Selected Publications
- “Culture and Politics: An Introduction to the Cultural Analysis of Politics “, Oxford: Routledge, 2011 (mit Jan-Erik Lane)
- „Arbeitsbuch Empirische Politikforschung“ (zusammen mit Maximilian Grasl und Sebastian Jäckle), Münster: Lit, 2009.
- „Die kulturellen Dimensionen des globalen Konfliktgeschehens. Kulturelle Konflikte seit 1945“, Reihe Weltregionen im Wandel, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2009 (zusammen mit Aurel Croissant, Nicolas Schwank und Christoph Trinn).
- „Konsolidierungsstrategien der Bundesländer“, Gütersloh, 2009 (zusammen mit Georg Wenzelburger, Thomas Metz und Tim Jäkel).
- „Successful Budget Consolidation. An International Comparison“, Gütersloh, 2008 (engl. Übersetzung des Buches „Haushaltskonsolidierung“, zusammen mit Georg Wenzelburger)
FRIAS Project
Überzeugungsstrategien in politischen Entscheidungs- und Reformprozessen.
Strategies of persuasion are a central factor in the success of political decision-making processes. These persuasive strategies play a particularly vital role in reform processes, as anti-reform positions enjoy a distinct advantage over reform supporters. For reforms to be set in motion, a significantly more persuasive performance must be used than for the maintenance of the status quo (“status quo bias”). The communication skills of political actors and the effect of persuasive strategies gain importance in the competitiveness, reform, and political effectiveness of current media society, particularly against the background of the greatest economic crisis since World War II. In the wake of this crisis it is possible to establish a radical change in communication patterns which extends to the critical analysis and replacement of the hitherto accepted paradigms of economic policy. The process of persuasion is not to be understood as a non-hierarchical discourse in the vein of Habermas, but rather as bound to the institutional framework, the share of resources, the preferences of the actors and the existing power structures. Therefore, successful reform can be expected – ceteris paribus – based on a country’s veto player structure which allows for better communicative persuasion of individual and collective veto players. Therefore, this project focuses not only on the effects and changes of the persuasion strategies, but also on the determinants of success or failure of persuasion strategies.