Research

Research Project on the State Election on October 8, 2023, in Bavaria

Once again, we are conducting a teaching research project in the city of Regensburg for the State Election in Bavaria on October 8, 2023. Many students from the University of Regensburg are actively participating in the project this time as well. As part of the project, we are conducting written surveys, door-to-door visits, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions with citizens in selected neighborhoods of Regensburg. The collection of this diverse information allows us, together with our students, to examine and answer current questions in empirical electoral research, such as:

• Who participates in the Bavarian State Election 2023, and who does not?
• What are the reasons for non-participation?
• What types of non-voters are there?
• Can non-voters be re-mobilized, and if so, how?
• What are the reasons for vote-switching in the 2023 State Election?
• Where are voters in Bavaria switching their support? To other political parties or towards the group of non-voters?
• What are the key issues in the 2023 Bavarian election, and which political parties are perceived as competent in providing solutions?

A publication of these research findings with our students is also planned with Springer VS Publishing.

Contacts for the research project are Prof. Dr. Melanie Walter-Rogg (melanie.walter-rogg@ur.de) & Raphael Richter (M.A.) (raphael.richter@ur.de).

Scholars and political decision-makers emphasize the security consequences of global warming. Since the 1970s, nation-states have adopted policies to protect the environment, and currently, most states regard environmental protection as state responsibility. In the early 1990s, global environmental change was also recognized as a political problem on the international level. However, environmental performance varies considerably between countries and over time. Therefore, this research project examines whether an analysis of the effects of different democratic qualities improves our understanding of cross-national variation in environmental performance among democracies and among autocracies. There are considerable differences in environmental performance across democracies, and environmental outcomes vary among autocracies as well. There is little knowledge about how democracy influences environmental performance, though multiple features of democracy are emphasized in the literature. Democracies vary in nonelectoral aspects. Autocracies differ in the extent to which they hold competitive elections and implement non-electoral traits of democracy. Thus, this research project examines whether analysing the effects of each democratic feature separately contributes to a better understanding of crossnational variance in environmental performance across democracies and across autocracies. Political corruption affects a country’s ability to adopt and implement environmental policies. Therefore, we consider also the joint influence of different democratic qualities and political corruption. The main results of this research project are published in the following Palgrave Pivot in 2020:

Escher, Romy and Melanie Walter-Rogg 2020: Environmental Performance in Democracies and Autocracies – Democratic Qualities an Environmental Protection. Palgrave Pivot. doi 10.1007/978-3-030-38054-0.

Previous empirical research on democracy and global warming has mainly questioned whether democracy contributes to climate protection. However, there is no consensus in the theoretical literature on what institutional traits of democracy are crucial for climate policy. Thus, results based on indices that summarize multiple democracy quality dimensions could be misleading, as their effects could balance each other out or hide the relative importance of each institutional trait. This research project examines whether the analysis of the effects of democracy quality dimensions, measured by separate indicators, contributes to a better understanding of cross-national variance in climate policy compared to the focus on the regime type difference, measured by democracy quality measures. Compared to earlier research, the results indicate that the positive effect of democracy on commitment to climate cooperation depends on the realization of political rights. We find little to support the claim that democracy quality dimensions matter for climate policy outcomes. The main implication of our findings is that it could be fruitful to use more disaggregated democracy measures for the analysis of substantive research questions.

The main results of this research project were published 2018 in the Special Issue “Why Choice Matters: Revisiting and Comparing Measures of Democracy”, edited by Heiko Giebler (WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany), Saskia P. Ruth (German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Germany), and Dag Tanneberg (University of Potsdam, Germany).

Escher, Romy and Walter-Rogg, Melanie 2018: Does the Conceptualization and Measurement of Democracy Quality Matter in Comparative Climate Policy Research? Politics and Governance, vol. 6, Issue 1, 117-144.