In our deliberative democracy and integration projects we treat our participants – natives as well as migrants – as citizens, able and willing to discuss in a rational way the big themes likeRead More
Complex social issues are often more easily resolved when they are connected up with other societal problems. Habitual approaches to thinking and problem solving, as well as the ways we have dividedRead More
We need to talk. We need to talk about fundamental concepts like democracy, ethical and political pluralism, tolerance, equality and freedom, concepts that many consider as constitutive for the European identity. We needRead More
In 2015, roughly 1,1 million refugees came to Germany. About 428,500 of these people are Syrians. Refugees from Iraq (13%) and Afghanistan (10%) form the second and third largest group. For 2016, theRead More
Market and liberal democracy are both based on the assumption that individuals are the best possible referees of their personal interests. This makes sense because nobody knows us as long and as wellRead More
It is often assumed in social and political science that citizens should participate more in political structures and processes aimed to bring about or to influence public decision making. The current strong interestRead More
Some time ago Martin Spiewak stated in the German quality-weekly Die Zeit that an awful lot of undisputed knowledge existed about the best ways to educate children, but that policy makers hardly everRead More
In all OECD countries, but in particular in Germany, there seems to be an enormous overproduction of PhDs – in case one sees a PhD as the starting point of an academic careerRead More
It’s conference season! Thousands and thousands of social scientists are flying around to visit conferences. The American Sociological Association gathers with more than 4000 participants in 600 sessions in Chicago. In 2014 theRead More
A science is not called a discipline by coincidence: its students are actively and deliberately disciplined to think and behave in the specific ways that define a discipline. They are trained to observeRead More
