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In Germany, the introduction of new institutional forms of direct democracy – direct election of the mayor, public petitions and citizens’ decisions – has changed the political landscape since the 90’s on the local level. These local innovations aroused interest within the scientific community: Several studies deal with legal, philosophical and historical aspects of direct democratic elements or they evaluate the effects on local decision making processes and policies. However, the effects on mobilization or demobilization for the participation in civil society have hardly been analyzed. This project will explore whether and how the newly introduced elements of direct democracy have in fact influenced the engagement in associations of civil society.

“Governance through networks of non-governmental actors” has been a main topic in scientific and political debates for years. Networks of civil society and market actors raise hope for the solution of local, national and transnational problems that are neglected or cannot be solved by the state itself, for example sustainable farming and production or matters of justice in world trade. The problem solving capacity of these networks presumably can be optimized by transnationalization (i.e., “best practice” processes in the context of NGO-regimes). Factors for success or failure – measurable through territorial expansion for example, market share or total revenue – are analyzed only marginally.

This project is based on the edition of constitutional texts from 22 European countries between the French Revolution and the Second World War. For the first time all constitutional texts (according to a formal concept of constitution) and their modifications are completely published or rather cited in German. The editors’ aim is to create a textual basis for a comprehensive comparison of constitutional tendencies in modern European history. This will allow to determine both similarities und differences, processes of national isolation and transfer as well as phases of constitutionalization and deconstitutionalization in modern European history. Is there a common ‘European’ heritage of constitutional institutions – or does diversity prevail?

The First Integration Indicator Report „Integration in Germany“ was prepared in 2009 in cooperation with ISG Köln on behalf of the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration, in order to test and improve an existing set of indicators on integration and to get a first overview on the progress of integration in Germany. The level of integration was measured using 100 indicators on 14 areas of life situation (among others, legal status, education, employment, income, social participation). Results revealed substantive progress of integration in several areas, especially among the second generation of migrants. Nevertheless, migrants are still disadvantaged in nearly all areas (except health) when compared to natives.

In the face of accelerating globalization, increasing inequality and ongoing democratization, a re-examination of the nature of political legitimacy and the functioning of democratic processes is taking place. Within the debates on these developments, the measurement and evaluation of democracy have received special attention. However, the most widely used indices for measuring the quality of democracy in comparative political science, such as the Vanhanen-Index, the Polity-Index and the Freedom House-Index, are being called into question. Three aspects of these indices' conceptual assumptions are being challenged: first, their focus on procedural aspects; second, their exclusive focus on the nation-state; and third, their tendency toward cultural blindness.

Over three subsequent periods of funding, the GLES (http://www.gles.eu) is to examine the German federal elections 2009, 2013, and 2017 and therefore will be able to track the German electoral process over an extended period of time and at an unprecedented level of detail. The principal investigators of the study are Hans Rattinger (University of Mannheim), Sigrid Roßteutscher (University of Frankfurt), Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck (University of Mannheim) and Bernhard Weßels (Social Science Research Center Berlin). Evelyn Bytzek (University of Frankfurt) serves as the project manager, and several research assistants at each of the involved institutions are responsible for carrying out the study at the operational level.

EES — 2009 European Election Study

For the first time, a centrally coordinated research project covering all relevant aspects of the electoral process was conducted for all 27 member-countries at the 2009 European Parliament Elections. In investigating the feasibility of an infrastructure for the study of democracy in the EU, data were gathered on:

Since its formation as the Manifesto Research Group/Comparative Manifestos Project (MRG/CMP), the Manifesto Project has dealt with different aspects of party performance as well as the structure and development of party systems. The project is based on quantitative content analyses of parties’ election programmes from more than 50 countries covering all free, democratic elections since 1945. In 2003, the project received the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) award for the best data set in comparative politics.

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems.
German part

The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) is a collaborative program of research among election study teams from around the world. Participating countries include a common module of survey questions in their post-election studies. The resulting data are deposited along with voting, demographic, district and macro variables. The studies are then merged into a single, free, public dataset for use in comparative study and cross-level analysis.