Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: China�s rapid economic growth has been coupled with the extensive corruption of government officials and senior executives of state-owned enterprises. In a recent poll conducted by xinhuanet.com, �putting an end to corruption� is on the top of the list for nearly a quarter of the 200,000 Chinese respondents. By law, serious corruption is punishable by death penalty in China. Its deterrence to this systemic problem however is unclear. The number of corrupt Chinese officials who fled overseas with state funds has increased since 2000 when the former vice-governor of Jiangxi Province was sentenced to death for corruption. This paper will examine opportunities for abuses of power in the current power structure through China�s high profile corruption cases brought to light in 2004.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Welfare state supporters typically contend that social-welfare programs reduce poverty. Critics argue that, over time, such programs instead may increase poverty by inhibiting growth of economic output and/or employment. A number of recent cross-country empirical studies have found that welfare state generosity is strongly associated with low relative poverty, but there has been virtually no cross-national analysis of welfare state effects on absolute poverty, which is at the heart of the critics' argument. This paper uses Luxembourg Income Study data to examine the relationship between welfare states and absolute poverty for working-age households in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. Consistent with the critics' charge, there is an association across these five countries between welfare state generosity and rising pretax-pretransfer absolute poverty. Yet the largest decline in posttax-posttransfer absolute poverty during this period, and the lowest level as of the mid-1990s, were found in Sweden, the country with by far the most generous welfare state. Canada's superior performance relative to the United States also suggests that social-welfare policies can help to reduce absolute poverty.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: International regime research has pioneered a measurement concept to answer the question whether international institutions matter. Yet this approach is merely concerned with international institutions and not with performance at large. It could well be the case that international institutions are effective, but miss the overall point of making much of a contribution as compared to domestic and European actors in a particular policy domain. This paper builds on the original measurement concept for (relative) regime effectiveness and extends it to the triad regulatory domains of domestic, European, and international. By using absolute lower and upper bounds, this concept of absolute effectiveness allows for the separation of performance across the triad of national, European, and international actors and the derivation of potential cross-actor interaction.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Rather than question whether or not globalization is eroding sovereignty or not this paper asks whether sovereignty as it is commonly understood is a valuable concept for understanding international order today and in the past.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As the secularist notion of state and religion as two separable spheres of interest grew out of religious wars, secularist public and media perceptions of international politics tend to consider many conflicts as "religious". Whereas foreign policy actors pragmatically treat the same conflicts or relational structures in terms of interests of domestic power play. This perception gap urges states to brand their foreign policy in public as more "value orientated" than their policies are in reality. As shown by Horkheimer and Adorno, the rationalist values of enlightenment turn emancipative separation of private and public, where religion belongs to the former sphere and politics to the latter, into its opposite: oppression by an absolute truth disguised as secularist, rational, "democratic" and above all – non-absolute. Instead of state vs. religious or "national interest" rhetorics, current international politics discourse seems to be framed along ethical or value based or even humanitarian lines. Outlining a short history of Western absolute enlightenment this paper argues that the gap between the presumably realist secularist foreign policy of rational, non-absolute norms, and public perception of many of the major conflicts in world politics as religious, points to the need for reconsidering basic concepts of foreign policy ”normal language” such as "values" and – "religious". One of the ways to attack this question might be through the notion of value spheres, and indeed once again the concept of (and the construction of) national interest (Morgenthau, Wendt, Weldes, Chandler).