Events 2013

On one level the answer is “of course!”  Science is proven possible every day by the existence of scientific journals and societies, by the professional activities and employment of scientists, and by the ongoing process of scientific education and apprenticeship.  But on another level science is a complicated and fragile enterprise whose existence depends on a constellation of distinctive cultural circumstances (abstraction, reason, empiricism, curiosity), organizational patterns (work settings, access to instruments and data, journals, professional societies), institutional arrangements (

Die Vortragsreihe „Europa in der Krise. Problemdiagnose und Zukunftsperspektiven“ im Rahmen des Jahresthemas 2013|14 "Zukunftsort: EUROPA" an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften geht in ihre dritte Runde. In diesem Teil der Reihe thematisiert der Politikwissenschaftler Michael Zürn die Konsequenzen der Finanz- und Währungskrise für die europäische Integration und versucht - aus einer transnationalen Perspektive - Wege einer europäischen Verständigung nach der Krise aufzuzeigen. Zu dem öffentlichen Vortrag laden wir Sie herzlich ein.

Das Thema Wissenstransfer ist hochaktuell, wissenschaftspolitisch wie wissenschaftssoziologisch. Anders als bei den Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften gibt es für die Sozial- und Raumwissenschaften keine Analysen des Wissens- und Technologietransfers. In diesen Disziplinen ist umstritten, ob Transfer in außerwissenschaftliche Bereiche überhaupt zum Kanon guter Wissenschaft gehört. Dementsprechend sind Transferaktivitäten in den sozial- und raumwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen bisher gering institutionalisiert und kaum sichtbar.

While most literature on neoliberalism argues it can only be understood through its variety and geographic specificity, accounts still often emphasise two particular narratives. Firstly, that neoliberalism was implemented in its vanguard phase by governments of the Right (such as those of Thatcher and Reagan, with similar policies subsequently adopted by social democratic parties). Secondly, that neoliberalism is primarily a coercive project (e.g. direct attacks on unions and the working class, imposition of structural adjustment, the Pinochet dictatorship).

Western perceptions of Pakistan tend to be uniformly negative – corrupt, dysfunctional and dangerous are only a few adjectives that come to mind. For years, Pakistan has been perceived by many observers of global affairs as a stumbling block towards regional and global security and peace. With this dominant biased view, many dimensions of Pakistan’s developments have been overlooked. What actually constitutes Pakistani society and which powers define its politics?

Der Autonomiebegriff spielt in der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung seit ihren Anfängen eine zentrale und umstrittene Rolle. Immer wieder ist fraglich, ob und in welcher Hinsicht Wissenschaft als ein mit Regeln eigener Art ausgestatteter autonomer Handlungsbereich anzusehen und entsprechend zu behandeln ist oder umgekehrt, ob Forschungsfreiheit überhaupt ein wünschenswerter Zustand sein kann. Zudem finden sich auch Konjunkturen, da diese Debatten vor allem in Krisenzeiten geführt werden, in denen Integrität, Eigenwert und Akzeptanz von Wissenschaft in Frage stehen.

Most consumers respond with scepticism or hostility when asked directly about factory farming, based on their associations of cruelty to animals. Most people say to be willing to pay higher prices for meat if livestock is held in a more animal-friendly way. This however does not translate into consumer decisions: around 98% of the meat comes from large scale livestock farming. Why? Which living conditions have to be guaranteed to animals? Is it right to eat animals? And how can customers take more responsibility?

Introduction:

Der Deutsche Juristinnenbund e.V. (djb), das Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin) und das Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) laden ein zu einer gemeinsamen Veranstaltung "Frauen in Führungspositionen auf dem Weg nach oben: Wissenschaft und Unternehmen im Dialog".

Global standards in corporate financial and social reporting have attracted lots of attention from policy makers, and become an expanding field of research over the last few decades. A similar discussion about different approaches to reporting regulation has been largely missing in the non-corporate sector, in particular in the area of international development.

Academic quality production delivered by research universities is to a large extent an outcome of the way these institutions are functioning as organi­zations. Current literature basically focuses on an input-output model: the more resources are invested, the higher the quality. This paper tests another hypothesis that is of some importance, since top uni­versities are emerging around the world and especially in Far East Asia.

Nähere Informationen bei der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berufsbildungsforschungsnetz (AG BFN)

This talk provides an overview of the range of responses to the spread of precarious work in industrial countries. It first summarizes what is meant by precarious work and presents some data on its growth in various countries in recent years. It then reviews some of the actions taken by unions and different social movements in response to the spread of precarious work. Next, an array of social welfare policies and labor laws that have been enacted by governments to address the growing concerns over precarious work and its consequences will be discussed.

Western perceptions of Pakistan tend to be uniformly negative – corrupt, dysfunctional and dangerous are only a few adjectives that come to mind. For years, Pakistan has been perceived by many observers of global affairs as a stumbling block towards regional and global security and peace. With this dominant biased view, many dimensions of Pakistan’s developments have been overlooked. What actually constitutes Pakistani society and which powers define its politics?

Soziale Medien sind für viele Jugendliche und Erwachsene in Deutschland ein zentraler Bestandteil des alltäglichen privaten, aber auch beruflichen Lebens geworden. Im Rahmen dieses Workshops werden Experten aus dem Forschungsbereich „Social Media/Web 2.0“ Einblicke in unterschiedliche Themenbereiche gewähren und Forschungsergebnisse zu den Schwerpunkten Selbstdarstellung, Informationssuche, -austausch und -bewertung, Nutzung von Sozialkapital sowie Risikobewusstsein präsentieren.

Politische Entscheidungen sind heute ohne Berufung auf Expertise kaum noch denkbar. Dies lässt sich auch anhand der Vervielfältigung von Expertennetzwerken, Rating-Agenturen und Wissenschaftsbehörden auf inter- und transnationaler Ebene ablesen. Zugleich zeigt sich angesichts grenzüberschreitender Probleme – von der Kernenergie über BSE bis hin zum Klimawandel – dass Expertise gerade dort auf öffentliche Skepsis trifft, wo sie am stärksten nachgefragt wird.

Experiments become increasingly popular in the social sciences and the variety of experimental methods goes well beyond game theoretic lab experiments. Vignette analysis is a survey experiment, in which respondents are randomly treated with a hypothetical situation consisting of several core characteristics, e. g. various aspects of a pensioners work biography and his/her old-age provision. As these characteristics are manipulated within and between respondents, vignette analysis offers many options for the analysis of causal effects.

Blockseminar "Introduction to Intercultural Management"

Die Forderung nach Autonomie ist in der Wissenschaft gleichermaßen allgegenwärtig wie umstritten. Während Autonomie
auch in anderen gesellschaftlichen Feldern, etwa in der
Politik oder in der Kunst, ein Dauerthema der Selbstreflexion
ist, stößt man im Bereich der Wissenschaft hinsichtlich der
Notwendigkeit, den praktischen Konsequenzen und den Grenzen
der Autonomie auf besonders vielfältige und widersprüchliche
Positionsbestimmungen. Obwohl die Autonomiefrage
spätestens seit der Aufklärung ein wesentliches Moment wissenschaftlicher

On 28-29 October 2013, the WZB is hosting an international conference on the “Advances on the Political Economy of Conflict and Redistribution II” which is jointly organized by Thomas R. Cusack (WZB), Kai A. Konrad (Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, and WZB) and Karl Ove Moene (Norwegian Centre of Excellence on Equality, Social Organization, and Performance at the University of Oslo).

Im Rahmen der 2. Langen Nacht der Bibliotheken in Berlin lädt das WZB zu einer Architekturführung mit anschließender Lesung aus dem Buch Adam Smiths Reise nach Frankreich oder die Entstehung der Nationalökonomie des WZB-Mitarbeiters Reinhard Blomert ein.

Health care systems vary across multiple domains, including financing, delivery of services and access. While it is possible to evaluate health care systems in different ways, one of the most important aspect is how users of services evaluate their health care system and whether they consider their health needs to be met in satisfactory manner. As all citizens in a country are past, or at least potential users of services, we argue that public attitudes provide an important window into the general cultural climate of satisfaction, or lack therefore, with the health care system.

The A.SK Social Science Award 2013 will be granted to Paul Collier, professor of economics at the University of Oxford.

The event will take place on Saturday, 19 October 2013, 1 p.m. at the WZB. The laudatory speech will be held by Klaus Töpfer. Before the event there will be a concert matinee (11 a.m. to 12 noon).

In the past decade, a new approach to political economy has deepened our understanding of how political institutions shape economic outcomes and how economic forces feed back on political processes. Concurrently, there have been fruitful developments on the effect of social and cultural institutions on economic behavior. In an effort to generate insights spanning the two areas, this workshop will explore the interaction of social and political factors, with a particular focus on religion and politics, by bringing together scholars in both economics and economic history.

Evaluationen in der Wissenschaft gelten als ein Instrument der Beschleunigung. In der öffentlichen Debatte wird vielmals kritisiert, dass das Zählen von Publikationen und von Drittmitteln zwar zu mehr Output, nicht aber unbedingt zu besserer Qualität von Forschungsleistungen beitragen würde. In dem Kolloquium soll über die Effekte und Nebeneffekte von Evaluationen diskutiert werden.  Führen sie tatsächlich zu Fehlsteuerungen und Fehlanreizen?

“Counter-multilateralism” is an apt phrase to describe a pervasive contemporary phenomenon: the strategic use of multilateral institutions to challenge the rules, practices, or missions of multilateral institutions. States and non-state actors, intergovernmental organizations or non-governmental organizations form coalitions that respond to dissatisfaction by combining threats of exit, voice, and the creation of alternative institutions.

Our commonly used frequentist statistics tell us the likelihood to have randomly drawn our particular random dataset at hand, if in reality the null-hypothesis was true. This is quite complicated and so it comes at no surprise that we often falsely interpret these inferential statistics as the likelihood that the null-hypothesis is true, or even worse that a statistically significant finding is highly likely to be true. But is it not possible to infer the likelihood of our findings given the data rather than the likelihood of our data given the findings?

Those who argue that multilateralism is in crisis typically point to the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations under the WTO and the post-Kyoto negotiations under the UNFCCC as Exhibits A and B. Both sets of negotiations have moved at a glacial pace over the past decade, are plagued by mistrust and major divisions among hardened negotiating blocs, and have so far failed to fulfil their basic purposes.

Die Messung subjektiven Wohlbefindens spielt international eine immer stärkere Rolle. So hat die OECD im März dieses Jahres hierzu „guidelines“ vorgestellt, die die Verwendung von Messinstrumenten unterstützen und Hinweise für Analysen und Berichterstattung geben sollen. Damit soll die amtliche Statistik bessere Voraussetzungen für die Einbeziehung des subjektiven Wohlbefindens in ihre Erhebungen und letztendlich in den politischen Prozess schaffen. Durch die Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise stellt sich die Frage, ob und wie solche Entwicklungen das subjektive Wohlbefinden beeinträchtigen.

In quantitative analyses, we analyse nominal and continuous variables, or so we are taught. For example: is a country democratic and how democratic is a country, or is a person poor and how poor is she? But both democratization and impoverishment are processes that develop over time. In consequence, there are social trajectories of democratization and impoverishment.

The recent meltdown of the financial markets and the lack of progress on announced financial reforms at the international level have stimulated debates about power in the field of finance. What role do financial institutions have in influencing the regulatory process? What has been achieved since the financial crisis? These questions will be addressed by experts from academia, NGOs, and think tanks in this roundtable discussion.

School-to-Work Transitions in Times of Economic Crisis: Causes, Consequences and Remedies

The WZB is hosting the 21st Annual Workshop of the European Research Network on Transition-in-Youth. The main objective of the network is to advance our understanding of transitions in youth with a special focus on the transitions between education system and labour market.

Data linkage is a technique used to connect pieces of information that relate to the same individual, family, place, or event. Western Australia (WA) has developed a unique health data linkage system that connects information about all health events for individuals, including births, hospital admissions, cancer, mental health, and deaths. It offers longitudinal data, is cost-effective, and protects the individual’s privacy.  

Heutige Gesellschaften sind existentiell auf ein leistungsfähiges Wissenschaftssystem angewiesen, denn die Wissenschaft stellt das Wissen bereit, das zur Bewältigung immer komplexerer gesellschaftlicher Problemlagen erforderlich ist. Um jedoch die Wissenschaft und ihre Einrichtungen gezielt und effektiv zu fördern sowie zugleich auch die Folgen der wissenschaftlichen Entwicklungen insgesamt einschätzen zu können, bedarf die Wissenschafts- und Hochschulpolitik eines Reflexions- und Orientierungswissens.

Hailed by viewers and critics alike as the greatest TV show ever, Breaking Bad explores themes of economic conditions, occupational choice, self-affirmation and moral change through the example of high-school chemistry teacher Walter White who when diagnosed with terminal lung cancer seeks financial salvation for his family in the drug business.

This two-day conference focuses on field experiments, how they can inform our understanding of economic behavior and what its limitations are. The covered topics include incentives in the workplace, social identity and discrimination, selection issues, and preference anomalies. The aim of this conference is to bring together senior and junior researchers to discuss and present their work.

In recent years there has been a vigorous debate among political philosophers about the origin and limits of the territorial rights of states. Three major views have emerged: a Kantian view; a Lockean view; and a nationalist view. These views differ substantially, but what they have in common is that they theorize territorial rights essentially one state at a time, without taking anything like a global standpoint. For that reason, topics such as immigration and global responsibilities connected to territoriality only appear as afterthoughts in these accounts.

Die Konferenz zum Thema "Cosmpolitan Conditions for Legitimate Sovereignty" hat als Ausgangspunkt die These, dass Internationales Recht und Internationale Politik die Aufgabe haben, die externen Bedingungen zu gewährleisten, unter denen Behauptungen staatlicher Souveränität legitim sein können. Welche Bedingungen aber sind das genau?

The workshop is organized jointly by the research centers CIRPÉE
and WZB and will be held in Berlin at the WZB on July 12, 2013. The workshop will start in the morning and will end with a dinner on that day.

The main goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers analyzing ambiguity experimentally and theoretically, preferably in the context of markets.

Professor Yu Keping is the Director of the Center for Chinese Government Innovations at Beijing University, China. He is a distinguished scholar having produced many books including the widely noted Democracy Is a Good Thing. In addition to his academic work, he has also acted as an advisor on political reforms to the Chinese government.

Professor Yu is also the New World Senior Fellow in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Gegenwärtig wird intensiv über die zeitlichen Voraussetzungen der Demokratie debattiert: Wie verändert sich die Koordination durch Zeithorizonte (Governing by Time) und die Rhythmisierung des Regierens (Time of Governing)? Welche Rolle spielt die Verstetigung sozialer Macht in parlamentarischen und administrativen Zeitstrukturen? Zudem kollidieren diese Eigenzeiten demokratischen Regierens zunehmend mit der Beschleunigung ökonomischer, technologischer und kultureller Prozesse: Gerät die Demokratie dabei an ihre Geschwindigkeitsgrenzen?

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

The rule of law is commonly closely associated with the nation state. Ever more states commit themselves to rule of law standards and, moreover, the rule of law has become a prominent feature of legitimate statehood. As authority has started to shift from the national to the global level, so, too, has the rule of law. International law has expanded and mechanisms to foster its implementation have been strengthened.

Are we not only amusing but also traveling ourselves to death? Has the modern tourist industry abolished travel as we know it and transformed our cities and landscapes into open air-museums that all look the same, with only minor differences? Did the post-modern leisure and tourist industry capture the good old state-sponsored institution of the museum turning it into a blockbuster world with fancy curated exhibitions we go to as a secular surregate for the holy pilgrimage? What is behind the ongoing process of a musealization of our world that seems to neglects the past?

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Professor Moritz Renner is the Lichtenberg-Professor for Transnational Economic Law and Theory of Economic Law at the University of Bremen.

Das Kolleg für Interdisziplinäre Bildungsforschung der Abteilung Ausbildung und Arbeitsmarkt veranstaltet am 24.-25.05. seinen Public Science Workshop. Ziel des Workshops ist es, eine offene Grundhaltung und Sensibilität der teilnehmenden Fellows des Kollegs für die Auswahl ihrer Forschungsthemen sowie die Möglichkeit ihrer Verbreitung in die Öffentlichkeit zu fördern.

Proteste und soziale Bewegungen sind treibende Kräfte gesellschaftlicher Veränderung. Sie bestimmen immer wieder die Schlagzeilen, beeinflussen Entscheidungen und verändern den Blick auf die Welt. Obwohl Politik „von unten” so wirkmächtig ist, bleibt die wissenschaftlliche Analyse ihrer Entstehung, Entwicklung und Wirkung unterentwickelt. Mit dem entstehenden Institut für Protest‐und Bewegungsforschung wollen wir diese Lücke füllen.

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

The concept of subsidiarity doesn’t play an explicit role in the current political debate: neither in the discussion about the policy of commitment, nor in the discourses about the demographic change, about the personal responsibility of citizens, the new importance of municipalities or the renaissance of neighborhoods as places of lived solidarity.  But these topics affect the fundamental idea of subsidiarity.

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Following our earlier session on quantitative textual analysis, Sophie Mützel will introduce us to applications of topic models. Originally, developed in computer science, machine learning, and natural language processing, topic models have recently gained increased attention in digital humanities, but also in the social sciences. Based on a particular probabilistic distribution, topic model algorithms cluster together words into "topics" without a priori coding by analysts. Topic modeling thus can be used as a tool to discover themes in large collections of documents.

Die experimentelle Methode hat in den letzten Jahren einen wachsenden Einfluss in der Entwicklungsökonomik erworben. Mit ihr lässt sich vor allem die Wirksamkeit ökonomischer Interventionen im Feld überprüfen. Viel verwendet wird die Methode der randomized trials, wie sie aus klinischen Versuchsreihen bekannt ist. Ein gänzlich anderer Ansatz ist die Analyse individueller Präferenzen an der Schnittstelle von Psychologie und experimenteller Ökonomik. Die beiden Herangehensweisen haben sehr ähnliche Zielsetzungen, aber werden verfolgt in fast vollständiger Unabhängigkeit voneinander.

Zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen als Lobbygruppen? Lange war diese Formulierung kaum denkbar. Lobbying betrieben die anderen: Unternehmen, die Verbände aus der Wirtschaft, Interessengruppen, die auf ihren eigenen Vorteil bedacht sind. Zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen machen sich ihrem Verständnis zufolge für breite, gemeinwohlaffine Interessen stark, auch stellvertretend für die Schwachen. Zudem verstanden sich viele zivilgesellschaftliche Gruppen als soziomoralische Basis der Demokratie.

A brownbag seminar by Prof. Dr. Markus Wissen, Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin.

9.00-11.30:  Symposium (A300)

11.30-12.30: Exhibition "Objects of Newness" (A300/public)

13.00-14.00: Lunch Beat (Garage/public)

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Ein Vortrag von Prof. Val Burris, Universität Oregon, im Rahmen der Brownbag-Serie der Projektgruppe "Modes of Economic Governance".

The debate on trust, cooperation, and civic engagement in ethnically diverse communities has proliferated rapidly over the last decade. Dozens of studies have been conducted on a variety of countries and levels of analysis, across a range of indicators of social capital, and using divergent operationalizations of diversity. The outcomes of these studies have been almost as varied as their research designs. The time has come to draw up the balance. The conference will focus on the discussion about causal mechanisms linking diversity and social capital.  

How do political parties which are in competition with other parties under proportional representation, choose the composition of their lists with regard to gender and competence? Torsten Persson asks this question for Sweden. He has built a unique data set with rich individual data on all politicial candidates, in all parties, in all Swedish municipalities, since 1988. The data show that the elected shares of women and competent men both increase with the quality of the party leadership.

Drawing from reports in investigative journalism, military documents, and critical scholarship, Lucy Suchman examines connections between the emphasis in military and security discourses on keeping “our” bodies safe through so called network-centric warfare, and the project of cutting the networks that might bring wars too close to home. The lecture will examine conjoinings of persons and machines within the military-industrial-media-entertainment network.

Western perceptions of Pakistan tend to be uniformly negative – corrupt, dysfunctional and dangerous are only a few adjectives that come to mind. For years, Pakistan has been perceived by many observers of global affairs as a stumbling block towards regional and global security and peace. With this dominant biased view, many dimensions of Pakistan’s developments have been overlooked. What actually constitutes Pakistani society and which powers define its politics?

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Ein Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Ulrich Brand, Universität Wien, im Rahmen der Brownbag-Serie der Projektgruppe "Modes of Economic Governance".

We argue that the standard EU model (and a fortiori PT, CPT, etc) is empirically useless, and that we should rethink risky choice theory.

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and Public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York University) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

Gonçalo de Almeida Ribeiro is Gulbenkian Professor at the Católica Global School of Law.

Wer sich gesellschaftlich engagieren will, braucht zunächst Informationen über die Möglichkeiten, aktiv zu werden. Solche Informationen werden in den meisten Fällen über soziale Kontakte vermittelt. Die Forschung ist sich einig: Je größer das persönliche soziale Netzwerk, desto höher ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, für ein Engagement angesprochen zu werden.

Why are income and subjective well-being related? Scholars have offered two very different sorts of explanations, suggesting that income’s positive association with happiness and life satisfaction is attributable to 1) the goods that income “buys” (the absolute income explanation) or 2) the social comparisons that income engenders (the relative income explanation). The presentation will summarize key findings of a national RDD survey of 728 U.S. adults conducted in 2012 that was designed to address this issue.

This event is part of the colloquium series “Rethinking Law in a Global Context”, which this summer semester focuses on “Private Ordering and public Authority”, sponsored by the WZB Rule of Law Center and convened by Prof. Dr. Mattias Kumm (WZB and New York Univeristy) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

This conference presents sociological research on poverty conducted by a set of international scholars. Special attention is devoted to how the major societal institutions of work, family, housing, and education contribute to poverty.

In the next five decades the Australian population pyramid will invert, doubling the ratio of people over 65 to the working age population from 20 percent in 2007 to around 40 percent in 2050. One way to safeguard economic productivity is to raise labour forceparticipation. This could be achieved by extending employment past the current retirement age and further engaging mothers. Australian mothers’ participation is low, and the majority of employed mothers work part-time (similar to the situation in Germany).

Muslime werden im öffentlichen Diskurs oft als integrationspolitisches Problem dargestellt. Dabei wurde Integrationspolitik jahrzehntelang ohne Beteiligung der Zielgruppen formuliert. So konnten keine erfolgreichen Strategien für die gesellschaftliche Einbindung von Minderheiten entwickelt werden. Außerdem führt die mangelnde Repräsentation ganzer Bevölkerungssegmente zu einem Legitimationsdefizit.

Sarwar Bari (Pattan, Pakistan)

Western perceptions of Pakistan tend to be uniformly negative – corrupt, dysfunctional and dangerous are only a few adjectives that come to mind. For years, Pakistan has been perceived by many observers of global affairs as a stumbling block towards regional and global security and peace. With this dominant biased view, many dimensions of Pakistan’s developments have been overlooked. What actually constitutes Pakistani society and which powers define its politics?

The worldwide financial crisis of 2007-2010 was set off by the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the U.S. This crisis caused widespread banking failure in the U.S. and forced the federal government to provide a massive bailout to the financial sector. The crisis simultaneously reverberated to banks around the world, and eventually brought about a worldwide recession. This paper documents why Western European countries were so susceptible to the housing price downturn.

A brownbag seminar by Lukas Graf, WZB, in cooperation with the WZB project group "Modes of Economic Governance".

What are the impacts of artistic interventions in organizations, how are such initiatives funded and what policy measures are needed to develop the field in Europe? Answers to these questions were generated in the course of the 2-year Creative Clash project, supported by the EU, and will be presented at the closing conference at the Goethe Institute in Brussels. The conference positions artistic interventions as a vehicle emanating from the creative sector to stimulate innovation in all kinds of public and private organizations.

The Research Unit “Skill Formation and Labour Market” is a leading partner in the new “College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research”, the first attempt in Germany to provide a structured career advancement program for postdocs. 30 research fellows from sociology, psychology, education and economics will cooperate in interdisciplinary projects to study important issues in educational research.

At the kick-off workshop, the main research topics of the College,
- educational inequality and success against the odds

Gegenwärtig kreisen drei unterschiedliche Diskurse um die vermeintliche Krise der Demokratie: die öffentliche Diskussion, die Debatte in der Politischen Theorie sowie in der empirischen Demokratieforschung. Interessanterweise unterscheiden sie sich in ihren Aussagen: Die öffentliche ebenso wie die theoretische Debatte machen unmissverständlich klar, dass es eine Krise der Parteien, der Parlamente, der politischen Eliten, der Partizipation, der Repräsentation und der demokratischen Herrschaft, kurz: eine Krise des gesamten demokratischen Systems gibt.

Central to the analysis of diffusion is identifying what is being diffused and explaining why that innovation travels across units. In this talk, Valerie Bunce  compares three cross-national waves of popular mobilizations against authoritarian rulers over the past quarter of a century – that is, 1989, the color revolutions and the Arab uprisings – in order to address precisely those questions.

Wenn von Zivilgesellschaft und Engagement die Rede ist, werden konflikthafte Formen (z.B. Proteste) und politische Partizipationsansprüche nicht selten marginalisiert oder sogar herausgefiltert. Politisches Engagement ist aber nicht von der Sphäre der Zivilgesellschaft zu trennen: Viele zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen gehen aus politischen Konflikten hervor. Proteste gehören nicht nur für ein Viertel der Bevölkerung, sondern auch für 12 Prozent der zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen zum selbstverständlichen Handlungsrepertoire.

In seinem Klassiker “Wir sind nie modern gewesen” hebt Bruno Latour auf Michel Serres verweisend hervor, dass wir nicht nur “exchangers and brewers of time” geworden sind, sondern dass es die stetige Verhandlung rund um Zeit ist, die uns weitreichend definiert. Ausgehend von dieser Feststellung wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie es um die Zeitregime kontemporärer Forschung steht.

Die 8. wissenschaftliche Jahrestagung der Keynes-Gesellschaft wird sich grundlegenden Keynesianischen Positionen widmen. Analysiert werden u.a. Keynes’ „Monetäre Theorie der Produktion“, die Rolle des „Animal Spirits“ und die Beziehungen zur evolutorischen Makroökonomie. Weiter Referate behandeln ausgewählte Probleme Europas, von den Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zu China bis zum künftigen Fachkräftemangel. Anmeldeformulare können unter mail [at] keynes-gesellschaft.de angefordert werden.
 

Workshop organized by Steffen Huck, Michael Hutter, Sir Peter Jonas, and Dorothea Kübler

While new ideas are two a penny, ideas that change the world are few and far between. In this workshop we want to explore the social, cultural and economic mechanisms that operate between the birth of an idea and its fulfilment in establishing change (or changing the establishment).

Die typische Führungskraft einer Stiftung ist ein gebildeter, gut situierter Mann um die 50. Was bedeutet das für die Entscheidungsstrukturen? Wie elitär sind Stiftungsgremien? Berit Sandberg zeigt, welche gesellschaftlichen Kreise die meist ehrenamtliche Stiftungsarbeit prägen.

Experimental results on the Ellsberg paradox typically reveal

The workshop serves to present and discuss the results of the research on the New Direction Foundation and the network of national think tanks (24 organizations) linked to the European foundation of the (right wing) European Parliament Group of Conservatives and Reformists (about 50 MEPs). The information has been collected over five months in collaboration with country experts and is presented at the website of the Think Tank Network Research Initiative. 

Automated content analysis is becoming increasingly popular for large-scale inference of information from all kinds of text. Although the talk focuses on the estimation of policy positions from political text, the underlying methods are basically applicable to a large variety of research questions. 

Resources:

Das Soziale befindet sich zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts in einer Phase des rapiden Wandels, in der die alten Institutionen sich auflösen, ohne dass sich neue Stabilitätsgaranten und Gleichgewichtspunkte etablieren.  Im Pragmatismus, der durch Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey und George Herbert Mead geprägt wurde, schlummert ein gesellschaftstheoretisches Potenzial, das in der deutschsprachigen Rezeption bisher fast vollständig übersehen worden ist. Kann eine pragmatistisch informierte Soziologie zu einem besseren Verständnis spätmoderner Gegenwarten beitragen?

Was passiert mit der Zivilgesellschaft, wenn sich neue räumliche Bezugsgrößen wie Metropolregionen bilden? Die eher abstrakte räumliche Handlungsebene stellt alle Akteure vor neue Herausforderungen. Elke Becker erklärt, welche Möglichkeiten sich dort für zivilgesellschaftliches Handeln bieten – oder auch nicht.