GRK 2503:  Collective Decision-Making

• Subject Area: Economics ; Philosophy ; Social Sciences
• Term: since 2020
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 401375414

The Research Training Group (RTG) is concerned with the descriptive and normative dimensions of collective decision-making. The research program goes beyond the traditional methodological framework in economics that treats collective decision-making as a mere aggregation of individual preferences or decisions. Instead, it conceptualizes collective decision-making as a complex and interactive process involving individual preferences, epistemic and normative beliefs, as well as decision-making procedures. The aim is to contribute to the fruitful integration of theoretical and empirical research (in particular with experimental methods) concerning collective decision-making. The research program addresses novel questions in electoral processes, complex mechanisms of deliberation and multi-layered decision-making processes, institution formation, and the normative assessment of decision-making procedures and their outcomes. The proposed RTG will integrate different strands of research in political science, economics and philosophy in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of collective decision-making processes for both small groups and big societies.The qualification program and supervision strategy are designed to provide doctoral researchers with both the specialist disciplinary knowledge and skills for studying collective decision-making, as well as the interdisciplinary competence to converse across the three disciplines of political science, economics, and philosophy. To achieve this goal, the qualification program consists of three modules: a disciplinary module, an integrative and interdisciplinary bridging module, and a professional skills module. The bridging module will bring together research themes and faculty from the three contributing disciplines and will make discussing and exchanging ideas, theories and research methods across disciplines natural. The interdisciplinary research environment will support doctoral researchers in their efforts to make innovative contributions that go beyond the incremental advancement of existing results in a single discipline. Researchers completing the program will stand out for their ability to engage in advanced theoretical, empirical, and normative reasoning about collective decision-making and generate new ideas concerning the design of procedures to tackle the complex governance problems of modern society.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Universität Hamburg
• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Anke Gerber
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Matthew Braham; Professor Dr. Thomas Krödel; Professor Dr. Andreas Lange; Professorin Dr. Lydia Mechtenberg; Professor Dr. Gerd Mühlheußer; Professor Dr. Peter Niesen; Professorin Dr. Elvira Rosert; Professor Dr. Kai-Uwe Schnapp; Professor Dr. Moritz Schulz; Professorin Dr. Judith Simon; Professorin Dr. Vera Troeger; Professor Dr. Stefan Voigt