Arno Tausch

Arno Tausch (born February 11, 1951 in Salzburg, Austria) is an Austrian political scientist. His research program is focused on world systems theory, development studies and dependency theory, European studies in the framework of core-periphery relationships, and quantitative Peace and conflict studies.^[1]

Academic career

Tausch received his Ph.D. in political science from Salzburg University in 1976 ^[2] His habilitation at the Department of Political Science at Innsbruck University was concluded in 1988; the Chairperson of his habilitation commission was Professor Anton Pelinka. Since then he has been adjunct professor (‘Universitätsdozent’) at that department.^[3] He is currently also associate visiting professor of Economics at Corvinus University Budapest.^[4]

Tausch is a member of the editorial boards of several scientific journals, among them Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research,^[5][6] Society and Economy, (Journal of the Corvinus University of Budapest),;^[7] History & Mathematics Almanac,^[8] and the Journal of Globalization Studies (State University, Moscow) ^[9]

Publications

As of November 2014, Tausch had authored or co-authored according to his academic CV at his website, 17 books in English, 2 in French, and 8 in German,^[10] and a number of articles in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish and German in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and articles on current affairs.

He also has written articles for Tiempo Argentino, a newspaper based in Buenos Aires,^[11] and in Der Standard in Vienna ^[12]

Scholarly work

In the international press, Tausch's work is seen mostly in the framework of the efficiency and effectiveness of social spending.^[13] Tausch also published critical studies of the political economy of the European Union,^[14] globalization ^[15] and providing a link between dependency theory and world system theory with the empirical analysis of social development in Europe, especially Eastern Europe and in the Muslim world.^[16]

His research started with a rethinking of dependency theory in the framework of quantitative data and statistical analysis and work on poverty in the leading industrialized countries.^[17]

His doctoral thesis at Salzburg University on "The limits to growth theory" ^[18] was dedicated to the empirical analysis of dependency, income inequality, and social development in up to 40 countries of the world, with country studies for Brazil and Yugoslavia.^[19] Following the logic of trying to identify the structures, which block Third-World development in the industrialized countries, he then researched on Austrian arms exports to Third World countries, based on United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency figures.^[20]

His habilitation thesis focused on multiple regression models of global development, based on data from the World Bank and Volker Bornschier as well as the World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators III, and tests the relevance of socio-liberal approaches to world development, already inherent in the writings of classical social democratic development theories in Europe in the 1930s with multiple regression and canonical correlation models.^[21] This approach was continued and expanded in Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development (1993).^[22]

Later work dealt with Russia and the global Kondratieff cycle;^[23] the effects of the arms trade on social development, especially for the countries of Eastern Europe and the former USSR.^[24] Militarism will grow in these countries because of the distribution coalition prone environment of "periphery socialism".^[25] In the 1990s, Tausch analyzed migration processes and the transformation of post-communist countries.^[26]

Later work also included studies of the effects of multinational corporations and their investments in developing countries;^[27] work on social indicators of development;^[28] Anti-Americanism,^[29] child poverty,^[30]Islamism,^[31] Kondratieff cycles,^[32] liberation theology,^[33] pension reform,^[34] contradictions of European Union development,^[35] global Keynesianism and comparative price levels,^[36] Islamophobia,^[37] social expenditure ^[38] and public health research.^[39]

In the last years, Tausch’s studies were mainly debated in the fields of Bibliometry and Scientometry;^[40] China studies;^[41] environmental studies and studies on unequal exchange;^[42] European Union studies;^[43] research on globalization and the international political economy;^[44] Kondratieff cycles;^[45] the measurement of poverty and well-being;^[46] Middle East studies and studies about Muslims in Western countries ^[47] globalization studies;^[48] in studies on Terrorism;^[49] and in World Values Survey oriented research ^[50]

Critique

Although the concept of "unequal exchange", as developed by Kohler and Tausch ^[51] has become one of the standard definitions in "world system theory" ^[52] and in critical studies on globalization and sustainable development,^[53] the Turkish economist Turan Subasat (Izmir University) recently criticized this concept by saying that international prices are formed in a complex manner and lower international prices for low income countries cannot simply be considered as evidence for unequal exchange.^[54]

The Austrian political scientist Thomas Schmidinger, writing in the official journal of the Austrian Political Science Association, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft,^[55] on Tausch's attempts to measure Muslim opinions in Europe ^[56] comes to the conclusion:

"Tausch attempts to redress the lack of serious qualitative and quantitative social research by using data from the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey. He speaks even of a "forensic political science " and a "forensic sociology" (p 9). He rightly criticizes that neither the European Union nor the national states in Europe provide adequate resources for such research. Really to resolve this lack of data, a whole team of long-term research would have been necessary. Right here, however, Tausch shows that he [also] does not have enough data and therefore his approach - as he himself writes in the introduction - is "forensic". Who really wants to get more secure data in the debate on Islam in Europe should invest in a large-scale study conducted in a methodologically sound way, which should not examine only the Muslim population, but also appropriate comparison groups from the non-Muslim population."

Selected books

English

• Tausch, A., Prager, F. (1993) Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development. Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan/St. Martin's Press
• Tausch, A., Bischof, C., Mueller, K. (2010), "Muslim Calvinism", internal security and the Lisbon process in Europe Rozenberg Publishers, Amsterdam
• Tausch, A., Heshmati, A., Brand, U. (2012), Globalization, the Human Condition and Sustainable Development in the 21st Century Cross-national Perspectives and European Implications. London, New York and Delhi: Anthem Press
• Grinin, L., Korotayev, A. and Tausch A. (2016) Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery. Springer International Publishing, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, London, ISBN 978-3-319-17780-9; http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319412603

French

• Tausch, A., Jourdon, P. (2011), Trois essais pour une économie politique du 21e siècle: Mondialisation, gouvernance mondiale, marginalisation. Paris: L’Harmattan
• Tausch, A. Karoui, H. (2011), Les Musulmans : Un cauchemar ou une force pour l’Europe? Paris: L’Harmattan

References

External links

• Socionauki (Russian social science publications, edited by Uchitel Publishers)
• The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies Monthly Reports
• Citation profile on Google Scholar
• Tausch at REPEC/IDEAS
• Tausch author page at Social Science Research Network, New York
• Tausch' page on Middle East Studies
• Tausch author page at Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) and Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel