What factors explain the low political participation of citizens in Western democracies? What impact does naturalisation have on the integration of migrants in Switzerland? To what extent and under what circumstances can citizens be influenced by political advertising campaigns?

Political science questions require a range of different research methods to answer them adequately. Broad and well-founded knowledge of methods is therefore a basic prerequisite for successful and innovative research work. To paraphrase Max Weber: Science is method. For this reason, the Chair of Methods is primarily dedicated to teaching basic methodological knowledge, but also to in-depth teaching and research in the field of quantitative methods. Regression methods as well as maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference are used. Quasi-experimental and experimental as well as qualitative methods are also applied. The current research projects are correspondingly wide-ranging: Political psychology, international relations, political sociology are just a few of the sub-disciplines currently being researched.

The book "The Ambivalent Partisan: How Critical Loyalty Promotes Democracy" (Oxford University Press, 2012), co-authored by Prof. Marco Steenbergen, has won two prestigious awards: (1) the David O. Sears Prize of the International Society of Political Psychology for the Best Book in Mass Politics published in 2012 and (2) the Robert E. Lane Prize of the American Political Science Association for the Best Book in Political Psychology.