Great Powers and less powerful states alike increasingly act outside international law. New alliances and rivalries are emerging. The declining importance of the UN Security Council and NATO, wars, as well as the weaponization of tariffs and technology, seem to wash away international norms and institutions, especially the liberal ones. Moreover, many voices from the Global South demand a new order that ends what they consider Western domination.
Junge Menschen werden häufig in Stereotypen beschrieben – mal als klimaengagierte und aktivistische, mal als politisch passive oder rechtspopulistisch orientierte Generation. Die Forschung zeichnet jedoch ein deutlich komplexeres Bild: Politische Einstellungen und politisches Engagement junger Menschen sind stark ausdifferenziert und werden von unterschiedlichen Faktoren geprägt, darunter politische Sozialisationserfahrungen, wirtschaftliche Zukunftsaussichten, Geschlechterrollen und digitale Informationsräume.
This lecture explores the transformative shift in global governance and societal organization as traditional state structures are increasingly challenged—and sometimes replaced—by algorithmic systems. Presenting Mathias Bianchi’s book of the same title, it examines how data-driven technologies, artificial intelligence, and automated decision-making are reshaping sovereignty, citizenship, and power in the digital age.
Bildung, Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend – die Gesellschaft in ihrer ganzen Breite findet sich im Zuständigkeitsbereich von Bundesministerin Karin Prien, und so versteht sie ihr Ministerium auch als maßgeblich für den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt in Deutschland. Bildungsgerechtigkeit, Gleichstellung und Zivilgesellschaft sind auch zentrale Forschungsthemen am WZB, und die Sozialforschung kann mit ihren Erkenntnissen zur politischen Willensbildung beitragen.
Keynote speaker for the WZB Annual Address on Migration and Diversity is Michael Muthukrishna, Professor of Economic Psychology at the London School of Economics.
Am Sonntag, den 13. September 2026, wird auf dem Kulturforum wieder gefeiert. Zum fünften Mal veranstalten die benachbarten Kultur- und Wissenschaftseinrichtungen und die St. Matthäus-Kirche einen "Tag im Grünen" für die ganze Familie. Auch das WZB beteiligt sich am Fest.
The workshop will gather researchers working on matching, market-, and mechanism design, through the lens of theoretical as well as related empirical and experimental work. The event will feature invited talks and focused discussions, creating opportunities for collaboration across institutions and methodologies.
What does it mean to become a citizen through data? As states, platforms, and development agencies increasingly rely on metrics to see, govern, and intervene, datafication is reshaping how political membership is recognized and contested—often most starkly in unequal urban peripheries. In this talk, we present the core agenda of the ERC Starting Grant InfoCitizen, which is building a global ethnography of the practices and infrastructures through which data are produced, circulated, and made consequential in the Global South.
At the 8th Neighborhood Festival at Schöneberg Town Hall, researchers from the WZB will engage with citizens in conversation about social cohesion, civic engagement, and protest, as well as workers’ rights, political conflicts, and democracy. Under the theme “Social Science Meets the Neighborhood,” the researchers will offer insights into their work, present key findings from their research, and answer questions.
We are excited to announce an upcoming one-day workshop aimed at fostering exchange at the intersection of behavioral and public economics. The workshop will bring together Berlin School of Economics researchers studying policy-relevant questions in behavioral public economics, public finance, labor, and behavioral public policy more broadly.
The workshop will include a keynote lecture by Naomi Feldman (Hebrew University).
Berlin’s urban landscape is changing rapidly: rising rents, displacement, and the transformation of established neighborhoods disproportionately affect people with a migration background, and shape who gets to feel at home in the city. But what does research tell us? How are gentrification, cultural diversity, and social inequality connected — and what perspectives can social science offer for a more equitable urban development?
Pro-democratic civil society in electoral authoritarian regimes is often confined to urban centers, limiting its ability to build broad-based coalitions. Can paid social media advertisements help overcome this geographic concentration? We examine this through the first large-scale field experiment of social media-based mobilization in an authoritarian context. Partnering with Turkey’s leading election-integrity NGO, we randomly assigned non-metropolitan districts to receive ads recruiting election monitors ahead of the 2023 general election.
OHNE ZIVILGESELLSCHAFT GEHT ES NICHT!
Panel discussants:
Prof. Dr. Robin Mansell (Professor emerita, London School of Economics),
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Thiel (Universität Erfurt) and
Prof. Dr. Jamal Shahin (Brussels School of Governance / University of Amsterdam / United Nations University-CRIS)
Über 55.000 Menschen leben aktuell in Berlin ohne eigenen Wohnraum – sie schlafen in Zelten, auf der Straße, bei Bekannten, in Wohnheimen oder Notunterkünften. Doch was wissen wir eigentlich über ihre gesundheitliche und soziale Lage? Welche Lücken zeigt das Berliner Versorgungssystem – und wie kann Forschung dazu beitragen, Hilfsangebote besser zu gestalten?
Fragen öffentlicher Haushaltsgestaltung werden in politischen wie wissenschaftlichen Debatten häufig unter ökonomischen Gesichtspunkten verhandelt – als Problem verfügbarer Ressourcen, administrativer Möglichkeiten oder makroökonomischer Restriktionen. Der Leviathan-Sonderband „Politische Theorien öffentlicher Finanzen“ rückt demgegenüber die politischen Dimensionen öffentlicher Finanzen in den Vordergrund.
The current US administration is, unlike the populist authoritarian regimes in Central Europe of recent years, not adequately characterized as following a legalist authoritarian or competitive constitutionalist path.
Wie haben sich soziale Unterschiede zwischen Ost und West in Berlin und Deutschland seit der Wiedervereinigung verändert? Wo zeigen sich Ungleichheiten heute noch besonders deutlich – und was sagt die Forschung dazu? Und wie war das eigentlich während der deutschen Teilung in Berlin, besonders im Berliner Mitte-Kiez?
Das Expert:innenforum Startchancen Frühe Bildung am 28. April 2026 ist die zweite Veranstaltung einer vierteiligen Reihe. Mit den Foren möchten wir einen Raum bieten, um interdisziplinär über gerechte Bildungschancen in der frühen Bildung zu diskutieren.
Deutschland braucht dringend Wirtschaftswachstum, das sagt auch der Bundekanzler. Was muss dafür getan werden? Sollten Feiertage abgeschafft werden? Oder braucht es mehr Beschäftigte in Vollzeit statt in Teilzeit? Sollen Unternehmen flexiblere, längere Arbeitszeiten einführen und sich vom gesetzlich geschützten Achtstundentag verabschieden dürfen? Oder sollten Betriebe im Gegenteil auf mehr Freiraum für Arbeitnehmer/innen, Gleitzeit und Viertagewoche setzen? Was macht Unternehmen wieder produktiver und die Einzelnen leistungsfähiger? Und schafft die Wirtschaft damit wieder Wachstum?
Join us for a panel discussion that brings together practitioners to discuss results from the ARM Project (funded by Horizon Europe) to explore strategies of transnational information manipulation, their impact on democratic societies, and practical ways to counter them. This event is co-hosted by the Centre for Digital Governance and the Berlin Social Science Centre.
Wie kann zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement gegen Rechtsextremismus wirksamer unterstützt werden? Wer übernimmt welche Verantwortung in Politik, Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft? Und wie lassen sich Praxiswissen und wissenschaftliche Evidenz besser miteinander verzahnen, damit vernetztes Handeln Wirkung entfaltet?
How have dramatically falling birthrates driven Putin’s War in Ukraine? What role do they play in today’s anti-immigrant populism in Europe and in the United States? How do they shape the conflicts around identity politics? These will be the central questions in an event organized by WZB Berlin Social Science Center in cooperation with the American Academy in Berlin on April 14, 2026.
Can intergroup contact improve relations between refugees and host communities? If so, are there added returns to combining contact and empathy education? To answer these questions, we conducted a field experiment that brings together 900 Syrian refugees and Lebanese nationals in three localities in Lebanon, where refugees make up a quarter of the national population. Working with a Lebanese NGO, we randomly assigned Lebanese and Syrian youth participants to nationally heterogeneous (Lebanese and Syrian) or homogeneous (Lebanese or Syrian) groups for a 12-week psychosocial support program.
This workshop is co-organized with Prof. Franziska Keller (University of Bern). If you are interested, please apply through the link.
Contemporary conservatism is undergoing significant strain in many countries. It faces pressure from a growing radical right, internal radicalization tendencies, and the normalization of formerly fringe positions. Long-standing conservative policy priorities of low taxation and public spending are challenged by overlapping economic and demographic crises. At the same time, there are signs of backlash among conservative voters against progressive value change and identity politics. These pressures occur in political landscapes shaped by growing polarization, hostility, and fragmentation.
Equal access to justice is a central prerequisite for democratic societies. Yet the gap between legal ideals and lived reality remains wide. Legal aid systems face growing pressure, digitalisation creates both new opportunities and new barriers, and social inequalities continue to shape how people understand and use the law. In times of increasing social and economic polarisation, questions of equitable access to justice become ever more pressing.
How can democracies respond to crises without sliding into technocracy or political erosion? Celebrating the recent publication of Democracy on a Tightrope: Politics and Bureaucracy in Brazil, this event brings the authors into conversation with academics and civil society, highlighting both the challenges and the productive forms of collaboration that shape democratic governance today
Authors:
Pedro Abramovay (Open Society Foundation)
This lecture will present a study by Anna Baranowska-Rataj and Sara Kalucza (Umeå University) about the influence of adult children's adverse labour market experiences on the mental health of their ageing parents. Taking a life course perspective, this study examined the trajectory of adult children over nearly a decade following graduation from a school or university.
