Trends in the Creation and Appraisal of Government Records in Germany

While archivists in western and eastern Germany may have different traditions, they face the same challenges presented by the use of information technology in government offices in recent years. Documentation strategies and goals in advising agencies must be developed in consideration of current professional debate and limited resources. The following article presents tendencies in governmental records management, advising strategies of archives, and schemes for broad-scale appraisal based on observations at the level of the governments of the German Länder and includes case studies from Saxony.     

PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL, PARTISANSHIP AND THE ECONOMY: EVIDENCE FROM THE 1984 CONTINUOUS MONITORING SURVEY IN THE US

This paper examines several key debates in the literature onthe effects of economic performance on political support, usingthe Continuous Monitoring Survey of the 1984 CPS American nationalelection study. Box-Jenkins time-series analyses show that theelectorate operates in terms of a reward-punishment model whichis asymmetrical and sociotropic in its effects. In the modelsdeveloped party identification and economic evaluations Granger–causepresidential approval, the effects of the former being strongerthan those of the latter. Partisanship and economic evaluationsform two independent streams of influence on presidential approval,casting doubt on some revisionist interpretations in the votingliterature, i.e., that party identification is simply a runningtally of voters' judgments about party performance on economicand other issues. In addition, the results suggest that popularityfunctions which omit party identification are theoreticallymisspecified.