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Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant - Research

 

Datasets

Ongoing research projects

Completed research projects

 

Datasets

Political Roles of the Military (PRM) Dataset 2.0

PRM_MI_2018

The Political Roles of the Military (PRM) Dataset contains information on 120 democratic and autocratic countries for the period 1999–2016.

Aurel Croissant, Tanja Eschenauer, Jil Kamerling. "Militaries’ Roles in Political Regimes: Introducing the PRM Data Set", in European Political Science,  2016.

PRM 2.0 (.zip format)

PRM 2.0 Codebook (.pdf)

The pilot project "Data Set Project on Multidimensional Measurement of Militarization" (FB1-PIL-01) is funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF). The project will  be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Markus Bayer, BICC. The actual research will start on April 1, 2022.

(Un-)healty Civil-Military Relations? Militarization of State Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in latin America and Asia-Pacific

VOLKSWAGEN-STIFTUNG (MÄRZ 2021 BIS NOVEMBER 2022)
  • Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant, Institute of Political Science, Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg
  • Dr. David Kuehn, GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg
  • Prof. Dr. David Pion Berlin, Political Science Department, University of California, Riverside.

The project examines two research questions: (1) What is the role of the military in developing and implementing public policies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America and Asia? (2) What are the short- to medium-term effects of the military’s role during the pandemic on civil-military relations and autocratization in the two regions? Based on the systematic coding of publicly available data and two waves of expert survey, we will create and analyze the “Militarization of State Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic” (MSRC)-Dataset. The project’s findings will be crucial for academics, decision-makers and the broader public to understand the political implications of the pandemic in the two regions and beyond. 

Ongoing research projects

Democratic regressions and the military since 1990

  • Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant, IPW, Ruprecht-Karls Universität, Heidelberg
  • Dr. David Kuehn, GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg

Research on democratic regressions has made impressive progress in recent years, both conceptually and empirically, and more recently also theoretically. While the initial focus was on conceptualizations and empirical descriptions of different forms of autocratization, interest has increasingly extended to questions of the causes and consequences as well as the reasons for the varying resilience of democracies after the onset of backsliding episodes. One aspect that has received little attention is the role of the military. Most studies emphasize that modes and actors of backsliding in the post-1990 period differ from earlier waves of autocratization. Thus, democratic backsliding after the end of the Cold War is primarily endogenous in nature, whereas exogenous terminations of democracy, such as military coups, have become increasingly rare. Insofar as the military is considered at all as a relevant factor in explaining the erosion of democracy in current research, considerations are limited to the phenomenon of the "promissory coup" or to the praetorian legacies of authoritarian civil-military relations, which contribute to a "weak democracy syndrome”.   The aim of this research, co-organized with David Kuehn (GIGA Hamburg), is to conceptualize and theorize these different roles of the military in processes of democratic regression, to describe them empirically, and to explain them causally and in terms of their impact on the outcome of backsliding episodes since 1990. Consequently, the project focuses on three guiding questions:

  1. What role do armed forces play in episodes of democratic regression (backsliding and breakdown) after 1990?
  2. How can the different forms be explained?
  3. What are the implications of the appearance of the military with regard to the transition from erosion to breakdown or to the breakdown resilience of democracies?   

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization

  • Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant, IPW, Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg
  • Luca Tomini, Centre d'Etude de la Vie Politique, ULB, Brüssel

Autocratization is a widespread phenomenon nowadays. After decades of democratic progress, a more pessimistic approach regarding the study of democracy spread out. Notably, the debate on regime change moved from a focus solely on democratization to its opposite process, i.e. autocratization. In the past five to ten years, legions of scholars have argued that democracy is in crisis, in retreat, in decline, is eroding, backsliding or deconsolidating. In this context, the processes and the existence of a third wave of autocratization in the post-cold war era are clearly at the centre of the current academic debate on political regime types, qualities, and developments. Within this debate, scholars are engaged in the analysis of structural pre-conditions to autocratization, the patterns and historical trends thereof, the motivations and the strategies of actors responsible for the authoritarian turn as well as the causes and mechanisms of democratic resilience against the threat of autocratization. However, this literature, compared to the studies on democratization processes, is still relatively young and somewhat theoretically immature. As the conceptual and methodological debate is indeed ongoing, there are research venues not yet explored, with the possibility of testing new theoretical approaches and methodologies.

The rationale of this handbook, co-edited by Aurel Croissant and Luca Tomini (Université libre de Bruxelles – ULB) is to take stock of what we know and do not know in the political science community about the phenomenon of autocratization so far. This handbook will take stock of the scholarly discussion on autocratization. Individual chapters are either single-authored or, if the lead authors of each chapter wish, can also be co-authored by a second or third author. In order to structure the discussion, we divide the contributions in an introduction to be authored by the editors and four main sections:

  1. Concepts, Measurements, and Patterns of autocratization
  2. Explanations of autocratization
    1. Structural factors
    2. Institutions and values
    3. Actors
  3. Consequences of autocratization
  4. Regional trends in autocratization

The volume will comprise 44 chapters, authored by more than 50 starting and advanced scholars from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Edward Elgar Research Handbook Civil-Military Relations Handbook

  • Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant, IPW, Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg
  • Dr. David Kuehn, GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg
  • Prof. Dr. David Pion Berlin, Political Science Department, University of California, Riverside

The armed forces have been central to the evolution of states and societies,  the rise and fall of regimes, and the fate of governments. The study of civil-military relations – a concept that encompasses all the interactions between a state’s armed forces, and the other sectors of society in which the armed forces are embedded – , has been an ongoing  scholarly enterprise for decades, and is the subject of this volume, co-edited by Aurel Croissant, David Kuehn (GIGA Hamburg) , and David Pion-Berlin (UC Riverside). The more than 30 contributions to this volume focus on the roles of the armed forces in politics, on the structures, processes and outcomes of the interactions between the political regime and its actors on the one hand, and the armed forces on the other. Unlike previous edited works on the subject whose entries are dominated by single country case studies,  this volume is entirely  thematic, organized by key subjects each of which feature research by leading scholars. As a research guide, it introduces the reader to scholarship that is novel, theoretically informed and empirically applied. What distinguishes these contributions is their attention to gaps in the literature, asking new questions and seeking solutions to as yet unresolved problems within their respective areas of inquiry. Hence, more than just an overview of the field, this volume also guides the reader toward the leading edges of scholarship within the study of civil-military affairs.

Civil-military affairs entails a complex set of relations between politicians, soldiers and civilians that cut across state and societal lines. This volume's organizational structure reflects that reality. It is divided into five thematic sections, each comprised of several chapters. Each section opens with a brief introduction by the editors. The first two sections, civilian control and military effectiveness, focus on what it takes for political overseers to both subordinate the armed forces and to harness its powers productively to serve the foreign and domestic pursuits of the government. The next two themes concentrate on the armed forces itself: what kinds of missions and roles does it undertake, and what forms of influence does it wield? The final section turns  the attention to the military's relations with different regimes (democratic, semi-democratic and autocratic) and its relations with society.

COVID-19 and Political Institutions in Asia-Oceania. Democracy and State Capactiy During Times of Crises

  • Aurel Croissant, IPW, Heidelberg
  • Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato

This project brings together 15 researchers from Asia, Europe, Ozeania and North America. It provides an original comparative analysis of the relationship between key political institutions – the state and political regimes – and government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia-Oceania. In this research, we focus on the trilateral relationship between (i) state capacity, (ii) democracy and (iii) government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from two perspectives. The first perspective looks at the role of institutional factors – state capacity and political regime properties – in explaining government policies. The second perspective looks at the impact of such policies on the democratic qualities of political systems and the state capacities of nations. The key assumption that will guide the case studies, comparative case studies and medium-N comparative studies in this volume is that the relationship between national government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, state capacity, and the quality of democracy is highly complex. The project tackles the following key questions:

  1. How have political institutions created incentives for effective public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic? 
  2. How have political institutions enhanced governments’ ability to implement public health responses to the pandemic? 
  3. Under what circumstances have political actors employed governance responses to COVID-19 to weaken democratic processes and institutions? 
  4. How does the politicization of public health governance as a means of democratic pushback undermine the effectiveness of COVID-19 control measures? 

Dictator's Endgame. Theory and empirical analysis of military behav-ior in authoritarian regime crises, 1946-2014

David Kuehn and Aurel Croissant, funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), October 2015-September 2018

This project aims to analyze the role of the military during episodes of peaceful mass mobilization in non-democratic regimes. It aims to answer two questions:

  1. When does the military defend the dictator against the mobilizing masses and when does it defect from the regime coalition?
  2. How can different forms of defection be explained, i.e., when and why do military leaders side with the opposition, and when do they stage a coup d’état, respectively?

In order to answer these questions, we advance the concept of “dictator’s endgame”, and devel-op a game-theoretic model that explains the outcome of authoritarian regime crises as the result of strategic bargaining between the dictator, the military leadership and the opposition over the distribution of material and political privileges. We test the model’s explanatory power through a mixed methods approach that systematically combines statistical analyses and process tracing case studies. At the core of the empirical analysis rests an original quantitative dataset on all instances of mass mobilizations in non-democratic regimes worldwide between 1946 and 2014. Publication goals are three peer-reviewed articles in A-ranked international journals and an English-language monograph. All original data will be made publicly available after the end of the project period.

As of now, there is no comparable study that combines deductive theoretical modeling and a multi-method empirical analysis of all instances of mass mobilization in autocratic regimes. The project, therefore, promises to deliver innovative theoretical and empirical contributions to four areas of political research: the study of non-democratic regimes, democratization research, research on civil-military relations, and the study of contentious politics.

 

Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI)

Since 2004, The BTI is published every two years by the Bertelsmann Stiftung.  The project analyzes development and transformation processes toward democracy and a market economy in international comparison. To be updated every two years, the Transformation Index BTI provides a ranking that combines qualitative, in-depth evaluations with quantitative scores for the performance of 137 developing and transition countries. The BTI measures the current state of democracy and market economy in a given country, its evolution over the past two years and the quality of governance performed by its leadership. The data collected will contribute to the development of strategy recommendations for the political management of transformation.


I have been involved in this project since the early 2000s as member of the academic advisory board of the BTI and as regional coordinator for the region “Asia and Oceania). In this, I closely collaborated with a large number of national and international scholars from 21 countries in Asia-Oceania as well as from Europe and North America. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2022 is currently in progress. We expect the results to be made available to the public in November 2021.


For more information, please see the BTI project homepage.

Adobe Ergebnisbericht BTI 2020

Adobe Executive Summary BTI 2020

 

Sustainable Governance Indicators

Employing both qualitative and quantitative research methods, the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) identify effective policy-making strategies throughout the OECD, with printed and online reports aimed at interested citizens, the media and policy practitioners alike. The project was developed as a complement to the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, which documents good governance practices in 128 countries in transition. Both projects are guided by the vision of Bertelsmann Stiftung founder Reinhard Mohn, who believed in the importance of identifying good practices by means of systematic comparison, allowing individuals around the world to learn from one another's experiences. The third round of the SGI (2014) will begin in May 2013.

Linked to the SGI research is the research on Sustainable Governance in the BRICS Countries (http://www.sgi-network.org/brics/) that has been launched in late 2012 and a special report on Sustainable Governance in Asia as well. I have been involved as coordinator and member of the academic advisory board of the SGI in these projects since the beginning. This gave me the opportunity to cooperate and publish with international leading scholars on governance in Australia, New Zealand, and a number of Asian countries. This group of researchers include Thomas Kalinowski (Ehwa Women’s University Seoul); Ian McAllister (Australian National University, Canberra); Roger Wilkins (University of Melbourne); Claudia Scott (Victoria University of Wellington); Ujjwal Kumar Singh (University of Delhi); Yasheng Huang (MIT); Edmund Terence Gomez (University of Malaysia); Jon T S Quah (National University Singapore); Carl Thayer and Vedi Hadiz (Murdoch University).

For further information, please refer to the SGI project homepageExterner Inhalt.

 

 

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Completed research projects

Regulating Civil-Military Relations: The Nexus of Control and Effectiveness

Civil–military relations are a key feature of political life in all nation-states that maintain permanent military organizations, are tasked with the defense of the state and its citizens, and engage in war against other states. In most liberal democracies, the armed forces support their governments in responding to natural disasters, are involved in border security, and assist the police in dealing with organized crime and terrorism, in addition to their core function of defending the state against external security threats. Civil–military relations are also relevant for many new democracies, which often struggle with the double challenge of creating robust institutions for the democratic control of the armed forces (and other statutory security forces, such as the police and intelligence agencies) and turning them into effective tools for the protection and security of their citizens. Finally, in authoritarian regimes, the armed forces are key components of regime coalitions. For example, in Egypt and Thailand, the military recently staged coups and controls politics, whereas in Russia and Turkey, authoritarian civilian leaders dominate the military, which play a more regional or global role. In Venezuela, where President Maduro clings to power by relying on the military to suppress the population and opposition political parties, the military is the ultimate guardian of the ‘civilian’ dictatorship as it is the only state institution capable of defeating a mass-based, organized, and potentially violent opposition movement. 

While there is an abundant literature on civil–military relations in emerging and consolidated democracies, and – much less, however – on contemporary civil–military relations in autocracies, most of this literature is concerned with the institutionalization and workings (or failures) of civilian control over the armed forces. Far less often do scholars focus on issues of military effectiveness – that is, the military’s ability actually to implement the policies formulated with the desired results. Among the few existing works on military effectiveness, most study a military’s battlefield effectiveness. However, a military’s capability to win an armed conflict is perhaps not altogether a useful measure of its effectiveness. For one, the aims of contemporary military operations have changed from pursuing concrete objectives and victory to establishing certain conditions from which political outcomes can be decided. In addition, conventional war-fighting is only one of many roles and missions, as most armed forces engage in contemporary politics as well. As we will elaborate below, for most of these – for instance supporting the police in fighting crime or assisting civilian authorities in coping with the humanitarian fallout of natural disasters – it is not possible to identify a “win” or to declare “victory.” 

The focus of this workshop and its resulting publication is therefore on what we describe as the “nexus of civilian control and military effectiveness.” The key question that will be discussed from theoretical, methodological, and analytical perspectives is how patterns and practices of political control influence the effectiveness of armed forces in fulfilling a broad spectrum of roles and missions, from warfighting to peace support operations, and from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to disaster and humanitarian assistance. We believe this topic is particularly timely as there are cases demonstrating substantial changes in both the relationship between military institutions and civilians, and in the roles and missions adopted by these institutions. For example, in the United States under the Trump administration, there is the unique situation in which both the Secretary of Defense and the White House Chief of Staff are retired four-star Marine Corps generals and the National Security Advisor is an active duty three-star army general. In Venezuela, democratic backsliding under leftist populist governments has not only destroyed the country’s democratic institutions, but has also contributed to the rise of the military as the main buttress of the tattered government of President Maduro. In contrast, in Chile, which experienced one of the most repressive and long-lasting military regimes in Latin America after the World War II, the transition from military to civilian government and the following transition from a democratic government to a democratic political regime have resulted in fundamental democratic change in the nation’s civil–military relations. Furthermore, there have been a number of cases in recent years, for example Egypt (since 2013) and Thailand (since 2014), which demonstrate that under certain circumstances, militaries are still able and willing to successfully takeover government. Meanwhile, in Turkey, following a pattern of intermittent rule by the military, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took advantage of the failed military coup d’état in 2016 to purge the military and to institutionalize his personal control over the military and other security forces, now dominating all domains of politics in his country. The situation of President Putin in Russia, who presides over an increasingly reformed and reequipped military, is similar.

The purpose of this research, co-funded by Heidelberg University’s Field of Focus 4 and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, is to compare civil–military relations in countries where the relationships between the military institutions are varied and in which militaries are directed to implement a variety of different roles and missions. The cases selected include established and emerging democracies as well as hybrid and authoritarian regimes in Europe, Asia, North and South America, North Africa, and the republics of the former Soviet Union. The findings will be discussed at a workshop in May 2018 and will eventually appear in an edited volume, published with Lynne Rienner Publishers (https://www.rienner.com).

Social Cohesion in Asia – Historical origins, contemporary shapes, and future dynamics.

This research project is funded by the Bertelsmann Foundation. It brings together researchers from Europe, Asia and the United States. The project runs from February 2018 to December 2019. It explores the historical origins, contemporary shapes and future dynamics of social cohesion in eight carefully selected countries in Asia. It builds on the concepts and empirical findings of the Asian Social Cohesion Radar project (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2018) but aims to investigate three aspects of social cohesion in Asia that the previous research project was not able to investigate or identify: 

  1. What are major historical traditions of writings and thinking about social cohesion and the social order in the political thinking of individual Asian countries or related concepts or traits of thinking and conceptualization that can be considered as conceptually equivalent? 
  2. What are the social origins and historical trajectories of different traditions of social cohesion in Asia, and their subsequent patterns of evolution, based on longue durée accounts of historical development?
  3. How does social cohesion interact with socioeconomic and political transformation in different – democratic or non-democratic – political regime settings? 
  4. What are current and future challenges for the cohesion of Asian societies and what are evidence-based recommendations in order to preserve and strengthen social cohesion in the respective societies?

In addition to a comparative overview of the historical origins and trajectories of social cohesion and socioeconomic and political transformation in Northeast, South and Southeast Asia, the project comprises eight  case studies: China, Singapore and South Korea (“Sinic cluster”);India and Bangladesh (“South Asian cluster”); Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia (“Malay-Buddhist cluster”).

Self-Regulation in the Context of Electoral Authoritarian Rule – Civil society in Malaysia and Singapore in Comparative Perspective

This project is funded by the Excellence Inititative of the University of Heidelberg and is part of the Field of Focus 4 program. The main concern of Field of Focus 4 is to better understand human (self-)regulation processes in interdisciplinary dialogue. This project examines the relationship between the type of political regime and the formation, development and forms of cooperation of civil society actors in two Southeast Asian electoral authoritarian countries, Malaysia and Singapore. Since the independence, these two autocratic countries are governed by a ruling party. Both societies are characterized by strong cultural, religious, and economic cleavages as well as ethnic diverse populations. Besides these similarities, the two autocratic regimes practise different forms of regulation with regard to the space for civil society actors. This study adresses three research questions:

  1. What kind of civil society actors did emerge in Malaysia and Singapore since their independence and in how far is this related to forms of state regulation?
  2. What kind of ideological, cultural, and strategic factors influence forms of cooperation between civil society actors?
  3. What does that mean for the persistence of the autocratic regime?

This project combines qualitiative methods of political science with those of cultural studies. The aim of the project is to gain new insights into forms of self-regulation in the context of electoral authoritarian rule.

For more information, please see the Field of Focus 4 homepage.

 

Democratic Transformation and Civilian Control of the Military: A configurative comparison of new democracies (1974-2010)

This study is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and examines the establishment of civilian control over the military in new democracies in order to answer two research questions: (1) Which structural factors affect the chances for institutionalizing civilian control in new democracies? (2) Which strategies do civilian actors employ to make the military accept civilian control? Theoretical point of departure is the model of civil-military relations developed in the preceding project which argues that civilian control depends on reducing the military’s capacity and disposition to encroach onto the elected officials’ effective power to decide in relevant policy areas. This is the more likely if the structural context in which civil-military interactions take place provides sufficient resources for civilians to employ robust strategies of control which deeply intrude into the military’s autonomous sphere of influence. The hypotheses derived from the model will be tested in a mixed methods research design that combines a configurative-comparative fuzzy-set analysis of 84 new democracies of the “third wave of democratization” (1974-2010) with short narrative studies of eight systematically selected cases. At the core of the empirical analysis rests the development of an original dataset of civil-military relations in the “third wave democracies”. As of now, there is neither a comparable dataset nor any comparative study of this kind. The project, therefore, promises to deliver significant theoretical and empirical insights. Publication goals of the project are a peer-reviewed article in an international journal and an English-language monograph. All data will be made publicly available after the end of the project period.

 

International Workshop-Conference “Varieties of Autocracy – Institutions, Performance and Survival”, Heidelberg University, March 2-4, 2012

Stefan Wurster (Heidelberg University) and I organized this conference which was funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation in order to discuss and analyze three research questions:

  1. Which types of authoritarian rule can be differentiated, and how can they be operationalized and measured?
  2. According to what specific logic do authoritarian regimes function, and which role do the dominant institutional, procedural, and ideological conditions play in this? Which policy performance do different types of authoritarian rule feature, and are there different economic, social, or environmental outcomes?
  3. How can the persistence of authoritarian states be explained? What are the specific survival strategies of autocracies, and what role does policy performance play in this?

The conference broad together a number of pertinent scholars in the field of authoritarianism and democracy research, such as Jennifer Gandhi; Edeltraud Roller; Carl Henrik Knutsen; James W. McGuire; Jörg Faust; Wolfgang Merkel; Jeffrey Pickering; Jan Teorell; Steffen Kailitz; Andreas Schedler; Jeffrey Haynes; Ronald Wintrobe; Manfred G. Schmidt; Julia Bader and Oliver Schlumberger.

The conference proceedings have been published as a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Contemporary Politics (19:1) in February (online) and April (print) 2013.

 

International Workshop-Conference “Addressing the Structure-Agency Divide in the Study of Civil-Military Relations in Democratizing Asia”, 14-15 October 2010, Heidelberg University

In October 2010, I organized a research workshop on ““Addressing the Structure-Agency Divide in the Study of Civil-Military Relations in Democratizing Asia” with financial support from the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation. At the workshop, 14 scholars from nine countries (Thomas C. Bruneau, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey; David Pion-Berlin, University of California, Riverside,  Helena Carreiras, Department of Sociology and CIES, ISCTE – Lisbon; Marcus Mietzner, ANU; Renato Cruz de Castro, International Studies Department, De La Salle University, Manila; Paul Chambers, David Kuehn, Siegfried Wolf and Philip Völkel, all Heidelberg University; Smruti S. Pattanaik The Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Dehli; York Chen, Tamkang University, Tamsui; Ukrist Pathmanand, Chulalongkorn University; and Rhyu Sang-young, Yonsei University) discussed methodological, empirical and theoretical issues in the study of civil-military relations in emerging democracies in East, South and Southeast Asia.

The conference proceedings have been published as a thematic issue of the peer-reviewed Asian Journal of Political Science (19:3).

 

Public Forum and International Workshop“Civil-Military Relations and Democratic Stress: Lessons from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Burma/Myanmar”, 1 September 2009, Bangkok.

Organized by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bangkok; Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Bangkok, and Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University. In September 2009, I co-organized an international workshop and public forum on civil-military relations in Asia, sponsored by FES and ISIS. Thai and foreign scholars such as Charas Suwanmala (Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok) , Thitinan Pongsudhirak (ISIS, Bangkok); Suchit Bunbongkarn; Paul Chambers (Heidelberg University/Payap University, Chiang Mai), Win Min (Payap University); Herman Joseph Kraft, University of the Philippines); Rizal Sukma (CSIS Jakarta) deliberated on the role of the military in Asian societies.

The conference proceedings and additional articles were published in the edited volume "Democracy under Stress. Civil-military relations in South and Southeast Asia", Bangkok: ISIS.

 

International Conference-Workshop “Challenges and Prospects of Democratic Governance in Southeast Asia”, 15-18 January 2009, Heidelberg University

With financial support of the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation, I organized a conference on the state of democratic governance in Southeast Asia at Heidelberg University that brought together scholars from Germany (Marco Bünte, Aurel Croissant, Claudia Derichs, Jürgen Rüland, Andreas Ufen, Patrick Ziegenhain and Claudia Derichs, Christoph Schuck, Wolfgang Merkel, Hans-Jürgen Puhle), the United States (Allen Hicken, Shin Doh-Chull, Mark Thompson), Switzerland (Heiner Hänggi), Canada (Philippe Régnier), and Australia (Ben Reilly).

Some of the papers presented at the conference and additional manuscripts as well were published as the edited volume "The Crisis of Democratic Governance in Southeast Asia", Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave.

 

The Cultural Dimensions of Domestic and International Conflicts since 1945 (2008-2009)

The research project on “The Cultural Dimensions of Domestic and International Conflicts since 1945” was conducted for and in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung Gütersloh by Prof. Dr. Aurel Croissant and Prof. Dr. Uwe Wagschal as well as by Nicolas Schwank, M.A. and Christoph Trinn, M.A. at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Heidelberg from October 2007 to September 2009. On the basis of the CONIS Databank Heidelberg, the project quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed violent and non-violent cultural conflicts in a global perspective. Cultural conflicts are those political conflicts in which culture is the thematic issue, but not necessarily the cause, of the respective conflict. In this context, culture is to be understood as the realm of society which has been constituted in order to generate and preserve a collective identity. Culture especially comprises religion, language, and historicity.

In 2009, the theoretical, statistical as well as case-oriented results were published by Nomos under the title  “Kulturelle Konflikte seit 1945.Die kulturellen Dimensionen des globalen Konfliktgeschehens”, Baden-Baden: Nomos.

 

Democratic Transformation and Civilian Control of the Military: Comparing New Democracies in Northeast, Southeast, and South Asia (2008-2012)

This study is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and examines the relationship of democratic transformation and civil-military relations in seven new democracies in Asia. The research was guided by three interrelated questions: How do new Asian democracies cope with the challenges of institutionalizing civilian control of the military? How successful are they and which factors lead to the observed differences in scope and shape of civilian control? How do the patterns of civil-military relations in these countries affect the quality and chances of democratic consolidation? The project followed a qualitative, two-dimensional comparative approach: First, the development of civil-military relations in seven young democracies of Northeast Asia (South Korea, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand) and South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan) were analyzed in country studies and intra-regional comparisons. In a second step, the results were compared in an inter-regional perspective, linking the findings to the general theoretical contexts and the democratization literature.

The project findings were published in the monograph "Democratization and Civilian Control in Asia", Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan.

 

Causes of Violent Escalation of Intrastate Conflicts (2011-2012)

This research project, which has been financed within the framework of the Excellence Initiative at Heidelberg University, aims at improving the explanatory power of current approaches in quantitative conflict research. Based on the observation that the findings of empirical analyses of conflict causation can be replicated only to a small extent, as a first step the project layed the theoretical and empirical foundations for systematizing the dependent (conflict escalation) as well as the independent variables (explanatory approaches). The aim of this step was a conflict-type-specific consolidation of theoretical approaches. As a second step, the grouped theories were tested on the basis of a typologized empirical conflict data set, which has been extended to include the subnational level. The project concluded with practically relevant findings with regard to which conflict phenomena are to be assigned to which conflict type and are to be analyzed and explained best by which theoretical approaches.

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