To the Point
To the point
The causes and effects of the financial crisis, the situation of school children with immigrant backgrounds in the German education system or the efforts to consolidate the rule of law in a country like Afghanistan – here you’ll find essays by scientists from the Max Planck Society on current socio-political issues.
Between Theory and Intuition
by Wolfgang Streeck
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln
What do political leaders need to know about the world in order to be able to govern it properly? And who can and should tell them? This is where the social sciences come into play. But while explanations of past events seem to be somewhat uninteresting for politics, predictions are difficult to make. Nevertheless, we can’t deny the impact and the usefulness of the social sciences. [more]
Fire Enhancers within the Financial System
by Martin Hellwig
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
For many people, the explanation of the financial crisis is simple: Blind with greed, bankers gambled on low-quality, subprime mortgages in the United States. A look at the numbers, however, indicates that there still is a puzzle. As of October 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated the total losses on these mortgages at some 500 billion dollars. This figure seems both too low and too high. [more]
The Cautious Path to a Stable State
by Tilmann J. Röder
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg
The violent conflict in Afghanistan has been escalating since 2005, making the process of reconstruction that much harder. To bring stability to the country, the focus must be on strengthening the state and facilitating the rule of law. [more]
Better to Step in Early than Fix Things Later
by Jürgen Baumert and Kai Maaz
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
As a country that prides itself on its education system, Germany was left reeling by the PISA study. To think that, in an international comparison of scholastic performance at the dawn of the 21st century, the nation of poets and philosophers failed to secure even an average grade! How has Germany responded to this challenge? Jürgen Baumert and Kai Maaz consider the problems facing educational policy and detect first glimmers of hope. [more]
Universities – Elitist but Nevertheless Fair?
by Marius R. Busemeyer
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln
The Excellence Initiative pursued by Germany’s federal government has acted as a catalyst in stimulating and accelerating the process of differentiation in the German university landscape. Critics fear increasing polarization between “elite” and “mass-market” institutions. Marius R. Busemeyer, however, sees opportunities arising from this development – and explains why and under what conditions the process of differentiation may, in the long term, improve the efficiency, as well as the fairness of the German education and employment system. [more]
A Reform That Misses Its Mark
by Fritz W. Scharpf
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Köln
Early in the present decade, political actors at the national and regional levels finally seemed to agree: if government at both levels was to remain effective, Germany‘s system of federalism needed to be reformed. Their objective was to reduce the number of federal laws requiring approval by the upper house of the federal parliament, and to increase the range of issues to be decided autonomously by state parliaments. But by the end of the first reform stage, not much had been achieved. And according to the viewpoint of Fritz W. Scharpf, Emeritus Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, nor will the second stage, which involves restructuring the financial affairs of the Bund (the federation) and the Länder (the states), deliver the desired “disentanglement.” Here, he analyzes the faulty approach that defeated the objectives of the first stage of reforms. [more]
