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„Closing borders is naive, the virus will come regardless" – this was the policy assumption that was repeatedly stated until mid-March by the WHO, the EU, as well as responsible authorities in Germany and other countries. Meanwhile, other states had started closing their borders to travellers from high-risk countries or to introduce mandatory quarantines. On 17 March, the EU did what it had previously argued against, and closed its borders to travellers from outside the EU and the Schengen Area. Germany, too, changed its line, and closed its borders to France, Switzerland, and Austria and on 18 March also to travellers from Italy. Who was right?

The dissertation engages with the potential of worker-led transformations, alternative models of ownership and democratisation of enterprises for a socially just and green transition of the German automotive industry.

Das oberste Ziel des Leibniz-Netzwerkes Mobilität ist die Generierung von System-, Ziel- und Transformationswissen für eine nachhaltige Verkehrswende. Dieses Wissen soll durch die gemeinsame Durchführung von Forschungsprojekten und gegebenenfalls durch die Beteiligung an Experimentierräumen erarbeitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden. Dies erfordert wissenschaftlichen Austausch zwischen den Mitgliedsinstituten und den regelmäßigen Austausch mit der (Fach-)Öffentlichkeit.

Um die Ziele des Leibniz-Forschungsnetzwerks Mobilität umzusetzen, werden Mittel für Maßnahmen der interdisziplinären Kooperation, der Anbahnung gemeinsamer Forschungsvorhaben und des Wissenstransfers beantragt, und zwar für:

The rise of the platform economy presents a fundamental challenge to policymakers. Larger cities, in particular, have to deal with emerging problems created by the rise of platform companies, such as Uber, Airbnb or E-Scooter providers. Responses to this challenge have varied, not just cross-nationally but, more significantly, across sectors and subnational levels, including cities. In view of the differentiated responses, this project explores how sub-national governments and administrations of larger cities have adapted to the rise of the platform economy. In particular, this project investigates European sub-national regulation of the platform economy in the transport and housing sectors.

Societal IT systems development. Towards a discursive process-oriented multi-perspective approach to co-designing, -operating, -assessing, and -regulating societally relevant IT systems

Computational models of the social play an increasingly important role in political processes, from consulting to algorithmic governance. The dissertation project investigates the relation between the knowledge production practices underlying such models and the governance practices that make use of them. In doing so it aims to understand how different forms of modeling the social translate into different forms of governing.

In his dissertation project, Florian Irgmaier investigated the mechanisms through which science and technology affect societal imaginations of the possible and the feasible. To this end, he developed conceptual and theoretical foundations for a general sociology of the construction of horizons of the possible. On this basis, he identified the specific processes through which research and technologization change the conditions for thinking about the future: the trivialization of event sequences, the establishment of resolution-enhancing media of perception, and the constitution of new objects.

In recent years, the Chinese government has engaged in a host of multilateral institutional creation efforts. Since 1990, China has acted as an institutional initiator or founding member of at least 21 distinct multilateral initiatives. These range from new multilateral development banks, intergovernmental security organizations, and space technology organizations through to transnational public policy forums, inter-regional groupings, and human rights conferences (see Stephen, 2021 for an overview).

Ever since Aristotle, political theorists have posited on the nature of the bond (tie, connection, attachment) that links a citizen to a polity. However, there is little agreement on what that “something” should be. International law has been silent on the issue. This is perplexing due to the international nature of citizenship, sometimes referred to as an ‘international filing system’. (Brubaker 1992) 

This is part of a bigger project at the ISF Munich – Institute for Social Science Research. 

Prof. Dr. Jeanette Hofmann and Dr. Clara Iglesias Keller will focus on the relationship between artificial intelligence and democratic institutions, with special focus on the interaction of these technologies and political participation.