Further Publications

Wie ist es um die repräsentative Demokratie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bestellt? Handelt es sich bei direkter Demokratie wirklich um eine Form 'demokratischerer' Demokratie? Ist Transparenz wirklich ein Allheilmittel? Und wie könnten gelungene Beispiele einer Kombination derartiger Verfahren und Instrumente aussehen? Diesen Fragen widmet sich der vorliegende Band.

Grundlage des Beitrags sind Daten des Forschungsprojekts Finanzaufsicht 2020, in dessen Rahmen Experteninterviews und Workshops mit Mitarbeitern der Aufsichtsbehörden und Aufsichtsbetroffenen sowie eine fragebogengestützte Befragung der Aufsichtsbehörden und Kämmereien der Länder Hessen, NRW und Sachsen durchgeführt wurden.

The European Union adopts rules governing the protection of minors against harmful media content in the form of soft law. Using the example of media law and the theory of competition between legal orders, I try to shed light on the possible reasons for the regulatory choice of soft law.

Governments and energy operators are frequently confronted with opposition to the construction of new energy infrastructure and a lack of public support. This is also true for the planning of new high-voltage overhead transmission lines. In this context, a question of interest for policy makers and energy operators is how residents react when they realize that they may be affected by future transmission lines in close proximity to their homes.

Measuring societal impacts of research is a challenging task in research evaluation. In this article, we describe several of these challenges with regard to causal inference, time lag, side-effects, operationalization, comparability between disciplines, and availability of required data. We show how different approaches deal with these challenges in evaluation practice and focus on a particular approach named “practice impact” in more detail. This approach includes an improved documentation and is sought to have positive effects on innovation processes and synergies with research and research funding. Moreover, dialogue with different user groups is fostered and serves to make evaluation beyond scientific impact desired, feasible, and efficient.

The characteristics of creative educational interventions and the way they are implemented in the field often make their evaluation a challenging task. This article uses an exemplary intervention from a large-scale consumer education program on climate protection to present the design, method, and results of a two-step evaluation procedure which allows evaluators to cope with such a situation. Step 1 aims to answer the question of whether or not an intervention actually has the intended effects. Step 2 then assesses the factors that contribute to those effects. Thus, such a two-step evaluation yields information, not only on which interventions are effective and should therefore be maintained, but also on how they should be designed to achieve maximum effects.