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Manifesting across three projects, the group analyzes how global liberal frameworks shape individuals’ climate beliefs, emotions, and behavioral intentions. The first project draws upon existing data collected by the International Social Survey Program (Environmental Module) to assess how nations' embeddedness within global liberal frameworks (e.g., linkages to liberal international organizations, treaties, standards, and top universities) impacts climate skepticism.  MLM analyses of longitudinal data from 37 nations show that overall embeddedness within global liberal frameworks is linked to lower skepticism. However, amidst anti-liberal pushback, the effect of global liberal forces varies.

This research project focuses on the diffusion of democratic backsliding across national borders. The concept of diffusion refers to processes in comparative regime change research where each instance of a phenomenon (in this case, democratic backsliding) increases the likelihood of future occurrences. Thus, individual cases are not independent of one another; rather, a form of 'contagion' takes place. Empirical observations indicate that instances of democratic backsliding often occur in close temporal succession and within geographically connected countries, suggesting that they are not isolated events.

How free do children and young people feel? What do they understand by their own freedom and the freedom of others? With these questions in mind, researchers from the WZB, togetaher with artists, visited twelve schools in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods between April and July. Under the motto “denk!mal FREIHEIT” they invited students to develop their images of freedom and build a modern monument to freedom. The project was part of the Science Year, which in 2024 was dedicated to the theme of freedom.

The emergence of service economies and the ongoing technological and digital revolution have changed the way we work. In particular, nonstandard work schedules (e.g., evenings, nights, weekends, irregular and rotating shifts) have become increasingly prevalent in recent decades. This trend has dramatically challenged family processes and interactions. Nonstandard work schedules (NSWS) can compromise parents’ mental health and increase conflicts with family time, thus affecting fathers’ and mothers’ parenting capacities as well as parent-child relationships. These implications of NSWS can, in turn, negatively affect the health and wellbeing of children whose parents work NSWS.

The research group “Technology, Power, and Domination” based at the Weizenbaum Institute investigates how relationships of power and domination change in the digital transformation. It focuses on the power potentials of artificial intelligence (AI) and platforms, societal conflicts regarding these technologies, and the possibilities of shaping them democratically. Empirically, the group studies states’ responses to disinformation (as well as its different political meanings), the use of AI in public administration, and the regulation of platforms and AI, among other topics.

In Germany, there is currently no recognized measurement concept that reveals racial ascriptions in statistical data. Consequently, only a limited number of quantitative studies have examined the extent to which racism contributes to educational inequalities. Most of the existing research on this topic relates to „ethnic“ inequalities. In this context, racism and migration-related mechanisms and manifestations are considered together, often with an operationalization based on „migration background“. However, it should be noted that different mechanisms apply to these social boundaries, and the groups of people affected by racism and (family) migration only partially overlap.

Background: It is well-known that under the new economy (globalized, information-based, digitalized, platform) work has become increasingly precarious, threatening workers’ financial security and wellbeing, particularly for those from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Less well known is that employment precarity is also manifested in when (timing) and how many hours (time) people work. The number of work hours is rising and work schedules have become more unsociable (evenings, nights, and weekends), unpredictable, and precarious (rotating, variable, on-call shifts) in the 24/7 economy. Such work conditions have detrimental health impacts on workers and their offspring.

The rise of right-wing extremism (RWE) is often attributed to citizens’ economic and cultural grievances. We know less about how the state facilitates RWE in contemporary democracies, despite commonly voiced claims that state actors help RWE flourish due to their biased treatment of political extremism. How valid is this critique? Analyzing thousands of documents covering the behavior of political parties, intelligence agencies, and the police in Germany over many decades and across states, we demonstrate that state actors have systematically downplayed RWE. This bias is not a feature of the state per se; it only emerges consistently among center-right actors.

Across the liberal-democratic world, ties between radical-right parties and civil servants have raised concern about the loyalty of the state apparatus. Drawing on the concept of militant democracy, we propose that states can counter the infiltration by the far right by publicly denouncing extremist organizations and threatening to impose disciplinary measures on civil servants who associate with them. We test our argument in Germany, a post-war militant democracy that is now facing a challenge from the far-right AfD party, which counts a significant number of civil servants among its members and tries to undermine the state from within.