This article explores the response of the child welfare system in Germany to the recent refugee crisis. Drawing on administrative data and qualitative interviews with administrators, front-line workers and refugee youth in Nuremberg, the article provides a contextualized account of how the crisis led to the collapse of established bureaucratic procedures, new forms of interagency collaboration and a flexible distribution of responsibilities and tasks. Combining a street-level bureaucracy (SLB) perspective with insights from the literature on crisis and policy change, the analysis shows how the responses of front-line workers effectively altered the content of services, introduced new actors and expanded the professional capacity of the local child welfare system. On a broader level, the findings indicate that front-line practice is not merely guided by policy mandates, but also responds to situational and institutional circumstances. For the child welfare system in Nuremberg, the findings raise important questions about the extent to which aspects of the crisis response will remain a part of the service delivery process moving forward, and whether the recent experience will better prepare them for future crises.

This article investigates Maimonides’s ethos of disclosing “secrets” and explores its Islamic origins, focusing on sources neglected by earlier scholarship concerning the Guide of the Perplexed. I turn from the prevalent method by which the Guide has been studied for decades, namely, as a work at the core of which lie strategies and an ethos of concealment. In lieu of the conventional method, I go in a very different direction by inquiring into the modes that Maimonides used in fashioning his Guide as a work that involves a self-proclaimed exceptional act of revelation of secrets and a breach of the boundaries of concealment. The resulting textual investigation demonstrates that clusters of motifs presented in these sources, as well as structures of arguments, were retained in their cultural migration. This exploration allows me to illuminate new aspects of the question of the genre of Maimonides’ Guide, its sources, and its author’s intertextual art of writing.

This article analyses the transatlantic financial crises of 1873 from the vantage point of the three countries that were most affected by it, Austria, Germany, and the United States, focusing on the experience of economic globalization and disintegration for actors on both sides of the Atlantic. It compares the perception of financial commentators and financiers of the panics in 1873, when the experience of integration was asymmetrical, and more pronounced in Germany and Austria than in the United States. It further argues that this asymmetrical experience of contagion shaped the monetary debates of the 1870s in all three countries. Focusing on the interrelationship and coexistence of experiences of integration and isolation, the article maintains that, despite the panics’ near-synchronicity, financial globalization remained difficult to see.

While the International Debt Crisis of the early 1980s was the most severe financial crisis since World War II and while national and international banking supervision was developing at that time, little is known about the response of supervisors to the deteriorating financial environment in the years preceding the crisis. Complementing the political and business history of the international debt situation, this article aims to unravel the international banking supervision side of the question. Based on archival material from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and various central banks, the article examines how the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), then emerging as the leading forum on international banking supervision, anticipated the International Debt Crisis through the prism of ‘country risk’. The article shows that the Committee refused to recommend strict regulations in this area. It argues that members adopted this position because of the lack of good information and the difficult position of banking supervision between macroeconomic issues and individual banks’ own responsibilities, but also because of somewhat excessive faith in market mechanisms. Their discussions on country risk shed light on critical challenges of banking supervision and, thereby, on the history of banking regulation and prudential thinking.

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which capital flows produced financial instability in Spain over a 165-year period. We study why and how capital bonanzas make crises more likely and severe, and whether their incidence varies depending on types of crises (currency, banking and debt crises). We conclude that most of them occurred in different monetary policy regimes, but they were associated with capital bonanzas in a liberal regulatory framework, both of which contributed to a higher likelihood and greater severity of crises. The analysis of the different monetary policy regimes, financial structures and the types of crises allows us to draw some policy implications that emphasise the need for sound financial regulation and supervision.

As more women attain executive office, it is important to understand how gender dynamics affect international politics. Toward this end, we present the first evidence that gender stereotypes affect leaders’ abilities to generate audience costs. Using survey experiments, we show that female leaders have political incentives to combat gender stereotypes that women are weak by acting “tough” during international military crises. Most prominently, we find evidence that female leaders, and male leaders facing female opponents, pay greater inconsistency costs for backing down from threats than male leaders do against fellow men. These findings point to particular advantages and disadvantages women have in international crises. Namely, female leaders are better able to tie hands—an efficient mechanism for establishing credibility in crises. However, this bargaining advantage means female leaders will also have a harder time backing down from threats. Our findings have critical implications for debates over the effects of greater gender equality in executive offices worldwide.

In this article, we examine how labour market policy interventions, notably short-time work (STW), affect voting behaviour in times of electoral downturn. We use the 2009 German general elections as an example. This is a particularly interesting case because the grand coalition of Christian democrats (CDU/CSU) and social democrats (SPD) was up for re-election against the backdrop of a major recession following the 2007/08 financial crisis and extensively used STW policies to counteract rising unemployment. Interestingly, STW policy and unemployment vary considerably between regions. We exploit this variance to create a unique dataset that combines regional information on STW policy and unemployment in 299 German electoral constituencies with individual data from the post-election survey. Our results show that especially the SPD profited from high STW rates at constituency level on election day, but this policy was insufficient to preclude the major losses social democrats suffered during the election. More generally, our results indicate that classic labour market policy can generate electoral support for social democratic parties, even as a “junior partner” in a grand coalition. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether such support is sufficient for electoral victories.

Assisting the increasing number of tourists and foreign nationals exposed to crises situations in third countries—many of them far from home and extremely vulnerable—presents significant challenges. Despite the need to explore consular crisis management from an operational perspective, there are few studies that address the issue. This paper aims to describe the characteristics and context of consular crisis management operations based on personal experiences, scientific papers, grey literature, and key informant interviews.

Consular crisis management operations are conducted in a context where the stakeholders and the legal environment may differ from humanitarian or civil protection operations. The physical distance causes logistical challenges and demands specific considerations for both civilian and medical evacuation. Consular crisis management operations often include medical care, psychosocial support activities, and disaster victim identification (DVI) activities. Political and media interest may also add significant challenges to such operations. Therefore, specific knowledge, skills, and preparations are needed for both diplomatic crisis management professionals and health professionals. Further research on consular crisis management activities—as well as the concept of consular crisis management itself—is strongly needed.

The COVID-19 outbreak could be considered as an uncontrollable stressful life event. Lockdown measures have provoked a disruption of daily life with a great impact over older adults’ health and well-being. Nevertheless, eudaimonic well‐being plays a protective role in confronting adverse circumstances, such as the COVID-19 situation. This study aims to assess the association between age and psychological well-being (personal growth and purpose in life). Young–old (60–70 years) and old–old (71–80 years) community-dwelling Spaniards (N = 878) completed a survey and reported on their sociodemographic characteristics and their levels of health, COVID-19 stress-related, appraisal, and personal resources. Old–old did not evidence poorer psychological well-being than young–old. Age has only a negative impact on personal growth. The results also suggest that the nature of the COVID-19 impact (except for the loss of a loved one) may not be as relevant for the older adults’ well-being as their appraisals and personal resources for managing COVID-related problems. In addition, these results suggest that some sociodemographic and health-related variables have an impact on older adults’ well-being. Thus, perceived-health, family functioning, resilience, gratitude, and acceptance had significant associations with both personal growth and purpose in life. Efforts to address older adults’ psychological well-being focusing on older adults’ personal resources should be considered.

The rapid insurgence and spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) exceeded the limit of the intensive care unit (ICU) contingency plan of the Maggiore della Carità University Hospital (Novara, Italy) generating a crisis management condition. This brief report describes how a prompt response to the sudden request of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) was provided by addressing the key elements of health care system surge capacity from contingency to crisis. In a short time and at a relatively low cost, a structural modification of a hospital aisle allowed to convert the general ICU into a COVID-19 unit, increasing the number of COVID-19 critical care beds by 107%.

Crises such as the global pandemic of Covid-19 (coronavirus) elicit a range of responses from individuals and societies adversely affecting physical and emotional well-being. This article provides an overview of factors elicited in response to Covid-19 and their impact on immunity, physical health, mental health and wellbeing. Certain groups, such as individuals with mental illness, are especially vulnerable, so it is important to maximise the supports available to this population and their families during the pandemic. More broadly, the World Health Organization recommends “Psychological First Aid” as a useful technique that can help many people in a time of crisis.

Finance is often considered a constraining or compelling force in war. This article examines an alternative role of finance in war, asserting that investors can inform states about adversarial intentions and resolve under certain conditions. This signaling mechanism can reduce information asymmetry between states and decrease the probability of conflict. In the context of these theoretical expectations, I examine the case of Austria and the Rothschild Bank in the nineteenth century. I find that instead of being a constraining force on Austrian foreign policy, the Rothschilds helped inform Austria and other European powers during interstate crises. The information provided by the Rothschilds helped Europe avert war in several cases during the nineteenth century.