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Since the 1990s there has been an increase in knowledge produced in the health sciences about the health and illness of migrants, particularly regarding communicable infectious diseases. The epidemiological categories and classifications which serve to generate this knowledge are changing. The aim of this three (3) year research project is a comparison of discursive epidemiological practices in Great Britain and Germany with regard to two infectious diseases, HIV/Aids and tuberculosis.

Educational trajectories are complex and influenced by many factors, including origin, school system, or economic conditions. Finding out more about educational processes requires transdisciplinary cooperation. This is precisely what the College on Interdisciplinary Educational Research - CIDER, a new innovative program, is about.

After the French and Dutch rejection of the European constitutional treaty in 2005 the European Commission started a number of initiatives designed to strengthen citizen participation in European affairs. One of the programs was the financing of European Party Foundations to strengthen the work of the European Political Parties, which currently consist mainly of the collection of the Members of European Parliament who join specific factions. The European foundations exist since 2008. Their work and the role of think tank networks linked to the Brussels based foundations has received limited attention by social scientists so far.

The United Nations Security Council is widely considered to be the most powerful international institution in the international system. But how legitimate is the Council’s power? The bulk of the literature on that topic remains conceptual or theoretical as scholars tend to make legitimacy assessments with reference to objective standards (usually derived from democratic theory). As a result, we do not know how actors perceive the Council’s legitimacy. To address this gap this project examines evaluative statements that UN member states makes about the Councils legitimacy in UN General Assembly debates. The project asks three questions: (1) How legitimate or illegitimate is the Council in the eyes of UN member states? (2) What are its sources of legitimacy?

The infamously capricious Roman tyrant Nero was said to post his edicts high on the columns of Rome so that his subjects would find them difficult to read and were thus more likely to violate them. What we can learn from this anecdote is that uncertainty about the law’s content promotes non-compliance, and that the rule of law requires that legal rules display certain features, such as publicness, clarity, non-retroactivity, etc. These features enable the law to discharge one of its core objectives, namely to stabilize actors’ normative expectations in an otherwise rather volatile world. To be sure, one way of achieving this is to commit government to fundamental primary rules of behavior; yet commitment to primary norms alone does not suffice for upholding the rule of law.

Frauen, die familienbedingt eine längere Phase nicht erwerbstätig waren, haben nach dieser Zeit häufig keinen Anspruch auf Arbeitslosengeld. Wenn diese Frauen sich für einen beruflichen Wiedereinstieg entscheiden, können sie sich an die Agentur für Arbeit wenden, um hierbei unterstützt zu werden. Unter bestimmten Bedingungen ist es möglich, dass sie sich arbeitslos ohne Leistungsbezug melden. Alternativ können die Wiedereinsteigerinnen sich arbeitsuchend melden. Hiermit sind weniger Rechte, aber auch weniger Pflichten verbunden.

How are research results from the Social and Spatial Sciences transferred to user groups outside of the scientific communities? What are the key factors supporting the relevance of basic research for users in politics, private companies, administrations and educational institutions? What are the factors for success or obstacles to knowledge transfer? What are the boundaries for professionalizing knowledge transfer? How are transfer processes affected by particular disciplinary environments?

The project involves the analysis of the evolution of world order, its underlying normative differences and conflicts as well as the question of the legitimacy of international authority. The aim is to link together the participating Leibniz Institutes (besides the WZB, the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) in Frankfurt am Main) usinga common analytical framework that integrates the concepts of "rising powers", "opposition, dissidence and justice" and "politicization" which have beenseparately analysed in the three institutes.

Aktuelle Themen wie die Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise, Migration, Sozialpolitik, Demokratie und Europapolitik beschäftigen die Deutschen. Diese Herausforderungen erfordern ein besonderes Verantwortungsbewusstsein aller Entscheidungsträger unseres Landes. Doch wie schätzen sie selbst die Lage ein? Was hat diese Führungspersonen geprägt, welche Einstellungen haben sie? Wo sehen sie ihre Verantwortung? Welche Unterstützung wünschen sie?

20 Jahre nach der Wiedervereinigung haben wir in Rahmen einer deutschlandweit angelegten Studie Antworten auf diese Fragen gesucht.

With the research study titled "Leadership Skills in Germany", the WZB and the stiftung neue verantwortung aim to explore the current understanding of leadership amongst German elites. Leadership has become increasingly complex in the dynamic and interlinked world of the 21st century. Today's so-called multistakeholder society demands that elites engage in cross-sectoral and intergenerational thinking and acting.