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Chair in Qualitative Empirical Research Methods

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29.04.2025 10:00

New publication by Benedikt Bender in Socio-Economic Review

Benedikt Bender, in collaboration with Luzie Hackenbroch from Bocconi University, Milan, has published his work in one of the most leading journals in the field of Political Economy.

 

Titel
Bender, Benedikt/ Hackenbroch, Luzie (2025): Insider鈥搊utsider representation and the logic of membership and participation. A multi-level analysis of unions' positions and individual attitudes on welfare state reforms.https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf024
Summary

Our analysis builds on the debate by comparing the impact of insider and outsider attitudes on union positions. Dualization theory argues that unions reflect dominant members - usually insiders - while the solidarity approach sees unions backing all vulnerable groups, regardless of dominant member opinion. We argue that the picture is more complex. Unions do care about insider as well as outsider member attitudes and they take both the level of union membership and level of union participation (e.g. discussions, meetings) into account. Each class in the workforce displays different patterns of membership and participation. We argue that these patterns determine influence on union position rather than pure ideology. We define six different class groups of insiders and outsiders according to their skill levels (low, medium, high), employment sector and occupation. If a particular class group is going to shape unions positions, two conditions must be met: (1) high union membership and (2) high union participation. The absence of either condition reduces the influence of the class group. In our study, only two groups satisfied both conditions: blue-collar workers (low-skilled insiders) and low-service functionaries (low-skilled outsiders). We therefore formed the hypothesis that their views have most influence on union positions. We used survey data from the German Internet Panel to determine class groups and their positions on unemployment benefits and labour market regulation. Macro-level data from the Reform Monitor on Political Conflict was used to determine the stance of six different unions. We observed the strongest correlations with union positions for low-skilled insiders and low-skilled outsiders and we suggest that if these groups change their views, union positions are likely to shift accordingly - reflecting both the logic of membership and participation. In addition, a general trend towards dissatisfaction with welfare state reforms by trade unions was evident after the general election in 2016. Since the reform of unemployment benefits was highly salient, we note that salient campaign topics may strongly affect post-election union positions.

 

23.04.2025 15:00

Interview with the New Chair of the Accreditation Commission

Prof. Claudius Wagemann from Department 03 will assume the chairmanship of 看片软件's Accreditation Commission in the summer semester 2025. Learn about his motivations and goals in an extensive interview.

"I look forward to making a practical contribution to ensuring that students at 看片软件 can complete their studies successfully," explains Wagemann, while also sharing personal insights into his own student years and career path.

The Accreditation Commission ensures the quality of all university degree programs and supports their further development. Prof. Viera Pirker, Vice President for Studies and Teaching, emphasizes the importance of this work and welcomes Wagemann's willingness to take on the chairmanship.

 

07.01.2025 12:00

Our new Project INTERFACED

Interfaces for Democratic Participation: Deliberation, Mobilization and Contestation Since the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic

We are pleased to announce that our team successfully applied for the Horizon Europe project INTERFACED (2025-2027). Amidst growing protests, declining trust in democracy and science, and increasing societal inequalities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it investigates diverse forms of non-electoral political participation. At its core are the so-called interfaces 鈥� such as referendums, street protests, social media debates, petitions or citizen assemblies 鈥� through which citizens may engage in decision-making and governance within representative institutions.

The principal objective of INTERFACED is to analyse these participation interfaces, their democratic underpinnings, their role in mobilizing the least engaged and most disadvantaged groups, and factors driving participation. Based on the empirical findings, the project aims to propose policy recommendations to improve the relations between citizens and their governments and to enhance the accountability of governance structures.

The project's consortium comprises ten European countries and Tunesia, and it is led by the City University of London. Applying an interdisciplinary approach, INTERFACED employs a comprehensive methodology 鈥� including large-scale surveys, experiments, computational tools, ethnography, textual analysis, and comparative qualitative methods 鈥� to examine the country cases of the United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany (North-Western Group), Austria, Hungary and Romania (East-Central Group) as well as Spain, Italy and Tunesia (Southern Group) for the (post-)pandemic period of 2020-2025.

The Work Package of Frankfurt investigates the feed through from participation interfaces into the institutions of representative democracy. Prof. Dr. Claudius Wagemann engages as Principal Investigator and Anna Geyer as Research Associate.

 

02.12.2024 12:00

The method handbook Set-Theoretic Methods for the Social Sciences is published in Chinese

We are delighted that the book Set-Theoretic Methods for the Social Sciences: A Guide to Qualitative Comparative Analysis by Carsten Schneider and Claudius Wagemann has now also been translated into Chinese. This underlines the importance of our work and extends the international reach of this innovative method. First published in 2012, the book guides the reader through the basic principles of set-theoretic methods and then goes into the applied practice of QCA, which is clearly explained using existing examples from academia.

article_set_theory_book_in_chinese

 

02.09.2024 18:00

Congratulations to Mohamed Salhi on defending his PhD thesis

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We are delighted to announce that Mohamed Salhi successfully defended his PhD 

thesis "" on September 2, 2024. 

As a doctoral researcher and DAAD fellow at our chair, Salhi conducted innovative research examining the discursive and linguistic composition of far right populist parties' crisis discourse. From a critical linguistics perspective, this research project examined the process of producing 'crisis' in discourse and connected (constructed) realities to patterned linguistic features, contending that far right populist parties produce and narrate crisis to function as their own raison d'锚tre. With a developed form of Discourse-Historical Approach, the array of findings has been incredibly wide and offered detailed insights on the strategic and manipulative functions of patterned linguistic choices.

His dissertation makes a significant contribution by reconceptualizing the relationship between crisis and populism as one of co-constitution, supported by meticulous analysis of linguistic choices, and not limited to, lexico-semantic fields, sentence structures, modality, rhetorical devices, and stylistics, and on the discursive practices related to the representation of social actors, phenomena, ideologies, and realities.

We congratulate Mohamed Salhi on this outstanding achievement and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.