Open Access

Das Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat hat das Deutsche Forschungsinstitut für öffentliche Verwaltung mit der Untersuchung des Phänomens von Gewalt gegen Beschäftigte des öffentlichen Dienstes beauftragt, um einen Überblick über das Ausmaß der Gewalt und eine wissenschaftliche Grundlage für die Entwicklung nachhaltiger und differenzierter Strate-gien im Umgang mit dieser Gewalt zu erhalten. Die vorliegende Handreichung stellt auf der Grundlage einer Literaturstudie verschiedene Maßnahmen zur Gewaltprävention vor. Im Fo-kus steht dabei die Bewertung von Nutzen und Aufwand der Maßnahmen durch Behörden-leitungen und Beschäftigte in einer bundesweiten Befragung.

Die Literaturstudie bietet einen Überblick über den aktuellen Forschungsstand zum Phäno-men der Gewalt gegen Beschäftigte des öffentlichen Dienstes in Deutschland sowie über Strategien, Maßnahmen und Initiativen zur Gewaltprävention. Dabei werden alle Bereiche des öffentlichen Dienstes betrachtet, zu denen Befunde zur Gewalt gegen Beschäftigte vor-liegen. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf Gewalt, die von Personen außerhalb der öffentlichen Verwal-tung auf Beschäftigte ausgeübt wird. Gewalttätige Übergriffe innerhalb einer Organisation sowie durch Beschäftigte des öffentlichen Dienstes werden nicht betrachtet. Die unter-schiedliche Nutzung des Gewaltbegriffs durch verschiedene Studien erschwert die Vergleich-barkeit der Ergebnisse sowie eine Aussage darüber, wie sich das Ausmaß der Gewalt in den letzten Jahren entwickelt hat.

The paper aims to elucidate to what extent the German Parliament exerts control over rail planning. Parliament has the budgetary right, but information asymmetries vis-à-vis the railway company Deutsche Bahn and the Ministry of Transport make parliamentary control difficult. Recently, Germany has instituted a parliamentary review process that allows the Parliament to take up concerns by the public affected by rail projects. We use the principal-agent theory to model this new institution. Parliament delegates rail planning to the Deutsche Bahn, while the Federal Railway Authority serves as a budget watchdog, and parliament uses input from public participation as a deck-stacking procedure. The paper first situates the institutional innovations—the new parliamentary oversight procedure—against the former logic of rail-way planning. Second, based on the documentation of parliamentary oversight, we analyze for which demands by the affected public the Parliament uses its power to change rail projects. The paper showed that public participation matters. The German Parliament introduced expensive changes to rail projects. In particular, demands that had been voiced in well-institutionalized public participation (that is, when municipalities, regional associations, etc., were engaged in long-term institutionalized dialogues with the Deutsche Bahn) were more likely to be addressed. An Extra budget was then allocated to, for example, noise-regulating measures. To sum up, the German Parliament uses information gained in public participation in com-bination with its budget rights to exert control over railway planning for conflictual projects. Thus, Parliament takes a more active role in railway planning. Whether this also leads to more acceptance for rail projects, is an open question.

To contribute to the laudable objectives regarding Export Controls the EU – US Trade and Technology Council has set, a multi-disciplinary network of independent experts from research institutes, think tanks, and policy advisory bodies, has joined forces and drafted the following priorities for action. A further elaboration of the actions recommended below will be performed by the members of this international network in the weeks and months to come, as Working Group 7 of the EU – US Trade and Technology Council will proceed in its work.

The aim of this paper is to create an analytical framework for comparative study (FÖV project “The Transformation of the Civil Service in Europe”). It explores the scope and denotation of the terms “civil service” and “civil servant”. Its main argument is that a comparative legal ana-lysis should distinguish the notions of public service and civil service. Public service concerns a type of professional activity related to the exercise of all public power (legislative, executive and judicial). Civil servants are officials employed by the executive; they have special duties and responsibilities and are often subject to specific requirements. The employment regime is not decisive for the status of civil servant, due to the fact that government officials in Europe are employed both under public or private (labour) law. Nonetheless, they should enjoy stability of employment and exercise their competencies on a regular basis, not ad hoc.