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Theoretical background and objectives

There is a large amount of evidence on a negative relationship between ethnic heterogeneity, various measures of social capital (trust, voluntarism, associational membership etc.), and levels of public goods provision. The evidence includes survey-based studies, (field) experiments, as well as studies relating aggregate-level data to spatial units. Much of this evidence pertains to the United States, but in addition there are also some studies of African and Asian countries, as well as large-N cross-national studies. Studies focusing on European countries are rarer, and do not always provide unequivocal support for the negative relationship between ethnic diversity and various forms of social capital.

Theoretical background and objectives

Theoretical background and objectives

Theoretical background and objectives

The increased and sustained presence of Muslim immigrants has led states and governments in Europe and elsewhere to re-negotiate the accommodation of religious minorities. Many of these processes of negotiation of cultural and religious rights have taken place in public institutions but only some of these institutions such as schools have received broad public and political as well as scientific attention. The current research project tries to broaden this perspective by directing attention to the military as a public institution that has not only a special relationship with the state and the nation, but also fulfils a very specific task and constitutes a "total institution" (Goffman 1961).

Dissertation project

This PhD research is part of a European project, called VEIL, in which eight different European countries participate. VEIL focuses on the debates and regulations concerning head- and body covering of Muslim women in the public sphere, particularly in public institutions such as schools, universities and courts. One of the assumptions of VEIL is that in these debates fundamental norms and values of liberal democracies are re-negotiated, and collective identities re-constructed within the European integration process. Moreover, the issue reveals the gendered nature of values and norms that widely prevail in liberal democracies in Europe.

Theoretical background and objectives

Theoretical background and objectives

Democratic societies are increasingly confronted with grand societal challenges such as climate change, energy and mobility transition, demographic change, and digitization. These kinds of problems can be characterized by a high degree of ambiguity, uncertainty and ignorance. Considering the complexity of these challenges, including the heterogeneous problem frames of different stakeholders, politics and society formulate extensive expectations towards science. These generally demand a stronger orientation of scientific knowledge production towards societal needs, in particular by including stakeholders from different social worlds into the processes of knowledge production and research policy agenda-setting.

Representative survey of the German population on cross-border perceptions of issues and ascriptions of responsibility to national, transnational, and international institutions

In this joint project, the research units "Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges" and "Transnational Conflicts and International Institutions" analyse as to which degree and for which reasons citizens are (increasingly) ascribing responsibility for solving urgent problems to international political institutions and organisations. The project’s focus is on the following three aspects:

Studying three systematically chosen European metropolises – Brussels, Berlin, and Barcelona – the project is a cross-country comparison of integration policies aiming at reforming and securing a comprehensive citizenship under the conditions of growing sociocultural heterogeneity. The project focuses on the quality and efficiency of processes of “becoming a citizen” in political-institutional contexts characterised by increasing diversity. Of special interest are those areas of policy where the actual processes of integration “on site” are particularly significant and where metropolises have a leeway to implement their own policies.