DFG funding for Prof. Sabine Carey’s research on the public support for human rights

Prof. Sabine Carey has been granted funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for her project B1.2018 “Security Threats and Fragile Commitments: Stress-Testing Public Support for Human Rights at Home and Abroad” in collaboration with Prof. Katrin Paula (TUM) and Prof. Robert Johns (University of Essex).

This project investigates whether and how support for human rights can be strengthened in times of crisis. Across different survey experiments fielded on the German adult population, it explores theoretically and empirically how support for human rights is shaped by potential threats people might be faced with and the types of rights that could be constrained to tackle the threat. The project distinguishes between domestic threats in the form of a potential terrorist threat from a right-wing extremist group or an Islamist group. To incorporate an international perspective, it evaluates attitudes toward a human rights-oriented foreign policy under costly scenarios in the context of an international threat, such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.