Research

Word research

My research focus is the fields of New Political Economy and New Institutional Economics, particularly the effects of national institutional frameworks on economic development, income inequality, and quality of life in international comparison.

In addition, I am engaged in international comparative suicide studies in the tradition of Emile Durkheim: The aim is to empirically capture anomic potential - the tension between integration and regulation capacities - in different societies, and relate these to suicide rates across countries and over time. A particular challenge lies in the operationalisation of the dependent variable: suicide rates. 

Military sociological issues I am investigating include, following the work of Max Weber, how the type of military organisation in a society influences income distribution and how arms races during and after the Cold War can be explained and measured sociologically. 

Another research focus is the explanation of deviant or criminal behavior. Are criminal acts the result of a rational decision-making process or can they be better explained by the (lack of) internalization of social norms of conformity? In my work, I pursue both approaches with respect to everyday crime, such as corruption, insurance fraud, shoplifting, fare evasion, hit-and-run driving, and tax fraud, and try to combine them in a consistent model of action. Extensive, self-conducted postal surveys in Germany and Switzerland serve as a data basis.

In an ongoing research project, I am investigating, together with cooperation partners from Germany and abroad, the prevalence of (legal and illegal) drug use among students and lectures at German universities. In addition to the intended empirical elucidation of the dark field, we pursue the question of how the decision to take these preparations can also be explained with regard to the ethical dimension of the phenomenon.

In view of the demographic change characterised by falling fertility rates and rising life expectancy in Germany and other (post-)industrial societies, social systems are coming under pressure to adapt. As a consequence, various social policy reforms are being discussed. In a current project, we will now investigate how acceptance or rejection of particular policy measures can be explained among the population. We assume that acceptance is influenced both by internalised values regarding institutions such as the welfare state and the family, and by individual cost-benefit expectations — as well as by the interaction between these factors.

Theory approach

In principle, I follow the classical microeconomic rational choice approach . This approach assumes that individuals have hierarchically ordered preferences regarding physical well-being and social recognition, and they seek to fulfil these preferences and goals given their opportunities and constraints. To do so, they evaluate the possible courses of action available in a given situation. Each alternative is associated with specific benefits, costs, and probabilities of occurrence, which the actors estimate. They ultimately choose the alternative from which they expect the highest overall or net benefit. Because individuals do not act atomistically, but are always integrated into diverse social contexts, certain groups of actors have quite similar estimates of costs, benefits and probabilities, and this social integration also has a fundamental influence on how actors interpret their environment. It is precisely this "social construction of reality" that manifests itself in socially defined symbols and codes that provide meaning to complex situations, pre-structure it and thus make it comprehensible to the individual in the first place. Thus, the social situation forms a framework for action. Particularly powerful these symbols are social norms and institutions (i.e., systems of sanction-backed behavioural expectations). This "normative construction of society" ensures that, given a sufficient degree of norm internalization, certain alternative courses of action fall outside this framework from the outset and others are suggested. Full deliberation occurs only when either no framework is apparent or is neutralized by other situational features. Thus, rational choice approaches are integrated with normative culturalist approaches to form a coherent decision heuristic, the Model of Frame Selection.

Methods and understanding of methods

Social science is an empirical discipline, meaning that theorectical statements and hypotheses derived from metatheory (medium-range theories) must also always be tested empirically. Thus, scientific progress in knowledge consists of gradually eliminating medium-range theories that have been empirically falsified.

Such a procedure requires that already during theory building and theoretical work the later obligatory empirical testing has to be kept in mind - in particular this means to clearly name causal relations within the theory and to precisely define the variables for the later operationalization.

In my own work I strive to adhere to this principle by empirically testing each theoretically derived statement, hypothesis, or expeation. The guiding rule is that the most parsimonious suitable mathod should be applied - in accordance with Ockham's Blade.

Accordingly, my goal is to teach the quantitative methods of social sciences in an applied and practice-oriented way - always with respect to relevant issues in the social sciences at the micro and macro levels. This includes a thorough training in methodology, particularly the principles of critical rationalism. Statistics occupies a central role in this context - students should be enabled not only to intuitively penetrate stochastics and probability theory, but also to apply them in the context of sampling theory. Basic statistical procedures, such as central and scatter measures, cross-tabulations and correlation as well as regression analysis are the focus of my lecture titled "Introduction to Statistics". In the lecture "Introduction to Methods", in addition to the methodology and stochastics already mentioned above, the most common methods of sampling and data collection will be discussed, such as postal surveys and the handling of secondary data (both individual and aggregate).