Author
Joachim J. Savelsberg
Other affiliations: University of Bremen
Bio: Joachim J. Savelsberg is an academic researcher from University of Minnesota. The author has contributed to research in topics: Genocide & Human rights. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 79 publications receiving 1727 citations. Previous affiliations of Joachim J. Savelsberg include University of Bremen.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
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TL;DR: In this article, a set of interrelated hypotheses on the impact of the institutionalization of knowledge production in the public, political, and academic sectors and political and legal decision making on macro outcomes of political and decision making using the case of criminal punishment is presented.
Abstract: Recent dramatic increases of criminal punishment in the United States and very different trends in the Federal Republic of Germany suggest a critique of basic sociological theory traditions The article confronts structural-functionalist, Marxist, and legalistic approaches with these trends and suggests an alternative and more complex theory Utilizing and ideal-typical comparison between the two countries, this article develops a set of interrelated hypotheses on the impact of the institutionalization of (a) knowledge production in the public, political, and academic sectors and (b) political and legal decision making on (c) macro outcomes of political and legal decision making Using the case of criminal punishment, the article suggests new themes for theory development and empirical macro-sociological research It also contributes to the understanding of current instabilities in the political process in the United States
287 citations
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that societal conditions that caused substantivation hamper reformalization in the political process; organizational and occupational consequences of substantivation also impede political and implementation chances of neoclassical instruments; and impediments to reformalisation derive from the method of central guidance used to reestablish sociologically formal rationality.
Abstract: Chances of realizing a legal rationality that does not fit society are limited. Referring to weber's "Sociology of Law," to related themes in the sociology of polity, organizations, and occupations, and to recent debates on technocratization, juridification, delegalization, and responsive law, this article presents a theoretical discussion of this thesis. An empirical case, using the neoclassical concept of sentencing guidelines, exemplified by the federal and Minnesota cases, supports the argument. The neoclassical movement, aiming to reverse the substantivation of law and to correct lack of due process, functional failures, disparities, and discrimination, faces considerable impediments and may result in counterproductive effects. The article demostrates that (1) societal conditions that caused substantivation hamper reformalization in the political process; organizational and occupational consequences of substantivation also impede (2) political and (3) implementation chances of neoclassical instruments; and (4) impediments to reformalization derive from the method of central guidance used to reestablish sociologically formal rationality.
234 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that societal conditions that caused substantivation hamper reformalization in the political process; organizational and occupational consequences of substantivation also impede political and implementation chances of neoclassical instruments; and impediments to reformalisation derive from the method of central guidance used to reestablish sociologically formal rationality.
Abstract: Chances of realizing a legal rationality that does not fit society are limited. Referring to Weber's "Sociology of Law," to related themes in the sociology of polity, organizations, and occupations, and to recent debates on technocratization, juridification, delegalization, and responsive law, this article presents a theoretical discussion of this thesis. An empirical case, using the neoclassical concept of sentencing guidelines, exemplified by the federal and Minnesota cases, supports the argument. The neoclassical movement, aiming to reverse the substantivation of law and to correct lack of due process, functional failures, disparities, and discrimination, faces considerable impediments and may result in counterproductive effects. The article demostrates that (1) societal conditions that caused substantivation hamper reformalization in the political process; organizational and occupational consequences of substantivation also impede (2) political and (3) implementation chances of neoclassical instruments; and (4) impediments to reformalization derive from the method of central guidance used to reestablish sociologically formal rationality.
216 citations
TL;DR: The institutionalization of distinct collective memories of hate and cultural traumas as law and bureaucracy is examined comparatively for the case of hate crime law in this article, where a dehistoricized focus on individual victimization and an avoidance of major episodes of domestic atrocities in the United States contrast with a focus on the Holocaust, typically in the context of the destruction of the democratic state, in Germany.
Abstract: The institutionalization of distinct collective memories of hate and cultural traumas as law and bureaucracy is examined comparatively for the case of hate crime law. A dehistoricized focus on individual victimization and an avoidance of major episodes of domestic atrocities in the United States contrast with a focus on the Holocaust, typically in the context of the destruction of the democratic state, in Germany. Such differences, in combination with specifics of state organization and exposure to global scripts, help explain particularities of law and law enforcement along dimensions such as internationalization, coupling of minority and democracy protection, focus on individual versus group rights, and specialization of control agencies.
88 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a theory of criminal punishment that introduces the organization of knowledge production and of political and legal decision-making as central concepts (Savelsberg, 1994a) is further developed.
Abstract: A theory of criminal punishment that introduces the organization of knowledge production and of political and legal decision-making as central concepts (Savelsberg, 1994a) is further developed. This article first explicates the general theoretical model. Second, the comparative perspective is enhanced as a previous comparison between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the United States (US) is extended to include the experience of state socialist systems. Three distinct empirical patterns of punishment dynamics are identified. Each of them is associated with a distinct type of social organization: decentralized domination - personalistic; decentralized domination - bureaucratic; and monopolized domination - bureaucratic. An analysis of the cases of Poland, building on earlier work by Greenberg (1980), and the German Democratic Republic reveals that the organization of domination and knowledge production are crucial to the understanding of criminal punishment under conditions of totalitarianism as w...
64 citations
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of the authors' brain’s wiring.
Abstract: In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.
4,351 citations
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01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: The four Visegrad states (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.
3,056 citations
TL;DR: In their new Introduction, the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future as mentioned in this paper, which is a new immediacy.
Abstract: Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\
2,940 citations
TL;DR: The institution of Citizenship in France and Germany is discussed in this article, where Citizenship as Social Closure is defined as social closure and Citizenship as Community of Descent as community of origin.
Abstract: Preface Introduction: Traditions of Nationhood in France and Germany I. The Institution of Citizenship 1. Citizenship as Social Closure 2. The French Revolution and the Invention of National Citizenship 3. State, State-System, and Citizenship in Germany II. Defining The Citizenry: The Bounds of Belonging 4. Citizenship and Naturalization in France and Germany 5. Migrants into Citizens: The Crystallization of Jus Soli in Late-Nineteenth-Century France 6. The Citizenry as Community of Descent: The Nationalization of Citizenship in Wilhelmine Germany 7. \"Etre Francais, Cela se Merite\": Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in France in the 1980s 8. Continuities in the German Politics of Citizenship Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
2,803 citations