The Chair of International Relations and Regional Studies covers a broad range of international relations topics in its research and teaching. The focus is on peace and conflict research and the analysis of foreign and security policy, but also includes issues related to international political economy and the role of international institutions. In this context, we examine the causes and consequences of international military conflicts and domestic armed conflicts as well as the effects of globalisation, prosperity and its distribution. Both teaching and research focus on empirical analyses of theory-driven questions.
The Chair is home to the research project “The Ambivalence of Deterrence and Cooperation: Challenges of Security Architecture in the Baltic Sea Region”, which analyses the upheavals of NATO's presence in the Baltic Sea region and in particular Germany's changing role within the framework of the cross-disciplinary IFZO collaborative project "Fragmented Transformations" (BMBF). Other current key fields of research include international armed conflicts, international interventions and the stability of military alliances.
The Chair of Political Sociology and Methods of Political Science examines the connections between politics and society from different perspectives. We are particularly interested in the attitudes and behaviour of political players. More specifically, we examine the voting behaviour in state parliament elections, MPs deviation from the official party line or the legislative process in policy areas such as agriculture. This research is also always about how the context - such as media coverage or the respective electoral system - influences attitudes and patterns of decision making.
The Chair's key fields of research currently lie in the comparative study of the legislative behaviour of members of European parliaments. The research focuses in particular on the causes and consequences of intra-party conflicts related to parliamentary debates. On the other hand, the Chair places emphasis on agricultural policy and the politics of rural development. The specific conditions of the surrounding rural region of Vorpommern act as a starting point for the research. In addition, we analyse individual elements of political competition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and politics in the Baltic Sea region.
The Chair's teaching is based around the methods of political science and the topic of "Politics in Germany". Additionally, the Chair provides classes for students training to become teachers.
The Chair of Comparative Politics conducts comparative political science research. The research projects based at the chair examine questions of representation, parliamentarism, government and gender studies in political science from a comparative perspective. Three topics are explored in particular: how parliaments work, women as political players and the performance of prime ministers. Most recently, the Chair has contributed towards two major research projects.
The first project tackles the topic of the extent to which men in parliaments shift their key fields of activity as a result of the increasing proportion of women in parliaments. The study, which develops theoretical explanations for such patterns and tests them empirically, examines the question by analysing the 16 German state parliaments. The second project analyses the question regarding the extent to which female ministers are monitored more thoroughly by MPs than male ministers. The theory-led empirical study looks at five European democracies and uses a mixed-methods design.