Institute of Political Science

Common public goods

- The political organization of infrastructure provision in the regulatory state

The research project "Common public goods. The political organization of infrastructure provision in the regulatory state" is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the funding line "Participation and Common Good" and is located at the Institute of Political Science at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

We investigate how infrastructure tasks are politically conceived as public goods and how they are demanded from the guarantor state. We are interested in the extent to which the state sees itself as a guarantor state in the organization of services for the common good and is able to meet the expectations placed on it. We focus on selected fields of action:

- outpatient health care in rural areas

- the provision of urban housing

- ensuring "clean air".

In these fields of action, we want to determine more precisely what specific developments, problems and obstacles there are and how political decision-makers are reacting to them. In particular, we analyze the competing meanings and justifications for the state's offer of public goods. In addition, we examine the performance claims  that civil society actors bring to the state. Among the competing discursive and programmatic conceptions, the positions of so-called "weak interest groups" are to be given special attention - from the perspective of participation.

 

Comparative climate change policy analysis in cities in California and Baden-Württemberg

The research project "Comparative climate change policy analysis in cities in California and Baden-Württemberg" has been funded by the initiative "Creating Climate Change Collaboration (4c) Baden-Württemberg - California State University" by Dr. Melanie Nagel (Institute of Political Science). It is funded by the Excellence Strategy "Environmental Systems" of the University of Tübingen and carried out in cooperation with scientists of the California State University in Long Beach. Two research assistants are employed in Tübingen and three in LongBeach. Due to the pandemic, this pilot study will be conducted online and is planned for one year (start February 2021). Teams of researchers in Long Beach and Tübingen will collect data in
Phase 1, collect data on local climate policy in the selected case cities (Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Long Beach, and Oakland) via local newspapers, creating a cross-national code-book and analyze these with a discourse network analysis. In Phase 2, local climate policy organizations identified as relevant will be investigated with a survey questionnaire. The research questions refer to questions like: Which actors are particularly important for a (more or less) successful climate policy? Which discourses that are supportive for local climate protection projects can be identified? What motivates actors to engage in climate protection projects? The research trip funded by the Ministry of Science and the Arts will be followed up at a later date and a research cooperation beyond this will be pursued.

Welcome Culture and Democracy in Germany

Joint project founded by BMBF

Welcome Culture and Democracy in Germany
Refugee Policy Initiatives as Sites of Active Citizenship, Collective Conflict Negotiation, and Democratic Learning

> Funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
> Duration 15.10.2017 until 31.03.2020
> For further information please visit www.welcome-democracy.de

In response to the influx of refugees, the temporary overload of state infrastructures, and partly in explicit demarcation from racist attacks and group-based misanthropy, 2015 saw a wave of assistance in Germany from civil society organizations, but also from those who had previously hardly been involved. Democracy in Germany faces a number of problems at this point: State infrastructure is underfunded in many areas, numerous people living in Germany are excluded from political participation due to a lack of civil rights, while the basic democratic consensus among the population is eroding. Existing social conflicts in Germany are intensifying.

Against this background, the joint project at the University of Kassel, the University of Osnabrück and the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen investigated how democracy has changed in the course of the so-called "welcome culture."

The project focused on three research questions: Do refugee policy initiatives contribute to inclusive democratic decision-making and articulation through their internal social forms? How did democratic attitudes and political subjectivities develop or change in the initiatives' actions? Do they provide a democratizing impulse for established decision-making structures?

Project management:
    Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Bieling (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen)
    Prof. Dr. Helen Schwenken (University of Osnabrück)
    Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tuider (University of Kassel)

Collaborators:
    Doreen Bormann, M.A. (Eberhard Karls University Tübingen)
    Dr. Katherine Braun (University of Osnabrück)
    Samia Dinkelaker, Dipl. Pol. (University of Osnabrück)
    Tom Fixemer, M.A. (University of Kassel)
    Dr. Nikolai Huke (Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen)
    Dr. Olaf Tietje (University of Kassel)

Documentaries

  • Refugee solidarity in Dresden and the surrounding area (2019, 16 min.)
     
  • "The solidarity among each other: that gives me strength!" Women's projects and work with refugee women (2020, 17 min.)
     
  • New Neighbors. From the initial reception center for refugees to their own apartment (2019, 17 min.)
     
  • "If we wait for the government, nothing will happen." Activism of refugees in Hamburg (2019, 16 min.).
     
  • "The state creates a precarity problem." Restrictive asylum policies hamper refugees' labor market integration (2019, 14 min).

To watch the documentaries, click here

Collected Volume: After the "Welcome Culture"

Samia Dinkelaker / Nikolai Huke / Olaf Tietje (Hg.)

Collected Volume: After the "Welcome Culture". Refugees between contested participation and civil society solidarity
Samia Dinkelaker / Nikolai Huke / Olaf Tietje (Eds.)

The "welcome culture" that began in Germany in 2015 will be remembered by many activists as a great moment of civil society engagement. At the same time, the participation of refugees was and is contested, and many racist attacks and assaults occurred in the period after the "Summer of Migration. Based on more than 160 interviews with refugees, civil society organizations, and government agencies, the contributors to this volume provide a reflective stocktaking and interpretation of this phase. Their empirically differentiated and multi-layered overview offers theoretical impulses for debates on micro-politics of engagement, solidarity, and an everyday-centered understanding of democracy.

The book is available in open access .

Focus Issue: Migration and Participation

Bürger & Staat

Five years after the "Summer of Migration," the issue provides an overview of current immigration challenges. The 96-page issue of the journal "Bürger & Staat" includes eleven essays.

With the immigration of nearly one million refugees in 2015, an initially dynamic movement of refugee assistance emerged, stemming from the goal of refugees' participation in society. With a view to practical experiences, the contributions address, among other things, the areas of labor market integration, housing provision, the everyday, often also voluntary support work and administrative action. They point to positive developments, but also identify difficulties and conflicts. In addition, examples are used to discuss what makes it difficult or impossible for refugees to participate.

The booklet is available in open access .

Project articles:

  •     Hans-Jürgen Bieling, Nikolai Huke: After the "Summer of Welcome Culture":
        Conflicts of Participation in the Postmigrant Society
  •     Olaf Tietje: "... as always in the industrial park."
        Restrictions on the social participation of refugees due to their accommodation
  •     Samia Dinkelaker, Helen Schwenken:
        Fragmented protection at the intersection of violent gender relations and restrictive asylum and residence policies
  •     Delal Atmaca, Samia Dinkelaker: A right to protection from violence for all women*.
  •     Elisabeth Tuider: Welcome to the Postmigration Society

Brochure for Political Education Work: Democracy and Participation in the Migration Society

Practical teaching methods and materials for education officers and teachers of social subjects and subject groups

The brochure "Democracy and Participation in the Migration Society" explores the question of how democracy can be lived in such a way that everyone can benefit from it and participate in it.

Through five thematic modules (integration and solidarity, refugee regime and social rights, racism in the post-migrant society, protection against violence in the context of flight and migration, democracy and self-organization), the brochure shows how, on the one hand, mechanisms of exclusion function and, on the other hand, counter-practices of people with a history of flight and migration and solidarity networks are shaped.

Through a variety of methods (short films, texts, interview passages, and experiential and interactive methods of peace education), the modules offer plenty of space for reflection on how people without a secure right to stay, with few resources and limited rights, can gain access to protection and participation. The methods and materials can be used by teachers and educational advisors as desired in the classroom, in topic-related projects, study groups, as well as workshops and training courses in political education work.

The brochure is freely available for non-commercial distribution Download PDF

Editors:

Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Bieling
Doreen Bormann, M.A.
Samia Dinkelaker, Dipl.-Pol.
Paula Edling, B.A.
Tom Fixemer, M.A.
Prof. Dr. Helen Schwenken
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tuider

Trade unions and right-wing populism

Trade unions and right-wing populism. Experiences and Learning Processes in Country Comparison

The research project, funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation (duration 1.11.2018 - 30.10.2019; Researcher Sylvia Erben), examines how trade unions react to the foreseeable or feared consequences of the increase in importance of right-wing populist parties - the questioning of social and labor rights, the weakening of trade union solidarity and fighting power, internal organizational conflicts. The research project focuses on three main questions:

1) How do right-wing populist parties concretely address the social question, i.e., how do they position themselves in terms of economic, social, and labor policy and what is their attitude towards workers' rights and forms of co-determination?

2) How have the unions - in selected countries Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands - reacted to the programmatic and strategic discourses and practices of right-wing populists to date?

3) What positive and negative experiences have they had? Can lessons, perhaps even "best practices", be identified by which trade unions in Germany can be inspired?

The results of the study can be downloaded here.