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Europe's two largest economies – Germany and the UK – are phasing out coal from electricity production as part of European efforts to fulfil increased climate policy ambitions that require comprehensive energy system transitions. German and UK governments varied in the ways they sought support from diverse societal interests to make the transition socially acceptable and politically feasible. Drawing on 22 expert interviews and process-tracing methods, this paper compares and explains how political and economic institutional differences influenced efforts to balance energy transition concerns, like speed and cost-effectiveness with justice for companies, workers and communities most adversely affected by the transition. We find that the increasing attention to just transition perspectives after the Paris Agreement affected the design of coal phase-out processes in different ways in the two countries. Just transition concerns were given priority by policymakers in Germany, but more so if they overlapped with the interests of incumbents. In the end, politically powerful stakeholders dominated the policy outcome. In the UK, policymakers and stakeholders gave only weak attention to just transition concerns, mainly because coal's market position had collapsed. Coal interests did not have strong representation in the decision-making process. But we find that just transition concerns are likely to gain more attention in the UK because a more challenging transition away from gas will take place over the next two decades. Key policy insights Policymakers must balance the objective of a fast decarbonization process against two other important concerns: cost-effectiveness and a just transition. Political-economic institutional design and capacity shape the extent to which just transition concerns are given weight in coal phase-out processes. State capacity for including just transition concerns in coal phase-out processes is higher when political and economic institutions strongly mediate government-stakeholder interaction in the policy process, and broad stakeholder participation increases the political feasibility and legitimacy of policy change. In Germany, the government's attention to just transition concerns was strong because broad stakeholder representation in the formal process, and transition assistance policies to target potential losers in the transition, became crucial to enhance the legitimacy of coal phase-out policies. In the UK, cost-effectiveness trumped just transition concerns in the coal phase-out process, but just transition issues have increasing salience and will likely become pertinent in the upcoming gas phase-out process because more jobs and key economic interests are at stake. Our findings are relevant for policymakers in countries struggling with balancing speed, cost-effectiveness and just transition concerns in similar transition processes: phasing out coal, gas, or oil from their energy system. The findings may also inform future energy transition research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain the origins of the rules of parliamentary agenda control, which can be regarded as the single most important institutional determinant of parliamentary power. Based on the premises of distributive bargaining, the paper develops a causal mechanism for the delegation of agenda control to the government majority. Given that only anti-system or anti-establishment parties strictly prefer to participate in plenary proceedings, these ‘anti’-parties potentially obstruct legislation. Such legislative obstruction by ‘anti’-parties causes establishment parties to commit themselves to procedural reform and thus triggers attempts to centralise agenda control. The delegation of parliamentary agenda powers is successful if opposition to procedural reform is confined to anti-system parties. The causal leverage of this mechanism is assessed in a process-tracing of three reform attempts in two most different cases: the initially ineffective, but then successful introduction of a closure procedure in the United Kingdom and the failed attempt to facilitate the closure in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I investigate the resonance of the volumeThe Empire Strikes Backwithin the debates on racism in Germany since the late 1970s. I am interested in this long-term intellectual exchange in light of the current need to conceptualize racism in a European framework and thereby reflect upon the characteristics, concepts and possibilities of such a framework. I begin by situating the debate at that time within the context of the New Left. What connected both situations, in Germany and the UK, was an inscription of the then-ongoing anti-colonial and decolonial struggles of the South in the North, not least through the ‘retaliatory effect’ of migration movements and struggles of migration arriving in Europe. I argue that the understandings of racism and anti-racism are grounded in a materialist framework and that the concept of articulation helped and continues to help thinking the complexity and heterogeneity of the social. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents results from a cultural comparative research on the issue of teaching assistants' and comparable (para-)professionals role in the international context on Inclusive Education. Due to the increasing expectations towards schools to work inclusive, in the last years assistant roles have been an important topic of educational research. On the basis of interview data collected in the UK, Canada and Germany especially the varying conditions of (para-)professionals' practice in inclusion oriented lessons and their professional self-perception are interpreted and internationally compared. Referring to the theoretical concept of professionalism by Ulrich Oevermann, the significance of the working alliance between teaching assistants and students for (para-)professionals self-perception is analysed. As the interpretations point out, teaching assistants' professional roles depend on locally varying structural conditions, but in all three countries are strongly associated with a struggle for increasing autonomy. This article focuses on professionals in schools, whose task it is to help students with assigned Special Educational Needs, for instance "teaching assistants" or "integration aids". We analyse the role of teaching assistants in Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany. Our interpretations base on interviews which have been conducted with teaching assistants in those countries. We will make clear that it is important for assistants to work autonomously. However, in some countries they are expected to mainly support individual students (Germany) and in others they shall primarily support teachers (United Kingdom, Canada). Our analysis shows the tendency of regular education to delegate the therapeutic dimension of its practice. This means that, internationally, increasing employment of assistants could contribute to teachers' de-professionalisation and undercut the aim of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the prospects for trilateral concord among Britain, France and Germany in terms of defence policies? Would more institutionalised links among them lead to more convergence of their defence policies? To answer these interrogations, this article investigates the relation between policy convergence and institutionalised cooperation, in particular by studying whether and when one is a prerequisite to the other. First, this article examines the extent to which these countries' defence policies have converged since the end of the cold war based on several indicators: their attitudes towards international forums, their defence budgets, the structure of their armed forces and their willingness to use force. Second, we study each of the bilateral relations between the three states to qualitatively analyse their degree of institutionalisation and the convergence of their defence policies. This article concludes that contrary to the arguments of many discussions, think-tank reports and political actors, there is no evidence that institutionalised cooperation leads to policy convergence as far as defence is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the triangle of relations between major EU powers, the relationship between Germany and the UK remains historically under-examined. Its implications for the future of European defence cooperation are, however, vital and gradually more decisive. The article examines indices on the direction of this relationship to model the shape and impact of this missing link among the more thoroughly investigated relations of Germany-France and UK-France. As both the UK and Germany were forced to formulate clear positions during the Brexit process, their pronounced interactions offer a unique insight into the development of their bilateral defence cooperation, both present and future, and its impact on multilateral UK-EU defence relations. The central question that arises is whether sufficient progress has been made towards a stronger bilateral defence relationship between these two actors to warrant the designation of a trend towards new bilateralism. The article explores this within three major sectors: (1) official defence cooperation; (2) military cooperation; (3) defence industrial cooperation and finds that overtures and initiatives launched in the examined period are insufficient to alter the relationship toward new bilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative statistical analysis is of tolerance and how it was perceived and experienced by minorities and majorities in the UK and Germany before and after two defining national events that both focused on immigration and national identity. Based on combined sweeps of the European Social Survey (2012–2018), this study applied logistic regression modelling to determine that during the Brexit vote in 2016 and the German Refugee Crisis in 2015, majorities from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to be intolerant towards minorities, who were more likely to experience discrimination. Majority intolerance and minority perceptions of discrimination increased after both events among less well-off groups. However, majorities from higher socioeconomic backgrounds were less likely to exhibit intolerance towards minorities before these national events and after. This study offers an original perspective on race and ethnic relations at times of national crises over identity and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances international comparative regulatory scholarship on the implementation of nudge-style risk rating systems that are used to empower the public to make 'right' choices for their health, safety or security and help shape regulatee behaviour. Little attention, however, has been paid to the policy question of the extent to which the international introduction of such approaches and the form that they take, is dependent on the institutional contexts of regulation in different countries. Drawing on 55 key informant interviews and extensive policy document analysis, we examine starkly contrasting attempts to introduce 'food hygiene barometers' in the UK and Germany, having been successfully introduced in the former, but abandoned in the latter. This outcome can partly be explained by the stronger sectoral organisation of food businesses and the number of policy veto points they can exploit in Germany compared to the UK. More significantly, however, the study identifies strong institutional contrasts between the two countries; both in the way they balance rights to consumer information, public health and economic activity as well as the extent to which ideas of consumer sovereignty can be instrumentalised for regulatory purposes. The article concludes by pointing to how the form, purposes or even the very possibility of nudge-style public policy interventions are likely to vary from country to country, depending on their fit with the conceits and character of nationally-specific regulatory philosophies, constitutional and legal norms, and juridical ideas about consumer sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did ordoliberal Germany unconditionally privatize its aerospace and defense industries in the 1980s, whereas the neoliberal government in the United Kingdom established significant state control? To shed light on this puzzle, this article builds on the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) and theorizes how different production regimes – complemented by distinct legal traditions – shape governments' decisions about how to privatize state-owned industries. I argue that Germany's coordinated market economy included informal networks between state and business actors that were based on trust. These relationships enabled the government to transfer ownership of the defense industries to the private sector without retaining any formal control. The United Kingdom's liberal market economy, by contrast, lacked such informal trust-based networks. That explains why the British government maintained formal control instruments and thus intervened more forcefully in its aerospace and defense sector. The comparative process-tracing analysis draws on original sources, such as formerly secret archival files and interviews with decision-makers. The article's contribution lies not only in extending the firm-centered logic of VoC to coordination between corporate actors and the state, but also in institutionalist theory-building: Trust-based coordination within informal networks systematically reduces vulnerabilities and can thus substitute for the arguably constant need of formal control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration and citizenship studies tend to see naturalization as a highly ambivalent process which simultaneously includes and excludes migrants. Moving beyond this inclusion/exclusion divide, I conceptualize naturalization as a subject-formation regime that encourages naturalized citizens to transform themselves into political, economic and cultural assets to the nation-state, a subjectivity which I term (alluding to its overstraining character) the 'Super Citizen'. How, then, is the call for the Super Citizen received and answered? Based on a thematic analysis of interviews with migrants applying for citizenship in either Germany or the United Kingdom, this article examines migrants' experiences of naturalization and identifies three types of response to the Super Citizen call: embrace, contestation, and disaffection. I argue that subject-formation is powerful, but not as deterministic as the literature suggests. The Super Citizen produces a competition for state recognition and new hierarchies among naturalized, national-born, and non-national citizens. [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]

The strategic use of rumour in wartime is part of the arsenal of governmental power, a self-aware political weapon. While the dissemination of misinformation, propaganda, and news has a lengthy history, it reached its pinnacle during World War Two, particularly through the attempts of the British to spread information that would undercut the confidence of enemy populations, provide hope for populations under enemy control, and support those who were working for an Allied victory. We present an account of the structure of the British propaganda machine, its operational forms, and then describe the spread of a set of active rumours. While it is difficult to determine the effects of these claims, the British believed that rumour diffusion had an important role in shaping public opinion in enemy and occupied nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of the regulatory furore over 'fake news', this article examines the protection that is afforded to untruthful expression by the European Court of Human Rights and by national courts in Germany, the UK and the US. It argues that the suppression of 'fake news' in the face of uncertainty over the contours of this highly politicised term and of the evidentiary vacuum as to the harm posed, may run counter to constitutional guarantees of free speech. Regulatory interventions seeking to curb the flow of 'fake news', which is not per se illegal, require careful consideration lest they should empower governments or unaccountable technology corporations without editorial culture to become the arbiters of truth. [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 past few years have witnessed the emergence of new actors and ideas in agri-food politics discussed under the heading ‘post-exceptionalism’. Yet our knowledge about which political actors promote a shift from exceptionalism toward post-exceptionalism is limited. How supportive are political parties of post-exceptionalism? Which political parties support a strong form for post-exceptionalism and which a weak one? To examine these research questions, the study concentrates on Germany and the United Kingdom. It shows that the green parties in Germany and the United Kingdom are the strongest advocates of opening up policy-making in the agri-food sector to new actors and of proposing policies that span across the boundaries of this policy sector. Parties that are more closely aligned with farmers’ interests tend to support weaker forms of post-exceptionalism. What also matters for explaining the parties’ positions on post-exceptionalism is how strongly they support state intervention in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) enable the consumption of pre-obtained drugs under supervised conditions. While 24 DCRs exist in Germany, there are none in the UK despite similar levels of drug-related harms. The first official, German DCRs were introduced in Hamburg and Frankfurt in the mid-1990s. A key influence was the appearance of “open drug scenes” in such cities over this time, whereby large numbers of users congregated in parks or shopping centers. This led to powerful coalitions of politicians, police, and treatment agencies and DCRs were seen as a professional response to these problems. In the UK, there have been two high-profile recommendations for the piloting of DCRs, which have been rejected by the government for a number of reasons, including lack of evidence, legal problems, and negative media responses. In explaining the different situations in the two countries, key factors are the potential for city-level policies, the stigma attached to drug users in media reporting, and the historical development of open drug scenes. Chance has also played a part, particularly in the UK. Drug policy is rarely a government priority, and drug policy decisions are therefore affected by wider political goals and pressures in unpredictable ways. [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]

In autumn 1914, the Western Front stabilized in the middle of some of France’s most populated and industrialized regions. Large population centres, including Nancy, Reims, Arras and the coal-mining region of the Pas-de-Calais were at the heart of the most destructive war that the world had yet seen. Their civilian inhabitants endured artillery bombardments, military occupations by the British, French and German armies, and levels of material privation greater than other sections of the French population. Many fled during the exodus of 1914 and became refugees in the French interior. But others remained in their homes under fire on both sides of the lines, and thus ensured that the Western Front was both a civilian and a military space. These populations that continued to inhabit the battlefield posed significant problems for civilian and military authorities, German and Allied alike. The question of evacuation inevitably arose. This article explores how authorities on both sides of the lines confronted the prospect of civilian evacuations. On the Allied side, tensions arose between humanitarian necessity, the demands of military effectiveness, and the ‘duty’ of civilians to remain in the homes, resisting the enemy like the soldiers in the trenches. By 1918, a compromise of sorts aimed to evacuate vulnerable members of the community while maintaining an economic core in place. Policies on the German side of the lines were quite different, as the ‘duty’ of civilians to remain under fire was not a factor, while desires to maintain civilians in place to prevent Allied shelling sometimes overrode humanitarianism. In both cases, however, authorities displayed a willingness to allow civilians to remain at the front. Mass evacuation policies were largely improvised and only developed gradually, reaching their full extent from the middle of 1917. This ensured that for much of the war, the Western Front remained a combat zone populated by civilians. In discussing the development of official policies, this article demonstrates how, for the first time, the mass evacuation of civilian populations from combat zones emerged as a feature of modern warfare. In doing so, it considers what these evacuation policies tell us about the changing relationship between civilians and war in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyses differences in individual-level working poverty determinants between Germany and the UK. These differences are linked to institutional patterns at the country level. Here, we observe that the two countries differ especially in bargaining centralisation, employment protection legislation and family policy. At the same time, the levels of decommodification and labour market regulation are no longer core differences in the institutional settings of Germany and the UK, which is interpreted as a consequence of Germany's departure from a traditional conservative regime since the mid-1990s. Adopting economic and sociological approaches, we explain how Germany's closed employment system channels the effects of deregulation policies to the periphery of the labour market. Additionally, we argue that open employment relationships that dominate in the UK put specifically older employees at risk. Finally, we identify country-specific differences in the economic dependency of women, resulting from a stronger male breadwinner orientation of family policy in Germany. Accordingly, multivariate analyses based on harmonised versions of the British Household Panel Study (2002–2005) and the Socio-Economic Panel Study (2003–2006) reveal that entrants and re-entrants to the labour market, women and – unexpectedly – low-educated persons are particularly affected by in-work poverty in Germany; whereas older workers are more likely to face precarious economic conditions in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]