The fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of East and West Germany in 1989/90 were events of world-historical significance. The twentieth anniversary of this juncture represents an excellent opportunity to reflect upon the evolution of the new Berlin Republic. Given the on-going significance of the country for theory and concept–building in many disciplines, an in-depth examination of the case is essential. In this volume, unique in its focus on all aspects of contemporary Germany - culture, historiography, society, politics and the economy - top scholars offer their assessments of the country’s performance in these and other areas and analyze the successes and continued challenges.
After World War II Berlin became one of the playgrounds of the Cold War; the Berlin Wall made the division between East and West, between ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’ in 1961 highly visible, though it did remove Berlin from front-line politics. East and West Berlin had turned into shop-windows of ideologies – West Berlin representing the lure of a market economy, East Berlin the promise of socialism. It is, then, fitting that the fall of the Wall in 1989 awarded Berlin such a prominent role. It was here that the development after Reunification of East and West became a closely observed event – and, well beyond Germany, Berlin appeared to represent fundamental developments throughout Europe at the time. Today, Berlin is the capital of reunified Germany and therefore one of the key political players in the European Union (EU) and it’s now a desirable destination for young entrepreneurs. The Historical Dictionary of Berlin contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, places, institutions, and events. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Berlin.
The decision to move Germany's government seat from Bonn to Berlin by the year 2000 poses an epic architectural challenge and has fostered an international debate on which building styles are appropriate to represent German national identity. Capital Dilemma investigates the political decisions and historical events behind the redesign of Berlin's official architecture. It tells a complex and exciting drama of politics, memory, cultural values, and architecture, in which Helmut Kohl, Albert Speer, Sir Norman Foster, and I. M. Pei all figure as players. If capital city design projects are symbols of national identity and historical consciousness, Berlin is the supreme example. In fact, architecture has played a pivotal role throughout Germany's turbulent twentieth-century history. After the fall of the monarchy, Germany gave birth to the Bauhaus, whose founders argued that their own revolutionary designs could shape human destiny. The century's warring ideologies, Nazism and Communism, also used architecture for their own political ends. In its latest incarnation, Berlin will become the capital of the fifth German state in this century to be ruled from that city. How will the official architecture of reunified Berlin, a democratic capital being built amid totalitarian remains, be different this time around? Th e Federal Republic of Germany, a highly stable democracy in stark contrast to its predecessors, has been struggling with burdensome architectural legacies. In the process, it has considered remedies as varied as outright destruction, refurbishment, and, in the case of the former Nazi Central Bank now being converted into the new Foreign Ministry, physical concealment.
British security officer Alan Turner battles radical German students and neo-Nazis after an embassy flack disappears from Bonn with dozens of top secret files.
The process of European integration is marked both by continued deepening and widening, and by growing evidence of domestic disquiet and dissent. Against this background, this volume examines three key themes: the challenge to the power of member states - as subjects of European integration - to determine the course of the integrationist project and to shape European public policies; the increasing constraints in the domestic political arena experienced by member states as objects of European integration; and the contestation over both the 'constitutive politics of the EU' and specific policy choices. These three themes - power, constraint and contestation - and their interdependence are explored with specific reference to contemporary Germany. The main findings call for a revision of the 'conventional wisdom' about Germany's Europeanization experience. First, while Germany continues to engage intensively in all aspects of the integration process, its power to 'upload' - 'hard' and 'soft', 'deliberate' or 'unintentional', 'institutional' or 'ideational' - appears in decline. Germany's capacity to 'shape its regional milieu' is challenged by both changes in the integration process and the ever more apparent weaknesses of the 'German model'. The traditional regional core milieu is shrinking in size and importance in an enlarging Europe, and Germany's milieu-shaping power is being challenged. Second, the coincidence of enabling and constraining effects is being progressively replaced by a discourse that notes unwelcome constrictions associated with EU membership. The book's findings suggest that key political institutions and processes in the Federal Republic have not co-evolved with the integration process, but lead an, at times, uncomfortable co-existence. Third, domestic contestation over both everyday EU policy and the constitutional politics of integration seems set to increase. There are, as yet, no indications that these domestic conflicts will reach an intensity comparable to that of the 1950s. However, both the 'permissive' mass consensus and, perhaps more importantly, élite consensus are being tested to their limits. This volume is essential reading for students of comparative European politics and German studies.
Adminstrative reform in most western democracies over the past couple of decades has been characterized by bringing in market-based concepts of public-service delivery. This book looks critically at administrative reform in a comparative perspective. The contributors - experts on administrative reform - assess its scope and objectives, and also the ways in which these reforms have impacted on the traditional roles of elective office and civil servants. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and academics in Politics and Public Administration, as well as for civil servants and experts on administrative reform.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) is an interdisciplinary research area devoted to exploring the issues of designing computer-based systems that enhance the abilities to cooperate and integrate activities in an efficient and flexible manner for people in cooperative work situations. This volume is a rigorous selection of papers that represent both practical and theoretical approaches to CSCW from many leading researchers in the field. As an interdisciplinary area of research, CSCW brings together widely disparate research traditions and perspectives from computer, human, organisational and design sciences. The papers selected reflect a variety of approaches and cultures in the field. Audience: Of interest to a wide audience because of the huge practical impact of the issues and the interdisciplinary nature of the problems and solutions proposed. In particular: researchers and professionals in computing, sociology, cognitive science, human factors, and system design.
Austria, Germany, and Switzerland are increasingly relying on hybridization at the nexus of vocational training and higher education to increase permeability and reform their highly praised systems of collective skill formation. This historical and organizational institutionalist study compares these countries to trace the evolution of their skill regimes from the 1960s to today‘s era of Europeanization, focusing especially on the impact of the Bologna and Copenhagen processes.
