Funded by: DFG
Web-Page: http://www.sfb580.uni-jena.de
Researcher: Dr. Ronald Gebauer; Dr. Dietmar Remy; Axel Salheiser, M.A.
By applying methods of historical source criticism and longitudinal and crosssectional analyses, the research project A1 examines the recruitment and career patterns of the socialist elites in the GDR. The data base is provided by the personal mass data memory of the GDR, which was created during the 1980s as auxiliary instrument for the selection, distribution and control of managerial staff. In co-operation with the Federal Archive in Koblenz, the research project A1 has decoded and processed several data sources for research purposes, including the Central Cadre Database of the Council of Ministers, the labour data base of the GDR ministries, the cadre database of the GDR People's Police, the database of societal working capacity constructed by the Staatssekretariat für Arbeit und Löhne (State Secretariat for Work and Wages) and the central database of teachers and educators installed by the Ministry of National Education. The research project A1 complemented these process-produced data by investigating the 1st and 2nd district secretaries of the SED and officers of the National Peoples Army of the GDR.
Funded by: DFG
Web-Page: http://www.sfb580.uni-jena.de
Researcher: Dr. Michael Edinger; Lars Vogel, M.A.
The research in this project is focused on comparative analyses of recruitment patterns and political orientations of parliamentarians at the single state level and in the national parliament (German Bundestag) as well as German Members of the European Parliament and is based on biographical and survey data.
Researcher: Dr. Andreas Hallermann
The major aim of this research is to study changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship presently underway as an effect of the process of European Union expansion and enlargement. In particular, the main focus is how integration and decentralization processes, at both the national and European level, are affecting three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation, and practice of good governance.
At a time in which the EU is facing an important number of challenges, and given that its legitimacy and democratic capacities are questioned, it seems particularly important to address the issue of if and how EU citizenship is emerging. From this primary question stem three further sets of questions that will form the building-blocks of this research: (1) How does a particular kind of political structuring shape citizenship? In a complex system, how do different identities coexist? (2) What sense of obligation is EU citizenship developing? How do coexisting identities affect the relationship between elites and the masses? (3) What are citizens expecting from the EU as a level of government?
In order to answer these questions, we will address the problems of citizenship under the threefold approach of identity, representation and evaluation of government performance, in particular by examining the dynamics between elites and public opinion, whose interactions traditionally nurture the dynamics of collective political identity, political legitimacy and representation, and standards of performance.
WebPage: www.eurelite.uni-jena.de
Researcher: Dr. Michael Edinger; Dipl. Soz. Stefan Jahr; Dr. Harald Klein; Dr. Christopher Hausmann
The goal of the EURELITE Network is to bring together, in a common research effort, political scientists, sociologists and historians who have studied the long term patterns of transformation of the political elites of European nation states from an empirical perspective (scholars from Central and Eastern Europe will be actively involved). The comparative diachronic study of similarities and differences in the personal characteristics and in the patterns of recruitment and careers of European representative elites will provide powerful instruments for a better understanding of the processes of political mobilisation, institutionalisation and democratisation taking place within the European nation states. At the same time, it will offer the opportunity to evaluate to what extent the process of European integration can rely upon convergence among diversities.
The Network will be able to exploit and update already existent empirical datasets, in particular the joint dataset (DATACUBE) recently developed with the help of a previous ESF exploratory grant. Articles and a series of books will disseminate the results.
Login