Political Science

In January 2021 a commission appointed by the federal government released an extensive report on the integration of people with a Migrationshintergrund, or migration background, in Germany. The report set out a concept of integration, discussed integration with regard to a wide range of policy areas, including health and housing, education, and employment, and raised issues like religion and language. Also included in the report were the dissenting positions of several commission members, which underline the extent to which integration remains a contested and controversial idea. The course uses this report as the starting point for an analysis of the concept of integration. The course considers the economic, social, political, and cultural aspects of the concept developed in the report, and compares it with terms like cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. The course also discusses the implications of integration for employment and education policy.

This course studies the signs and causes of party democracy crisis and the changing political conflict brought on by multilevel governance, globalization, and manifestations of political apathy, among other phenomena, which defy the way contemporary democracies work. Considering how the terms of the political conflict in Western democracies are changing significantly due to economic, cultural, and political transformations, the course analyzes the transformation of the political conflict and the attitudinal change behind it; the changing party systems and the rise of new challenger, populist, and radical right parties; changes in the patterns of political behavior; globalization, the increase in inequality, and the political consequences of both; the increase in polarization; the crisis of parties and party government and occurrences of democratic backsliding.

The course develops students' understanding of democratic theories and models, and introduces them to national and international democratic innovations to widen and deepen citizen participation.