ALLBUS-Bibliographie 25. Fassung, Stand - SSOAR

302 ALLBUS-Bibliographie (25. Fassung)
Abstract: "As the power of constitutional courts all over the world is increasing, we
still know very little about support for emergent courts and especially support for
supranational courts develops. So in order to better understand the development of
support for constitutional courts, this paper compares the sources of confidence in
constitutional courts in four cases. The comparison extends both cross-nationally and
cross-institutionally by contrasting public support a well-established constitutional
court - the Federal Constitutional Court or the Bundesverfassungsgericht in West
Germany - to support for three emergent courts - the Bundesverfassungsgericht in
East Germany and the European Court of Justice in both West and East Germany.
Building on previous quantitative analysis that demonstrated a link between support
for the national and the supranational link, the legitimacy transfer hypothesis is tested
against additional, qualitative evidence that is lower in external validity, but higher in
internal validity. These qualitative data consist of focus group interviews designed to
explore why and how people might link support for national to support for supranational
courts. Based on preliminary results from series of focus groups conducted in
West and East Germany, people do indeed make a functional connection between the
national and the supranational court. Unlike the other institutions of government both
courts are seen as neutral, technical arbiters of the law that are fundamentally trustworthy.
The European Court of Justice is considered as the functional eqivalent of
the Federal Constitutional Court at a different level of government. There are some
differences between East and West Germany, but they are slight. Even though the
results are still preliminary, the evidence corroborates a functional connection between
the two levels of courts, supporting the legitimacy transfer hypothesis." Die
quantitativen, empirischen Ergebnisse basieren auf den Daten des ALLBUS 1994.
Aufgenommen: 21. Fassung, Dezember 2006
Grosskopf, Anke, (2008). Explaining the democratic trust conundrum: The sources
of institutional trust in the reunited Germany. International Social Science Review,
83: 3-26.
Abstract: "This article discusses a study conducted to determine why citizens of
democratic governments place the highest level of trust in unelected constitutional
courts over elected institutions of government. The study analyzes the presence of
governmental trust in reunified Germany. It is stated that maintaining the trust of
citizens is vital if a country is to be governed effectively, as trust promotes social
cohesion. The study concludes that citizens perceive constitutional courts as more
effective in their role than other governmental bodies, and thus place more trust in
them. [...] This study takes a multi-method approach to overcome the inherent limits
of secondary data analysis by complementing quantitative analysis of data from 2002
German General Social Survey ALLBUS with rich, qualitative focus group data collected
in Germany that the same year."
Aufgenommen: 23. Fassung, Februar 2009