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In recent years, the transition from higher education to work in comparative perspective has attracted increasing attention from scholars and practitioners alike. Previous studies reveal similarities and differences in labour market outcomes across countries, but explanatory frameworks mainly refer to fields of study, whereas differences by types of institutions and types of degrees remain largely descriptive. Therefore, this paper specifically focuses on these institutional structures by arguing that the institutional stratification of higher education systems is crucial for shaping graduate employment prospects. More specifically, it is assumed that the higher the vertical differentiation of types of institutions or types of degrees, the stronger the differences of employment outcomes. This assumption is tested empirically by analysing two country cases most different in the institutional set-up of their higher education systems: Germany and Britain. By applying hazard models to the German Socio-Economic Panel and two British cohort studies (NCDS and BCS70), the paper shows that the vertical differentiation of British higher education institutions and degrees differentiates the transitions to the service class more strongly than in Germany. Thus, for understanding transition patterns from higher education to work in comparative perspective, it is necessary to take into account the institutional structure of higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is an introductory survey of the evolution of multiculturalism in Britain and Germany over the past two centuries. The historical approach argues that the main determinants of difference between these nation states lie in their long-term traditional attitudes towards immigrants and ethnic minorities. It focuses upon the patterns of immigration into Britain and Germany as well as the differing imperial traditions, which have both left differing legacies. An equally important historical factor has been the legal position of aliens in the two states, in which, until very recently, Britain adopted a policy of ;MS solis, whereas Germany pursued one of jus sanguinis. The paper then examines the realities of multiculturalism in the two states. Due primarily to the historical traditions of nationality legislation, immigrants and their descendants in Britain have come to play a more important role in recent British history than their contemporaries in Germany, particularly if we examine their role in the political process and in popular culture. While the conclusion reiterates the differences, it also stresses that we should not view Britain and Germany as the opposite ends of the multicultural spectrum, as both are modem liberal democracies with significant ethnic minority populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British politicians often argued that Britain maintained its navy only in order to secure its own survival by keeping sea communications open, while Germany in no real need of a powerful navy, threatened this legitimate British policy-goal by pursuing expansionist politics. German leaders, emboldened and a little dazzled by the tremendous industrial and economic success of the newly unified Reich, held that Britain was maintaining its economic dominance in the Empire by military means and thus blocking the progress Germany hoped to make in its aspiration to parity status and economic prosperity, with all that that entailed. This paper will explore the underlying rationale of the arms race between Britain and Germany shining through in those different positions on legitimate (military) policy aims. It will go beyond the visible symbols, as it were, of the Dreadnought and the Two-Power standard. These very concrete matters will also be dealt with here but, more importantly, this essay is meant to give some answer as to whether an archetypal differentiation between survival on the one hand and domination on the other can be made out as the predominant logic that led the two countries to embark on the road to the Great War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more than 10 million Muslims living in Western Europe, states are struggling to accommodate the religious needs of Muslims in state-supported institutions. Such issues include whether to fund separate Islamic schools and how or whether to teach Islam in state-supported schools. Despite these common concerns, national governments vary widely in their response to the religious needs and practices of Muslim citizens and permanent residents. This paper looks at how Britain, France and Germany have resolved these issues. We explore how pre-existing Church-State practices and institutional arrangements structured the politics of state accommodation of Muslims' religious needs in each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers how far and in what ways venture capital policies in the UK and Germany have been constructed as regional policy interventions. It begins by explaining two justifications for adding a regional dimension to venture capital policy and outlines the development of such policy in the two states. It explains the contrasting policy regimes and the means of intervention employed. Despite their marked differences, venture capital policies in both states are regionalized to only a limited degree. However, the uneven regional operations and effects of such policies are likely to produce an unintended regionalization of outcomes that may contradict the aims of closing regional disparities in risk finance and entrepreneurialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization, differentiated from European integration as the impact of European policies on national policies, practices, and politics, has had differing effects on EU member states, depending upon a number of independent variables. These include the constraints imposed by EU decisions in any given policy area, that is, whether the decisions demand that countries follow highly specified rules of implementation, less specified rules, suggested rules, or no rules at all. But adjustment also depends upon certain mediating factors, including countries' vulnerability to global as well as European economic pressures, their political institutional capacity to respond as necessary, the 'fit' of European policies with national policy legacies and preferences, and the discourses that influence policy preferences by changing perceptions of economic vulnerabilities and policies and thereby enhance capacity. Only by putting the decision constraints together with the mediating factors can we adequately explain countries' differential policy outcomes, whether inertia, absorption, or transformation. To illustrate, this paper considers three countries, France, Britain, and Germany, across a representative range of economic policy areas, including monetary policy, financial services, telecommunications, electricity, transport, and mutual recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact on the professions of changes in their institutional environment during the past two decades. A comparison is made between two professions - solicitors/advocates and pharmacists - in the contrasting institutional contexts of British and German society. It is suggested that, despite common pressures from the state and the market, there remains a significant degree of diversity in the way professions organize themselves in the two societies. A contrast is drawn between British modernizers and German traditionalists, but some convergence is also noted. In both Britain and Germany, professional authority and privilege can no longer be taken for granted but have to be earned by proven performance and enhanced accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour courts in many European countries have a tripartite structure, with a professional judge sitting with employer and employee lay judges. This article focuses on employee judges, who face a potential conflict between their partisan role defending workers and their role as an impartial judge. Using cognitive dissonance as our theoretical framework and drawing on over a 100 interviews in three European countries, we found that many British and German interviewees said that they had not experienced any conflict of interests. Others, however, reported such conflict, especially initially, and demonstrated adaptation strategies that appeared consistent with cognitive dissonance theory. Moreover, there were national variations: conflict in France appeared more pervasive and enduring than in Britain or Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers the various ways that tennis was implicated within First World War propaganda; more specifically, to consider tennis as both a lens to view and a context to understand and communicate perspectives about the war from a British perspective. In the midst of heightened nationalism, jingoism and Germanophobia, tennis featured in broader debates in both the mainstream and sporting press as a site of contested meanings of British national identity. This was seen through poetry and cartoons alongside public correspondence through letters to editors and various published discussions. These messages typically defended Britain's amateur games culture, utilising constructions of 'sportsmanship' to distinguish British and German approaches, while denigrating Germany's more functionalistic understanding of sport's role in training. These messages were far from one-sided, as some British correspondents sought to defend German tennis players as somehow 'above' their barbarous brethren in ethics. Moreover, through tennis, Germans also communicated their objections to Britain's apparently more 'frivolous' attitude toward sport and warfare. Thus, narratives were diverse and conflicting, and were indicative of ongoing confusions expressed publicly about the supposed role of amateur sport as a site of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between soldiers’ contemporaneous accounts of the First World War and writers’ later representations of combatants’ experiences in novels and other types of ‘war literature’. It argues that post-war literary depictions of such experiences closely resembled soldiers’ own testimony, serving to disseminate and legitimize combatants’ earlier, private revelations of the horrific reality of modern warfare. At the time and afterwards, these accounts of the fighting co-existed with patriotic and heroic descriptions of the war. Here, I investigate the transnational transfer and reception of literary works. Through a comparison of literary treatments of the conflict in Britain and Germany, the article highlights the significance of the outcome of the First World War for its longer-term cultural legacy. The war was described in similar terms in both countries, but criticism of the war effort proved much more divisive in Germany than in the United Kingdom, affecting the ways in which military conflict was remembered and understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attitudes of British and German socialists vis-a-vis religion before the First World War has been described by one of the most eminent scholars in the field of the history of religion, Hugh McLeod, as being diametrically opposed -- German socialists were largely secular, irreligious and anti-clerical whereas within British socialism, Christianity, especially dissenting Protestantism, was a far more important streak. In this article I would like to modulate the stark contrast contained in this commonly held view by looking at a slightly different time frame than McLeod, and by emphasizing more the ambiguities and uncertainties of that relationship between socialism and religion in both countries. It shall be argued that a longer-term positive relationship between religion and socialism in Britain can be juxtaposed with a rapprochement between the forces of religion and socialism in interwar Germany. Hence the article will provide a crosscountry diachronic comparison of the relationship between religion and socialism in Britain and Germany. It will highlight, in particular, a common utopianism of religion and socialism, that could also be called utopianism of the social ethics of the Sermon on the Mount; attempts to forge socialism as new religion shall be examined on the subsequent pages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At NATO’s 2014 Wales Summit, the UK and Germany unveiled two new initiatives for European defence cooperation, known, respectively, as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and the Framework Nations Concept (FNC). Both were the result of economic pressures and the need to exercise intra-alliance leadership, but they represented very different approaches to cooperation. The JEF was to be a UK-led contingency force for short-notice operations, selectively incorporating forces from allies and partners. The FNC sought to coordinate capability development between groups of allies, centred on larger framework nations, to develop coherent capability-clusters available to meet NATO’s force requirements. The common denominator and novelty of the initiatives was the building of forces and capabilities multinationally by having major states act as framework nations for groups of smaller allies. The UK and Germany have ownership and continue to provide leadership to these initiatives. This is one key reason why they continue to evolve to accommodate changing circumstances and are likely to endure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Edward Snowden’s revelations laid bare an unprecedented scale of state influence on communications technology. But government elites have frequently shaped technological development through their beliefs about potentially nefarious uses of communications. This article argues that beliefs about how other states or groups might use a technology can shape innovation. In particular, German visions about the British use of cables spurred German investment in developing wireless telegraphy. Germans imagined that the British were using cable technology to damage Germany’s reputation, spy on Germany and ‘poison’ neutral countries against the Central Powers. The German government and military at first created a colonial wireless network to bypass British cables. In World War I, however, they sought to establish a world wireless network. In the end, innovation was significantly shaped by how Germans imagined their enemies’ uses of communications technology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is often stated that there is no standard definition of a ‘welfare state’. A survey of the standard textbooks supports this claim. It is also often the case that academic works on welfare state and social policy history earmark lines or even pages to discussing the origins of the term welfare state. However, these brief accounts are often wrong in the details and are missing important aspects. In our article we offer the first detailed study of the origin of the term ‘welfare state’ tracing it back to the mid-19th century Germany and following its diverse and changing definitions in the German and British context until the 1940s. The study adds decades to the conventional understanding of this history and offers a more nuanced understanding of the different definitions attributed to the term before its political breakthrough in the late 1940s. Projecting this post-war understanding backwards in time – what the literature generally does – is too simple and anachronistic. Both in Germany and Britain the dominating understandings differ from our present day understanding of the ‘welfare state’ as a social security system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores how tramways were publically appropriated, in what way people responded to the new modes of transport, and how they integrated them into their lives and urban environments. The approach of public appropriation shifts the focus away from the technology and tramway companies to the users of the new modes and opens the field to the analysis of the interrelationship between transport technology and urban cultures in a comparative perspective. The study concludes that people were more critical of horse than of electric tramways. The often-quoted “massive public opposition” to electrification turns out to be much weaker than hitherto assumed. Only by the mid-1910s had the urban masses, upper classes, and workers fully appropriated them as modes to serve their working and leisure habits, as fashionable and as a very positive and visual sign for the ability and prestige of the city and an urban community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article traces the images of America's three foremost European allies in US public opinion over the course of the Presidency of George W. Bush. Public country images are seen to consist of a valence and a salience dimension. Employing a mix of opinion polls and media content data, the article locates the country images under study within this two-dimensional space. It finds that US relations with Britain, Germany and France rest on rather different foundations in the American public: the British image displays both the most positive valence and the highest salience; the valence of the German image is the second most positive but its image is the least salient; the French image has the least positive valence, and its salience takes on a middle position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family policies have been expanded in many OECD countries, whilst developments along other welfare state dimensions have been characterized by retrenchment. Although the contribution of gender analyses of the welfare state to a better understanding of family policies is widely acknowledged, the literature so far has largely failed to provide a comparative account explaining the recent expansions of employment-oriented family policies in countries that were previously categorized as pursuing policies in accordance with the strong male breadwinner model. This article aims to make a contribution to the comparative literature by investigating the socioeconomic conditions and politics of employment-oriented family policy expansions in Britain and Germany since the 1990s. We pay special attention to processes of post-industrialisation and especially changed skill compositions as well as the role of key policy actors, with a special focus on organized business. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The article has an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research from gender, media, sport and cultural studies. It considers the discourses of nature and sport in advertising which targets mainly men, in the editorial context of two examples of British and German news magazines, namely The Economist and Der Spiegel, from a critical cultural and gender studies perspective. It aims to outline the relational nature and hierarchical structure of gender reflected in constructs of popular culture; to assess whether promotional discourses of nature and sport are conceived to assert a uniform, global hegemonic masculinity, or whether nationally distinctive target-groups are addressed in specifically ‘national’ ways. It analyzes the particular gender ideologies contained in commodity advertising that use metaphors of untamed nature and competitive sports to address audiences who are considered to be ‘opinion leaders’ in Britain and/or Germany. The aspiration towards global competitiveness or neo-colonial domination visualized by wild, ‘virgin’ landscapes and global sports will be questioned in relation to the concept of global or national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the responses of three established European powers, France, Britain and Germany, to a world of rising regional hegemons. It argues that Europe as a region remains unique as it consists of three regional powers of similar material and ideational power resources and is the most institutionalised region worldwide. The current transformation of world power configurations, debated in competing visions of global order, challenges Europe's central place. Facing gradual marginalisation, the foreign policy adaptations of Germany, Britain and France have been insufficient and remarkably static. Old foreign policy identities still play a significant part in European self-perceptions. However, views are gradually changing as the world becomes more heterogeneous. Among the emerging regional powers, China, India and Russia are perceived as decisive global players. Other rising powers are viewed as mainly regional and, hence, more manageable actors. Finally, the article calls for a general shift in European attitudes towards the non-European world and argues that European powers should overcome traditional Euro-centric world views. Rather, they should start to engage with rising powers in a serious discourse over common global responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the assumption that the welfare delivery state does not fit into the vertical or hierarchical model of political accountability in light of its recent organizational arrangements. Although a distinction in any analytical framework between managerial and political accountability bears some fruit, the replacement of the latter with the former is contestable and misleading. In contrast to the claims that managerial accountability is a technical and neutral exercise in the application of politics-free criteria, and, as such, it more readily fits the complexity of the 21st-century welfare state, this article suggests that the new organizational arrangements of state schools and hospitals indicate that traditional forms of accountability to elected officials have not withered. The process of developing new welfare state organizational arrangements cannot be divorced from fundamental institutional questions about each democracy. By empirically investigating the effects of the introduction of managerialism on democratic accountability in Britain and Germany, the article aims to further our understanding of the link between the managerial and political dimensions of accountability in the welfare delivery state. Points for practitioners Social policy practitioners, including secondary school teachers, and nurses and doctors in public hospitals, are accountable to their peers through a mechanism that is fundamentally different from the hierarchical form of accountability. Professional accountability is essentially a horizontal and internal type of control. Managerialism has challenged clinical and pedagogical autonomy in many ways, lowering the morale of practitioners, who have traditionally perceived their function well beyond the achievement of objective targets and performance outputs. Yet, it is easier to dismiss such managerial attempts and overlook the fact that public managers are themselves part of the same medical and teaching profession with which they often share common interests. However, there is an important distinction to be made between professional and managerial functions, namely that public managers in a democratic and representative government are accountable also to elected officials through external mechanisms of control. One of the key challenges for public managers, thus, is the acknowledgement of what managerial accountability entails and also in practice what it may exclude, when aimed at replacing political accountability. This may run against the very foundations of the welfare state. Social policy practitioners are inextricably located at the heart of a complex web of political mechanisms of accountability, which make the welfare delivery state one of the greatest contributors to our democratic institutions, and far from being only a machinery for satisfying material needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A century ago chemistry was the pre‐eminent academic and science‐based industrial pursuit, mainly as a result of the introduction of synthetic dyestuffs. The German dye‐making industry had just introduced synthetic indigo, following the longest and most expensive academic–technological campaign ever known and, as a follow up, novel fast vat dyes. The relevant coal tar, or aromatic, chemistry also heralded major breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals. The economic ramifications were enormous. It seemed appropriate then to celebrate the jubilee of the foundation of the dye industry by William Henry Perkin in 1856 with a major international event in London. Here the background to the jubilee is described and, by entangling key personalities in its organisation and their perspectives and opinions, I demonstrate how success in Germany and decline in England became one of the most compelling reasons for exploring issues related to the early debate over technical education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key questions in international research addresses the tensions arising from international co-ordination and local adaptation of multinational companies' (MNCs) policies and practices. The German business system encourages MNCs to have a long-term, high-investment orientation, to practise intensive management-labour cooperation and to pursue developmental human resource management (HRM). This study analyses six major German MNCs operating in both Britain and Spain and outlines their reasons for the international co-ordination of HRM. It addresses the issue of central control versus local adaptation by looking at the transfer of German HR policies and practices. The cases show that the MNC's were able to preserve substantial 'German-ness' abroad. However, the results of the transfer of German HRM were not always positive due to a variety of endogenous and exogenous causes. Barriers to transfer from institutionally strong to weak environments are discussed and possible internal HR approaches are suggested to counterbalance the national business system effect. Their success will depend on head office-foreign affiliate relations shaped by factors such as cross-border communication, trust and power distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]