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GIGA RP 1 - Research
Research Programme 1:
Areas of Analysis and Research Projects
The work of RP 1 concentrates on three areas of analysis:
Area of Analysis 1:
Institutionalisation and performance of political actors
Corporative and collective political actors - such as political parties, labour
unions and employers' associations, the judiciary, press/media, and civil society
- are crucial for the reproduction of political systems. They can also be essential
in processes of democratic consolidation, if they exhibit not only a certain
degree of stability, durability, and internal complexity, but also comply with
requirements of participation and transparency. In terms of the efficiency and
legitimacy of political systems, these actors can play an important role in
the workings of political regimes, as regards civil rights, political participation,
governability or horizontal checks and balances. The question remains, however,
whether one actor (e.g. an active civil society) can compensate for the shortcomings
of another (e.g. political parties). Moreover, it is unclear what role these
actors play in only partially open societies, as so far, there are few comparative
studies on such actors. Knowledge of the autonomy and the political capability
of parties, labour unions, employers' and other associations as well as on the
autonomy and internal structure of civil society remains particularly limited.
On account of these lacunae, the institutionalisation and, in particular, the
impact of parties, unions, associations and civil society in the world regions
covered by GIGA is examined from a comparative perspective.
Current research projects:
- Der Einfluss von Parteien und Zivilgesellschaft auf die Sozialpolitik in Indien (Joachim Betz/Bianca Stachoske)
- Strukturen und Dynamik der „New Intermestics“: US-Latinos als
transnationale politische Akteure in Residenz- und Herkunftsland (Bert Hoffmann)
- Parteipolitik und Islamisierung in Malaysia (Andreas Ufen)
Area of Analysis 2:
Social mobilisation and legitimacy discourses
Social and political change, whether induced by governments or protest movements,
requires mobilisation. As mobilisation theory approaches are crucial for understanding
the connection between social processes at the micro- and the macro-level, they
have become a key concept in recent times for explaining processes of social
transformation. This applies especially to research on non-western societies.
According to classical modernisation theory, western institutions can be transferred
in an unmodified form to non-western societies. Today, however, the notion that
in many countries a combination of tradition and innovation can generate unexpected
and new outcomes ("multiple modernities") has become widely accepted.
Therefore, we analyse the causes, mechanisms and consequences of collective
mobilisation by considering different countries and regions of the world and
assessing the empirical findings using comparative and theoretical perspectives.
In this area of analysis, research interest ranges from protest movements to
governments and how the latter communicate their policies to the public. Discourses
of legitimacy are of particular relevance: If mobilisation is understood as
the activation of resources for accomplishing political aims, political actors
must constantly try to furnish their claim to power with an "aura"
of legitimacy. This applies in equal measure to governments and to the political
opposition. Our research draws attention to 1) the mechanisms of acquiring legitimacy,
2) the open and hidden discourses of legitimacy, 3) the strategies to mobilise
consensus, 4) the responsiveness of political regimes, 5) the structures of
mobilisation networks, 6) the production and reproduction of ideologies and
collective identities and 7) the management of public opinion.
Current research projects:
- Legitimacy Discourses in Contemporary China (Heike Holbig/Bruce Gilley,
Queen’s University, Canada)
Area of Analysis 3:
Ruling and governing in non-European contexts
Political power can be understood as the capability to make and implement collectively
binding decisions. The variability of political power essentially depends on
the ways in which power or rulership is executed and how the relevant power
holders and rulers are (s)elected. Both dimensions of political power are examined
in this area of analysis. With respect to authoritarian and hybrid political
systems, we are primarily interested in the dimension of power execution: How
can such political systems be captured in typological terms? What is the relationship
between formal and informal institutions within them? How do power holders in
such systems try to create or maintain at least a modicum of legitimacy and
what can we say about the efficiency in selected policy areas? Also of interest
is the question: how (context) factors affect political transformations. In
other words, when and why do such transformations lead to liberal democracy,
a hybrid regime or a return to authoritarianism?
The not insubstantial number of (sometimes still relatively young) democracies
in the world regions covered by GIGA exhibit a broad spectrum of government
types and electoral systems that affect the concentration and dispersion of
political power within them in different ways. Against this background two institutionally
oriented questions are of particular interest. First, how do electoral systems
that are embedded in specific local contexts impact on the way a country is
governed and on the type of political representation in parliamentary and presidential
systems? Second, how does the institutionally shaped distribution of executive
power in different regions of the world develop in horizontal and vertical terms?
Or, more concretely: what is the impact of decentralisation processes and the
deepening of the horizontal balance of power that can be observed in various
places? Can a tendency towards a "presidentialisation" of parliamentary
systems also be observed in non-western contexts?
Current research projects:
- The Political Economy of Legislative Overrepresentation in Latin America:
A Comparative Study (Jorge P. Gordin)
- Kubas Transformation. Zur Politischen Ökonomie von Krise, Kontinuität
und Wandel im sozialistischen Kuba (Bert Hoffmann)
- Autoritäre Regime in Asien (Patrick Köllner)
- Judicial Nominations: Argentina in Comparative Perspective (Mariana
Llanos)
- Verfassungsänderungen in Lateinamerika (Detlef Nolte/Jorge P. Gordin)
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