Sports, Global Politics, and Social Value Change: A Research Agenda

Despite their important role in forging, constructing and self-ascribing social identities and shaping popular culture, sports have long been a marginalized subject of social science inquiry, cultural studies, and research on international politics. Only in recent years this has begun to change. The article seeks to advance the still nascent but emerging cross-disciplinary field of research on sports and global politics in two ways: first, by addressing largely unexplored issues of sports, politics, and social conflicts, putting the spotlight on sociopolitical arenas beyond commercialized sports mega events, which have attracted most scholarly attention in contemporary research; and second, by generating hypotheses on the indirect political effects of sports cultures, in particular on the relationship between local social identities—reinforced through sports—and cosmopolitan value change. These interlinked spatial and substantive claims ground a new critical research framework and agenda: it examines sports as profoundly embedded in socioeconomic, cultural and political forms of rule and domination but also seeks to disclose sports’ emancipatory and subversive potential in advancing globalization from below

Back to Kant? The Democratic Deficits in Habermas’ Global Constitutionalism

This chapter offers a critical reappraisal of two different models of global constitutionalism proposed by Jurgen Habermas that respond to Immanuel Kant's cosmopolitanism and seek to move beyond it. Habermas' own discursive theory of deliberative democracy, which allocates a central place to self-legislating subjects in culturally grounded communicative communities, can hereby function as a critical resource to challenge the democratic deficits in his global constitutionalism. An aspect of Kant's political cosmopolitanism is significant for the critique and revisions that Habermas suggests. The chapter argues that although Habermas' models absorb Kant's cosmopolitan intuitions and contribute important resources for critiquing resilient nationalist fictions and sovereigntist shortcomings, cultural relativism and arbitrary justice, they also risk fetishizing what he presupposes a priori to be universally consensual, rational and binding formal constitutional principles. Cosmopolitan translations and re-articulations can also challenge the content and scope of ‘basic human rights' in unpredictable ways.</p

Divided We Stand:An Analysis of the Enduring Political East-West Divide in Germany 30 Years after the Wall's Fall

Germany continues to face an inter-regional political divide between the East and the West three decades after unification. Most strikingly, this divide is expressed in different party systems. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany and the left-wing populist Left Party are considerably more successful in the eastern regions, while German centrist parties perform worse (and shrink faster at the ballot-box) than in the West. The article discusses empirical evidence of this resilient yet puzzling political divide and explores three main clusters of explanatory factors: The after-effects of the German Democratic Republic’s authoritarian past and its politico-cultural legacies, translating into distinct value cleavage configurations alongside significantly weaker institutional trust and more wide-spread skepticism towards democracy in the East; continuous, even if partly reduced inter-regional socioeconomic divisions and varying economic, social and political opportunities; and populist parties and movements acting as political entrepreneurs who construct and politically reinforce the East-West divide. It is argued that only the combination of these factors helps understand the depth and origins of the lasting divide

Two-sided Cybermediary Platforms: The Case of Hotel.de

The market for hotel room accommodation is highly fragmented on the supply-side as well as on the demand-side. Online booking platforms such as booking.com or hotel.de bring together hotels and their customers. Hotels and booking customers are the main customer groups of the platform. This paper explores the business model of a large online hotel booking platform, hotel.de, using a case study approach. By serving two customer groups simultaneously, hotel.de has to deal with the specific dynamics that unfold on the two sides of its platform and align its business model accordingly. The results reveal that hotel.de maintains two distinct business models for the two customer groups, offering a unique set of value propositions to each of them. A third, overarching business model links the two sides by simultaneously solving both sides’ specific problems and creating a match between booking customers and hotels

The Contemporary Globalization of Political Antisemitism:Three Political Spaces and the Global Mainstreaming of the ‘Jewish Question’ in the Twenty-First Century

is article examines the current globalization of political antisemitism and its e ects on the resurgent normalization of anti-Jewish discourse and politics in a global context. e focus is on three political spaces in which the “Jewish question” has been repoliticized and become a salient feature of political ideology, communication, and mobilization: the global radical right, global Islamism, and the global radical left. Di erent contexts and jus- ti catory discourses notwithstanding, the comparative empirical analysis shows that three interrelated elements of globalized antisemitism feature most prominently across these di erent political spaces: anti-Jewish conspiracy myths, Holocaust denial or relativization; and hatred of Israel. It is argued that the current process of the globalization of political antisemitism has signi cantly contributed to antisemitism’s global presence in all kinds of public spaces as well as the convergence of antisemitic ideology among a variety of di erent actors. Moreover, the globalization of political antisemitism has helped accelerate the dis- semination and social acceptance of anti-Jewish tropes that currently takes shape in broad- er publics, that is: the globalized mainstreaming of antisemitism. e article concludes by discussing some factors favorable to the globalization and normalization of antisemitism and antisemitic politics in the current age

The Noisy Counter-Revolution:Understanding the Cultural Conditions and Dynamics of Populist Politics in Europe in the Digital Age

The article argues for a cultural turn in the study of populist politics in Europe. Integrating insights from three fields—political sociology, political psychology, and media studies—a new, multi-disciplinary framework is proposed to theorize particular cultural conditions favorable to the electoral success of populist parties. Through this lens, the fourth wave of populism should be viewed as a “noisy”, anti-cosmopolitan counter-revolution in defense of traditional cultural identity. Reflective of a deep-seated, value-based great divide in European democracies that largely trumps economic cleavages, populist parties first and foremost politically mobilize long lingering cultural discontent and successfully express a backlash against cultural change. While the populist counter-revolution is engendered by profoundly transformed communicative conditions in the age of social media, its emotional force can best be theorized with the political psychology of authoritarianism: as a new type of authoritarian cultural revolt

Guilt, Resentment, and Post-Holocaust Democracy:The Frankfurt School's Analysis of 'Secondary Antisemitism' in the Group Experiment and Beyond

Previous discussions of the Frankfurt School’s work on Judeophobia have almost entirely neglected the Critical Theorists’ pathbreaking analysis of “secondary antisemitism” after Auschwitz. This new form of Jew-hatred originates in the political and psychological desire to split off, repress, and downplay the memory of the Holocaust because such memory, with which Jews are often identified, evokes unwelcome guilt feelings. As Holocaust memory undermines the uncritical identification with a collective, family, or nation tainted by anti-Jewish mass atrocities, the repression of national guilt may unconsciously motivate the reproduction of resentments that helped cause the Shoah. In this light, the article re-examines the empirical postwar German study Group Experiment and other works of the Frankfurt School. Three specific defensive mechanisms in relation to historical collective guilt feelings are identified that engender a variety of antisemitic projections—from “Jewish power” to “Jewish money” and other anti-Jewish tropes—after the Holocaust. It is argued that these insights into post-Holocaust secondary antisemitism, empirically analyzed in the German context, can partly be transferred to other contexts in European democracies and beyond. This article demonstrates that an unprocessed history of national guilt can have a negative impact on democracy and the resilienceof antisemitism

Sarkar, Butler & Steinfield (1995) “Intermediaries and Cybermediaries” Revisited: A Review and Identification of Future Research Directions for Intermediaries in Electronic Markets

Intermediation in markets is a phenomenon that has been studied by many researchers from a variety of different theoretical angles. With the introduction and diffusion of the Internet in everyday life, broad predictions were made that called for disintermediation enabled by direct Internet linkages between suppliers and buyers and lower transaction costs. The often-cited paper by Sarkar, Butler and Steinfield (1995) challenges this prediction. By comparing Internet effects on transaction costs with the cost situation ex ante, the paper explains that both direct sales or cybermediated sales are possible outcomes. In this paper we confront key assumptions of the Sarkar et al. paper with recent developments in the tourism market. We find that in the tourism market a multitude of direct and indirect distribution channels exist next to each other. Multi-level distribution channels often including several cybermediaries have been built, resulting in a complex market topology. We also see a large variety of intermediary roles, resulting from highly specialized and highly integrated cybermediary business models. Furthermore the model of Sarkar et al. fails to deliver an explanation for the on-going dynamics in the tourism market in terms of shifts towards more or less intermediaries and the emergence of new intermediary-like business models. By taking these trends into account we are able to identify relevant future research directions in order to extend our understanding of the phenomenon of electronic intermediaries in markets

Analyzing the Added Value of Electronic Intermediaries in the Dutch Health Care Sector

The CareAuction intermediary offers a reverse auctioning platform to support the allocation of individual maternity care patient requests between purchasers of health insurance companies (acting on behalf of their policy holders) and care providers. Since its introduction in 2005, CareAuction has contributed to a small price drop of maternity care and induced competition on the supply-side of the market. This is a result of increased transparency for both (demand and supply) sides. The quality of the maternity care that is provided is monitored by a newly introduced quality evaluation system, which includes the patient and introduces quality as another competitive factor next to price. Next to CareAuction, other intermediaries are still active in the health care sector, supporting the allocation of care between insurance companies and care providers. Findings indicate that the influence of CareAuction leads to the disintermediation of at least one other intermediary. Theory on electronic intermediaries and market dynamics is used to identify the added values that these two intermediaries (CareAuction and LTZ) create for the purchasers and providers of maternity care in the context of the maternity care market

Xenophobia and Anti-Immigrant Politics

The emergence of widespread xenophobia and anti-immigrant politics has raised the following questions: What are the explanatory factors and cultural conditions for the relative salience of xenophobic attitudes in the current era—and why is there a varying demand in different countries? Which independent variables on the supply side explain the emergence and the diverging success or failure of “anti-immigrant parties” as well as variations of mainstream anti-immigrant discourses and campaigns in electoral politics? What causal mechanisms can be found between contextual, structural, or agency-related factors and anti-immigrant party politics, and what do we know about their emergence and their dynamics in political processes? These questions are addressed by demand-side, supply-side, as well as mixed models. Demand-side approaches focus on the conditions that generate certain anti-immigrant attitudes and policy preferences in the electorate, on both the individual and the societal level, as key explanatory variables for anti-immigrant policies. Supply-side approaches turn to the role of political agency: They explain the salience and variation of anti-immigrant politics mainly by the performance of parties which mobilize, organize, and (as “agenda setters”) generate them. Mixed models include both sets of explanatory variables and a “third” set of institutional and discursive factors, such as electoral rules, party competition, and ideological spaces in electoral marketplaces