in Europe, but also different pathways to success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]