Archiv Veranstaltungen 2019

Wer hätte vor ein paar Jahren gedacht, dass Grundfragen der Demokratie in Deutschland zu Debatte stehen und intensiv diskutiert werden? Viele Wählerinnen und Wähler haben sich abgewandt und sind enttäuscht. Andere sind entschlossen, sich nicht entmutigen zu lassen und demokratische Standards zu verteidigen. Welchen Beitrag können ein Museum und ein wissenschaftliches Institut dazu leisten? Das WZB und das Deutsche Historische Museum (DHM) laden in der WZB-Reihe „Achtung: Demokratie“ zu einem Diskussionsforum über die neuen Herausforderungen für die Demokratie ein.

The Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) brings together faculty and advanced graduate students in economics, political science, and other social science disciplines, with a combined focus on field-based research and political economy methods. The workshop involves in-depth discussions of papers and research designs that are circulated and read in advance, and is ideally suited for feedback on work-in-progress.

Organizers: Ana Garcia-Hernandez, Alexandra Scacco, Michael Seese

Moderated by Anette Fasang

Discussant: Macartan Humphreys
Moderated by Swen Hutter

The European Union (EU) is facing one of the rockiest periods in its existence. No time in its history has it looked so economically fragile, so unsecure about how to protect its borders, so divided over how to tackle the crisis of legitimacy facing its institutions, and so under assault of Eurosceptic parties. The unprecedented levels of integration in recent decades has led to increased public contestation, yet at the same the EU is more reliant on public support for its continued legitimacy than ever before. Catherine E.

Discussant: tba

“Wir sind das Volk”, “defending the heartland”, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”—these are the rallying cries of populists across the globe. If nothing else, a strong anti-elitism unites those parties and movements. However, it remains unclear why this assertion would resonate with citizens if they felt well represented.

Die liberale Demokratie ist in Bedrängnis. Jenseits sozialer und ökonomischer Konflikte reichen neue Auseinandersetzungen tief in die Identität und Kultur der westlichen Gesellschaften hinein. Konflikte über Grenzen, Migration, Menschenrechte und den Umgang mit Minderheiten führen zu einer stärkeren Politisierung und Mobilisierung. Viele Menschen engagieren sich und wollen die Welt verändern. Gleichzeitig sind die Eliten in die Kritik geraten. Eine zunehmende Sprachlosigkeit zwischen den verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen erschwert die Suche nach Lösungen.

Migration is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. Many countries in Europe and North America have experienced a stark increase in the size and diversity of their immigrant and refugee populations. Reeling and reactive, governments are struggling to facilitate their successful integration. Much is at stake in this process. With the right approach, governments can set up immigrants for success and thereby strengthen the economy and enrich civil society.

Since its foundation in the 1970s, the Manifesto Project has provided data for measuring party positions and preferences based on parties’ electoral programs. The Manifesto Dataset which offers data on party preferences on specific policy issues and overarching policy scales in over 60 countries has strongly influenced research on political parties in the last decades. Recently, the Manifesto Project has extended its data collection and now provides access to the Manifesto Corpus – the digital and annotated manifesto collection of MARPOR.

Discussant: Wolfgang Merkel
Moderated by Swen Hutter

When do voters form accurate perceptions of party positions, and when do they feel certain about their perceptions? We believe that information availability plays a crucial role, and argue that election campaigns, by increasing information availability, enhance voter accuracy and certainty. Yet, we also argue that campaigns are less effective for voters’ perceptions about governing parties’ positions. In addition, we argue that changing party positions reduce voter certainty.

Democracy is a system of peaceful conflict resolution. It places an absolute ban on the exercise, tolerance, and encouragement of political violence. Existing democracies, however, are not immune to violent action but suffer from multiple forms of political violence. Antidemocratic actors who openly justify and exercise violence are one part of the problem. Those who are suspicious of acting as their masterminds, accomplices, or sympathizers are the other part.

Using a new measure of “comprehensive democracy,” our analysis traces the global democratic trend over the last 116 years, from 1900 until 2016, looking in particular at the centennial trend’s cultural zoning. As it turns out, democracy has been proceeding and continues to differentiate the world’s nations in a strongly culture-bound manner: high levels of democracy remain a distinctive feature of nations in which emancipative values have grown strong over the generations.

We invite researchers to submit papers or extended abstracts to the 4th Economics of Media Bias Workshop. Organized by the eponymous research network, the workshop will be a platform to discuss current research, exchange ideas, and explore new collaboration scenarios.
As a group of economists and political scientists, we investigate forms, causes, and consequences of media bias, especially in news markets. Main questions of interest are:

Klimawandel, Energie- und Verkehrswende – in den nächsten Jahrzehnten kommen große Veränderungen auf die Bürgerinnen und Bürger zu. In der Politik wird die Vernetzung über Ressortgrenzen hinweg immer wichtiger, wenn es darum geht – auch unbequeme – politische Entscheidungen über neue Mobilitätsformen oder Klimaschutzmaßnahmen zu treffen. Wie lässt sich Akzeptanz für diese neuen Energie- und Fortbewegungsmodelle schaffen? Welche Rolle kann hier die Forschung spielen?

While in most Western democracies women support left-leaning and progressive parties at higher rate than men, five decades ago the opposite was the case. To explain the realignment along gender lines on the left, we analyze it jointly with the rise of the radical right – two phenomena usually studied separately. Unlike most studies of the gender gap, we focus on men’s vote.

In cooperation with the doctoral program “Work and its Subjects” at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the WZB doctoral program “Good Work” is organizing an interdisciplinary PhD conference. International PhD students from different disciplines who have dedicated their PhD project to the topic of “work” in a broad sense will come together to exchange their progress and to connect with each other.

(supported by CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition)

Die Wissenschaftsfreiheit steht in einigen Ländern unter Druck: Forschungsergebnisse werden immer wieder öffentlich diskreditiert, der internationale Austausch zwischen Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern behindert, unbequemen Forschenden die nötigen finanziellen Mittel entzogen. In Deutschland können wir Angriffe auf die Wissenschaft in dieser Dramatik zwar noch nicht beobachten. Dennoch: Auch hier sieht sich die Wissenschaft immer stärkeren Rechtfertigungszwängen ausgesetzt.

Die Veranstaltung ist ausgebucht, leider sind keine Anmeldungen mehr möglich!

The Berlin Applied Micro Seminar (BAMS) is a weekly seminar, jointly organized by DIW Berlin, Hertie School of Governance, HU Berlin, FU Berlin, TU Berlin, WZB, the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) and the SFB TRR 190.

We cordially invite you to the next session of our workshop series on Authoritarian Politics and International Relations at WZB!