We worked on the dualization of labor markets and welfare states in Western democracies. We wanted to know to what extent, why and with which political and electoral consequences post-industrial societies become more and more divided in insiders and outsiders. Work in this project is situated in two institutional contexts: a) The project was linked the the EU Network of Excellence „Reconciling Work and Welfare RECWOWE“. From the collaborative research in this project, we published the book „The Age of Dualization. The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies“ (2012, OUP). I am a co-editor, together with Profs. Patrick Emmenegger, Bruno Palier and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser. The book shows that dualization of labor markets and societies is not a mere structural trend, but rather the result of political decisions. b) On dualization, I also worked with Hanna Schwander (University of Bremen) and Thomas Kurer (UZH), on the SNF-project „Who is in and who is out? The political representation of insiders and outsiders in Western Europe“ of which I am the main applicant (2011-2013, Grant number 100017_131994; 138’800.- CHF). Inequality is on the rise in almost all Western European countries for the first time in more than five decades. To scholars of comparative political economy, this does not come as a surprise, since both the flexibilization of labor markets as well as welfare state retrenchment have been major trends in the policy development of these countries since the 1980s. These reforms, in combination with de-industrialization and sluggish economic growth have led to an increasing division of the working class into labor market insiders and outsiders. Labor market insiders hold standard, protected and stable jobs, while outsiders are marginally or atypically employed, and more likely to be unemployed. The determinants, structure and outcomes of dualization are increasingly well researched by sociologists and economists. However, we still know relatively little about the extent of dualization across countries, about the politics of dualization and about policy feedback. We investigate how deep the divide between insiders and outsiders has become in different European countries, whether this divide impacts on the democratic process and which policy feedbacks result from it. Key questions are the following: What is dualization and how can we measure it? Who are the insiders and outsiders across different countries? Do we see differences in the levels of participation and party choices of insiders and outsiders? What are the policy preferences of these groups? Are outsiders mobilized by radical right-wing or left-wing parties? What policies do these parties advocate? In this project, we combine the analysis of a variety of data sources (household panel data, comparative survey data, coded media content analysis) in order to contribute to the understanding of one of the most acute and salient topics that West European societies need to deal with in the current context of crisis and austerity, namely how to distribute increasingly scarce resources between different segments of the society.
The Department of Political Science (IPZ) and the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research (IPMZ), both part of the University of Zurich, have evaluated the “Communication strategy for the prevention of seasonal flu 2008-2012” (“Kommunikationsstrategie zur Prävention der saisonalen Grippe 2008-2012”) on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). This communication strategy has two threads. On the one hand, it seeks to directly encourage the end addressees to get vaccinated (for their own protection and that of others) via the use of educational material such as posters and brochures. On the other hand, it seeks to indirectly influence these end addressees through message multipliers (such as doctors and the mass media). The question of whether this communication strategy reached its intended end addressees and multipliers is of central importance to the evaluation. The findings indicate that the communication strategy has (so far) failed to achieve its objectives concerning the end addressees: a ten-year comparison shows a considerable fall in uptake among the at-risk groups who were encouraged to get themselves vaccinated for their own protection. Also, uptake among medical and health-care professionals as well as among individuals in close contact with the at-risk groups is insufficient to ensure the protection of others. In contrast, most of the multiplier-related objectives were achieved. On the basis of these findings, the evaluation formulates recommendations for the design of a follow-up strategy starting as from 2012/13.
This project examines how individuals respond to financial crises. It includes studies on the effect of foreign currency lending on individual political opinions in Eastern Europe, survey-research in Greece, and individual-level studies on public opinion during the 2008-10 Latvian financial and economic crisis. In a collaborative effort with colleagues from the University of York, Oxford University and IE University, we have run several surveys of public opinion on crisis management and the euro in Greece (July 2015, September 2015, December 2015, and February 2017).
This project in the framework of the Swiss Electoral Studies (Selects) analyzes the dynamics of the voting decision process in the campaign of the 2011 National Council elections. To this end, the project relies on the rolling cross-section (RCS) component of the Selects study – the first of its kind in the framework of an election campaign in Switzerland. The questions at the centre of this PhD project are how party strategies, media content, and campaign events influence the way in which citizens assess parties and form their voting intention.
In the last two decades, Swiss municipalities have been increasingly under strain and subject of various reforms (see for an overview: Ladner (2011b, 2001); Ladner and Steiner (2003); Kübler and Ladner (2003)). The reorganisation of the municipal administrations often inspiried by New Public Managment, the intergovernmental reallocation of tasks and financial resources, the creation of network-like organizations for service provision and, last but not least, municipal mergers are key elements of recent reform activities. In general, the reforms aim at preserving the important role of local governments in the Swiss political system. More precisely, they are often implemented in order to enhance the capacity to act at the local level and to increase the efficiency of policy outputs (Kübler and Ladner, 2003, 151). However, the impact of these “efficiency-driven reforms” on structures and processes of local democracy are hardly analyzed ((Ladner, 2011b, 212). The purpose of the project is to shed light on the democratic effects of the laft wave of local government reforms. In a first step we analyze the effect of municipal mergers on political partizipation.
In Switzerland, a wide range of political measures promoting gender equality at work are in place. However, this has not resulted in sustainable success in terms of equal payment, career development and the gendered division of labour. The aim of this project is to elaborate knowledge about the dynamics and the interplay of diverse equal opportunity policies in Switzerland. The envisaged findings seek to enhance the ability of political and state actors to adequately conceptualise and coordinate future policies. The project will analyse the genesis and governance of Swiss equal opportunity policies on the federal and cantonal level which aim at the equal participation of men and women in employment. Such policies include the anti-discrimination law, equal opportunity programmes of private and public employers, as well as measures to reconcile work and family life (e.g. public child care). Comparative expertise reports for Germany and Austria complement the study, as all three countries – in principle – have similar gender arrangements. Whereas Switzerland has developed stronger anti-discrimination policies, both other countries focus more on reconciliation. The project maps and classifies existing political initiatives and policy approaches since the 1990s. Selected cases will undergo a more detailed analysis. Research methods include surveys and interviews with stakeholders and experts, document analysis and network analysis.
The state chancellery of the canton of Argovia increasingly has the problem to animate people to participate in political processes. Based on this, the study systematically describes the current challenges of government communication in the canton of Argovia and formulates recommandations. The study focusses on the 1) constitutional borders of state communication; 2) political communication in an inter-cantonal and inter-national comparison; 3) opinion making of the people and the role of political communication.
This project aims at embedding urban design into the very processes of its generation, thereby harnessing the capacity to design that is ultimately framed by policy-making, strategic spatial planning and decision-making, and by the work processes in implementation. Several scientific disciplines have contributed to understanding of these local processes. In this project, we draw from four fields of knowledge: •Urban Design and Architecture (Documenting urban events) •Governance of urban transformation (Analysis of municipal policies) •Planning and decision-making (Tracing and mapping of planning strategies) •Studies of Work (Implementation of projects) We argue that city regions are best understood by observing their change over time with a focus on external shocks; thus, urban design activity should be analysed with respect to ‘events’ that generate far from equilibrium, ‘crisis’ situations, nudge everyday practices away from their standard responses, call for an explicit formulation of design strategies, and require their implementation into built environment. This is what we define as ‘urban events’ - they are the starting point of this research project. Our perspective on urban quality implies to attend to the multiple relations (of people, building, systems, processes, institutions) that make, shape and perform the city. The proposed project explores local solutions with regard to urban quality against the background of on ruptures that are induced by major changes in transportation connectivity and that trigger activities to conserve, secure or generate new urban qualities. More precisely, we endeavour to unveil the dynamics that influence the promotion - or hampering - of urban quality in development projects at the municipal level. Ultimately, the goal of the project is to understand the production of urban textures, and tracing the manifold transformations between both urban design and various (decision-making) processes in the field of policy-making, spatial planning and administrative work, and between those sequences respectively. The project is structured: A. Three disciplinary tracks (political science, urban geography and urban sociology): the analysis of three translations/transformations of which we expect that they are coupled in complex ways, taking place synchronically and diachronically, by means of both feed forward and feed back loops; B. An interdisciplinary approach: in four design studios, which are run by invited architects and followed by researcher involved in the track of the project. Studio participants will get retrospective and prospective insight in changes in the urban fabric that then can be linked to transportation connectivity. The aim of the design studio is not to the content of this study, but to generate new research questions, to reorganise research procedures, or to reconsider taken for granted knowledge.
This project investigates changes of lay participation in the context of the professionalization of management structures in the Swiss public school. In most Swiss cantons, professional school boards with operative power were introduced with the project of partial autonomy (Teilautonomisierung) of schools. This raises the question what happens with the local lay commissions that were strategically leading the public school in many cantons up to now. Additionally, school management has changed because parental boards were introduced in many places. The goal of the project is to clarify the relation of professionalization and lay participation concerning both participation forms (local lay commissions and parental boards). First, we will make qualitative case studies in four cantons to investigate changes in lay participation due to the reform of school governance. Second, we will systematically investigate the interaction of school management, school commissions, parental boards, and the local council in all 26 cantons in order to check whether the results from the qualitative case studies are generalisable for Switzerland as such.
In the fall of 2008, banks around the world were at the brink of failure, and governments, in an attempt to save them, took over huge amounts of risks, jeopardizing their own solvency. Many scholars see bailouts, particularly the one in the United States, as the product of crony capitalism: Politicians grant bailouts as side-payments at the cost of the general public. In this thesis, I argue that this view misunderstands bailouts. It overlooks that voters, too, benefit from banking bailouts. In effect, the interests of voters and banks overlap because both prefer avoiding the crisis to deteriorate. Voters benefit from government interventions because they mitigate the impact on the economy and reduce the losses to investments. The latter is especially important for voters in countries with financialized pension systems because financial turmoil threatens voters’ retirement savings. Thus, this dissertation advances the debate on bailouts by arguing that the current contributions neglect politicians’ electoral incentive to bail out banks and exaggerate the importance of banks’ privileged access to policymaking and their lobbying power. This dissertation also contributes to the debates on business power and the power balance between the legislature and the executive. I argue that recent scholars of business power have mistakenly understood instrumental power to come from deliberate actions and structural power from automatic mechanisms. But structural power does not have to function automatically; business can invoke its structural power intentionally and strategically. And banks’ strategic use of structural power explains why British banks could thwart the government’s preferred crisis intervention, but American banks could not, and why the British government ended up with large losses, while the American government got its money back.