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Chair in Qualitative Empirical Research Methods

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15.05.2025 10:00

INTERFACED Kick-Off-Meeting in Budapest

INTERFACED_article_group_picture
On April 29 and 30, 2025, project partners gathered in Budapest for the first in-person meeting of the project, hosted by the Centre for Social Sciences (CSS). This long-anticipated event provided an invaluable opportunity for face-to-face collaboration, constructive dialogue, and strategic planning as the project moves into its next phase.

The formal programme began on Tuesday morning, April 29, with arrival and coffee, followed by welcoming remarks from Boldizsár Megyesi, Director of the Institute of Sociology at CSS. The morning continued with progress reports from each work package, offering a concise overview of developments and accomplishments to date. This was followed by a review of key deliverables, including the dissemination plan and the quality assurance plan.

Late morning sessions featured a focused discussion on the data management plan, guided by our Ethics Advisor. After lunch, the meeting resumed with a session involving the project's Scientific Advisory Board.

In the afternoon, participants turned their attention to the conceptualisation and operationalisation of interfaces, a critical step in linking together the project's various work packages. This session drew upon key documents, including the descriptive exploration of democratic and political participation variables, the draft interfaces manuscript, and a draft truth table.

Later in the day, we met with representatives from our sister projects, ProTest and Trans4Demo, to share updates and explore potential synergies.

On Wednesday, April 30, the meeting resumed with a first session of the day was dedicated to platform recruitment strategies led by the Edgeryders team, sparking thoughtful discussion on engagement methods and data collection.
These two days in Budapest offered a dynamic mix of strategic dialogue, collaborative planning, and community building. The in-person format brought renewed energy to the project and strengthened the bonds among partners, paving the way for continued progress and meaningful impact in the months ahead.

 

12.05.2025 10:00

Welcome Noah Weber

We are pleased to welcome a new student assistant to our team!

Noah Weber studies sociology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and is a student assistant at the Chair of Qualitative Empirical Research Methods. As part of the research project 'Interfaces for Democratic Participation: Deliberation, Mobilisation and Contestation Since the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic', he is primarily entrusted with research activities. His focus is on the analysis of political mobilisation movements in the digital space. The aim of his work is to work out the special features of democratic participation in digital interfaces and to compare them with physical forms of political participation.

 

29.04.2025 10:00

New publication by Benedikt Bender in Socio-Economic Review

Benedikt Bender, in collaboration with Luzie Hackenbroch from Bocconi University, Milan, has published his work in one of the most leading journals in the field of Political Economy.
Titel
Bender, Benedikt/ Hackenbroch, Luzie (2025): Insider–outsider representation and the logic of membership and participation. A multi-level analysis of unions' positions and individual attitudes on welfare state reforms.https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf024
Summary

Our analysis builds on the debate by comparing the impact of insider and outsider attitudes on union positions. Dualization theory argues that unions reflect dominant members - usually insiders - while the solidarity approach sees unions backing all vulnerable groups, regardless of dominant member opinion. We argue that the picture is more complex. Unions do care about insider as well as outsider member attitudes and they take both the level of union membership and level of union participation (e.g. discussions, meetings) into account. Each class in the workforce displays different patterns of membership and participation. We argue that these patterns determine influence on union position rather than pure ideology. We define six different class groups of insiders and outsiders according to their skill levels (low, medium, high), employment sector and occupation. If a particular class group is going to shape unions positions, two conditions must be met: (1) high union membership and (2) high union participation. The absence of either condition reduces the influence of the class group. In our study, only two groups satisfied both conditions: blue-collar workers (low-skilled insiders) and low-service functionaries (low-skilled outsiders). We therefore formed the hypothesis that their views have most influence on union positions. We used survey data from the German Internet Panel to determine class groups and their positions on unemployment benefits and labour market regulation. Macro-level data from the Reform Monitor on Political Conflict was used to determine the stance of six different unions. We observed the strongest correlations with union positions for low-skilled insiders and low-skilled outsiders and we suggest that if these groups change their views, union positions are likely to shift accordingly - reflecting both the logic of membership and participation. In addition, a general trend towards dissatisfaction with welfare state reforms by trade unions was evident after the general election in 2016. Since the reform of unemployment benefits was highly salient, we note that salient campaign topics may strongly affect post-election union positions.

 

23.04.2025 15:00

Interview with the New Chair of the Accreditation Commission

Prof. Claudius Wagemann from Department 03 will assume the chairmanship of Goethe University's Accreditation Commission in the summer semester 2025. Learn about his motivations and goals in an extensive interview.

"I look forward to making a practical contribution to ensuring that students at Goethe University can complete their studies successfully," explains Wagemann, while also sharing personal insights into his own student years and career path.

The Accreditation Commission ensures the quality of all university degree programs and supports their further development. Prof. Viera Pirker, Vice President for Studies and Teaching, emphasizes the importance of this work and welcomes Wagemann's willingness to take on the chairmanship.

 

07.01.2025 12:00

Our new Project INTERFACED

Interfaces for Democratic Participation: Deliberation, Mobilization and Contestation Since the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic

We are pleased to announce that our team successfully applied for the Horizon Europe project INTERFACED (2025-2027). Amidst growing protests, declining trust in democracy and science, and increasing societal inequalities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, it investigates diverse forms of non-electoral political participation. At its core are the so-called interfaces – such as referendums, street protests, social media debates, petitions or citizen assemblies – through which citizens may engage in decision-making and governance within representative institutions.

The principal objective of INTERFACED is to analyse these participation interfaces, their democratic underpinnings, their role in mobilizing the least engaged and most disadvantaged groups, and factors driving participation. Based on the empirical findings, the project aims to propose policy recommendations to improve the relations between citizens and their governments and to enhance the accountability of governance structures.

The project's consortium comprises ten European countries and Tunesia, and it is led by the City University of London. Applying an interdisciplinary approach, INTERFACED employs a comprehensive methodology – including large-scale surveys, experiments, computational tools, ethnography, textual analysis, and comparative qualitative methods – to examine the country cases of the United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany (North-Western Group), Austria, Hungary and Romania (East-Central Group) as well as Spain, Italy and Tunesia (Southern Group) for the (post-)pandemic period of 2020-2025.

The Work Package of Frankfurt investigates the feed through from participation interfaces into the institutions of representative democracy. Prof. Dr. Claudius Wagemann engages as Principal Investigator and Anna Geyer as Research Associate.