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In the 1990s, the European Union (EU) has created a common status called “European citizenship”. Yet, to date, the EU has no common citizenship policy; each Member State remains sovereign to determine “who” a European citizen is and the law relating to the access and loss of European citizenship is wholly fragmented between national legal systems. This research project aims to focus on the challenges and opportunities that this situation generates.

The manner in which citizenship should be allocated is one of the most sensitive decisions in any political community. And yet, naturalization policies have no clear theory; they include “a little bit of everything”—citizenship tests, loyalty oaths, integration contracts, attachment requirements, and language demands. Some requirements are knowledge-based (language proficiency, civic knowledge), other demands are behavior-based (good moral character, residency), and others are based on ties with the host country (residency, family, employment). Often, the goal of these policies is unknown, their format is arbitrary, their guiding ideology is controversial, and their justification is unclear.

European Junior Faculty Forum

Im Rahmen des Pakts für Forschung und Innovation wird im Projekt "Urteilsbildung im Peer Review" anhand von internationalen Fallstudien der Prozess des Begutachtens und das ihm zugrunde liegende Grundverständnis von guter Wissenschaft rekonstruiert. Gegenstand sind Evaluationsverfahren der Leibniz Gemeinschaft in Deutschland, des Research Assessment Exercise in Großbritannien und des Standard Evaluation Protocol in den Niederlanden.

Abstract

The research project will examine some important key elements of the new governance of science. Part of this is an analysis of performance-based funding (PBF) procedures and their effects, the analysis of actors’ strategies to act following the introduction of PBF systems, the location of PBF within specific governance arrangements on the micro- and meso level, the theoretical integration of the empirical findings, and the creation of practically applicable knowledge for the (re)design of PBF procedures.

Over the last 30 years, social scientists have continuously seen the legitimacy of basic research contested, including its funding modes and organisation. This questioning is due to purported changes in knowledge production as well as to the various social pressures on science to prove its social and economic benefits. If the legitimacy of basic research is under attack, then why and how can new forms of basic research funding arise and stabilise? In other words: How can science and politics come to an understanding for establishing and sustaining the institutional legitimacy of basic research? In this dissertation, this question will be answered by reconstructing a policy process, which has led to a new research funding organisation: the European Research Council (ERC).

Winners and losers of the first and second round of Germany's Excellence Initiative are identified; both rounds were accompanied by a broad debate on aims, procedures and evaluation criteria of "excellence": were innovation and "excellence" really decisive, or was it the reputation of those filing the proposal? Did only big universities have real chances of success? Is the big share of management tasks justified? Are the criteria of the competition also suitable for social sciences and humanities? Accordingly, research foundations and the Länder initiated compensatory programs, where some of the "losers" of the Excellence Initiative can be found.

Concept paper - and final report 2009 (PDF) (german)

This research project analyses processes of value attribution/valorisation in socio-algorithmic networks, using two case studies:

The first case study focuses on valorisation dynamics of APIs (application programming interfaces). One specific empirical example examined is Google’s translation service (Google Translate) and the associated Google Translate API.

The second case study analyses processes of valorisation around Internet bots in social media. A specific empirical example focuses on translation-related processes in Wikipedia.
 

While international authorities are often portrayed to take highly consequential decisions in an insulated manner, recent debates suggest that citizens and a wider set of societal actors become increasingly aware of global governance, form opinions on the involved political choices, and confront international actors with new legitimacy demands.