Politics

The increasing coupling of minimum rates for municipal taxes and conditions of funding programs is a profound threat to the self-government of the municipalities. This development in a shocking way undermines the basic principles of municipal self-determination,... [...]

Many district reforms in Germany have repeatedly caused displeasure and confusion among citizens in recent years. The central problem is that in most of these reforms, the counties - i.e. the... [...]

Democracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship, despotism, totalitarianism, absolutism and anarchy - each of these forms of government faces the fundamental challenge of finding a balance between the two crucial criteria of efficiency and legitimacy. While efficiency describes how quickly... [...]

The debate about the abolition of Christian holidays affects many people like an attack on identity, memory and social stability. Not as a factual reform, but as a cold offsetting exercise that wants to exchange culture for supposed productivity gains.... [...]

In a hypothetical scenario, the image of a fine, hardly tangible network of influence is created in which German state and semi-state actors try to have a deep impact on the administrative processes of the USA without ever appearing openly.... [...]

Trust in the course of democratic elections is based on transparency, traceability and legal control. In recent years, however, there have been increasing indications of discrepancies in the handling of postal voting documents, of non-transparent counts and insufficient controls,... [...]

In an alternating political reality in which reunification did not take place in 1990 and the GDR instead deepened a strategic rapprochement with China, the GDR remains as an independent state and... [...]

In the European Union, which presents itself as a bulwark of democracy and equality, monarchies and their ruling families work like relics from past epochs that hinder progress and indirectly weigh on Germany. These systems,... [...]

Petitions often have an ineffective effect because without a strategically well thought-out organization, broad media response and targeted political follow-up measures can hardly exert any pressure on decision-makers. Many petitions remain on the level of symbolic gestures, which, although short-term attention... [...]