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Citizanship In Austria, Germany, And Switzerland, Claus Hofhansel
Citizanship In Austria, Germany, And Switzerland, Claus Hofhansel
Claus Hofhansel
A common claim has been that liberalization of citizenship policy depends on making policy behind closed doors. I challenge one variant of this line of argument, which regards courts as the primary �countermajoritarian� champion of the expansion of immigrant rights, through a comparison of citizenship policy in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. In all three countries subnational authorities play a significant role in the administration of naturalization policy. Courts have played more of a �nationalizing� rather than a �countermajoritarian� role. I also show how differences in federal structures affected recent efforts to reform citizenship policy in these countries.
Learning Democracy, Claus Hofhansel
Learning Democracy, Claus Hofhansel
Claus Hofhansel
After the initial euphoria over German (re)unification had subsided, it became clear that it would take longer to tear down the mental barriers separating eastern and western Germans than to remove concrete slabs from the Berlin Wall. Studies of German electoral behavior found that eastern and western Germans displayed different voting patterns and that eastern Germans were less supportive of the principles of a market economy and the political institutions of unified Germany than western Germans.