Not much ado about quite a lot? The German election of September 2013

The German election of 22 September 2013 saw Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU return triumphantly to office. Merkel’s party won as she is widely admired and, most importantly, she is widely trusted to lead Germany through potentially challenging times. So, all much as was. Yet beneath the surface the tectonic plates of German party politics are shifting. The Social Democrats appear to be stuck in an electoral trough, whilst the number of politically relevant smaller parties is increasing. Although the liberal FDP failed to re-enter parliament for the first time in post-war history, and both the Pirates and Alternative for Germany (AfG) also fell at the final (5%) hurdle, the era of multi-party politics is now well and truly with us. The CDU/CSU and SPD will lead Germany until 2017, but the story of what happens then really is anyone’s guess

Anticorruption: a case of 'good, but could do better'

This article utilizes a neoinstitutionalist framework to argue that while Germany’s anticorruption infrastructure remains strong, resilient pathdependent tendencies often make it difficult to reform. The article analyzes three specific areas: the state’s attitude to regulating German business, meeting international anticorruption commitments, and doing justice to the rising transparency agenda. High-profile examples of corruption in multinational businesses prompted significant changes to these companies’ compliance regimes. This critical juncture, however, did not prompt reform across much of the Mittelstand. Germany’s preparedness to fulfill international commitments, meanwhile, has been strongly dependent on correspondence with the internal logic of German politics and law. Where this was not so and in the absence of any critical junctures, change has been infrequent. Finally, the rise of an international transparency agenda has not fit with the logics of German public life, and change has been minimal. Thus, despite a strong anticorruption record, German elites would benefit from proactively thinking about where corruption lurks and what could be don

International approaches to tackling corruption: what works and what doesn't?

A well-developed set of international anti-corruption tools now exists. These range from broad conventions to focused initiatives in specific policy areas. This article argues that international agreements work best when they are focused and they speak to the common interests of the parties involved. Solutions need to be creative, they need to bring in a broad coalition of stakeholders and they need to be focused on specific problems. International agreements need to help states with good quality institutions of governance focus on developing transparency initiatives, accountability drives and nuanced efforts to tackle particular national variants of “legal corruption.” In countries with patchy institutions of governance the scope for international influence is broader, while in states with serious governance challenges the best international anti-corruption efforts will often have surprisingly little to do with corruption at all. In a state where the rule of law is patchy or non-existent then anti-corruption laws (or indeed laws more generally) mean very little. The challenge here is to improve the basic tools of governance in the knowledge that only then can the issue of corruption be brought on to the agenda

The Alternative for Germany’s radicalization in historical-comparative perspective

This article chronicles the AfD’s rightward repositioning and compares it with the programmatic development of three postwar German parties on the ideological wings. By highlighting factors that tilt the balance of power away from moderate reformers towards hardliners, this comparative analysis sheds light on the conditions that lead a relatively successful party on the ideological wings, such as the AfD, to radicalize its programme. Four variables stand out: whether party hardliners take the blame for the recent election loss; whether they offer a convincing programmatic and strategic alternative to the reformers; whether changes in party composition strengthen hardliners; and whether external factors enhance their weight within the party. The essay concludes that the AfD’s radicalization was unusual, but not exceptional. It is however too early to conclude that the Federal Republic’s distinctive institutions and political culture no longer impose significant costs on parties that shift their programmes away from the centre

Lithofacies control on deformation bands

Deformation bands are strain localisation features common in highly porous clastic sedimentary bodies. They form as predominately planar features with lateral extents commonly of a few metres and thicknesses frequently less than a centimetre. Deformation bands affect reservoir quality as they can have significantly reduced permeability compared to that of the host rock (typically 3-5 orders of magnitude lower). As such, the frequency and arrangement of multiple deformation bands within a reservoir sandbody can have implications for recovery rates. Despite the potential negative implications, our current ability to predict the presence of deformation bands is largely limited to their proximity to larger-scale (seismically resolvable) fault structures. However, using outcrop examples from the Triassic, aeolian-fluvial Sherwood Sandstone Group in the Cheshire Basin, this study is able to demonstrate a link between host lithofacies types and the frequency of deformation bands. Specifically, this study has shown that deformation bands are most likely to occur within the highly permeable aeolian facies types, notably grainflow and grainfall facies (constituent aeolian sand dune facies types). Deformation bands observed in aeolian facies types also have significantly larger lateral extents and are more likely to occur in complex morphologies compared to those identified in non-aeolian facies types. A new working classification scheme based on deformation band geometry is proposed that aims to provide information on the anisotropy resulting from multiple variable arrangements of deformation bands. This new scheme is complimentary to the kinematic and dominate mechanism of deformation schemes currently adopted

Citizens, bribery and the propensity to protest

It is widely assumed that the more one experiences corruption the more likely one is to want to protest about it. Yet empirical evidence illustrating this is thin on the ground. This paper fills that gap by focusing on the extent to which self-reported experience of bribery affects the willingness to engage in protests against corruption in Africa. We find that the more one experiences bribery the more one is likely to support anti-corruption protests. A further unexpected finding is that the personal experience of corruption also increases the willingness to rely on bribes to solve public administration problems

Adenovirus-Mediated Somatic Genome Editing of Pten by CRISPR/Cas9 in Mouse Liver in Spite of Cas9-Specific Immune Responses

CRISPR/Cas9 derived from the bacterial adaptive immunity pathway is a powerful tool for genome editing, but the safety profiles of in vivo delivered Cas9 (including host immune responses to the bacterial Cas9 protein) have not been comprehensively investigated in model organisms. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a prevalent human liver disease characterized by excessive fat accumulation in the liver. In this study, we used adenovirus (Ad) vector to deliver a Streptococcus pyogenes–derived Cas9 system (SpCas9) targeting Pten, a gene involved in NASH and a negative regulator of the PI3K-AKT pathway, in mouse liver. We found that the Ad vector mediated efficient Pten gene editing even in the presence of typical Ad vector-associated immunotoxicity in the liver. Four months after vector infusion, mice receiving the Pten gene-editing Ad vector showed massive hepatomegaly and features of NASH, consistent with the phenotypes following Cre-loxP-induced Pten deficiency in mouse liver. We also detected induction of humoral immunity against SpCas9 and the potential presence of an SpCas9-specific cellular immune response. Our findings provide a strategy to model human liver diseases in mice and highlight the importance considering Cas9-specific immune responses in future translational studies involving in vivo delivery of CRISPR/Cas9

Bishops who live like princes: Bishop Tebartz-van Elst and the challenge of defining corruption

This article contributes to the debate on defining corruption. Rather than attempting to provide a definitive definition, it uses the case of Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, a German bishop from the diocese of Limburg who stepped down in 2014, to illustrate that the disciplines of law, political science, economics, and anthropology all make important contributions to understanding what corruption is and how it should be conceptualized. Seen through these different lenses, the article argues, the case of “Bishop Bling” can be understood in strikingly different ways. This has ramifications not just for the case itself but also for how analysts understand corruption more broadly. Adopting an overtly interdisciplinary approach does not represent a way to “solve” the definitional dilemma, but it can help analysts understand more about corruption’s multiplicity