Other DFG-Funded Projects
Dynamics of Chinese Social Policy: The Interplay of National and International Influences
The Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1342 “Global Dynamics of Social Policy” at the University of Bremen is concerned with the development and dynamics of public social policy in a global perspective. Social policy is a key producer of welfare, but each country deals with it differently. Its development around the world therefore takes various forms and proceeds at different rates.
The subproject, led by Professor Liu Tao (INEAST) and Professor Tobias ten Brink (Jacobs University), of SFB 1342 looks at the dynamics of Chinese social policy in relation to international and transnational interdependencies. Social policy in the People’s Republic of China cannot be explained purely in endogenous terms and must be analysed from the perspective of interdependence-oriented theory, linking national and international causal mechanisms. (Funding period: 2018–2024)
Cross-Border Temporary Staffing. Market- Making and Transnational Regulation in Inter- Regional Comparison
The leading questions of Prof. Karen Shire’s DFG research project consider how and why markets for temporary labour are taking on transnational dimensions and to what extent it is possible to govern and regulate them. Transnationalisation studies often take developments in the EU as their point of reference. IN-EAST’s many years of experience in East Asia make it possible to arrive at general conclusions beyond European boundaries. Current research shows temping agency placements across national borders in the course of regional economic integration to have risen equally strongly in both Europe and East Asia. In Europe these relate to workers from Hungary, the Czech Republic and especially Poland, while in East Asia China is an important destination for and origin of this form of labour migration. (Funding period: 2013–2016)
Configurations of Governance and Development Paths in the Studies of Chinese Political Scientists
Little is known about the internal policy debates of so-called closed systems like that of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the interplay between political leaders and political scientists in the development of action-oriented political ideas. Analysis is mostly restricted to the visible actions of leadership elites and their official political statements. The underlying considerations and reflections that shape the political decision-making process and guide political action are often neglected. This research project, led by Professor Nele Noesselt, attempts to close this gap by conducting a systematic and structured analysis of Chinese political science debates on modes of political governance and development paths in the PRC. (Funding period: 2014–2017)
(New) Political Representative Claims: A Global View (France, Germany, Brazil, China, India)
Europe is currently experiencing a crisis in its established forms of political representation, visible, for example, in growing political distrust. Different claims to renew political representation are emerging all over the world. However, most contemporary research concentrates on electoral/mandate representation in single countries. As a result, there is a lack of comparative, global analysis of (new) representative claims developed outside the representative political system, and Western researchers neglect the dynamic developing in the Global South, including non-democratic entities. In this research project co-funded by the DFG and its French counterpart the ANR , Prof. Thomas Heberer from INEAST, Prof. Dr. Brigitte Geissel (Goethe University Frankfurt), Prof. Yves Sintomer (Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris, CRESPPA) and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal (Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, CNRS-EHESS, Paris) intend to close these gaps by considering representative claims in France and Germany – two leading democracies in Europe that are actively experimenting with new concepts of representation – and in three BRICS states, Brazil, India, and China. (DFG-ANR funding period: 2016–2019)