Faculty of Social Sciences
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Chair in Qualitative Empirical Research Methods

Dr. Benedikt Bender

Profilbild Benedikt Bender

Dr. Benedikt Bender

Research Fellow

PEG 3G 101
+49 69 798 36641
b.bender@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
Website, Orcid, Twitter

Office hours
Registration by email
Tuesday 16:00 - 18:00

Address

Institut für Politikwissenschaft
Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Goethe-Universität
Theodor-W.-Adorno Platz 6

60323 Frankfurt am Main

Dr Benedikt Bender is a postdoctoral researcher at our professorship and is involved in teaching, research and university self-administration. Mr Bender completed his doctorate at the University of Mannheim and his research focuses on three major areas: political economy, welfare state comparison and comparative methodology. Benedikt Bender is currently working on issues relating to the connection between growth models and welfare state reforms (EU comparison), the conditions under which nation states change their growth models (OECD comparison), climate policy in Germany and the USA, and the use of AI in qualitative empirical social research.
Mr Bender's research findings have been published in book form, in several book chapters and in high-ranking journals such as Socio- Economic Review, Comparative Politics, Regulation & Governance, Business and Politics, Journal of Social Policy. Mr Bender also heads the Reform Monitor Political Conflicts, which is continuously updated and analyses the positions of trade unions, employers' associations and political parties on welfare state policy. If you have any questions about the data set or the individual positions of the actors on specific topics, please feel free to send an email to: b.bender@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Research Fellow (Post-Doc) at the Department of Social Sciences

Political sciences at the Chair in Qualitative Empirical Research Methods
Professorship Dr. Claudius Wagemann
Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main
since 01/2020

Fellow at the SFB 884, Political Economy of Reforms at the University of Mannheim

Project: „Welfare state reform support from below: linking individual attitudes and organized interests in Europe“
From 01/2020 to 07/2022

Research assistant (PhD student) at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES)

Projekt: Krisenkorporatismus oder Korporatismus in der Krise? Soziale Konzertierung und Sozialpakte in Europa
From 08/2016 to 12.2019

Research assistant (PhD student) at the Chair of Macrosociology at the University of Mannheim

From 10/2014 to 12/2019

Political economy

Comparative welfare state research

Organized interests (especially business associations and trade unions)

Comparative methodology

Bender, Benedikt (2020): Politisch-ökonomische Konfliktlinien im sich wandelnden Wohlfahrtsstaat. Wiesbaden: Springer-VS, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-658-31825-3

  • Bender, Benedikt/ Kinderman, Daniel (2025): Green Subsidies and the Promotion of Eco‐Social Policy in Germany and the United States. Regulation & Governance, online first, https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.70087
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Bluhm, Katharina/ Klimovich, Stanislav/ Kropp, Sabine/ Pappe, Ulla/ Wagemann, Claudius: Why are state-business relations formalized in Russia's authoritarian regime? A set-theoretic analysis. Comparative Politics.https://doi.org/10.5129/001041525X17624649924440
  • 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, Socio-Economic Review, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwaf024
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Malsch, Laura (2024): Politische Konflikte in der Sozialpolitik zwischen 2017-2021 in Deutschland: Eine Inhaltsanalyse von Plenardokumenten und Pressemitteilungen, Zeitschrift für Sozialreform, 70, 2, 145-172. https://doi.org/10.1515/zsr-2023-0019 (open access)
  • Bender, Benedikt (2023): Class Conflict or Consensus? Understanding Social Partner Positions on Social Policy Reforms. Journal of Social Policy. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279422000873
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Paster, Thomas (2023): What types of social policies does business want? Examining German employer associations' positions toward labor-protective and labor-activating social policies. Business and Politics https://doi.org/10.1017/bap.2023.18 (open access).
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Bruinsmaa, Bastian (2022): Patterns in the Press Releases of Trade Unions. How to Use Structural Topic Models in the Field of Industrial Relations. German Journal of Industrial Relations. https://doi.org/10.3224/indbez.v29i2.02
  • Ebbinghaus, Bernhard/ Bender, Benedikt (2025): Vom Mitgliederschwund zur Stabilisierung deutscher Gewerkschaften im neuen Millennium?. Handbuch Gewerkschaften in Deutschland. Wiesbaden: Springer, 231-256, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-48294-7_8
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Brenner, Lukas/ Wagemann, Claudius (2025): Expanding Methodological Quality to Qualitative Methods. In: Verzichelli, Luca/ Wagemann, Claudius (ed.): The Application of Political Science Methods in Europe. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-93841-2_11
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Ebbinghaus, Bernhard (2025): Mobilization from below facing welfare state reforms. In: Ebbinghaus, Bernhard/ Nelson, Moira (eds.): Handbook on Welfare State Reform. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839108808.00012
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Ebbinghaus, Bernhard (2024): How Organized Interests Shape Labour Relations and Social Policies. In: Greve, Bent/ Amílcar, Moreira/ Gerven van, Minna (eds.): Handbook of the Political Economy of Social Policy. Edward Elgar, 165-177. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035306497.00021
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Ebbinghaus, Bernhard (2021): When governments include social partners in crisis corporatism: Comparing social concertation in Europe during the Great Recession. In: Ebbinghaus, Bernhard/ J. Timo Weishaupt (eds.): The Role of Social Partners in Managing Europe's Great Recession: Crisis Corporatism or Corporatism in Crisis? Routledge Studies in the Political Economy of the Welfare State, page: 24-50. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003186144
  • Bender, Benedikt/ Ebbinghaus, Bernhard (2020): Social concertation in Europe during the Great Recession: A fsQCA-study of social partner involvement. S. 33-50 in: Romana Careja, Patrick Emmenegger, Nathalie Giger (Hrsg.) The European Social Model under Pressure. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27043-8_3
  • Buss, Christopher/ Bender, Benedikt (2018): Positions of Interest Groups Towards Labour Market Reforms in Germany: A Novel Content Analysis of Press Releases. S. 81-105 in: Bernhard Ebbinghaus, Elias Naumann (Hrsg.) Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below. Comparing Public Attitudes and Organized Interests in Britain and Germany. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63652-8_4
  • Bender, Benedikt (2018): Sozialstaatliche Alternativen. S. 610-630 in: Gisela Kubon-Gilke (Hrsg.) Gestalten der Sozialpolitik: Theoretische Grundlegungen und Anwendungsbeispiele. Marburg: Metropolis. ISBN 978-3-7316-1279-7
  • Bender, Benedikt (2017): Polnisches Puzzle. Organisation, Mitgliederentwicklung und politische Beteiligung von Gewerkschaften und Arbeitgeberverbänden aus vergleichender Perspektive. Darmstadt: Deutsches Polen Institut, Polen-Analysen: 208, ISSN: 1863 – 9712, https://www.laender-analysen.de/polen/pdf/PolenAnalysen208.pdf
  • Bender, Benedikt (2017): Staatsbürgerrechte und gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt. Nach bürgerlichen und politischen Elementen müssen soziale folgen, um die Stabilität in Europa zu stärken. Berlin: Bundesnetzwerk Bürgerschaftliches Engagement (BBE), Newsletter für Engagement und Partizipation in Europa; 1/2017
  • Gerechtigkeit als normativer Orientierungspunkt für Wissenschaften und Politik, (with G.Kubin-Gilke). Ed.: Forschungszentrum der Evangelischen Hochschule Darmstadt. Working Paper University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt: ISSN 2193-6501 https://www.eh-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/PDFs/Forschung/Arbeitspapier_Nr_17.pdf

2025

  • Nothing Stays as It Is? Political Economy Transformations in Hard Times. Conference of the DVPW Section Political Economy, Mainz, Germany.
  • Solidarität im Sozialstaat. Forschung für eine inklusive Gesellschaft. FIS-Forum, Leipzig, Germany.

2024

  • Lost in Social Policy? Research for an Integrated Welfare State. FIS-Forum and Social Policy Biennale, Berlin, Germany
  • Radical Europe: Violence, Emancipation and Reaction. Conference of Europeanists, Lyon, France

2023

  • Europe´s Past, Present, and Future: Utopias and Dystopias, CES, Reykjavik, Iceland
  • Crisis and Transformation, DVPW, University Witten/Herdecke, Germany

2022

  • The Environment of Democracy. CES, Portugal, Lisboa
  • Wer gewinnt, wer verliert? Zugespitzte Verteilungskonflikte in Zeiten multipler Krisen. DVPW, Freie Universität Berlin.