Main Research Area: Federalism and Democracy

The research focus „democracy and federalism“ bundles investigations on federal and democratic political systems from a theoretical perspective of history of ideas as well as from an empirical comparative perspective. An analytic focus Iies on the tension between democracy and federalism as well as on the mutual influence and dependency. In terms of the history of ideas, a focus is on the era of ‘democratic’ revolutions at the end of the 18. century. In addition, there are critical diagnoses of the current state of democracy and analyses of the conditions of democracy in supranational multi-level architectures. Empirically, various aspects of federal orders and processes – e.g. representation and coordination – are investigated in Germany, in the EU and comparatively in Western democracies.