The Referendum of the Revised Swiss Asylum Law in 2016 : An Application of the Advocacy Coalition Framework

The following paper deals with the idea of a possible policy change of actors in political coalitions due to an external event or policy-oriented learning. Therefore, the requested referendum of the revised Swiss asylum law revision in 2016 has been analyzed according to the Advocacy Coalition Framework theory. In order to get information about the position of the SVP, a qualitative content analysis of the four debates in Swiss parliament about the revision of the asylum law was performed. The idea was to find out if the European migrant crisis and the corresponding media coverage had an impact on the position of the SVP towards the new asylum law, which would provide a faster and more constitutional asylum procedure. In a second analysis the paper tried to find out the impact the evaluation testing operation of the asylum law in Zurich had on the position of the SVP. Overall the paper tries to determine the reasons of the requested referendum of the SVP. The paper drew two main conclusions. The European migrant crisis as an external shock had no significant impact on the position of the SVP. According to the ACF theory an external shock can lead to a change in the policy core beliefs of a coalition. The paper deducted that the impact of the waves of refugees towards Europe was not sufficient to change the SVP's policy core beliefs. Therefore, they requested the referendum and held on their position in asylum policy matters. Probably observed time span of a bit more than one and half year was a too short period for having a real impact on the SVP policy core programme. Likewise, the testing phase in Zurich with the corresponding evaluation reports could not influence the position. Here a confrontation of new findings collided with the policy core belief of the SVP. A consequent refusal of the new finding of the testing phase by the SVP-faction occurred. This observation fits with the ACF theory, which indicates that policy-oriented learning with quantitative indicators of success is more likely to be successful when it concerns secondary beliefs of a coalition, rather than the policy core beliefs. The theory of policyoriented learning could be confirmed with the position of the FDP in the debate about the asylum law revision. First being against the free legal assistance, they changed their mind after being convinced by the results in the testing phase in Zurich. For the FDP as a traditionally market liberal political party, a restrictive and severe asylum policy is not a part of their policy core beliefs. Therefore, they changed the coalition and voted in favour of the asylum law revision. The paper ascertained four arguments for the requested referendum which are the following ones: the free legal assistance to the asylum seekers, the malfunctioning and the poor execution of the Dublin regulation, the wish to reduce the attractiveness of Switzerland as a target country and the planning permit procedures

Overall survival and role of programmed death ligand 1 expression in patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer and immunotherapy: an observational study from central Switzerland.

BACKGROUND In clinical trials, therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors has improved the survival of patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These trials were important for drug approval and for defining new treatment standards but the effect of checkpoint inhibitors in patients treated outside of clinical trials is not well known. The goal of this study was to assess the effect of immunotherapy on the overall survival of patients with metastatic NSCLC in the region of central Switzerland. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study included 274 patients with histologically confirmed metastatic (stage IV) NSCLC in central Switzerland in the years 2015 to 2018. Patients with NSCLC and actionable driver mutations were excluded. Patients with checkpoint inhibitor treatment (immuno-oncology [IO] group, n = 122) were compared with patients without checkpoint inhibitor treatment (no-IO group, n = 152). Baseline demographics, disease characteristics and therapies applied were collected retrospectively. The primary endpoint was median overall survival calculated either from diagnosis or from the start of checkpoint inhibitor therapy to death or data cut-off (21 July 2021). We used the Kaplan-Meier method and an adjusted Cox proportional-hazards regression model. The expression of programmed-death ligand 1 (PD-L1) on tumour cells was used for exploratory analysis. RESULTS Patients had a median age of 68.4 years, most were male (61.7%) and more than half were current or former smokers (65%). A test for PD-L1 expression was available for 55.8% of the tumours. Patients in the IO group were younger than patients in the no-IO group. Among the 122 patients in the IO group, the median overall survival was 15 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 12-20). In the no-IO group, the median overall survival was 4 months (95% CI 3-7) with chemotherapy and 2 months (95% CI 1-2) with best supportive care. Patients with high (≥50%) PD-L1 expression and checkpoint inhibitor therapy had a slightly longer overall survival than patients with low PD-L1 and checkpoint inhibitor therapy. CONCLUSION These results suggest that treatment with checkpoint inhibitors improves overall survival in patients with metastatic NSCLC and that PD-L1 expression could have a predictive value in patients treated outside of clinical trials. Further studies are needed to study the magnitude of the benefit of checkpoint inhibitors according to molecular NSCLC subtype

Wandlungen des Liberalismus: Zum Zusammenhang von Herrschaftskritik und Theoriestruktur

Jüngere Formen des (Neo-)Republikanismus fordern, die politische Theorie wieder stärker herrschaftskritisch auszurichten, und wenden sich damit vor allem auch gegen den klassischen Liberalismus. Dieser Artikel zeigt am Beispiel von John Stuart Mill zunächst, dass diese Diagnose fehlgeht. Insbesondere in Mills Schriften zur Geschlechterunterdrückung lässt sich nachzeichnen, dass in der "Erfindung" des Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert tatsächlich Problemstellungen des historisch früheren Republikanismus aufgegriffen werden. Unter dem Eindruck der geänderten gesellschaftlich-politischen Verhältnisse sowie der neuen Perspektiven werden die republikanischen Ausgangspunkte allerdings korrigiert und weiterentwickelt. Über den Ansatz von Ronald Dworkin wird daran anschließend rekonstruiert, wie dieser die republikanisch-liberale Vorgehensweise zurückweist und den Liberalismus grundsätzlich neu bestimmt. Es kommt zum Übergang von einem Freiheits- zu einem Gleichheitsfokus, was wichtige Folgen für die gesellschaftlichen und politischen Phänomene und Konfliktlagen hat, die thematisiert werden können. Der dritte Abschnitt dieses Artikels fragt, ob es dem Neo-Republikanismus gelingt, normative Grundlagen und Herrschaftskritik wieder enger miteinander zu verbinden. Im Gegensatz zur Selbstwahrnehmung kehrt der Neo-Republikanismus aber in seiner Theoriestruktur nicht zum früheren Republikanismus zurück. Er verbleibt vielmehr in der Theoriestruktur des jüngeren Liberalismus und nimmt lediglich Veränderungen in den normativen Grundlagen vor, die politischen Institutionen größere Bedeutung zuweisen. Abschließend wird demgegenüber argumentiert, dass es sich lohnt, die Theoriestruktur aufzunehmen, die sich sowohl im Republikanismus wie auch im frühen Liberalismus findet und von minimalen normativen Überlegungen ausgehend mögliche Beherrschungsphänomene und -formen diskutiert.Recent versions of (neo-)republicanism call for political theory to focus more on the critical analysis of domination, which, it is argued, classical liberalism had forsaken. Using John Stuart Mill as an example, the present article first shows that this critical diagnosis of liberalism is mistaken. Especially in Mill's writings on gender oppression one can observe that the "invention" of liberalism in the 19th century actually addresses problems of the historically earlier republicanism. Under the impression of the changed socio-political conditions and the new perspectives, however, the initial assumptions of the republicans are corrected and further developed. By drawing on the work of Ronald Dworkin the present article then demonstrates how he rejects the republican-liberal approach and how he fundamentally redefines liberalism. Dworkin argues for a transition from a focus on freedom to a focus on equality, and this has important consequences for the kind of social and political phenomena and conflict situations he can address. The third section of the article asks whether neo-republicanism succeeds in strengthening the link between normative foundations and the critique of power again. In contrast to its self-perception, however, neo-republicanism, in its theoretical structure, does not revert to earlier republicanism. Rather, it remains within the theoretical structure of recent liberalism and merely changes some of the normative foundations and, thus, assigns greater importance to political institutions. In conclusion, it is argued that it is worth taking up the theoretical structure found in both republicanism and early liberalism and discussing possible phenomena and forms of domination based on rather minimal normative considerations

Netzwerke

Holzer B. Netzwerke. In: Niederberger A, Schink P, eds. Globalisierung: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart / Weimar: J.B. Metzler; 2011

Understanding the charge storage mechanism to achieve high capacity and fast ion storage in sodium-ion capacitor anodes by using electrospun nitrogen-doped carbon fibers

Microporous nitrogen‐rich carbon fibers (HAT‐CNFs) are produced by electrospinning a mixture of hexaazatriphenylene‐hexacarbonitrile (HAT‐CN) and polyvinylpyrrolidone and subsequent thermal condensation. Bonding motives, electronic structure, content of nitrogen heteroatoms, porosity, and degree of carbon stacking can be controlled by the condensation temperature due to the use of the HAT‐CN with predefined nitrogen binding motives. The HAT‐CNFs show remarkable reversible capacities (395 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1) and rate capabilities (106 mAh g−1 at 10 A g−1) as an anode material for sodium storage, resulting from the abundant heteroatoms, enhanced electrical conductivity, and rapid charge carrier transport in the nanoporous structure of the 1D fibers. HAT‐CNFs also serve as a series of model compounds for the investigation of the contribution of sodium storage by intercalation and reversible binding on nitrogen sites at different rates. There is an increasing contribution of intercalation to the charge storage with increasing condensation temperature which becomes less active at high rates. A hybrid sodium‐ion capacitor full cell combining HAT‐CNF as the anode and salt‐templated porous carbon as the cathode provides remarkable performance in the voltage range of 0.5–4.0 V (95 Wh kg−1 at 0.19 kW kg−1 and 18 Wh kg−1 at 13 kW kg−1)