Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has inched a little closer towards banning Germany’s oldest far-right party. After pondering the issue (and more importantly, the evidence) for a mere two years, the court has formally opened the proceedings that could result in a ban. A previous attempt to outlaw the NPD collapsed in 2003 because of the…
This week, I’m moonlighting at the International Association for the Study of German Politics (that is quite a mouthful). Click on the link below for the full text. “However, it is still difficult to assess what kind of party the AfD wants to be, and what they stand for. From its beginnings, the AfD has…
West European Politics has released a virtual special issue on (European) populist parties. The collection brings together a host of articles that were published in the journal over the last 20 years or so, including some evergreens by Paul Taggart, Cas Mudde, David Art, Sarah de Lange, and other chums. Disclaimer: My own article on…
Following the meeting in July that led to a split of the party, the AfD is holding another party conference this weekend. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that the assembly has just voted down a position paper on asylum drafted by the national exec and backed by the new leader. Internally, the paper was seen as…
No fees for authors and a legit-looking crowd of supporters. But why “Humanities” and not “Humanities and Social Sciences”? Still looks too soft for quantitative social scientists. The Open Library of Humanities is financially supported by an international library consortium. This means that we never have to charge our authors to publish with us. In…
Being part of the peer review system has a sadomasochistic quality. Nate Jensen’s story about how he had to submit a certain manuscript again and again to different journals to get it published eventually is all too familiar. I don’t keep records as exact as his (would be too depressing), but I remember a single…
The controversy about how we should refer to the terrorist group known in Western Europe as “ISIS” has been going on for some time (the Americans prefer “ISIL”). If you followed the news after the recent attacks (and who hasn’t), you will have noticed that a third name, “Daesh”, is gaining currency with heads of…
Germany’s restrictive bioethics legislation in general, and its very tight rules on embryology and fertilisation in particular, present a puzzle for political science. Early on, the country has enacted liberal rules in other moral policy domains, most notably the abortion law of 1975 (Richardt, 2003: 113). The full range of prenatal diagnosis is available to…