Gender and authoritarian regimes:a review

Although the scientific community attests a “renaissance” (Bank 2009) of authoritarianism political science has no focus on the research field of gender and authoritarianism yet. The strengthening of authoritarianism research within political science is mostly located in comparative politics and regional studies. But most recent studies on authoritarian regimes do not focus on gender questions explicitly. This review gives a structured overview on recent literature on authoritarianism and gender and focusses on recent theoretical approaches to authoritarianism and authoritarian regimes. Furthermore interesting policies within a gender perspective and how they are looked upon in mainstream and feminist political science and in part recent historical research as well will be described: state formation and gender; political rights, suffrage rights and women’s rights activism; women’s representation; social hierarchies and social processes; family policy, the role of domestic violence and abortion rights as measuring degrees of women’s autonomy and eventually the socio-economic gender orders

The Conceptualisation, Measurement, and Coding of Education in German and Cross-National Surveys (Version 2.0)

This contribution provides an overview of the theoretical conceptualisation, empirical operationalisation, and the measurement and coding of education in national and international survey research. In this context, the term "education" refers to the level of education attained by an individual, which must be distinguished from concepts such as competencies, performance at school, and educational disciplines. Because education is often included in statistical models in a merely routine way, emphasis is placed on the connection between the theoretical concept, the indicator, the measurement instrument, and the variable. When doing so, use is made of long-standing social science research on educational returns and educational inequality. A distinction is made between linear, ordinal and categorical concepts of education that have emerged from the different theoretical approaches, and that, to some extent, impose different requirements on data collection and coding. Indeed, it is true to say that there is no consensus as to how education should be conceptualised, measured, compared across countries, and statistically modelled. The contribution does not give a recommendation for a "one size fits all" educational variable that would be appropriate for all studies. Rather, it endeavours to encourage readers to make an informed decision on the measurement of education in the respective educational context and to support them in doing so

Education in OECD's PIAAC Study: How Well do Different Harmonized Measures Predict Skills?

The comparable measurement of educational attainment is a challenge for all comparative surveys and cross-national data analyses. While education is an important predictor or control variable in many research contexts, it is particularly important when studying education and education-related outcomes such as skills or labor market chances. This study evaluates the cross-nationally comparable measurement of education in OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC, in terms of its construct validity when predicting general basic skills. In order to do so, the predictive power of country-specific (i.e. non-comparable) education variables is compared to the predictive power of different cross-nationally harmonized variables, namely the detailed ISCED-based coding scheme used in PIAAC, ISCED 2011 and 1997 levels, the broad education levels 'low, medium, high', ES-ISCED, as well as years of education. The analyses consist in sets of country-wise linear regressions, taking PIAAC’s plausible values and complex sampling into account, and use adjusted R2 as the indicator for predictive power and validity. The results show that while harmonization into a detailed coding scheme such as the most detailed comparable variable available in PIAAC does not entail large losses of information, the way this variable is further simplified plays a major role for validity. The paper also highlights shortcomings of the detailed variable from a theoretical point of view, such as the lack of differentiation of vocational and general education and other markers of educational content and quality, which are important aspects both for skill development as well as the labor market outcomes of education, and of the country-specific measures of education, which may make the detailed PIAAC education variable look better than it actually is

The classification of education in surveys: a generalized framework for ex-post harmonization

All social science (and many other) surveys measure respondents' educational attainment. However, most of them do it in different ways, resulting in incoherent education variables across surveys. This complicates the cumulation of different datasets and hampers survey data reuse. For cross-national surveys that are designed to be comparative from the outset, methods for ensuring comparability in the measurement of education across countries have improved substantially over the last decades, relying on ex-ante output harmonization. For ex-post harmonization, the situation is more difficult because the data have already been collected, with education measures that only partly overlap in the amount and kind of information they store about respondents' education. This results in aggregated measures when harmonizing data ex-post. Such aggregated measures may underestimate associations with education in multivariate analyses, leading to biased results. They also do not allow testing hypotheses on the effects of specific types of education, such as vocational programs. This paper presents a new framework for harmonizing education variables ex-post, building on the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) and experience from cross-national surveys using ex-ante harmonization. It includes a new coding scheme called 'generalized ISCED' or GISCED, and extension variables standardizing aspects of education not covered by ISCED. It proposes solutions for problems that specifically occur in ex-post harmonization, for example source categories spanning ISCED levels. The paper also shows how to apply the GISCED framework to existing data. An empirical illustration shows how detailed harmonized education measures may give insights for research and policy not possible with more aggregate measures

Degrees of competency: the relationship between educational qualifications and adult skills across countries

Background: Educational qualifications and literacy skills are highly related. This is not surprising as it is one aim of educational systems to equip individuals with competencies necessary to take part in society. Because of this relationship educational qualifications are often used as a proxy for "human capital". However, from a theoretical perspective, there are many reasons why this relationship is not perfect, and to some degree this is due to third variables. Thus, we want to explore the net relationship between educational attainment (harmonized according to the International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED) and literacy skills, and how much skills vary within education levels across countries. Methods: We use data from 21 countries from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012. This paper compares the literacy skills of adults who achieved different levels of educational attainment across countries. Given the high degree of educational differentiation in most countries, we do this using a more differentiated educational attainment variable than what is commonly used. In our analyses we firstly adjust for factors that are likely to affect access to education and the acquisition of educational qualifications and literacy skills, such as parental education and language and migration background. In a second step, we also take into account factors affecting skill development after initial formal education, such as occupation and skill use at home. Results: We firstly find a high degree of heterogeneity of skills across countries for equivalent education categories. Secondly, we find skill similarities for equivalent education categories classified at different broad education levels, sometimes even breaking the hierarchical order of 'higher education entails higher competencies'. Conclusion: We conclude that ISCED levels cannot be taken as a cross-nationally comparable proxy for human capital in terms of literacy skills, and that education has to be harmonized in a substantively more meaningful way in future adult literacy surveys

Dimensions of Migrant Integration in Western Europe

The integration of immigrant minorities is a major concern for diverse societies - with major implications for the well-being of those affected, social cohesion and group relations, and economic and social progress. In this paper, we give a comprehensive description of long-term migrant integration in Western Europe to investigate theories of migrant assimilation and integration. We take a multidimensional approach, looking at 10 indicators measuring social, structural, political, civic and cultural integration. We take an innovative approach to measuring minority background by using two complementary measures: generational status, distinguishing first and second-generation migrants from the third and higher up 'natives,' and self-reported ancestry, separating those with autochthonous-only ancestry from those with various kinds of allochthonous ancestry. Using interaction effects between these measures, we can test whether generational change is faster or slower for some ethnic groups than for others, i.e. whether different groups integrate at differing speeds. Using the pooled samples of all Western European countries included in the European Social Survey rounds 7 and 8, we run multivariate regression analyses to estimate the effects of migrant background on the 10 indicators of integration. Compared to migrants with autochthonous ancestry, respondents of Middle Eastern, North African & Central Asian as well as Sub-Saharan African ancestry are less integrated on all dimensions of integration except the political and civic ones. The South & South-East Asian group is also substantially less assimilated socially and culturally, but not so much structurally. They are closely followed by the South East and East European groups, following the same pattern except that the latter are less integrated politically as well. We only find substantial interaction effects between ethnic group and migrant generation for two integration indicators, namely citizenship and homophobia, for which speed of integration thus appears to differ across ethnic groups. For all other indicators, integration speed does not appear to differ across ethnic groups, supporting straight line assimilation theory, with social integration in terms of interethnic friendship potentially rather following a 'bumpy-line' pattern

Was denken deutsche Ökonomen? Eine empirische Auswertung einer Internetbefragung unter den Mitgliedern des Vereins für Socialpolitik im Sommer 2006

This article presents the results of a survey among the members of the "Verein f¨ur Socialpolitik", the association of German speaking economists, containing questions on schools of thought, economic role models and policy issues. A probit analysis is used to identify to what extent ideological preferences or personal facts determine the respondent's opinion. Some of the questions were already asked a quarter of a century ago so that it is possible to track the changes in view among economists. One of the most important findings is that neoclassical economics has become more strongly accepte

Funktionsanalyse und Wirkungsoptimierung einer Wasserdruckmaschine

Seit mehr als 2.000 Jahren nutzen die Menschen die Wasserkraft: Zuerst zum Antrieb von Schöpfrädern zur Bewässerung von Feldern, später als Antriebsquelle für Mühlen, Säge- oder Hammerwerke und seit ca. 150 Jahren vorrangig zur Elektrizitätserzeugung. Trotz dieser langen Nutzungshistorie fehlen für den Bereich der kleinen Wasserkraft mit niedrigen Fallhöhen erprobte Technologien, welche sowohl hydraulische und wirtschaftliche Anforderungen erfüllen als auch eine hohe ökologische Verträglichkeit hinsichtlich der Durchgängigkeit für Sediment sowie des Schädigungsrisikos für Fische aufweisen. Aus diesem Grund wird in jüngster Zeit verstärkt auf die Entwicklung neuer Wasserkraft-Technologien gesetzt. Eine vielversprechende Entwicklung ist die Wasserdruckmaschine, deren Wirkungsprinzip auf der Nutzung des Unterschieds der hydrostatischen Wasserdrücke auf der Ober- und Unterwasserseite des Energiewandlers beruht. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war die Bewertung, ob die Wasserdruckmaschine einen geeigneten Energiewandler für den Einsatz an Standorten mit geringen Fallhöhen im Bereich von 0,5 bis 2,5 m darstellt. Hierzu wurde die Maschine erstmalig in einem halbtechnischen Maßstab im Labor untersucht und weiterentwickelt. Der Fokus der Untersuchungen lag sowohl auf der hydraulischen Optimierung der Maschineneigenschaften als auch auf der Analyse ihrer ökologischen Verträglichkeit für den potentiellen Einbau in einem Fließgewässer. Darüber hinaus wurde die bisherige theoretische Beschreibung des Wirkungsprinzips der Maschine um eine Theorie zur Abbildung der an einer Wasserdruckmaschine auftretenden Verluste erweitert. Zur Betrachtung des Einflusses verschiedener Randbedingungen und Maschinenparameter wurden hydraulische Untersuchungen in einer Laborrinne der Technischen Universität Darmstadt durchgeführt. Diese fanden im Rahmen des Europäischen Forschungsprojektes „Development of hydropower converters for very low head differences – Hylow“ statt. Auf Basis der Versuche wurden der Einfluss verschiedener Parameter auf das Maschinenverhalten sowie deren Wirkungszusammenhänge analysiert und eine aus hydraulischer Sicht optimierte Wasserdruckmaschinengeometrie identifiziert. Dabei wurden mechanische Wirkungsgrade von bis zu 70 % erreicht, wobei die Maschine vor allem im Teillastbereich sehr gute hydraulische Eigenschaften zeigte. Ergänzend wurden den Laboruntersuchungen erste hydraulische Beobachtungen an Prototyp-Anlagen im Naturmaßstab gegenübergestellt. Die optimierte Maschinengeometrie ist charakterisiert durch diagonal angeordnete Schaufeln, welche gegenüber der Gerinnebreite eine Breite im Verhältnis von 1:2 aufweisen. Durch diese Konfiguration können Verluste im Bereich des Ein- und Austauchens der Schaufeln sowie durch Widerstände bei der Schaufelbewegung durch das Wasser minimiert werden. Es zeigte sich, dass an den Schaufelkanten Gummidichtungen angebracht werden sollten, um Spaltverluste auf ein Minimalmaß zu reduzieren. Des Weiteren sollte die Maschine insgesamt entsprechend des Entwurfsdurchflusses ausreichend groß dimensioniert werden, um die Drehzahl und damit die Verluste möglichst gering zu halten. Ebenfalls gilt zu beachten, dass die Wasserdruckmaschine so eingebaut wird, dass zum einen die Unterwasserstände relativ dicht an der Nabenunterkante anstehen und zum anderen durch Steuerung der Maschinendrehzahl der Oberwasserstand möglichst auf Nabenoberkante eingestellt werden kann. Auf Grundlage der Ergebnisse der physikalischen Modellversuche in der Laborrinne konnten modellspezifische Beiwerte zur Beschreibung der Verluste aus dem Schaufelwiderstand (cD-Werte) bestimmt und die theoretische Beschreibung der Wasserdruckmaschine um Verlustansätze erweitert werden. Dabei zeigte sich eine gute Übereinstimmung zwischen der ergänzten Theorie und den Messwerten. Hinsichtlich der Auswirkungen der Wasserdruckmaschine auf die Ökologie des Fließgewässers galt es, das mögliche Schädigungspotential für Fische, die Durchgängigkeit von Sediment sowie das Erfordernis eines Schutzes der Maschine gegenüber Sediment und Treibgut zu bestimmen. Zur Betrachtung des Einflusses der Maschine auf das Verhalten von Fischen wurden Beobachtungen auf Basis ethohydraulischer Ansätze in einer Laborrinne der Technischen Universität Darmstadt herangezogen. Hierbei zeigte sich, dass von der Maschine keinerlei Scheuwirkung auf die Fische ausging. Mittels Fisch-Dummies wurde eine erste Abschätzung des Schädigungspotentials vorgenommen, welche auf ein erhöhtes Risiko im Eintauchbereich der Schaufeln in den gekrümmten Bodeneinbau hinwies. Weder auf Grundlage der vorliegenden Ergebnisse der Fischbeobachtungen in der Laborrinne noch unter Berücksichtigung der bislang durchgeführten fischökologischen Untersuchungen an einer Prototyp-Anlage in Bulgarien konnte eine abschließende Aussage zum Schädigungspotential der Wasserdruckmaschine getroffen werden. Entsprechend wird die Errichtung von dem Stand der Technik entsprechenden Schutzeinrichtungen (z.B. mechanische Barriere) empfohlen. Zudem wird die Installation eines Rechens in Hinblick auf den Schutz der Wasserdruckmaschine vor größerem Treibgut sowie Grobkies oder Steinen als sinnvoll erachtet. Eine erste Abschätzung der Wirtschaftlichkeit der Wasserdruckmaschine erfolgte auf Basis der Kennwerte einer in Deutschland installierten Prototyp-Anlage. Aufgrund spezifischer Standortgegebenheiten ist jedoch keine allgemeingültige Aussage zu den Investitions- und Unterhaltungskosten möglich. Zusammenfassend kann die Wasserdruckmaschine auf Grundlage der im Rahmen dieser Arbeit betrachteten Einflussfaktoren aus hydraulischer und ökologischer Perspektive als ein geeigneter Energiewandler für den Einsatz an Kleinwasserkraftstandorten mit niedrigen Fallhöhen eingestuft werden

Spatial and temporal trends of iron and iron isotope cycling in the Peruvian oxygen minimum zone

Iron (Fe) is a key element in the global ocean’s biogeochemical framework because of its essential role in numerous biological processes. A poorly studied link in the oceanic Fe cycle is the reductive release of Fe from sediments in oxygen depleted ocean regions - the oxygen minimum zones (OMZs). Changing rates of Fe release from OMZ sediments may have the potential to modulate ocean fertility which has far-reaching implications considering the high amplitude oxygen fluctuations throughout earth history as well as the ongoing ocean deoxygenation projected for the near future. In order to explore spatial and temporal trends of Fe cycling in OMZs, we present here Fe isotope and speciation data for surface sediments from a transect across the Peruvian upwelling area, one of the most pronounced OMZs of the modern ocean. Because of continuous dissimilatory Fe reduction and diffusive loss across the benthic boundary, sediments within the OMZ are strongly depleted in reactive Fe components, and the little reactive Fe left behind has a heavy isotope composition. In contrast, surface sediments below the OMZ are enriched in reactive Fe, with the majority being present as Fe oxides with comparably light isotope composition. This lateral pattern of Fe depletion and enrichment indicates that Fe released from sediments within the OMZ is reoxidized and precipitated at the oxycline. First-order calculations suggest that the amount of Fe mobilized within the OMZ and that accumulated at the boundaries are largely balanced. Therefore, benthic Fe fluxes in OMZs should be carefully evaluated prior to incorporation into global models, as much of the initially released Fe may be reprecipitated prior to vertical or offshore transport. First XRF core scanning results for partly laminated piston cores from the OMZ boundaries reveal downcore oscillations in the content of reactive Fe and redox-sensitive trace metals that are attributed to past changes in OMZ extension. Ongoing work on these cores will focus on their dating and the downcore investigation of Fe and trace metal records in order to better understand past Fe cycling within the Peruvian OMZ and potential interactions with climate variability