This article suggests studying special relationships in international politics from an ontological security perspective. It argues that conceptualising the partners to special relationships as ontological security seekers provides a promising theoretical angle to address gaps in our understanding of three important dimensions of such relations: their emergence and stability; the processes and practices of maintaining them; and the power relations within special relations. The article illustrates its theoretical argument in a case study on the German-Israeli relationship. The close partnership between the two countries that has developed since the Holocaust ranks as one of the most remarkable examples of special relationships in the international arena. We argue that foregrounding the ontological security that the special relationship provides, in particular for Germany, sheds important new light on how German-Israeli relations have developed. Specifically, we hold that Germany’s ontological security needs were already an important driver in establishing the relationship and have been a key stabiliser of it ever since; that the ontological security perspective can make sense of three interrelated practices of maintaining the ‘specialness’ of the relationship; and that the asymmetries between the ontological security needs of the two partners help account for Israel’s political leverage in the relationship.

In coalition governments, political parties are concerned not only with how many but also with which departments they control. The foreign ministry is among the most highly considered prizes in coalition negotiations. This article develops hypotheses to explain under which conditions the foreign ministry is likely to be allocated to a ‘junior coalition partner’. The factors that are hypothesized to affect the allocation are: the relative size of coalition parties; the proximity of their foreign policy positions; the party family of the junior coalition party; the salience of foreign policy to the coalition parties; and past allocations of the foreign ministry to junior coalition partners. Employing a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, the article demonstrates that although the conjunction of the junior partner being relatively large and it having led the foreign ministry in the past is not sufficient by itself, those two factors are very influential in the junior partner being allocated the foreign ministry.

Heterogeneous system integration is one of the key topics for future system integration. Scaling of System on Chip (SoC) alone does not address today's requirements of smart electronic systems in terms of performance, functionality, miniaturization, low production cost and time to market. The traditional microelectronic packaging will more and more convert into complex sys-tem integration. ‘More than Moore’ will be required due to tighter integration of system level components at the package level. This trend leads to advanced System in Package solutions (SiP) which require the synergy and a combination of wafer level and board integration technologies and which are rapidly evolving from a specialty technology used in a narrow set of applications to a high volume technology with wide ranging impact on electronics markets especially due to the high volume and very cost competitive consumer and communication market. Advanced SiP approaches explore the third dimension which results in complex system architectures that also require, beside new technologies and improved materials, adequate system design tools and reli-ability models. One of the most promising technology approaches is 3D packaging which in-volves a set of different integration approaches including stacked packages, silicon interposer with Through Silicon Vias (TSV) and embedding technologies. The paper highlights future sys-tem and potential technical solutions.