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This paper takes into consideration the contextualization hypothesis and addresses several relevant influence factors which might have shaped the immigration perception in the Eastern European ex-communist societies after the migration crisis in 2015-2016: (i) the history and geopolitical context of the countries in the eastern half of Europe and the history of East-West emigration before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; (ii) politicization of migration and political party favourability in the host societies, (iii) national culture characteristics as emphasized by Hofstede’s theory, (iv) beliefs (trust in others), and (v) materialist and postmaterialist values. The roles played by these influence factors in the formation and change of anti-immigration attitudes are discussed in four Country Case Studies comparative analysis between traditional immigration countries from Western Europe and latest immigration target countries from the Central Eastern Europe. The research outcomes provide conceptual support to the hypothesis that the Central Eastern European societies are more sensitive to political culture issues and their reactions to massive immigration might be deeply influenced by their historical and geopolitical contextual conditions, and by their sets of values and beliefs. These and other contextual conditions are discussed with regard to the capacity of CEE countries to develop national models of immigrant integration such that they could face the challenge of massive migration waves in Southern-Central-Eastern Europe.

Zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts ist der Aufstieg der Rechtsextremen in Europa nicht mehr nur als Randerscheinung zu betrachten, sondern als ein ernstes Zeichen der Krise der liberalen Ordnung. Die Zunahme rechtsextremer Wähler:innen und die Verbreitung rechtsextremer Parteien, Bewegungen und subkultureller Gruppen steht für eine veränderte politische und ideologische Landschaft, in der die liberale Demokratie zunehmend und offen herausgefordert wird "Rechte Bedrohungsallianzen" als direkte Opposition zur offenen Gesellschaft sind damit ein nicht zu vernachlässigendes Phänomen geworden. Dieses Papier befasst sich am Beispiel Serbiens näher mit den wichtigsten rechtsextremen Gruppierungen und Organisationen während der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte. Auch wenn die extreme Rechte in den meisten Westbalkanländern noch keinen entscheidenden politischen Faktor darstellt, wird die Grenze zwischen ihrer politischen Agenda und den etablierten politischen Parteien immer dünner. Die Internationalisierung des Rechtsextremismus hat die strategischen Möglichkeiten rechtsextremen Handelns über nationale politische Strukturen hinaus erweitert und diesem damit eine internationale Perspektive und globale Bedeutung verliehen. Diese neuen internationalen "Rechten Bedrohungsallianzen" stellen somit vermehrt eine Bedrohung für die Demokratie sowohl im nationalen als auch im regionalen Kontext auf dem Westbalkan sowie über die Region hinaus dar., At the beginning of the 21st century, the rise of the far-right in Europe should no longer be considered as a peripheral phenomenon but rather as a serious sign of the crisis of the liberal post-Cold War order. The growth of far-right voters and the proliferation of far-right parties, movements, and subcultural groups stands for a changed political and ideological landscape, one where the notion of democracy is increasingly and openly contested. "Rechte Bedrohungsallianzen" - "Right-wing threat alliances" as a direct opposition to open society constitute a phenomenon that must not be ignored. This paper looks closer into the most representative far-right groups and organisations in Serbia during the last two decades. Even though the far-right in most Western Balkan countries is not a decisive political factor yet, the boundary separating its political agenda from mainstream political parties is becoming thinner. The internationalization of right-wing extremism has expanded the strategic possibilities of far-right action beyond national political structures thus giving it an international perspective and global meaning. These new international "signatures of the far-right" continue to be a threat to democracy both in the national and regional context in the Western Balkans as well as beyond the region.

The purpose of the article is a conceptual identification of religiosity tendencies in Western Europe at the end of the XXth - the beginning of the XXIst centuries. The methodological bases of the study were socio-philosophical analysis of the religiosity phenomenon, as well as historical systemic and analytical synthetic methods. The Scientific Novelty. In Western Europe new religious processes go beyond the classical contours of modernity. The dynamics of change in the field of religion takes place under conditions of uncertainty, nonlinearity, ephemerality of social processes, as well as the continuing aggravation of relations between secular culture and religion. It is necessary to be critically aware of the fact that the institutional and socio-cultural return of religion (post-secularity) causes vulgarization, the creation of various distorted forms of religiosity. Our point of view is that the decline of a traditional religiosity continues in Western Europe, which is not a localized tendency and a civilizational integration project, a transnational paradigm are being actively promoted. The Conclusions. Western societies remain a relatively secular part of the global world and differ in the level of a religious diversity and the dynamics of a religious change among their population. From the point of view of the confessional identification, Western European countries can be attributed to one Christian culture (unfortunately, practically lost). According to the criterion of religiosity level, "high religion" is characteristic of countries with the maximum number of Orthodox and Catholics. In Western Europe, there is a situation where religion is often engaged with "vicariously". In Western Europe, an important tendency in religiosity is the subjectivation of faith and practice, which complicates the preservation and transmission of religious traditions. As a result, religiosity is of a situational character.

Examining the role of religion and the evolution of religiosity in Western European societies, as secular societies, has always been important. Given the period from 1980 to 2010, this article seeks to answer the question of what changes religiosity has undergone in Western European societies, especially in the two dimensions of belief in religion and practice of religious beliefs. To answer this question, we have used the survey method and data analysis. In this regard, a survey program entitled "Study of European Values" examined the ideas, attitudes and values ​​of citizens in various fields including religion and religiosity since 1981 and in the form of five study waves (1981, 1990, 1999, 2008 and 2017). The survey data have been used in this article to explain and analyze the discussion. Considering indicators such as theism, religious rites, church attendance rate and adherence to traditional rituals in important matters of life (birth, marriage and death), the findings of this study show that the process of secularization in Western European countries, both in terms of belief in religion and in terms of practice of religious beliefs, has intensified and the role of religion in the lives of Western European societies is much more declining than before.

Muslims and immigrants have both been subjected to negative attitudes over the past several decades in Europe. Using data from the European Values Study, this study analyses the changes in these attitudes in the period 1990-2017. We find that negative attitudes have been increasing on average in Europe as a whole, with anti-Muslim attitudes being more prevalent than anti-immigrant attitudes. However, when split into a Western European set and an Eastern European set, from 2008, there is a divergence between the two halves. Our findings reveal that negative attitudes towards Muslims and immigrants have decreased in Western Europe, whereas they have increased significantly in Eastern Europe. Further analyses find that there are large discrepancies between anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant attitudes in different countries. These discrepancies are discussed in detail and related to several relevant factors, such as the differences in size of the Muslim and immigrant populations, variations in the refugee influx and other possible factors and developments.

This paper analyses social variability in retirement timing. It draws on a social stratification perspective, which arguably provides a richer theoretical framework than one-dimensional pull or push approaches. The first objective is to establish how class membership influences both the timing of retirement as well as the degree of accessibility to different pathways to retirement. The second objective is to elucidate the interplay of gender and class in work-exit dynamics. The empirical analysis uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to estimate a series of event-history models for a sample of respondents from 11 Western European countries. The results show that social class exerts a strong influence on retirement processes, over and beyond other socio-economic characteristics, and especially on the risk of involuntary retirement. Employment constraints (push factors) and economic incentives (pull factors) affect workers in different class positions in markedly different ways. While there exist significant gender differences in retirement behaviour, these appear to be largely driven by women’s lower class positions. The article concludes that ill health and unemployment remain heavy obstacles to prolonging working life in contemporary Western Europe.

What was the impact of the 2014–2016 refugee crisis on immigration attitudes and national identification in Europe? Several studies show that radical right parties benefitted electorally from the refugee crisis, but research also shows that anti-immigration attitudes did not increase. We hypothesize that the refugee crisis affected right-wing citizens differently than left-wing citizens. We test this hypothesis by combining individual level survey data (from five Eurobarometer waves in the 2014–2016 period) with country level statistics on the asylum applications in 28 EU member states. In Western Europe, we find that increases in the number of asylum applications lead to a polarization of attitudes towards immigrants between left- and right-leaning citizens. In the Southern European ‘arrival countries’ and in Central-Eastern Europe we find no significant effects. Nationalistic attitudes are also not affected significantly.

Scholars have long recognized that national identity-related factors are among the strongest predictors of citizens’ attitudes toward the European Union. But while some find that they reinforce support for the European Union, other scholars show that national identity undermines its support. In this article, we aim to disentangle this puzzle by studying how the national identity profiles of European citizens relate to support for the European Union across individuals and member states. To this end, we employ data from the International Social Survey Program 2013, by far the most extensive collection of survey questions on national identity, and the technique of latent class analysis. Our results show which specific configurations of national identity entail support, ambivalence or rejection of the European Union, their antecedents, and their variation across countries.

The present study aimed to predict job control (i.e., task discretion) based on class and occupation with skill use as a (hypothesized) mechanism in four Western European countries by using the OECD adult skill survey (PIAAC). The countries were Denmark, Belgium, Italy, and the United Kingdom (UK). The study used a Bayesian approach that included multilevel models combined with measurement models. The study uses the international standard classification of occupations with two digits (clustering variable) as well as the European socioeconomic classification (ESeC) measured with three social classes. The results indicate that greater worker technical skills (computer use) and social skills (e.g., negotiate and influence) predict higher levels of job control. Social classes interact with skills to predict job control (except Belgium). Occupational computer skills predict job control (in Belgium and Italy). In conclusion, the study supports predictions by neo-Durkheimians, neo-Weberians, New Structuralists, and relational approaches to inequality.

In many advanced democracies, mainstream political parties have been disrupted either by the rise of new (populist) parties or by hostile takeovers. In this article we argue that immigration attitudes have had a powerful impact on the strategic environment of political parties and leaders. We show, based on evidence from a comparative study conducted by YouGov in spring of 2015, that immigration attitudes had, by that time, driven a wedge between mainstream parties - those that regularly play a role in government - and their partisans. This ‘immigration gap' opened up enormous space for new political movements to form, either inside existing parties or outside. Furthermore, we show that the representation gap on immigration issues is a relevant predictor of vote choice, so that parties are particularly likely to lose votes when they are more distant from their supporters on immigration.

Using data from Eurobarometer 83.4, this study combines the two branches of research that address climate-related and biodiversity-related opinions and actions of individuals in the EU. The literature shows that the differences between climate-related and biodiversity-related policies correspond, at an individual level, to a person's basic attitudes towards environmental protection and towards nature protection, respectively. The contribution of this study is to demonstrate how these attitudes can influence behavior that has environmental repercussions for both issues, such as food consumption practices. The analysis focused on two Eurobarometer questions about buying local and seasonal food (to fight climate change) and about buying organic and local food (to protect biodiversity and nature). The results of two multinomial regression analyses, separately in Northwestern European countries and Eastern and Southern European countries, demonstrated that climate-related and biodiversity-related attitudes were, independent of each other, related to the adoption of these purchase behaviors. The results may support Europe's new Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy and indicate that improving food consumption practices can enable individuals to better play their part in fighting climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously, which opens up interesting new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.

Background: Migration has become one of the most salient policy areas in the European Union. In response, the European Commission established a research team with the task of investigating a range of possible demographic futures. Objective: This paper explores the demographic effects of migration on eastern, southern, and western EU regions, using different scenarios to see the extent population size, working-age population, education composition, and total age dependency can be influenced. Methods: We use a deterministic cohort-component projection model that (a) incorporates improving levels of educational attainment in the population and (b) explicit consideration of migration between EU member states (MS) and migration between EU MS and the rest of the world. Eight stylised what-if scenarios are developed around a medium assumption projection. Results: Although migration can have a large effect on total and working-age population size, the EU population will continue to age and see a rise in age dependency regardless. Despite depopulation occurring in many eastern MS, the region is and should remain in a better position than the south and on par with the west in terms of age dependency. Conclusions: While both the south and east provide large demographic subsidies of working-age people to the EU’s west, the south is less prepared to cope with the losses due to an already older population, lower labour force participation, and lower education levels. Contribution: We report demographic consequences of contrasting migration scenarios for the EU-28 (now EU+UK) based on multidimensional projections by age, sex, and educational attainment.

This paper examines why some Western European countries are more successful in integrating immigrants into the labour market than others. Using data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), we show how the country-specific immigrant composition and context of reception contribute to immigrants’ disadvantages across receiving countries. Because the data provide extensive information about relevant characteristics that were often considered unobservable, we can comprehensively model the immigrant composition in receiving countries. We find considerable cross-country differences in immigrants’ disadvantages, both in terms of employment and occupational status. Multivariate analyses highlight that a large part of this variation is explained by differences in immigrant compositions, whereas we find little evidence for context effects. Counterfactual simulations corroborate that the extent to which countries succeed with integrating immigrants into the labour market strongly depends on the composition of the immigrants that they receive.

Die Geschichte der "Chinesenviertel" und chinesischer Migranten in europäischen Metropolen demonstriert, wie "Fremde" zur Gefahr für die nationale Arbeit und für die Großstädte stilisiert wurden; sie zeigt aber auch, wie Migranten wirtschaftliche Nischen besetzen und schließlich als kulturelle Bereicherung akzeptiert werden konnten. In Hamburg präfigurierte in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts ein ausgeprägter Hygiene-Diskurs die vehemente Ablehnung, während sich die Behörden in Rotterdam anfangs indifferent verhielten und die dortige Bevölkerung in den frühen 1930er-Jahren durchaus Empathie mit arbeitslosen Chinesen zeigte. In London wiederum schlug die anfängliche Toleranz seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg in Abwehr um. Ab den 1950er- und 1960er-Jahren setzte mit dem großen Erfolg chinesischer Gastronomie eine neue Phase chinesischer Migration ein, die nun als kulinarische Bereicherung der urbanen "Konsumgesellschaft" allgemein anerkannt wurde. Während ein kosmopolitischer Charakter von westeuropäischen Metropolen seit den 1970er-Jahren als mehr oder minder selbstverständlich gilt, ist die Geschichte chinesischer Migranten in Westeuropa ein gutes Beispiel für den langen und unebenen Weg zur multikulturellen und multiethnischen Gesellschaft., The history of 'Chinese quarters' and of migration from China to western European metropolises reveals how migrants have been perceived as a threat to national labour forces and to urban centres. In reality, Chinese people set up economic niches and were eventually accepted as a valuable cultural addition to society. During the first half of the twentieth century, opposition to the presence of Chinese migrants in Hamburg was vehemently articulated in terms of social hygiene. While the authorities in Rotterdam were initially indifferent, local inhabitants were sympathetic towards unemployed Chinese people who arrived in the early 1930s. In London, the initially tolerant attitude towards these migrants turned into hostility after the First World War. The 1950s and 1960s saw a new phase of Chinese migration in Europe following the success of the Chinese catering trade, which became a key aspect of urban consumer society. Although the cosmopolitan character of western European metropolises has been well-established since the 1970s, this article offers an insight into the long and bumpy path towards a multicultural and multiethnic society.

Der Artikel betrachtet die späten 1960er- und die 1970er-Jahre als eine Umbruchszeit, in der in West- wie in Osteuropa fundamental neue Gesellschaftsentwürfe formuliert wurden. Ausgehend von 1968 als transnationalem Protestjahr wird gefragt, inwieweit sich die an Bedeutung zunehmenden Oppositionsbewegungen im östlichen Teil Europas von den neuen sozialen Bewegungen in Westeuropa unterschieden. Dabei werden die Geschlechterbeziehungen in den staatssozialistischen Gesellschaften ins Zentrum der Analyse gerückt, und es wird herausgearbeitet, inwieweit die Formung der Geschlechterverhältnisse durch staatliche wie oppositionelle Politik neue Gesellschaftsentwürfe beeinflusste. Die Konservierung traditioneller Geschlechterverhältnisse war sowohl für die Regime als auch für die oppositionellen Bewegungen funktional. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird verständlich, dass im östlichen Europa - im Gegensatz zu Westeuropa und den USA - aus den gesamtgesellschaftlichen Protestbewegungen keine einflussreiche Frauenbewegung hervorging., The article focuses on the late 1960s and 1970s as a period that witnessed political and societal changes as well as the rise of fundamentally new concepts of society in both Western and Eastern Europe. Taking 1968 as a starting point of transnational significance, it investigates differences between new oppositional movements in Eastern Europe and new social movements in the West. The article focuses in particular on gender relations within societies of the Eastern bloc. It demonstrates how the conceptions of these relations in policies of the regimes and within oppositional groups influenced projects for political change. Both regimes and oppositional movements preserved traditional gender relations in order to attain their respective political goals. Since gender relations played a key role in the formation of an oppositional identity, a women’s movement could hardly develop out of the broader movements which challenged the authorities of the socialist countries.

Der Artikel skizziert die politische, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Gesellschaften Ost- und Westeuropas in der Ära der Entspannungspolitik. Die Hauptthese lautet, dass die diplomatische Annäherung der beiden Blöcke von einem gegenläufigen Auseinanderwachsen der west- und osteuropäischen Länder begleitet war. Während die westlichen Gesellschaften neue politische Aktionsmöglichkeiten in Form von sozialen Bewegungen erlebten, blieb dies im Osten wegen des Machtmonopols der kommunistischen Parteien unmöglich bzw. war mit weitaus größeren Schwierigkeiten verbunden. Auch neue (jugend)kulturelle Erscheinungsformen wie bestimmte Mode- und Musikströmungen konnten im Westen eine Normalität erreichen, die im Osten nicht möglich war. Die Wirtschaftskrise der 1970er-Jahre führte im Westen zu einem Ab- bzw. Umbau der fordistischen Produktionsweise, während die realsozialistischen Staaten an alten Strukturen festhielten. Während diese Trends der 1970er-Jahre heute fast teleologisch auf den Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus vorauszudeuten scheinen, war dies für die Zeitgenossen nicht der Fall. Im Gegenteil: Viele Beobachter sahen eine mögliche Konvergenz der beiden Systeme., This article examines the political, cultural and economic divide between Eastern and Western European societies during the period of détente. The author argues that, although this period was marked by political rapprochement, the societies within the two blocs drifted further apart. The West witnessed new forms of political action in the form of social movements, which were integrated into the standard repertoire of political activity, whereas similar developments in the East faced far greater hurdles or were rendered impossible in the face of the communist monopoly of power. Similarly, new cultural developments such as youth cultures, which attained a degree of normality in the West, were not possible in the communist world. The economic crisis of the 1970s drove the two societies further apart by modifying and dismantling the Fordist model in the capitalist countries, while the communist leadership hung on to orthodox ideas of production. While these trends appear, retrospectively, to render the collapse of communism predictable, this was not apparent to people at the time. Most observers, particularly in the 1970s, predicted that the two systems would converge.

The integration of immigrant minorities is a major concern for diverse societies - with major implications for the well-being of those affected, social cohesion and group relations, and economic and social progress. In this paper, we give a comprehensive description of long-term migrant integration in Western Europe to investigate theories of migrant assimilation and integration. We take a multidimensional approach, looking at 10 indicators measuring social, structural, political, civic and cultural integration. We take an innovative approach to measuring minority background by using two complementary measures: generational status, distinguishing first and second-generation migrants from the third and higher up 'natives,' and self-reported ancestry, separating those with autochthonous-only ancestry from those with various kinds of allochthonous ancestry. Using interaction effects between these measures, we can test whether generational change is faster or slower for some ethnic groups than for others, i.e. whether different groups integrate at differing speeds. Using the pooled samples of all Western European countries included in the European Social Survey rounds 7 and 8, we run multivariate regression analyses to estimate the effects of migrant background on the 10 indicators of integration. Compared to migrants with autochthonous ancestry, respondents of Middle Eastern, North African & Central Asian as well as Sub-Saharan African ancestry are less integrated on all dimensions of integration except the political and civic ones. The South & South-East Asian group is also substantially less assimilated socially and culturally, but not so much structurally. They are closely followed by the South East and East European groups, following the same pattern except that the latter are less integrated politically as well. We only find substantial interaction effects between ethnic group and migrant generation for two integration indicators, namely citizenship and homophobia

Transnational marriages of migrants in Western Europe tend to be seen as hampering integration. In response, policies have been tightened, despite little knowledge on transnational marriages and the effects of such measures. This paper investigates the role of individual preferences and contextual factors such as family reunification policies, group size and development levels of the regions of origin in partner choice of the children of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. We draw on a novel dataset collected in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Our findings suggest that transnational marriages are partly associated with contextual factors such as a rural origin and family reunification policies. The analysis indicates higher rates of transnational marriages under open family reunification policies, providing tentative evidence of policy effects. On the individual level, the choice of a partner from the parents' origin country is associated with religiosity.

The connection between social class and political preferences is among the most well established in the social sciences. This association is typically taken as prima facie evidence of economic self-interest: Classes hold different attitudes, values, and party preferences because they have different economic interests. However, this assumption has rarely been tested empirically. In this article, we use survey data from 18 West European countries to examine why classes differ on a central aspect of political preferences, namely their views on the desirability of income inequality. We find that only a moderate proportion of differences between employee classes in support for redistribution can be accounted for by contemporary differences in resources and risks; differences in economic interests to some degree account for the anti-redistributive preferences of the professional middle classes compared with the working class. However, the preferences of the self-employed have a different explanation; autonomy is a better explanation of the right-wing preferences of the self-employed compared with the working class.

With the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of society’s capability to deal with an acute health crisis is, once again, brought to the forefront. In the core is the need to broaden the perspective on the determinants of a country’s ability to cope with the spread of the virus. This paper is about bringing together diverse aspects of readiness and initial reaction to a COVID-19 outbreak. We proposed an integrated evaluation framework which encapsulates six dimensions of readiness and initial reaction. Using a specific multi-level outranking method, we analysed how these dimensions affect the relative positioning of European countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. The results revealed that the order of countries based on our six-dimensional assessment framework is significantly reminiscent of the actual positioning of countries in terms of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in the initial phase of the pandemic. Our findings confirm that only when a country’s readiness is complemented by an appropriate societal reaction we can expect a less severe outcome. Moreover, our study revealed different patterns of performance between former communist Eastern European and Western European countries.

Background: Prevention aiming at smoking, alcohol consumption, and BMI could potentially bring large gains in life expectancy (LE) and health expectancy measures such as Healthy Life Years (HLY) and Life Expectancy in Good Perceived Health (LEGPH) in the European Union. However, the potential gains might differ by region. Methods: A Sullivan life table model was applied for 27 European countries to calculate the impact of alternative scenarios of lifestyle behavior on life and health expectancy. Results were then pooled over countries to present the potential gains in HLY and LEGPH for four European regions. Results: Simulations show that up to 4 years of extra health expectancy can be gained by getting all countries to the healthiest levels of lifestyle observed in EU countries. This is more than the 2 years to be gained in life expectancy. Generally, Eastern Europe has the lowest LE, HLY, and LEGPH. Even though the largest gains in LEPGH and HLY can also be made in Eastern Europe, the gap in LE, HLY, and LEGPH can only in a small part be closed by changing smoking, alcohol consumption, and BMI. Conclusion: Based on the current data, up to 4 years of good health could be gained by adopting lifestyle as seen in the best-performing countries. Only a part of the lagging health expectancy of Eastern Europe can potentially be solved by improvements in lifestyle involving smoking and BMI. Before it is definitely concluded that lifestyle policy for alcohol use is of relatively little importance compared to smoking or BMI, as our findings suggest, better data should be gathered in all European countries concerning alcohol use and the odds ratios of overconsumption of alcohol.

Der Globale Militarisierungsindex (GMI) des BICC bildet alljährlich das relative Gewicht und die Bedeutung des Militärapparats von Staaten im Verhältnis zur Gesellschaft als Ganzes ab. Der GMI 2018 umfasst 155 Staaten und basiert auf den aktuellsten vorliegenden Zahlen, in der Regel sind das die Daten des Jahres 2017. Der Index wird durch das Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) gefördert. Israel, Singapur, Armenien, Zypern, Südkorea, Russland, Griechenland, Jordanien, Brunei und Weißrussland bilden die Top 10 des GMI 2018. Diese Staaten stellen dem Militär im Verhältnis zu anderen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen besonders viele Ressourcen zur Verfügung. Auf Europa liegt ein regionaler Schwerpunkt des GMI 2018: Der US-amerikanische Druck auf die europäischen NATO-Staaten, ihre Militärhaushalte zu erhöhen, zeigt Auswirkungen. Beinahe alle europäischen Mitgliedsstaaten geben mehr Geld für ihr Militär aus als noch im Vorjahr. Auch die Anzahl des militärischen Personals und der Großwaffensysteme ist in vielen europäischen Staaten gestiegen. Russland zählt abermals zu den weltweit am stärksten militarisierten Staaten, hat 2017 aber im Vergleich zum Vorjahr seine Militärausgaben deutlich reduziert. Trotz zurückgehender Einnahmen aus dem Erdölhandel ist die Militarisierung im Nahen und Mittleren Osten im internationalen Vergleich weiterhin auf einem sehr hohen Niveau: Alle Staaten der Region, mit Ausnahme des Iraks (Platz 41), sind unter den 30 am stärksten militarisierten Ländern der Welt zu finden. In Nordafrika gehören Algerien (Platz 15) und Marokko (Platz 24) zu den hoch militarisierten Ländern. Allerdings befinden sich die meisten afrikanischen Staaten, vor allem südlich der Sahara, im unteren Teil des Ranking. Der diesjährige GMI untersucht auch die Verbindung zwischen besonders hoher beziehungsweise besonders niedriger Militarisierung und dem politischen System der betreffenden Staaten. Er bezieht sich dabei auf die Daten des Free

Every year, BICC’s Global Militarisation Index (GMI) presents the relative weight and importance of a country’s military apparatus in relation to its society as a whole. The GMI 2019 covers 154 states and is based on the latest available figures (in most cases data for 2018). The index project is financially supported by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. In this year’s GMI ranking, the ten countries that provided the military with markedly large amounts of resources in relation to other areas of society are Israel, Singapore, Armenia, Cyprus, South Korea, Russia, Greece, Jordan, Belarus and Azerbaijan. The authors Max Mutschler and Marius Bales put the regional focus of the GMI 2019 on Europe (eastern Europe / NATO and EU countries), the Middle East and Asia. Russia (position 6) continues to sustain one of the largest military forces in the world. The European NATO countries, especially Baltic and eastern European states, are again continuing to arm themselves pointing to ongoing tensions with Russia. The unresolved secessionist conflict between Armenia (position 3) and Azerbaijan (position 10) over the Nagorno-Karabakh region continues to keep militarisation in the South Caucasus at a very high level. The countries in the Middle East are all highly militarised by global standards. In view of the tense security situation, Israel (position 1) is again at the top of the global ranking in 2019. The list of highly militarised countries in Asia is headed, as in previous years, by Singapore (position 2). In absolute figures, China (position 94) invests most in its armed forces in a regional comparison. Other countries in the region are also increasingly investing in their armed forces, citing the various conflicts with China. Finally, this year’s GMI looks at the link between militarisation and fragility. A comparison of the GMI with the typology of fragility constellations drawn up by the Constellations of State Fragility Project of the

This article examines teachers' beliefs about the aims of citizenship education in 12 countries from Europe and Asia. A latent class analysis of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study of 2009 identified three distinct profiles of teachers' beliefs about the goals of citizenship education. These profiles are associated with teachers' characteristics and with national indicators of democratic development. Profiles can be more useful than single beliefs in understanding how teaching contributes to students' civic development. Teachers across countries thought it far more important to foster students' participation in the school or local community than to foster future political participation.

Political parties respond strategically to the electoral success of radical right populist parties (RRPPs). While previous research has focused on programmatic responses on cultural conflict issues, we are expanding the research on policy position adaption to the economic left-right issue of welfare-state politics. Actual and potential supporters of RRPPs do not only feel threatened by migration or liberal conceptions of society but are also often confronted with real or perceived socio-economic decline. Therefore, we argue that established parties do not only react by changing their socio-cultural policy offers but also by adjusting their welfare state policy positions. Based on parties' voter potentials and issue ownership theory, we investigate whether such changes are especially pronounced for left-of-center parties. Analysing data from 18 West European countries since 1985, we find that non-RRPPs indeed advocate more leftist positions on welfare state policies in response to increasing electoral support for RRPPs. This effect is especially pronounced for economically left-of-centre parties as these parties might consider this to be a promising strategy to win back voters from the populist radical right.

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Based on the example of West European radical left parties, this article investigates whether and how centripetal and centrifugal positional movements on different conflict dimensions influence the election results of these parties. Depending on parties’ issue-linkages, these strategies will have a different effect for the economic and the non-economic issue dimension. Due to radical left parties’ long-term commitment and a strong party-issue linkage on economic issues, more moderate positions will play to their electoral advantage. In contrast, far-left parties compete with social democratic and green-libertarian parties for party-issue linkages on the non-economic issue dimension. Here, they benefit from promoting centrifugal strategies. Based on time-series cross-section analyses for 25 West European far-left parties between 1990 and 2017, the empirical results show that the success of radical left parties’ positional strategies varies with the conflict dimension in question and that this effect is only partly moderated by the positions of competing mainstream left parties.

The present research examines whether the ‘healthy immigrant effect’ thesis observed in the American context prevails also in the West European context. According to this thesis, immigrants are likely to be healthier than comparable nativeborn. Data for the analysis are obtained from the Generations and Gender Survey for the following countries: Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Ordered logit regression models are estimated to compare the health of immigrants with the native-born population. The findings reveal that in all countries, immigrants tend to report poorer health than comparable third generation native-born Europeans, and that health disparities between second and third generation are smaller than health disparities between first-generation members and native-born regardless of second- or thirdgeneration membership. The findings in the West-European countries do not lend support to the healthy immigrant effect. We attribute the differences between the United States and the West European countries to differential selection processes and differences in healthcare policies.

Immigration has become a hot topic in West European politics. The factors responsible for the intensification of political conflict on this issue are a matter of considerable controversy. This holds in particular for the role of socio-economic factors and of radical right populist parties. This article explores the politicization of immigration issues and its driving forces in the electoral arena. It is based on a comparative study using both media and manifesto data covering six West European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK) for a period from the early 1990s until 2017. We find no association between socio-economic factors and levels of politicization. Political conflict over immigration follows a political logic and must be attributed to parties and party competition rather than to ‘objective pressures.’ More specifically, we provide evidence that the issue entrepreneurship of radical right populist parties plays a crucial role in explaining variation in the politicization of immigration.