SFB 884:  Political Economy of Reforms

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences ; Humanities
• Term: from 2010 to 2021
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 139943784

The SFB 884 aims at gaining novel insights into the causes and consequences of the success and failure of reforms from a quantitative perspective. The SFB brings together economists, political scientists, sociologists and computer scientists with joint interest in the empirical implications of theoretical reform-making models. While in the first phase most projects have worked on the theoretical conceptualization of actors’ involvements in sector-specific reforms mainly for Germany, the focus has shifted towards the empirical investigation of reform-making in European welfare states in the second phase. The third phase of the SFB will mainly be devoted to three major goals. First, the research program will strongly focus on the longitudinal dimension of individual and collective reform preferences and decisions, and the evaluation of successful and failed reforms. Second, by intensifying interdisciplinary collaboration, the SFB will provide novel insights into the reform processes from different views on how actors deal with reform also in non-welfare and developing states in Africa and Asia. Third, the accumulated findings from the first, second and third phase will be used as a basis for the practical design of reform proposals.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• International Connection: Austria, Canada

Completed projects

• A01 - Individuals´ support for social and political reforms (Project Heads Börsch-Supan, Ph.D., Axel ;  Grüner, Hans-Peter )
• A02 - The role of asymmetric information in political reform processes (Project Head Grüner, Hans-Peter )
• A06 - Welfare state reform support from below: Linking individual attitudes and organised interests in Europe (Project Heads Ebbinghaus, Bernhard ;  Möhring, Katja ;  Weishaupt, Ph.D., Jörg Timo )
• A07 - Experimental analysis of Bayesian voting mechanisms, procedural choices and the acceptance of transfers (Project Heads Engelmann, Dirk ;  Grüner, Hans-Peter ;  Kim, Ph.D., Duk Gyoo )
• A08 - Evaluating Data Sources for Research into Political Reforms: (Non)probability Online Surveys and Big Data (Project Heads Blom, Ph.D., Annelies ;  Bosnjak, Michael ;  Gschwend, Ph.D., Thomas ;  Keusch, Florian ;  Kreuter, Frauke ;  Lo, James )
• A09 - Survey mode, survey technology and technology innovations in data collection (Project Heads Frölich, Markus ;  Keusch, Florian ;  Kreuter, Frauke ;  Siflinger, Bettina )
• B02 - Labour income risk and labour market reform: a macroeconomic analysis (Project Heads Jung, Philip ;  Krebs, Ph.D., Tom )
• B04 - The politics of territorial reform - redrawing the boundaries of administrative districts (Project Head Rittberger, Berthold )
• B05 - Robust methods for the evaluation of policy reforms (Project Heads van den Berg, Gerard J. ;  Frölich, Markus ;  Gutknecht, Ph.D., Daniel ;  Mammen, Enno ;  Rothe, Christoph )
• B06 - Nonparametric and nonlinear panel data and time series analysis (Project Heads Leucht, Anne ;  Mammen, Enno ;  Ponzetto, Simone Paolo ;  Trenkler, Carsten )
• B07 - Attitudes and conflict, longitudinal conflict analysis and randomized control trials (RCTs) in Asia and Africa (Project Heads Carey, Ph.D., Sabine ;  Frölich, Markus ;  Weber, Andrea )
• B08 - The role of middle men in the implementation and feasibility of reforms (Project Head van den Berg, Gerard J. )
• B10 - Empirical analysis of the economics of lobbying in European policy reforms (Project Head Wagner, Ulrich J. )
• C01 - Legislative reforms and party competition (Project Heads König, Thomas ;  Yordanova, Ph.D., Nikoleta ;  Zudenkova, Ph.D., Galina )
• C02 - Reform agendas, policy diffusion and the consequences of intra-party position-taking (Project Heads Bräuninger, Thomas ;  Debus, Marc )
• C03 - "Strong" vs. "weak" governments and the challenge of economic reforms (Project Head Bäck, Hanna )
• C04 - Measuring a common space and the dynamics of reform positions: Non-standard tools, non-standard actors (Project Heads Baerg, Nicole ;  Gschwend, Ph.D., Thomas ;  Lo, James ;  Lowe, Ph.D., Will ;  Ponzetto, Simone Paolo ;  Stuckenschmidt, Heiner )
• C05 - Fiscal institutions and reform preferences (Project Heads Heinemann, Friedrich ;  Janeba, Eckhard )
• C06 - The domestic foundation of governmental preferences over European politics (Project Head König, Thomas )
• C07 - Political attention and the substance of legislative reform (Project Heads Gschwend, Ph.D., Thomas ;  Nyhuis, Dominic ;  Stiefelhagen, Rainer )
• Z01 - Data Centre (Project Heads Blom, Ph.D., Annelies ;  Stuckenschmidt, Heiner )
• Z02 - Central Administration (Project Head König, Thomas )

• Applicant Institution: Universität Mannheim
• Participating Institution: GESIS - Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften; Universität Mannheim ; Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung; ZEW - Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH
• Participating University: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main; Karlsruher Institut für Technologie; Universität Wien
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Thomas König