Immigration (Political science - International relations)

This entry discusses ‘immigration,’ which is the permanent movement of people across states, seen from the perspective of the receiving (rather than sending) states. The focus is on the relationship between immigration and states, a neglected topic in classic immigration research, but receiving more attention in recent scholarly literature. The entry discusses, in particular, some explanatory models of immigration policy and how the immigration experience has changed or reconfirmed the institution of citizenship.

Entwicklungslinien deutscher Verkehrspolitik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert

Die Verkehrspolitik seit dem Kaiserreich verfolgte immer auch verkehrsfremde Ziele militär-, sozial- und regionalpolitischer Art, was die Kohärenz der verkehrspolitischen Strategien häufig einschränkte. Prägend für die Verkehrspolitik im engeren Sinn war neben einem meistens infrastrukturlastigen Politikansatz das als grundsätzlich konfliktiv wahrgenommene Verhältnis von Schiene und Straße. Obwohl im internationalen Vergleich das starke Engagement des Staates im Zeichen der Daseinsvorsorge auffällt, kann von einem eigentlichen deutschen Sonderweg keine Rede sein.

"Das politische System der Schweiz im Wandel": Eine Diskussion zwischen Adrian Vatter und André Holenstein

Politologe Adrian Vatter und Historiker André Holenstein diskutierten mit SRF 4 News-Moderatorin Barbara Peter darüber, wie 1848 gewählt wurde, über Ursprung und Sinn von Lobbyismus, über den Fleiss unserer Parlamentarier - oder aber darüber, wie einst Zofingen als Bundesstadt im Gespräch war.

The Personal Foundations of Political Tolerance towards Immigrants

In this paper, we expand previous research on the psychological foundations of attitudes towards immigrants by evaluating the role of the Big Five personality traits with regard to the formation of political tolerance. Following the literature, we elaborate tolerance as a sequential concept of rejection and acceptance to uncover differentiating effects of personality on both immigrant-specific prejudices as well as on the assignment of the right to vote as a pivotal political privilege to this group. Using a representative sample of the Swiss population, with its distinctive history related to the immigration issue, our two-step Heckman selection models reveal that extroverts and people who score low in agreeableness exhibit negative attitudes towards immigrants. At the same time, only openness to experience is significantly connected to the likeliness of granting immigrants the right to vote.

Tomorrow’s Silk Road: Assessing an EU-China Free Trade Agreement

The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) is an independent policy research institute in Brussels. Its mission is to produce sound policy research leading to constructive solutions to the challenges facing Europe. The views expressed in this book are entirely those of the authors and should not be attributed to CEPS or any other institution with which they are associated or to the European Union. This book, commissioned by the Foreign Trade Association, aims to provide an independent and in-depth contribution on the status of bilateral economic exchanges and persistent trade barriers between the European Union and China. A second objective is to encourage a frank and open dialogue, based on a scientific evaluation and without prejudice, of the possibility of a preferential trade agreement between the two sides. The study was carried out by CEPS, in cooperation with the World Trade Institute at the University of Bern.

The loss of trust in the European Union during the great recession since 2007: The role of heuristics from the national political system

How can we explain the decline in support for the European Union (EU) and the idea of European integration after the onset of the great recession in the fall of 2007? Did the economic crisis and the austerity policies that the EU imposed—in tandem with the IMF—on several member countries help cause this drop? While there is some evidence for this direct effect of EU policies, we find that the most significant determinant of trust and support for the EU remains the level of trust in national governments. Based on cue theory and using concepts of diffuse and specific support, we find that support for the EU is derived from evaluations of national politics and policy, which Europeans know far better than the remote political system of the EU. This effect, however, is somewhat muted for those sophisticated Europeans that are more knowledgeable about the EU and are able to form opinions about it independently of the national contexts in which they live. We also find that the recent economic crisis has led to a discernible increase in the number of those who are disillusioned with politics both at the national and the supranational level. We analyze 133 national surveys from 27 EU countries by estimating a series of cross-classified multilevel logistic regression models.

Political Depolarization in German Public Opinion, 1980–2010

Little is known about political polarization in German public opinion. This article offers an issue-based perspective and explores trends of opinion polarization in Germany. Public opinion polarization is conceptualized and measured as alignment of attitudes. Data from the German General Social Survey (1980 to 2010) comprise attitudes towards manifold issues, which are classified into several dimensions. This study estimates multilevel models that reveal general and issue- as well as dimension-specific levels and trends in attitude alignment for both the whole German population and sub-groups. It finds that public opinion polarization has decreased over the last three decades in Germany. In particular, highly educated and more politically interested people have become less polarized over time. However, polarization seems to have increased in attitudes regarding gender issues. These findings provide interesting contrasts to existing research on the American public.