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Theoretical background and objectives

Theoretical background and objectives

After more than half a century of mass immigration to Europe, the consequences of increasing ethnic diversity in Europe are far from clear. More specifically, one of the prominent questions on today’s research agenda is how ethnic diversity affects social cohesion and attitudes towards immigrants. This project aims to contribute to answering this question.

The Online Dossier Education is an internet platform integrated into the bpb.de website that provides basic information about key players and institutions in the German education system and brings together debates, findings and insights from education research. 

Airline industries have been subject to deregulation efforts both nationally and internationally. While some restrictions to market entry remain both in airline markets and ground services – subject to late deregulation battles –, global integration of air transportation and related markets have come a long way. Current and future regulatory debates are likely to shift focus: The agenda is being set by infrastructure and air space limits, denationalization of industrial relations, and the rising concern about climate change in particular. How do airlines and the various interest groups involved react to the post-deregulation challenges?

The third-party funded project “Democracy as Concept and Cultural Performance” is dedicated to questions and problems connected to the so-called “delimitation crisis” of political development in the Federal Republic of Germany as well as other EU countries from the 1970s to today. By “delimitation crisis” what is meant is the lack of cultural willingness and ability to undertake and acknowledge essential limitations for every liberal regime.

Issues examined are:

The research group, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), focuses on the rise of interface conflicts within and across overlapping spheres of authority. The increased institutional production of rules and norms in the international realm leads to both horizontal interface conflicts at the same level of governance (e.g. across two or more international spheres of authority) and vertical interface conflicts across spheres of authority on different levels of governance (e.g. international and national spheres of authority). The work of the research group is guided by the following questions: Under which conditions become such conflicts manifest? What are the responses to conflicting rules originating from overlapping spheres of authority?

Theoretical background and objectives

The aim of the FCGG research network is to foster international scientific exchanges and dialogues on regime complexes and institutional fragmentation. Due the growing proliferation of international institutions and regimes, many issues in world politics today fall under the authority of multiple institutions, both private and public. Such a composite galaxy of international institutions and regimes that are valid or active in a particular area has been dubbed a ‘regime complex’. Regime complexes have attracted the attention of a growing number of scholars of world politics as they beg important theoretical questions pertaining to their origins, consequences, and management. The aim of the research network is to sustain and expand inter-disciplinary research into regime complexes.

This project studies what amounts of financial resources students have available, what funding mixes in terms of BAföG, loans, employment and parental support they draw on and how these funding mixes vary by socio-economic background. We then study how different funding sources affect the drop-out probability, progress towards degree, time-use, academic achievement and likelihood of graduating. In particular, we are interested in whether BAföG aid, loans and employment differ in their effects on student outcomes. We plan to use data from the NEPS. These data contain very detailed information about students’ financial resources and background.