Research at the department of German Politics and Political Sociology is characterized by a broad interest in different research questions and methodological approaches. On the one hand, we are interested in questions related to elections, parties, and voting in general. A specific focus lies on questions related to voting behavior, for example by considering socio-political contexts of candidates.
On the other hand, our research focus lies on phenomena related to political sociology, as well as political attitudes and behavior more broadly. In this area, we investigate for example how extreme attitudes are formed and can be assessed on the right and left end of the political spectrum, as well as questions related to national and European political identity, and political culture in Germany.
To this end, theoretical approaches related to political psychology, as for example social identity approaches, are applied. Regarding research methods we focus on current methods applied in political science, as for example structural equation modeling.