How do governments navigate the tension between border security and the liberal principles of the rule of law and human rights? To answer this question, the project zooms in on the actors executing the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force: police forces responsible for controlling cross-border traffic at the border lines. Deploying more border guards is a way for governments to demonstrate responsiveness to voters demanding assertive controls. Yet, in a democracy, governments face liberal constraints in the way they can deploy police forces – from parliament, courts, the law, human rights treaties and other international agreements. Liberal constraints in border management have received relatively less scholarly attention compared to public preferences over migration. We don’t know to which extent liberal constraints have varied over time and across countries or how they influence how border agents do their job.
This project sets out to collect information on the extent to which national border authorities in Europe are subject to oversight by governments, parliaments, courts, and independent ombudsman offices. The more diverse and independent institutions are checking on the border agents’ work, the more constrained governments should be in the way they deploy them. This kind of “liberal-embedded” border management with checks and balances would provide officials, civil servants, and affected individuals with the opportunity to systematically document and report violations, impose disciplinary sanctions or pursue legal action, and thereby shape agency culture. The project then examines the conditions under which such accountability mechanisms for border agents are introduced or reformed, for example as a result of public pressure, reporting on violations, or in anticipation of accession to the European Union.
Since states are increasingly cooperating with one another in the area of border protection and, in doing so, are also outsourcing border protection tasks to non-democratic states, the project analyses how such cooperation affects the ability to hold officials accountable for violations. Cooperation might allow to evade liberal constraints by “outsourcing” patrol to weaker constraint countries. Or it might serve to bolster such constraints by diffusing good practices in accountability. Finally, the project addresses the question of how accountability mechanisms influence the frequency and severity of human rights violations at the border. Direct political control of agencies might hand down pressure to guard the border more assertively. In contrast, independent accountability mechanisms are more likely to enforce responsibility to human rights and the rule of law. In the project, we will leverage reforms in accountability to assess the causal effect on the reported and prosecuted behavior of agents.
- The project makes a contribution to the study of border politics by moving beyond anti-immigrant sentiment among the population to studying the resilience of liberal institutions to shifting popular demands. This will also further enrich the research on the relationship between domestic (il)liberalism and challenges to the liberal international order.
INFRASEC examines how algorithmic infrastructures transform international security governance. Focusing on large-scale processing of Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Records (PNR), it investigates how international actors design, implement, and scale algorithmic systems that produce actionable security knowledge. While existing scholarship has addressed anticipatory logics and risk-based rationalities in algorithmic security, the concrete organizational, computational, and governance processes behind these infrastructures remain understudied. INFRASEC introduces the concept of "algorithmic infrastructuring" to study infrastructures as open-ended processes. Through a comparative analysis of the EU and the UN, the project combines expert interviews, participant observation, document and interface analysis, digital mapping, and qualitative comparative analysis, thus systematically exploring how different institutional configurations produce divergent security practices. By shifting attention from infrastructures-as-objects to infrastructures-as-processes, INFRASEC advances debates on digital sovereignty, epistemic infrastructures, and democratic governance.
The Federal Chancellery is currently developing a "Dashboard Political Affairs" designed to provide federal employees with efficient access to information on the status of ongoing federal affairs. The dashboard draws information from various existing databases. In order to structure and classify the available information, a finely detailed process structure differentiated by type of affair is required.
The project "Simplify! Improving social services through a generative translation tool for plain/simple language: Validation of its use for social welfare clients, implementation principles and assessment of its impact on benefit uptake" is funded by the Digitalization Initiative of the Zurich Higher Education Institutions (DIZH).
It addresses non take-up of social welfare benefits due to language and administrative barriers. The project will develop an AI tool to translate complex welfare documents into plain language. And we will then validate the tool’s effectiveness, design real-world implementations and evaluate its impact on benefit uptake through field experiments.
The project is carried out as a collaboration between the team of Rainer Gabriel at ZHAW's School of Social Work and the team of Karsten Donnay at UZH's Department of Political Science. And we are very happy to be working with the Social Welfare Department of the Canton of Zurich, Amt für Zusatzleistungen (AZL) and the Social Services of the city of Zurich, the Social Services of the city of Dietikon and Pro Senectute Canton Zurich as our practice and implementation partners.
Governments traditionally represent national interests in international politics, but how horizontal inequalities and minority representation extend beyond the nation-state remains less clear. Parliamentary delegations offer a unique channel through which non-majority perspectives can be amplified on the international stage. These delegations signal which citizens—and which inequalities—are acknowledged in International Organizations and Global Governance Networks. The project examines how political regimes and parties in the Global North and Global South shape and deploy parliamentary delegations for strategic representation. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for grasping how states respond to shifts in inequality and how contestation and politicization unfold in global governance. Using attendance data, text analysis of summit speeches, and elite interviews with delegation members, this study investigates how countries choose which forms of inequality to highlight—or ignore—at three key international cooperation forums: BRICS (plus), the OECD, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). The working hypothesis suggests that economic organizations such as the OECD (a Global North hegemon) and BRICS (a Global South challenger) rarely represent or politicize inequalities between member states. Instead, inequalities are often accepted as structural realities rather than actively addressed through parliamentary delegations. In contrast, the IPU, as a global parliamentary forum, provides a space where both global and horizontal inequalities are strategically represented and contested, reflecting the role of non-majoritarian interests across different political regimes. By examining economic, political, and cultural inequalities, this project contributes to a deeper understanding of the strategic representation and contestation of global inequalities in international politics.
Unser Forschungsprojekt entwickelt Masse, um die Arbeit der Mitglieder des Schweizer Parlaments transparenter zu machen. Die Masse sind wissenschaftlich fundiert und politisch neutral. Das gibt Wähler:innen eine einfache Möglichkeit, die Leistung ihrer gewählten Vertreter:innen besser zu verstehen. Dabei untersuchen wir drei zentrale Aspekte:Politischer Erfolg: Wie wirksam ist eine Person in der Politik? Dazu messen wir den Erfolg in drei Bereichen: Karriereerfolg (z. B. Erreichen wichtiger politischer Positionen), Reputation (z. B. Anerkennung innerhalb des Parlaments) und politische Wirkung (z. B. Einfluss auf die Gesetzgebung).Einhaltung von Wahlversprechen: Halten Politiker:innen, was sie im Wahlkampf versprechen? Wir entwickeln eine computergestützte Methode, um Wahlversprechen aus politischen Texten (z. B. Wahlprogramme, Reden, Videos, Webseiten) zu identifizieren und vergleichen sie mit den politischen Handlungen im Parlament. Politisches Vermächtnis: Welche langfristigen Auswirkungen haben die Gesetzesvorschläge und politischen Initiativen einer Person? Dabei betrachten wir sowohl die Beständigkeit der eingebrachten Gesetzesänderungen als auch deren inhaltliche Bedeutung für die Gesellschaft.Das Ziel dieses Projekts ist es, politische Rechenschaftspflicht in der Schweiz zu stärken und den Bürger:innen verständliche, wissenschaftlich fundierte und neutrale Informationen über ihre gewählten Vertreter:innen bereitzustellen. Die entwickelten Methoden können langfristig auch für andere Parlamente genutzt werden, aber die erarbeiteten Indikatoren sind speziell auf das Schweizer Parlament zugeschnitten und werden den Bürger:innen auf einer benutzerfreundlichen, interaktiven Website präsentiert.Mit diesem Projekt leisten wir einen Beitrag zur Transparenz der Schweizer Politik und helfen mit, das Vertrauen in die Demokratie zu stärken.
EN: Our research project develops measures to make the work of members of the Swiss Parliament more transparent. These measures are scientifically grounded and politically neutral. They provide voters with a simple way to better understand the performance of their elected representatives. We examine three key aspects:
Political success: How effective is a person in politics? We assess success in three areas: career success (e.g., attaining important political positions), reputation (e.g., recognition within parliament), and political impact (e.g., influence on legislation).
Fulfillment of campaign promises: Do politicians deliver on what they promise during election campaigns? We develop a computer-assisted method to identify campaign promises from political texts (e.g., party manifestos, speeches, videos, websites) and compare them with political actions in parliament.
Political legacy: What are the long-term effects of an individual’s legislative proposals and political initiatives? We examine both the durability of proposed legal changes and their substantive significance for society.
The goal of this project is to strengthen political accountability in Switzerland and provide citizens with accessible, scientifically grounded, and neutral information about their elected representatives. The methods developed can, in the long term, also be applied to other parliaments, although the indicators are specifically tailored to the Swiss Parliament and will be presented to citizens on a user-friendly, interactive website. With this project, we contribute to greater transparency in Swiss politics and help strengthen trust in democracy.
At the heart of this project is a critical question: How do societies move from persistent violence to sustainable peace? Despite a global decline in violence over centuries, certain regions, particularly in Latin America, remain plagued by high levels of violence that are deeply entrenched in local social structures. This project offers a novel theory, suggesting that the process of alignment between state and societal institutions is a key mechanism to overcome persistent violence.
Combining historical analysis, statistical data, and qualitative interviews, the research team examines how institutional change influences trajectories of violence over decades, with a focus on Colombia and other countries where violence remains common. By analyzing local cases of violence reduction and embracing a long-term perspective, the project seeks to provide a better understanding of how societies afflicted by violence can move to sustainable peace.
DE: Die menschenrechtlichen Beschwerdemechanismen der Vereinten Nationen ermöglichen Menschen auf der ganzen Welt, ihre nationalen Regierungen für Menschenrechtsverletzungen anzuklagen. Dieses Forschungsprojekt hat systematisch untersucht, welche Faktoren beeinflussen, ob Opfer von Menschenrechtsverletzungen Individualbeschwerden bei den Vereinten Nationen einreichen und welche Effekte diese Beschwerden auf die Menschenrechtssituationen in ihren Ländern haben. Die Forschungsergebnisse zeigen, dass Opfer von Menschenrechtsverletzungen mit niedrigerem sozioökonomischem Status häufig keine Beschwerden einreichen, weil sie die Mechanismen nicht kennen oder weil ihnen die notwendigen Sprachkenntnisse fehlen. Sozioökonomische Eliten sind systematisch überrepräsentiert in den Menschenrechtsbeschwerden an die Vereinten Nationen. Ausserdem zeigen die Forschungsergebnisse, dass diese Beschwerdemechanismen zur Verbesserung der Menschenrechtslage beitragen können, dass es aber in vielen Staaten auch repressive Vergeltung gegen zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen gibt, die Beschwerden gegen ihre Regierung einreichen. Die Forschungsergebnisse legen nahe, dass Beschwerdeführer von den Vereinten Nationen besser geschützt und anonym gehalten werden müssen, um sie vor repressiver Vergeltung zu schützen.
EN: The United Nations’ human rights complaints mechanism enables people from across the world to submit complaints against their national governments. This research project systematically examined which factors influence whether victims of human rights violations submit a complaint to the UN, and what effects such complaints have on the human rights situation in their countries.
The findings show that victims of human rights violations with lower socioeconomic status often do not file complaints because they are unaware of the mechanism or lack the required language skills. Socioeconomic elites are systematically overrepresented in human rights complaints submitted to the UN.
Although the findings show that the complaints mechanisms can lead to improvements in human rights, in many states there is also repressive retaliation against civil society organisations that file complaints against their governments. The findings further suggest that complainants must be better protected by the UN and kept anonymous in order to protect them from retaliatory repression.
Representative democracies in Europe face demands for more democratic participation and more efficient and effective policy making at the same time coming from the populist and technocratic challenges, as well as simultaneous demands for regional devolution and supra-national integration. As a result, they have been under pressure to reform for some time. As a systematic and theoretically driven repository of such reforms is missing, the project aims to produce a dataset of reforms of representative institutions and processes aimed at enhancing both citizen inclusion and policy effectiveness. Based on a typology of areas of reforms (electoral systems, legislative procedures, participatory rights, legislative−executive relations, etc.), reforms are classified and linked to the dimensions of representation they target, such as inclusion, responsiveness, responsibility, accountability among others.
The dataset covers all member-states of the European Union as well as Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom up to 2022, and links up with data from a past endeavour at EUDO (the forerunner of EGPP), within the SIEPOL (Seclusion and Inclusion in the European Polity) project, directed by Peter Mair and Camille Bedock. The project, directed by Daniele Caramani, has received funding from the Research Council of the EUI.
Online-Plattformen haben die politische Diskussion verändert, indem sie einerseits mehr Menschen eine Stimme geben, andererseits aber auch schädliche Inhalte wie Hassreden verbreiten. Diese Inhalte beeinflussen die Gesellschaft und Politik negativ. Das Ziel dieses Projekts ist es, die Qualität der Online-Diskussion zu verbessern, indem sowohl schädliche als auch konstruktive Inhalte untersucht werden. Wir definieren schädliche Inhalte als respektlose und beleidigende Beiträge, die persönliche Angriffe oder diskriminierende Sprache enthalten. Konstruktive Inhalte fördern hingegen positive Diskussionen und demokratische Beteiligung.
Das Projekt verfolgt zwei Hauptziele: die Entwicklung von Methoden zur Erkennung schädlicher und konstruktiver Inhalte sowie die Bewertung der Wirksamkeit von Massnahmen zur Reduzierung schädlicher Inhalte und zur Förderung konstruktiver Dialoge. Unsere Forschung umfasst drei Arbeitsbereiche: die Entwicklung und Messung von Erkennungsmethoden, die Bewertung von Massnahmen gegen schädliche Inhalte und die Untersuchung von Massnahmen zur Förderung konstruktiver Inhalte.
Wir arbeiten mit Schweizer Nachrichtenportalen wie Blick und 20 Minuten zusammen und analysieren Daten von Plattformen wie Twitter und Reddit. Das Projekt adressiert Herausforderungen wie die zuverlässige Inhaltserkennung und den Zugang zu Daten und hat entsprechende Massnahmen zur Risikominderung getroffen. Insgesamt wird unser Projekt wertvolle Erkenntnisse und neue Methoden liefern, um die Online-Diskussion zu verbessern und schädliche Inhalte zu reduzieren. Dies wird Forscher:innen, zivilgesellschaftlichen Gruppen und politischen Entscheidungsträgern helfen.