Current News

The majority of the population is of the opinion that the government and the parties generally do not fulfil any or very few election promises. Yet 60 per cent of the governments' election promises have been at least partially implemented. In the MDR interview, Dr Deiss-Helbig reveals a gap between perception and reality. One of the reasons for this could be that sober facts sometimes only play a minor role in voters' favour. So-called "motivated thinking" is relevant: "General attitudes and…

Alexander Horn, Anthony Kevins and Kees van Kersbergen jointly win the SER prize for the best article.  The paper The Paternalist Politics of Punitive and Enabling Workfare: Evidence from a New Dataset on Workfare Reforms in 16 Countries, 1980-2015 convinced the committee. As a result, it is considered the best article published in the Socio-Economic Review in 2023. The award committee was deeply impressed by the high quality.

In a report by Perspective Daily, Prof. Dr. Gerald Schneider comments on 5 questions in the Middle East conflict that are asked far too rarely. He discusses the failure of past peace plans and what we can learn from them. He explains the mediation role of the EU, the USA and the Arab states and points out common interests between Israelis and Palestinians. The full report in German is available here.

Leslie Fischer, graduate of the M.A. in Politics and Puiblic Administration, receives the Christiane Rajewsky Prize of the Association for Peace and Conflict Research for her outstanding Master's thesis. Ms Fischer receives the prize for her thesis "Victimised societies and voter turnout: A natural experiment assessing the price of indifference to conflict-related sexual violence", in which she uses a natural experiment to investigate the long-term political effects of conflict-related sexual…

Since the beginning of 2024, protests against right-wing extremism have been very popular across Germany. But is it really a "silent majority" that is standing up for democracy? Marco Bitschnau and Sebastian Koos found that the participants mostly feel they belong to the upper middle class, are politically left of centre and have above-average educational qualifications. Many have no experience of protesting and are concerned about the rise of the AfD, but are more nuanced when it comes to…

During the coronavirus pandemic, working from home was the norm for many people. No more inconvenient commuting, more space for a good work-life balance. Company buildings were sold off and office space reduced. But that all seems to be over. More and more bosses are calling their employees back to the office. This is causing a lot of resentment and unrest in the workforce. Why this recall campaign? What are the business motives behind it? And: How will we work in the future? Doris Maull…

In recent years, state intervention in digital communication has increased. However, in order for governments to gain and maintain control over digital data flows, they must secure access to the network infrastructure at the ISP level. Eda Keremoglu et al. have analysed how the network topology of the internet is changing in different political environments. They show that in autocratic countries, state (and not private) providers have a significantly higher degree of control over transit…

In an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio, Prof. Dr. Florian Kunze explains the reasons for the trend towards the introduction of compulsory attendance, which is due to the lack of development of new work cultures in Germany. He points out that the introduction of mandatory attendance can lead to employee demotivation and make it more difficult to attract suitable employees. He also points out that managers fear a subjective loss of control due to home office regulations, but that home office…

Prof. Dr. Breunig talks about his playlist for the Comparative Politics course. Thereby he plays a soundtrack before each session to encourage students to apply course concepts in a different context. You can find the article and the playlist here.