Projects in Research Area "Citizens and Democracy"
Research in this area investigates which characteristics and mechanisms drive various forms of political competition and participation that are at the heart of democratic politics. We explore how voters’ attitudes, interests, and preferences are formed, how they are shaped by electoral institutions, and how they are mobilized to support specific parties, politicians, and policies. Our work investigates the dynamic interactions between governments, parliaments, and political parties, focusing on how these institutions engage with citizens, and, in turn, how citizens influence elite behaviour.
- Making the Queers Visible: Partisanship and Support among Sexual and Gender Minorities in Eastern and Western Europe (VisibleQueers)
- Navigating Troubled Water: How Germans React to a Changing World Order
- Pariah or Partnership? Examining Citizens' Coalition Preferences and their Willingness to Exclude Undesirable Parties from Coalition Formation
- Withstanding the Bullies – Strategies, Motivations and Cooperation of Mainstream Actors Countering Populist Obstructions in the European Council and the Council of the European Union
- The Politics of Appearance
- German Sexual Identity and Election Study (GSIES)
- Democratic Values Among Migrants from Authoritarian Regimes
- Countering Polarization: Exploring the Potential of the Borda Score for Systems of Proportional Representation
- The Electoral Advantages of Being a Prime Minister Candidates' Party
- Towards a Fractured Global Order? Deglobalization Dynamics and the Distributional Conflict between Globalists and Nationalists (DEGLOBALIZE)
- Group Appeals in Electoral and Parliamentary Debates (GAEPD)
- Politicised Wokeness, Residential Mobility, and Spatial Polarisation
- Election Forecasts for the German Federal Election 2025
- Dynamics of Government–Opposition Parliamentary Relations and Public Attitudes
- Attitudes towards Human Rights in European Foreign Policy
- Challenges of Radical Left and Left-wing Populist Parties for Party Competition and Coalition Politics in Western Europe
- Party Policy Ambiguity and its Consequences for Political Representation and Satisfaction with Democracy
- RISKOPIA: Coping With Uncertainty in Representative Democracy
- Causes and Consequences of Prime Ministerial Change
- Get the Word Out. The Formation and Political Impact of Judicial Opinion-Writing
- Political Reactions to Local Housing Market Dynamics
- Security Threats and Fragile Commitments: Stress-Testing Public Support for Human Rights at Home and Abroad
- Political and Religious Extremism: Measuring and Explaining Explicit and Implicit Attitudes
- Issue Evolution in Multiparty Systems
- Textual Measures of Populism (TEMPOP) for the Analysis of Party Competition and Political Behaviour
- (GLES) Long- and Short-term Panel Studies
- (GLES) Campaign Dynamics of Media Coverage and Public Opinion