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Over the previous half-century, the religious field in Germany has undergone extreme change. In particular, Catholicism has increasingly become a part of a traditionally Protestant-dominated mainstream religious sphere. The present essay therefore pleads for an updated approach to analyzing these aspects of Christianity and accurately assessing Catholic influences today. Concepts such as "Catholicism" or "Catholic milieu" have tended to describe developments as a history of deprivation only, while leaving out newer forms of faith. Based on a social-constructivist approach, the essay proposes a concept of "lived religious faith" to gain new insights into religious changes from the 1970s on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative reluctance of German historians to engage the postmodern challenge suggested the need for a reflection on what post-structuralist impulses might have to offer for analyzing the Central European past. In the United States the criticism voiced by Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn had already undercut the hegemony of the Sonderweg paradigm, promoted by the "societal historians" of the Bielefeld school which was slow to respond to feminist and everyday history approaches. Michael Geyer and I therefore set out to initiate a discussion about the deconstruction of "grand narratives" about the German past, in order to create more interpretative space for stories that did not fit into the model of "historical social science." In the American intellectual climate this objectivist and modernist outlook seemed no longer persuasive enough, since various minorities promoted views that emphasized the constructivist character of historical understanding. Our joint programmatic essay therefore tried to open space for recovering a greater plurality of experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autobiographical retrospective discusses Konrad Jarausch's scholarship as an example of the topical and methodological development of contemporary history. In contrast to nationally bound scholars, his career in the United States and involvement in German debates illuminates the transatlantic connections of historicizing the recent past. The need to confront the Nazi dictatorship initially privileged political history, but the societal upheavals of the 1960 shifted interests towards quantitative methods and the new social history. The peaceful revolution of 1989 then challenged historians to establish a nuanced interpretation of the GDR in scholarship and memory culture. At the same time the cultural turn called for an engagement with postmodern methods of narratology, transforming theoretical approaches towards constructivism. The growing sensitivity towards the European and global embeddedness of the German past finally inspired a move towards transnational perspectives. This intellectual trajectory is therefore emblematic of successive changes which opened contemporary history towards a new plurality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre- and post-agreement discourses are an integral part of international relations. Yet, they only matter sometimes as an empirical analysis of European judicial discourses shows. State of the art Habermasisan and social psychology approaches on effective arguing cannot sufficiently explain variation in the success of discourses. This requires a fine-grained perspective: Only if actors share yardsticks fitting to the issue at stake, they can commonly assess the quality of arguments and incrementally develop a consensus. If such issue-specific reference standards are absent, actors talk at cross-purposes and dissent prevails. The article empirically illustrates the importance of intersubjective validity for the effectiveness of discourses and tests its central claim against alternative constructivist and rationalist explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a period of just under 20 years, 15 Western European countries have adopted national same-sex union (SSU) laws that legally recognize the gay and lesbian couples who chose to enter them. This rather startling case of convergent policy change has largely slipped under the radar screens of political scientists. This article argues that the European Union (EU), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and a transnational network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists have played a crucial role in this policy change by creating a soft law norm for relationship recognition and disseminating this norm to policymakers in Western European states. More recently, both the EU and the ECtHR have begun mandating some minimal recognition of same-sex couples. Using Austria and Germany as comparative cases, the article posits further that Europe has had a far greater impact on national policy outcomes when its influence has been felt through the informal processes of norm diffusion and elite socialization than when it has tried to impose formal mandates through court decisions and EU directives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorism studies is fascinated with the terrorist actor. Though this may seem natural, the present article argues that a different perspective can be fruitful. From a constructivist point of view, terrorism is a social construction. The terrorist actor is a product of discourse, and hence discourse is the logical starting point for terrorism research. In particular, it is the discourse of the terrorists' adversaries that constitutes terrorist motivations, strategies, organizational structures and goals. Hence, the article suggests a shift of perspective in terrorism studies - from an actor-centred to a discourse-centred perspective. It develops a discourse approach that emphasizes the crucial role of metaphors in the making of reality. To illustrate this approach, the metaphorical construction of Al-Qaeda in the German popular press in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington (2001), Madrid (2004) and London (2005) is analysed. Terrorism was first constituted as war, but from 2004 onwards the principal metaphor shifted from war to crime, constructing Al-Qaeda as a criminal rather than a military organization. This shift has transformed Al-Qaeda from an external to an internal threat, which has entailed a shift in counter-terrorism practices from a military to a judicial response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parapublic underpinnings of international relations are cross-border interactions that belong neither to the public world of states nor to the private world of societies. They underpin relations among specific states and construct social purpose in the international realm. Focusing on Franco-German parapublic underpinnings reveals a particular and neglected kind of ‘Europeanization’. Such parapublic activity includes massive state-financed youth exchanges, some two thousand municipal partnerships, and a host of institutes and associations. In their entirety, these parapublic interactions have developed into structural components of the European polity. Rather than directly affecting domestic political affairs, this kind of Europeanizarion connects French and Germans in a certain way. It makes Europeans more European, but without making them less national. This article contributes a concept to properly capture a distinct and substantial type of international activity and to identify its characteristic effects and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]