Political Science
Research
The Department’s research programme starts from the observation that politics in contemporary Europe is to an increasing extent taking place at the intersection of domestic and supranational levels of governance. The nation state is still the most important locus of decision-making in core areas of modern statehood such as internal and external security, taxation and welfare. As a consequence, the struggle among political parties for domestic government positions remains at the heart of political contestation. At the same time, domestic politics increasingly interacts with political processes at the supranational level. More and more policy decisions are nowadays made in the framework of the European Union. But European Union politics is by no means decoupled from politics within the nation state. Domestic political actors are intensively involved in supranational decision-making, and the process of European integration in turn impacts domestic politics.
The Department seeks to analyse the logic of political contestation in this setting of increasingly interwoven levels of governance. We pursue three clusters of research questions:
(1) Multi-level Politics in Europe
This is the core area of research in the Department, directly engaging the multi-level nature of political contestation in contemporary Europe.
(2) Politics within European Nation States
This research area seeks to explore the remaining core of autonomous politics within the nation state.
(3) Politics within the Emerging EU Polity
This research area analyses politics within the emerging polity of the European Union and between the European Union and the outside world.
