Places of Power

At the chair we investigate administrative coordination processes in policy-making and in multi-level systems. Besides comparative studies, our main focus is on administrations in the German multi-level system – from local level to Länder and federal levels up to the EU. Concomitantly, we take on a theoretical perspective of 'multi-level governance'.

Beside the federal distribution of powers and public service personnel, public finances are a major research theme in our group. These are external factors for administrative work. Also, we analyse coordination processes within and between administrations as well as across levels of government as crucial 'internal' conditions for effective administrative work. Finally, we investigate conditions and processes of local policy implementation in various policy fields.

We teach various courses in the BA- and MA programmes of the Institute of Political Science. Among those are an introductory lecture on Public Administration, introductory seminars on Public Policy as well as advanced seminars on governance, government, local administration and finances, public service and multi-level governance. On those topics, we supervise theses at BA, MA and PhD levels.