Den Luxus getrennter Ämter – Kanzler + Präsident – leisten sich die Bundesländer nicht. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es die Aufgaben und die Rolle eines Staatsoberhaupts auf Länderebene nicht gibt. Der Ministerpräsident übernimmt sie – beide. Damit müsste also jeder Ministerpräsident wissen, “wie Präsident geht”, denn es ist ein ureigener Teil seines Jobs.

schreibt der Kollege Faas via Ministerpräsident = Präsident + Kanzler « Zweitstimme « ZEIT ONLINE Blogs.

Die eigentliche Frage ist aber doch nicht, ob der gegenwärtige Amtsinhaber weiß wie es geht, sondern ob es 112 Jahre nach dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunders auf der Bundesebene überhaupt noch den Bedarf für und das Bedürfnis nach einem separaten Staatsoberhaupt gibt.

Meinungen dazu?

Whose afraid of whom?

cii 1043 round(1043*.41)
cii 1043 round(1043*.366)

set obs 5
gen threat = _n
lab def threat 1 "right-wingers" 2 "islamists" 3 "left-wingers" 4 "other" 5 "no threat"
lab val threat threat

gen number = round(1043* 0.41) in 1
replace number = round(1043* 0.366) in 2
replace number = round(1043* 0.056) in 3
replace number = round(1043* 0.038) in 4
replace number = round(1043* 0.13) in 5
expand number

mlogit threat,base(5)

test [right_wingers]_cons = [islamists]_cons

local trials = 10000
foreach v of newlist s1-s`trials' {
qui gen `v' = .
}

mata:
probs =(.388,.388,.056,.038,.13)
st_view(X.,.,"s1-s`trials'",)
X[.,.] = rdiscrete(1043,`trials',probs)
end

local excess = 0

forvalues sample = 1/`trials' {
qui tab s`sample' if s`sample' == 1
local rw = r(N)
qui tab s`sample' if s`sample' == 2
local isl = r(N)
if (`rw' / 1043 * 100) - (`isl' / 1043 * 100) >=4.4 local excess = `excess' +1
}

display "Difference >=4.4 in `excess' of `trials' samples"

First, the mainstream media including the public broadcasters and the left-liberal press refer to the series as ‘Dönermorde’, i.e. ‘Kebab Killings’, because most of the victims were small businessmen of Turkish origin. This is impious at any rate, and not exactly sensitive in the context of ethnically motivated violence.

Second, for most of the media the victims are ‘foreigners’ (‘Ausländer’), although they spent much of their lives in Germany. The BBC and other English-speaking media refer to ‘ethnic Turks’ or ‘persons of Turkish origin’. Much food for thought here.

Third, Germany has seventeen offices for the protection of the constitution (one in each state as well as a federal institution), effectively secret services that are given the task to observe extremists. Add to that the same number of federal and state criminal investigation offices, plus seventeen crime prosecution services, plus countless special branches and task forces who are supposed to keep an eye on Neo-Nazis.

These agencies are not understaffed or underfunded, and their employees are not lazy: In 2003, an attempt to ban the NPD collapsed because the party leadership had been infiltrated by so many undercover agents that some of the judges sitting on the Federal Constitutional Court were not sure the NPD had any political life of its own. How could the killers possibly escape this machine?

Image via Wikipedia

Three possible answers spring to mind:

• Parts of the left claim that the state still turns a blind eye when it comes to right-wing extremism. That may or may not have been true in the past but is certainly not a correct description of the situation today. The various agencies’ performance has much improved over the last decade, and much of the increase in the number of reported hate-crimes is due to the fact that officers are now trained to look very carefully for extremist motives, and that the rules for collecting statistics have been harmonised.
• Quite predictably, the right (and many politicians who specialise in Home Affairs) argue that coordination and communication between the various agencies need to be improved. While this may seem reasonable, this is a perennial and very delicate issue in Germany. For historical reasons, the constitution puts strict limits on the cooperation between secret services and the regular police. Moreover, policing is generally the domain of the states, which jealously guard their rights.
• Finally, many observers just begin to wonder if one or more agencies were involved much closer with the killers than they let on at the moment. Nobody really seems to know how many Neo-Nazis are moonlighting as undercover agents for whom. Is it possible that agencies did not share their information with other institutions in order to protect their sources? Given the scale of the NPD disaster in 2003, it seems quite possible. I strongly
  suspect this is how the story will pan out over months to come.

• Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation, by Kenneth Train, Cambridge University Press, 2002 – Discrete Choice Geodatenzentrum – Hier erhalten Sie vielfältige Informationen über die Geobasisdaten der Bundesländer und des Bundes. Nutzen Sie unsere Dienste und interaktiven Karten für Bestellung, Download, Suche oder Verarbeitung von Geoinformationen.
• Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland – Statistik lokal – Statistik lokal 2010 ist eine von den Statistischen Ämtern des Bundes und der Länder gemeinsam herausgegebene Datenbank auf DVD, die Gemeindedaten für ganz Deutschland enthält. Mit Statistik lokal 2010 können Sie über 12 000 Städte und Gemeinden in ganz Deutschland anhand ausgewählter Ergebnisse aus allen wichtigen Bereichen der amtlichen Statistik mit derzeit rund 330 Merkmalsausprägungen analysieren und vergleichen. Die DVD enthält auch die Ergebnisse für alle Kreise (kreisfreie Städte und Landkreise), Regierungsbezirke/Statistische Regionen, Bundesländer und Deutschland.

Image via Wikipedia

As predicted yesterday, the nuclear disaster in Japan is having a profound impact on something as trivial as three state election campaigns in Germany, more than 9000 kilometres away. Roughly 70 per cent of the population believe that an incident on the scale of the Japanese catastrophe could happen in Germany, too. The Federal Government has declared a three-month “moratorium” on its controversial decision to extend the life-span of German nuclear plants, what ever that means. Meanwhile, they want to reconsider their position on the issue and to re-assess the status of the German plants. It makes you wonder if/why they have not assessed those plants in the first place.

At least the oldest and least secure plants could indeed have reached the end of their life-span. If and when they would be switched off, that would be a U-turn for the government. This looks like a liberal-conservative panic attack.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s amazing: Just 36 hours after the horrible earth quake in Japan, 60000 people are demonstrating in Swabia – against nuclear energy. While we do not know whether the Japanese plants are actually in meltdown, for the German liberal-conservative coalition, this is certainly the Most Credible Accident.

One of the governments most controversial decisions so far was to amend the red-green phase-out law so that the German nuclear plants can remain operative much longer than planned under the original law. This upset many people, as acceptance for nuclear energy in Germany is low. And so the issue was already salient for the ongoing state-election campaigns in Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz and Sachsen-Anhalt long before yesterday’s tragedy, particularly in Baden-Württemberg, which has four operational nuclear power plants.

Now, the Greens and the SPD are having a field day. Or so it would seem: The governments semi-official line is that it would be inconsiderate to discuss domestic matters in the face of the Japanese tragedy, and the SPD is playing along for today. But it’s difficult to imagine that the left parties will not play the issue over the next two weeks – the scale of the nuclear threat is just too big.

And the media are certainly on the job. The main public broadcaster ARD – roughly equivalent to BBC One – just changed its schedule and dropped one of its insufferable shows for the over 60s in favour of a documentary on the Chernobyl disaster. Showing something that is actually relevant one a Saturday night is an almost unprecedented move for them. And even if no one was trying to set the agenda, having a power plant in or near meltdown will certainly prime voters.

Related articles

• “IAEA Reports Evacuation Zones Around Fukushima Daiichi and Daini Nuclear Plants Extended to 20 km and 10 km” and related posts (geospatial.blogs.com)
• German nuclear dispute fueled by Japan mishap (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

If this post’s title does make any sense to you, chances are that you are one of us anoraks who had a brilliant weekend of extreme right spotting. In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen stepped down as leader of the Front National, just under 40 years after he founded the party. He is succeeded by his youngest daughter, who is portrayed as a moderniser (hey, she’s twice divorced) and a moderate (by FN standards). While this story might conjure the image of Prince Charles, Marine’s rise through the Front’s ranks was quick, largely unexpected and a major source of aggravation for Bruno Gollnisch, the controversial academic who became the party’s number two after the old number two, Bruno Mégret, left the party to found the MNR in 1999. If Gollnisch (who was soundly beaten by LePen the younger in the leadership contest) aims to repeat that stunt remains to be seen. I’m sure there is a silly story about men named Bruno who turn out to be the real Princes Charles here (both spent a lot of  time eyeing the leadership and are in their early 60s now ), but more importantly, Marine is going to change le Front, though her father might be tempted to meddle. These right-wingers know a thing or two about family values.

Meanwhile, in Germany the NPD, arguably the most radical amongst the electorally viable right-wing parties in Germany has celebrated its merger with its old rival DVU. The DVU was founded in the early 1970s as a marketing device for right-wing books, journals and paraphernalia and became a party in the 1980s. For nearly 40 years, it was completely dominated by its founder Gerhard Frey, who finally stepped down in 2009, aged 76. While has successor planned for the merger that became effective from January 1, some regional leaders are less than happy and seem willing to either take the issue to the courts over some alleged irregularities, or to set up a new party of their own. Either way, it would seem that the German extreme right remains divided, as it has been since the 1980s.