If there was one thing most Serbian citizens could agree on in 2004, it was the need for a new national vision.
Serbia was still reeling from the crises and conflicts of the 1990s. The multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia had collapsed violently. The republics of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia had seceded, leaving behind a reduced federation made up of Serbia and Montenegro. By the late 1990s, the violence and talk of secession had spread to the formerly autonomous province of Kosovo, which was dominated by ethnic Albanians and was part of Serbia. A NATO bombing campaign in 1999, which aimed to stop the violence and mass killings in Kosovo, decimated the Yugoslav army and caused major damage to the capital city of Belgrade and to Serbia’s infrastructure.
In October 2000, massive street demonstrations in Belgrade ousted Slobodan Milošević, leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia and president of the country since 1989. In elections later that year, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia — a broad coalition of parties — won federal, parliamentary, and local posts and installed Zoran Đinđić as the new prime minister to work in cooperation with the country’s president, Vojislav Koštunica.1 However, the elections did not bring stability. In 2003, Đinđić was assassinated by a former Special Forces operative who had ties to organized crime and who sympathized with Milošević, whom the prime minister had extradited to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Strategic Privatization: Railway Transportation in the 21st Century
Spring 2008
Wolfgang Tiefensee, Germany’s Federal Minister for Transport, Building, and Urban Development from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), stated at a press conference on April 15, 2008 that the SPD Commission’s proposal to partially privatize the Deutsche Bahn Corporation was a “decisive step” in the privatization debate and confidently declared that the coalition has now “opened the door for the future security of the train service.” Tiefensee was confident that the way was finally clear to implement his brain- child, the DB privatization. However, this proved to be a miscalculation as the events of 2008 unraveled.
The journey begins
The German railroad system is dominated by the state-owned company Deutsche Bahn (DB), which is not only active in transporting passengers and freight but also manages railway infrastructure and operates logistics enterprises across the globe. The DB is engaged in transnational freight and passenger transport and has started to invest in international passenger transport. In 2006 the DB employed 237,299 persons, had revenues of 30 billion euros and earned a net profit of 1.68 billion euros. The freight and transport ventures are dominated by non-railroad transport and logistic activities, amounting to 13.8 billion euros in revenue. Schenker, a subsidiary company, handles 13.2 billion of this revenue, and the small-specialized logistic service company Stinnes is responsible for the remainder. Railroad transports by Railion account for only 3.2 billion euros in revenue. Altogether the freight and transport ventures (Schenker, Stinnes and Rail- ion) account for 46% of the DB’s revenue and for 25% of its profits.
Peer Producing Public Policy: Nicholas Negroponte, Walter Bender, and the OLPC
In April 2008, Walter Bender sat down at his laptop. For the last two years, he had worked at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), more often referred to as the $100 laptop project. This non-profit organization hopes to change the world by constructing a cheap and robust laptop to be used in the education of children in developing countries. OLPC’s vision is to empower children and enable them to use the $100 laptop as a learning tool and a way to contact the rest of the world.
The idea of the OLPC project was to reduce the costs of laptop computers to less then $100, by turning Moore’s law on its head (instead of aiming for increased speed, the idea was to reduce cost and power consumption) and by selling directly to governments in batches of 1 million for distribution in schools. The project has been able to capture the imagination of the world. At times, it was seen as a competitor to the big hard- and software companies, it led to commercial copies such as the EeePC, was hailed by the open source software development community, and promised to transform primary education worldwide. The project created a new market for low-budget laptops and initiated many policy debates about educational approaches in primary education.
Aerospace Clusters and the German Dual Vocational System: Addressing the lack of skilled technicians in emerging regions
In 2013, three prominent aerospace firms in Mexico were facing the scarcity of skilled technicians: GNK Aerospace in Baja California, Tetakawi Maquiladoras in Sonora and Bombardier in Querétaro. With 287 aerospace firms already in Mexico and an expected 14% annual export growth, or $12.3 bn by 2021, the firms needed immediate access to a pool of skilled technicians. They addressed this challenge by approaching local schools in order to design new training schemes that would take into account the specific needs of the industry.
This has been made possible by a recent national pilot program on dual vocational systems, a variation of the so-called vocational German Dual System (GDS), developed together by the Ministry of Education, the Business Chamber and the German Embassy in Mexico. The newly created training schemes have formally linked aerospace firms with technical schools. Firms pro- vided state-of-the-art equipment, trained the school instructors and updated the curricula. In return, the schools offered flexible academic programs to students who received training from both, the school and the firms themselves, in the form of paid apprenticeships. Even though the new training schemes in the three locations were independent from each other, they all responded to the pressure to keep up with the increasing demand for skilled technicians in the aerospace industry. They also showed key lessons about transposing German Dual Vocational Systems to developing regions.
Horizon 2020: Shaping EU Innovation Policy through Interest Representation
The European Union has been long investing in promoting research and innovation across its Member States with the objective of increasing the competitiveness of Europe. These efforts include not only direct funding to research and innovation but also significant efforts in coordination to ensure the results of European scientific research have a real impact on the economy. Since 1984, the EU – through the European Commission – has been implementing the so-called ‘Framework programmes’ (FPs), the main financial tool to support research and development activities covering almost all scientific disciplines. The latest FP, called FP7, ran from 2007 until 2013.
In 2011, as FP7 was approaching its end and a new EU budgetary period (2014-21) would start, the EU sized the opportunity to give its research and innovation policy a new strategic approach in order to tackle the on-going financial crisis and to redirect Europe onto a growth path. The main aim was to stabilize the financial and economic system while creating economic opportunities and tackling the “innovation emergency” that was affecting Europe. This new concept – named Horizon 2020 – was thought to be an essential part of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn; Rapporteur MEP Teresa Riera; and members of the Irish Council Presidency were to embark in the design and legislative approval of this new €80 bn policy, bringing along the views of major stakeholders.
Monterrey Digital: Digital Government for Municipalities
Monterrey is the second most important city in Mexico. The municipality has 1.1 million inhabitants (2000 census), and it is also in the center of 7 municipality cluster that contains 82.1% of the population of the state of Nuevo Leon1. Managing the city on a day to day basis requires its fare share of attention.
In the Fall of 2006, Edgar Olaíz the Mayor of Monterrey was inaugurating the project Monterrey Digital, an important strategic project of the municipal government, shortly before handing over the municipal administration to the newly elected Mayor Adalberto Madero.
In Mexico, local elections are held every three years and since reelection is not permitted there is a new Mayor after every cycle. In this particular case, the incoming Mayor is from a different political party (PAN), which made the process of transferring control difficult and the question was if this program that Edgar Olaíz considered as very important would continue. (mehr …)
Last Stop, Berlin Central Station: Reuniting Germany’s New Old Capitol
His management style was perceived as too radical, however, and this recommendation was refused by the German government, which, maintains the power to appoint the company’s leadership, despite its status as a completely private, legal entity. Nevertheless, after two unsuccessful years with Johannes Ludewig as CEO, Mehdorn was eventually appointed as the new head of Deutsche Bahn. (mehr …)
Die soziale Schieflage der Wahlbeteiligung: Abwärts! – Die Fakten zur Wahlbeteiligung im Sinkflug (Teil 1/5)
Nach fast jeder Wahl in den letzten Jahren ist es das gleiche Bild: Die Wahlbeteiligung ist erneut gesunken, Medien und Politik beklagen dies und spätestens nach einigen Tagen geht das Interesse am Thema wieder verloren. Äußerst selten erfolgt im Rahmen dieser Phasen eine ernsthafte Diskussion der Ursachen und Folgen der sinkenden Wahlbeteiligung. Meistens gibt es nur allgemeine Phrasen zu hören.
In diesem ersten Artikel der fünfteiligen Reihe über „Die soziale Schieflage der Wahlbeteiligung“ stellen Michael Kaeding, Morten Pieper und Stefan Haußner die Fakten fest, um zu schauen, mit welchem Problem sie es überhaupt zu tun haben. Der Beitrag zeigt für Deutschland, NRW,Duisburg und Europa dass sich immer mehr Menschen vom politischen Prozess der Wahl fernhalten – ein Phänomen von wachsendem Ausmaß. (mehr …)
Beyond fast‐track secondary schools. The piecemeal hollowing out of the G8 reform in Hessen
The CDU mourned the loss an absolute majority. It was voted out of government – a defeat that depressed the mood of the party leadership and file-and-rank members of the CDU alike. Suffering a loss of 12 percent of the votes, the CDU only gained 36.8 percent of the votes. The Social Democrats (SPD) improved their share by eight percent and came very close the result gained by the CDU. It was possible to form a government without the CDU. It was easy to see, how much Roland Koch (CDU), prime minister of Hessen since 1999, suffered from the defeat. (mehr …)
Loose cannon or political genius? The ramifications of the moratorium on grid expansion of the Bavarian state government
But what had stirred this excitement, what had hap- pened? Prime minister Seehofer has quite a reputation to perform unexpected massive political U-turns from time to time. This is what happened on February 4th, when he declared, together with Christine Haderthauer (CSU), chief of staff in the state chancellory, that he would demand a moratorium for the plans to build new high-voltage electricity lines – energy highways – in Bavaria. “Nobody should think that you can do something of this kind against the population and the free state of Bavaria.” As he went on, existing plans were to be reconsidered, as there was a change of circumstance that had occurred with respect to the pending reform of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (“Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz” / EEG). Finally, it was to be checked whether transmission lines were actually needed. If there was a decreasing production of green electricity because of a reduction of the subsidies for renewable energies, existing plans would be obsolete. (mehr …)
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