POLITSOLID is a Consolidator Grant Project funded by the European Research Council that kicked off on 01 January 2021.
This project is receiving funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 864818).
Goal: This ERC Consolidator Grant project POLITSOLID investigates the micro-foundations of political solidarities in fast-changing European polities. It analyses why some ordinary citizens show a high overall willingness to shoulder costs of public redistribution to other people in a polity, while others do not; and why ordinary citizens have multiple levels of willingness to shoulder costs depending on who receives the benefit.
Relevance: Having high levels of political solidarities is important for modern democracies to deal with exogenous shocks and long-term structural changes in their societies, which create pressures on the political system. Recent exogenous shocks in Europe that brought the necessity of political solidarities to light were the financial crisis (2007/8) with its extensive transnational bail-out policies across the European Union and the large refugee intake (2015/16). Relevant long-term structural changes are population ageing, rising income inequality and mass immigration.
POLITSOLID answers the overarching research question: What drives political solidarities in modern European democracies?
Objectives
• To create a novel theoretical and empirical framework that allows simultaneous modelling of multiple political solidarities and that includes the individual as well as the macro levels to enable better predictions about how people behave.
• To test causal mechanisms with a range of mostly experimental methods to get a better understanding of causality where observational studies have so far dominated.
• To isolate effective levers that political actors can pull to create political solidarities. Data: POLITSOLID collects and analyses new data from (1) lab experiments & online surveys, (2) a simulated artificial state ‘Novaland’ in which volunteers from Austria, Germany & Switzerland act as citizens in an online environment, with experimental treatments applied, (3) an international panel survey in six countries and (4) field experiments in collaboration with real political actors.
Relevance: Having high levels of political solidarities is important for modern democracies to deal with exogenous shocks and long-term structural changes in their societies, which create pressures on the political system. Recent exogenous shocks in Europe that brought the necessity of political solidarities to light were the financial crisis (2007/8) with its extensive transnational bail-out policies across the European Union and the large refugee intake (2015/16). Relevant long-term structural changes are population ageing, rising income inequality and mass immigration.
POLITSOLID answers the overarching research question: What drives political solidarities in modern European democracies?
Objectives
• To create a novel theoretical and empirical framework that allows simultaneous modelling of multiple political solidarities and that includes the individual as well as the macro levels to enable better predictions about how people behave.
• To test causal mechanisms with a range of mostly experimental methods to get a better understanding of causality where observational studies have so far dominated.
• To isolate effective levers that political actors can pull to create political solidarities. Data: POLITSOLID collects and analyses new data from (1) lab experiments & online surveys, (2) a simulated artificial state ‘Novaland’ in which volunteers from Austria, Germany & Switzerland act as citizens in an online environment, with experimental treatments applied, (3) an international panel survey in six countries and (4) field experiments in collaboration with real political actors.
Online Working Papers
Goerres, Achim and Tepe, Markus S. and Kemper, Jakob, Costly Solidarity Behavior and the Identity of Others: The Novel Identity-Solidarity Game in a Large Panel Survey of the German Resident population (February 6, 2024), Soc. Sci. Res. Netw. (2024). LINK
Publications
Clasen, Patrick, Treating nations like people: How responsibility attributions shape citizens’ fiscal solidarity with other EU countries (February 13, 2024), Journal of European Social Policy (2024). LINK
Goerres, Achim/ Vail, Mark. I (2024): How national models of solidarity shaped public support for policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020–2021, Frontiers in Political Science, Sec. Comparative Governance Volume 6 - 2024, 06 February 2024 LINK
Goerres, Achim/ Höhne, Jan Karem (2023): Evaluating the Response Effort and Data Quality of Established Political Solidarity Measures: A Pre-Registered Experimental Test in an Online Survey of the German Adult Resident Population in 2021, Quality and Quantity. Open Access https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-022-01594-4
Höhne, Jan Karem/ Goerres, Achim (2023). Question Order effects: How Robust are Survey Measures on Political Solidarities with Reference to Germany and Europe?, International Journal of Social Research Methodology. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2023.2227011
Goerres, Achim (2021): The research agenda of POLITSOLID. The ties that bind—Experimental analyses of political solidarities in modern European Democracies. Soc. Sci. Res. Netw. (2021). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3792243
Data
Goerres, Achim; Höhne, Jan Karem, 2022, “Replication Data for: Evaluating the Response Effort and Data Quality of Established Political Solidarity Measures – A Pre-Registered Experimental Test in an Online Survey of the German Adult Resident Population in 2021”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XKERRU , Harvard Dataverse, V1.
Working Papers (presentable, submitted or in preparation for submission)
This page contains material that is still work-in-progress or in the peer-review process of social science journals. You can access most of my papers in full-text via the Social Science Research Network and/or the Open Science Framework SocArXive Working Papers
Do Natural Disasters Produce Positive Solidarity Outcomes? A Natural-Experimental Analysis of 38 African Countries (with Johannes Vüllers)
The More Giving and Reciprocating Left: Solidarity Behaviour of Voters in Large Online Survey in DE and AT (with Jakob Kemper)
The Extended Solidarity Game in Online Surveys in Austria and Germany (with Markus Tepe, Jan Karem Höhne, Jakob Kemper)
A Feasibility Study of the Solidarity Game in an Online Environment with OTree (with Markus Tepe, Jan Karem Höhne, Jakob Kemper), under review
Virtual Worlds and Measurements of Meaningful Political Behaviour (with Jan Karem Höhne & Jakob Kemper), working paper
Goerres/ Vail: Models of Solidarity during the Covid-19 Crisis, R&R Frontiers in Political Science
Goerres/Höhne/Kemper: Can we Measure Political Solidarities Meaningfully in a Virtual Online State?
Goerres/Höhne/Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland
Kemper/Goerres/Höhne/Tepe: Putting the Solidarity Game Online: a Feasibility Study
Goerres/Tepe/Kemper/Höhne: What is the Effect of Norm Transparency on Solidarity Behavior?
Goerres, Achim and Tepe, Markus S. and Kemper, Jakob, Costly Solidarity Behavior and the Identity of Others: The Novel Identity-Solidarity Game in a Large Panel Survey of the German Resident population (February 6, 2024), Soc. Sci. Res. Netw. (2024). LINK
Publications
Clasen, Patrick, Treating nations like people: How responsibility attributions shape citizens’ fiscal solidarity with other EU countries (February 13, 2024), Journal of European Social Policy (2024). LINK
Goerres, Achim/ Vail, Mark. I (2024): How national models of solidarity shaped public support for policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020–2021, Frontiers in Political Science, Sec. Comparative Governance Volume 6 - 2024, 06 February 2024 LINK
Goerres, Achim/ Höhne, Jan Karem (2023): Evaluating the Response Effort and Data Quality of Established Political Solidarity Measures: A Pre-Registered Experimental Test in an Online Survey of the German Adult Resident Population in 2021, Quality and Quantity. Open Access https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-022-01594-4
Höhne, Jan Karem/ Goerres, Achim (2023). Question Order effects: How Robust are Survey Measures on Political Solidarities with Reference to Germany and Europe?, International Journal of Social Research Methodology. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2023.2227011
Goerres, Achim (2021): The research agenda of POLITSOLID. The ties that bind—Experimental analyses of political solidarities in modern European Democracies. Soc. Sci. Res. Netw. (2021). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3792243
Data
Goerres, Achim; Höhne, Jan Karem, 2022, “Replication Data for: Evaluating the Response Effort and Data Quality of Established Political Solidarity Measures – A Pre-Registered Experimental Test in an Online Survey of the German Adult Resident Population in 2021”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XKERRU , Harvard Dataverse, V1.
Working Papers (presentable, submitted or in preparation for submission)
This page contains material that is still work-in-progress or in the peer-review process of social science journals. You can access most of my papers in full-text via the Social Science Research Network and/or the Open Science Framework SocArXive Working Papers
Do Natural Disasters Produce Positive Solidarity Outcomes? A Natural-Experimental Analysis of 38 African Countries (with Johannes Vüllers)
The More Giving and Reciprocating Left: Solidarity Behaviour of Voters in Large Online Survey in DE and AT (with Jakob Kemper)
The Extended Solidarity Game in Online Surveys in Austria and Germany (with Markus Tepe, Jan Karem Höhne, Jakob Kemper)
A Feasibility Study of the Solidarity Game in an Online Environment with OTree (with Markus Tepe, Jan Karem Höhne, Jakob Kemper), under review
Virtual Worlds and Measurements of Meaningful Political Behaviour (with Jan Karem Höhne & Jakob Kemper), working paper
Goerres/ Vail: Models of Solidarity during the Covid-19 Crisis, R&R Frontiers in Political Science
Goerres/Höhne/Kemper: Can we Measure Political Solidarities Meaningfully in a Virtual Online State?
Goerres/Höhne/Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland
Kemper/Goerres/Höhne/Tepe: Putting the Solidarity Game Online: a Feasibility Study
Goerres/Tepe/Kemper/Höhne: What is the Effect of Norm Transparency on Solidarity Behavior?
Upcoming Presentations
Köln 4.-6. Juli 2024
EPSA Cologne 2024
A. Goerres & J. Kemper: Do Left Voters Behave in a More Solidary Manner? Experimental Evidence from Austria and Germany
14-15 March attending a workshop "Experimental Research on ethnic diversity, discrimination, and pro-sociality in European societies" by Tamara Gutfleisch & Johanna Gereke at the MZES in Mannheim
Past Presentations
Witten-Herdecke 21-22 September 2023
A. Goerres, J.K. Höhne, & J. Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland. Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Public Policies in a Virtual Online State?
Prag 4. September 2023 ECPR General Conference
A. Goerres & J. Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Public Policies in a Virtual Online State?
2023: Konstanz Center for Data and Methods, 24 hours Political Psychology Bielefeld, University College London, King's College London, Nuffield College Oxford, University of Utrecht
Paper Goerres et al. Witten 2023
EPSA Glasgow
A. Goerres, J. Kemper, J.K. Höhne, & M. Tepe: What is the effect of norm transparency on solidarity behavior? A cross-national experiment
A. Goerres, J.K. Höhne, & J. Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland. Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Public Policies in a Virtual Online State?
University of Cologne, Center for Comparative Politics
2022: 24 hours Political Psychology Chemnitz, DVPW Decision Theory Oldenburg, DVPW Empirical Methods Hamburg, ECPR General Conference Innsbruck, EPSA Prague, Institute for Social Cohesion Bremen, GOR Berlin, Department of Political Science (Knill) LMU Munich, Department of Political Science (Duisburg), Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Cologne, Project workshop Duisburg
2021: Council for European Studies
Köln 4.-6. Juli 2024
EPSA Cologne 2024
A. Goerres & J. Kemper: Do Left Voters Behave in a More Solidary Manner? Experimental Evidence from Austria and Germany
14-15 March attending a workshop "Experimental Research on ethnic diversity, discrimination, and pro-sociality in European societies" by Tamara Gutfleisch & Johanna Gereke at the MZES in Mannheim
Past Presentations
Witten-Herdecke 21-22 September 2023
A. Goerres, J.K. Höhne, & J. Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland. Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Public Policies in a Virtual Online State?
Prag 4. September 2023 ECPR General Conference
A. Goerres & J. Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Public Policies in a Virtual Online State?
2023: Konstanz Center for Data and Methods, 24 hours Political Psychology Bielefeld, University College London, King's College London, Nuffield College Oxford, University of Utrecht
Paper Goerres et al. Witten 2023
EPSA Glasgow
A. Goerres, J. Kemper, J.K. Höhne, & M. Tepe: What is the effect of norm transparency on solidarity behavior? A cross-national experiment
A. Goerres, J.K. Höhne, & J. Kemper: Political Solidarities in Novaland. Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Public Policies in a Virtual Online State?
University of Cologne, Center for Comparative Politics
2022: 24 hours Political Psychology Chemnitz, DVPW Decision Theory Oldenburg, DVPW Empirical Methods Hamburg, ECPR General Conference Innsbruck, EPSA Prague, Institute for Social Cohesion Bremen, GOR Berlin, Department of Political Science (Knill) LMU Munich, Department of Political Science (Duisburg), Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Cologne, Project workshop Duisburg
2021: Council for European Studies
19.02.2024 - Achim Goerres added an update
New project members and other updates
Dear all
We are pleased to announce that two new researchers are joining the POLITSOLID project team.
(Philipp Chapkovski) will join the POLITSOLID team in March as a postdoctoral researcher. He will use his experience with online experiments to contribute to the further development of our online virtual state "Novaland".
Philipp Kemper will join the POLITSOLID team in February as a pre-doctoral project officer .
Achim Goerres and Mark Vail recently published a research article on how national models of solidarity shaped public support for policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Frontiers of Political Science.
Patrick Clasen recently published a research article on how responsibility attributions shape citizens’ fiscal solidarity with other EU countries in the Journal of European Social Policy
In December we completed the data collection of a two-wave panel survey in Germany. The first working paper with data from this survey is (available on SSRN), and we received helpful comments on the paper at the Virtual APSA meeting in February.
In the coming months we will focus on developing our online virtual state "Novaland" and revising our working papers for submission.
24.07.2023 - Achim Goerres added an update ResearchGate project function no longer available
ResearchGate stopped offering its project function. The last RG update were thus posted in March 2023, see below.
We are now entering another phase of the project. We are currently in the field with an online survey where we test stuff for a large comparative international survey. Moreover, we are bringing Novaland to higher server capacity and to sequential data collection.
We are also working on many papers from our online survey in Austria and Germany from May 23 and from Novaland in May 23.
We gave plenty of presentations in spring and summer 2023.
14.03.2023 – Achim Goerres added an update New project homepage POLITSOLID and follow project members
Dear all,
please follow the people involved in POLITSOLID on ResearchGate Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper @Joshua-Claassen @AchimGoerres to continue receiving project news.
Please book mark the new project homepage with all publications and links http://achimgoerres.de/politsolid Here are some further news. Jan Karem Höhne will join the University of Hannover as Assistant Professor of Survey Methodology on 01 May 2023 and continue to work on our project. Joshua Claassen https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joshua-Claassen will join the project team as junior project officer and PhD student on 01 May 2023. We are currently collecting data in two countries on simulatenous interactive instruments of solidarity (with Markus S. Tepe) and further developping our virtual online state.
10.11.2023 – Jan Karem Höhne added an update Artificial Online State NOVALAND
Yesterday, we successfully conducted the first large-scale study of the artificial online state Novaland with more than 300 participants that were recruited via social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Here are some first-hand insights into data collection.
22.08.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update We are at the ECPR General Conference 2022 We'll present our work this week at the ECPR General Conference 2022 in Innsbruck. First talk coming up today: The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree Where? Building: D, Floor: G, Room: HS1 When? Monday 13:00 - 14:45 (22/08/2022) The second talk takes place on thursday: Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities Where? Building: A, Floor: 1, Room: SR1 When? Thursday 14:00 - 15:45 (25/08/2022) I would be very happy to meet with you if you're interested in our work.
27.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Two presentations at EPSA Annual Conference 2022 On friday, I presented two papers at the EPSA Annual Conference in Prague. We are very grateful for the comments and questions from the discussants and the audience. In the paper "Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities" I presented first results from the experiments in our artificial state Novaland. In the paper "The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree" I presented our online implementation of the solidarity game by Selten and Ockenfels (1998) and the plans we have to use this measurement instrument.
11.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree I presented first results from a pilot study we conducted together with Markus Tepe at the Annual Conference of the Section Methods of Political Science (DVPW), 10 June 2022. Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree Authors: Jakob Kemper, Achim Goerres, Jan Höhne, Markus Tepe Political psychology and sociology frequently aim to measure the multi-dimensional concept of political solidarity using survey measures. This is done in major surveys, such as the World Values Surveys (WVS). However, political scientists point to methodological shortcomings of survey measures and argue for the use of (experimental) behavioural measures that are collected via behavioural games, such as the solidarity game. The main reason is that political scientists are usually not primarily interested in the attitudes per se, but in the behaviour these elicit. Most frequently, games are conducted in lab rather than in field settings reducing external validity. Solidarity-based behaviour is difficult to measure in the field, but measuring it could help to better understand contributions to a political community. The open-source platform oTree allows researchers to conduct browser-based, interactive experiments and surveys. The programming of the experiment can be done visually via a user-friendly interface in oTree studio or in the programming language Python. In this talk, I present a solidarity game programmed in oTree, and the results from pilot tests with participants from a convenience sample. The game will enable political scientists to measure political solidarity behaviour in a simple way. In addition, I present my research agenda regarding the use of behavioural measures in the study of political solidarities. Measuring human behaviour in an experimental setting allows political scientists to better understand and predict human behaviour in the real world. The transfer of methods from behavioural economics to political science will open new avenues for research.
31.05.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update First results of artifical online state experience presented in Munich Living in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States and Public Policies in an Artificial Online State? Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and programmer Raphael Hürler invited by Christoph Knill, LM University of Munich, 31 May 2022 What if we could experimentally manipulate all characteristics of states and public policies and estimate their effects on citizens? This presentation puts forward the first evidence from a pilot of Novaland. Novaland is an artificial liberal democracy that only exists online and that has characteristics realistically drawn from German, Romanian and US contexts. The pilot consists of an experimental online platform based on text, images and audio in which volunteers (a) are surveyed before they go into the experience, (b) are randomly assigned to different experiences, such as defined by income, quality of government or state corruption, (c) interact with each other simultaneously and (d) thereby co-create collective decisions, such as elections or donation pools, that then determine the course of Novaland and thereby the subsequent experiences of the participants. The pilot gives us many insights into the usefulness of such full experiential simulations in the social sciences. Can this technically and organizationally be done? Do participants behave in an externally valid manner? Do they behave sincerely? What is the potential of such an approach for finding causal effects?
28.04.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update Workshop Politsolid in Duisburg Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and I are organising the first workshop in Duisburg 28-30 April. We have guests from Norway, the UK, Austria and Germany who are coming to Germany. a whole workshop on the politics of solidarities
21.02.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update We R learning O-tree and programming new behavioural instruments We have started working with Markus S. Tepe to develop new measures of solidarities for the online framework Otree. Jakob Jonathan Kemper is taking the technical lead on Otree and will present first results on 10-11 March at the 24h Political Psychology Network meeting in Chemnitz.
22.01.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update New PhD student and project officer Jakob Kemper, two new working papers, one new presentation Jakob Jonathan Kemper joined the POLITSOLID project in November 2021 or 3 years as project officer and PhD student. Jan Karem Höhne and I have a new paper under review about how to optimally measure political solidarities in survey Mark Vail and I have a new paper under review about public responses towards the Covid crisis in the US and DE, using the concept of national models of solidarity. I gave a presentation at the Research Institute for Social Cohesion Germany. Materials can be found here www.achimgoerres.de/politsolid Jan, Jakob and I submitted the first-year deliverables to the ERC as to data protection, data management and ethics management. Prof Peter John of King's College London is our ethics advisor for the rest of the project. Objectives for 2022
25.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update Recruiting Predoc ERC-CoG project POLITSOLID We are recruiting a predoc for three years for th ERC-project POLITSOLID. 1700 € net salary after taxes and health insurance in Duisburg The ideal candidate should care about why individuals behave politically as they do and in cutting-edge experimental and survey methods. Deadline is 14 July 2021 Start http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_EN http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_DE
16.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update First POLITSOLID paper: Achim Goerres and Mark I. Vail As part of the theory development, I have co-authored a paper with Mark Vail from Wake Forest @MarkVail about the ways in which the United States and Germany reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic and what we can learn from that about political solidarities. Solidarities, Fairness, and Economic Governance in Advanced Capitalism: The Cases of COVID-19 Responses in Germany and the United States This paper addresses the theoretical question of how competing models of social and economic solidarity shape patterns of economic governance in periods of economic crisis. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a signal case, we seek to understand how changes in public opinion in response to similar social and economic shocks are informed by deeper ideational structures among citizens relating to their capacity for empathy, mutual support, and willingness to support and trust public policy interventions. Drawing on scholarly literatures related to moral economies and the social embeddedness of economic relationships, we undertake an empirical study of how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped patterns of support for social and economic policies. We focus on Germany and the United States, countries with widely divergent modes of integration of capitalist markets and, therefore, potentially different levels of support for particular kinds of policy responses. We trace American and German policy responses since March 2020 across a number of domains, complemented by a systematic analysis of public opinion in the two countries, drawing from fifteen different sources of public-opinion data, in order to assess the pandemic’s effects on public support for individualized and collectively-oriented policy responses. The paper is available here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868185 https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x37qr (the second still needs pre-approval). The paper will be presented next week at the virtual Annual Conference of the Council for European Studies
24.02.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update We R live: Research Agenda online Jan Karem Höhne and I started working on POLITSOLID. Find the Research Agenda for five years here as an online paper http://ssrn.com/abstract=3792243
27.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Presentation at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Cologne On 27 November 2020, I am giving a presentation in German More with one another and more against one another? Political Solidarities during the Corona Pandemic. find a pre-recorded presentation here https://vimeo.com/484330436 and the slides below Goerres_MPIfG_Institutstag_20201127.pdf
16.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Postdoc recruited I am happy to report that I could recruit Jan Karem Höhne as the leading postdoc for POLITSOLID. Jan Karem Höhne is currently working in the research cluster The Political Economy of Reform at the University of Mannheim. He will start in Duisburg in January 2021.
07.09.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update I am recruiting a postdoc to start 01 January 2021 please apply by 14 September https://bit.ly/politsolid_postdoc_en Please share widely.
04.12.2019 - Achim Goerres added a project goal This ERC Consolidator Grant project POLITSOLID investigates the micro-foundations of political solidarities in fast-changing European polities. It analyses why some ordinary citizens show a high overall willingness to shoulder costs of public redistribution to other people in a polity, while others do not; and why ordinary citizens have multiple levels of willingness to shoulder costs depending on who receives the benefit. Relevance: Having high levels of political solidarities is important for modern democracies to deal with exogenous shocks and long-term structural changes in their societies, which create pressures on the political system. Recent exogenous shocks in Europe that brought the necessity of political solidarities to light were the financial crisis (2007/8) with its extensive transnational bail-out policies across the European Union and the large refugee intake (2015/16). Relevant long-term structural changes are population ageing, rising income inequality and mass immigration. POLITSOLID answers the overarching research question: What drives political solidarities in modern European democracies? Objectives
10.11.2023 – Jan Karem Höhne added an update Artificial Online State NOVALAND
Yesterday, we successfully conducted the first large-scale study of the artificial online state Novaland with more than 300 participants that were recruited via social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Here are some first-hand insights into data collection.
22.08.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update We are at the ECPR General Conference 2022 We'll present our work this week at the ECPR General Conference 2022 in Innsbruck. First talk coming up today: The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree Where? Building: D, Floor: G, Room: HS1 When? Monday 13:00 - 14:45 (22/08/2022) The second talk takes place on thursday: Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities Where? Building: A, Floor: 1, Room: SR1 When? Thursday 14:00 - 15:45 (25/08/2022) I would be very happy to meet with you if you're interested in our work.
27.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Two presentations at EPSA Annual Conference 2022 On friday, I presented two papers at the EPSA Annual Conference in Prague. We are very grateful for the comments and questions from the discussants and the audience. In the paper "Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities" I presented first results from the experiments in our artificial state Novaland. In the paper "The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree" I presented our online implementation of the solidarity game by Selten and Ockenfels (1998) and the plans we have to use this measurement instrument.
11.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree I presented first results from a pilot study we conducted together with Markus Tepe at the Annual Conference of the Section Methods of Political Science (DVPW), 10 June 2022. Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree Authors: Jakob Kemper, Achim Goerres, Jan Höhne, Markus Tepe Political psychology and sociology frequently aim to measure the multi-dimensional concept of political solidarity using survey measures. This is done in major surveys, such as the World Values Surveys (WVS). However, political scientists point to methodological shortcomings of survey measures and argue for the use of (experimental) behavioural measures that are collected via behavioural games, such as the solidarity game. The main reason is that political scientists are usually not primarily interested in the attitudes per se, but in the behaviour these elicit. Most frequently, games are conducted in lab rather than in field settings reducing external validity. Solidarity-based behaviour is difficult to measure in the field, but measuring it could help to better understand contributions to a political community. The open-source platform oTree allows researchers to conduct browser-based, interactive experiments and surveys. The programming of the experiment can be done visually via a user-friendly interface in oTree studio or in the programming language Python. In this talk, I present a solidarity game programmed in oTree, and the results from pilot tests with participants from a convenience sample. The game will enable political scientists to measure political solidarity behaviour in a simple way. In addition, I present my research agenda regarding the use of behavioural measures in the study of political solidarities. Measuring human behaviour in an experimental setting allows political scientists to better understand and predict human behaviour in the real world. The transfer of methods from behavioural economics to political science will open new avenues for research.
31.05.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update First results of artifical online state experience presented in Munich Living in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States and Public Policies in an Artificial Online State? Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and programmer Raphael Hürler invited by Christoph Knill, LM University of Munich, 31 May 2022 What if we could experimentally manipulate all characteristics of states and public policies and estimate their effects on citizens? This presentation puts forward the first evidence from a pilot of Novaland. Novaland is an artificial liberal democracy that only exists online and that has characteristics realistically drawn from German, Romanian and US contexts. The pilot consists of an experimental online platform based on text, images and audio in which volunteers (a) are surveyed before they go into the experience, (b) are randomly assigned to different experiences, such as defined by income, quality of government or state corruption, (c) interact with each other simultaneously and (d) thereby co-create collective decisions, such as elections or donation pools, that then determine the course of Novaland and thereby the subsequent experiences of the participants. The pilot gives us many insights into the usefulness of such full experiential simulations in the social sciences. Can this technically and organizationally be done? Do participants behave in an externally valid manner? Do they behave sincerely? What is the potential of such an approach for finding causal effects?
28.04.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update Workshop Politsolid in Duisburg Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and I are organising the first workshop in Duisburg 28-30 April. We have guests from Norway, the UK, Austria and Germany who are coming to Germany. a whole workshop on the politics of solidarities
21.02.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update We R learning O-tree and programming new behavioural instruments We have started working with Markus S. Tepe to develop new measures of solidarities for the online framework Otree. Jakob Jonathan Kemper is taking the technical lead on Otree and will present first results on 10-11 March at the 24h Political Psychology Network meeting in Chemnitz.
22.01.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update New PhD student and project officer Jakob Kemper, two new working papers, one new presentation Jakob Jonathan Kemper joined the POLITSOLID project in November 2021 or 3 years as project officer and PhD student. Jan Karem Höhne and I have a new paper under review about how to optimally measure political solidarities in survey Mark Vail and I have a new paper under review about public responses towards the Covid crisis in the US and DE, using the concept of national models of solidarity. I gave a presentation at the Research Institute for Social Cohesion Germany. Materials can be found here www.achimgoerres.de/politsolid Jan, Jakob and I submitted the first-year deliverables to the ERC as to data protection, data management and ethics management. Prof Peter John of King's College London is our ethics advisor for the rest of the project. Objectives for 2022
25.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update Recruiting Predoc ERC-CoG project POLITSOLID We are recruiting a predoc for three years for th ERC-project POLITSOLID. 1700 € net salary after taxes and health insurance in Duisburg The ideal candidate should care about why individuals behave politically as they do and in cutting-edge experimental and survey methods. Deadline is 14 July 2021 Start http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_EN http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_DE
16.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update First POLITSOLID paper: Achim Goerres and Mark I. Vail As part of the theory development, I have co-authored a paper with Mark Vail from Wake Forest @MarkVail about the ways in which the United States and Germany reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic and what we can learn from that about political solidarities. Solidarities, Fairness, and Economic Governance in Advanced Capitalism: The Cases of COVID-19 Responses in Germany and the United States This paper addresses the theoretical question of how competing models of social and economic solidarity shape patterns of economic governance in periods of economic crisis. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a signal case, we seek to understand how changes in public opinion in response to similar social and economic shocks are informed by deeper ideational structures among citizens relating to their capacity for empathy, mutual support, and willingness to support and trust public policy interventions. Drawing on scholarly literatures related to moral economies and the social embeddedness of economic relationships, we undertake an empirical study of how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped patterns of support for social and economic policies. We focus on Germany and the United States, countries with widely divergent modes of integration of capitalist markets and, therefore, potentially different levels of support for particular kinds of policy responses. We trace American and German policy responses since March 2020 across a number of domains, complemented by a systematic analysis of public opinion in the two countries, drawing from fifteen different sources of public-opinion data, in order to assess the pandemic’s effects on public support for individualized and collectively-oriented policy responses. The paper is available here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868185 https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x37qr (the second still needs pre-approval). The paper will be presented next week at the virtual Annual Conference of the Council for European Studies
24.02.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update We R live: Research Agenda online Jan Karem Höhne and I started working on POLITSOLID. Find the Research Agenda for five years here as an online paper http://ssrn.com/abstract=3792243
27.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Presentation at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Cologne On 27 November 2020, I am giving a presentation in German More with one another and more against one another? Political Solidarities during the Corona Pandemic. find a pre-recorded presentation here https://vimeo.com/484330436 and the slides below Goerres_MPIfG_Institutstag_20201127.pdf
16.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Postdoc recruited I am happy to report that I could recruit Jan Karem Höhne as the leading postdoc for POLITSOLID. Jan Karem Höhne is currently working in the research cluster The Political Economy of Reform at the University of Mannheim. He will start in Duisburg in January 2021.
07.09.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update I am recruiting a postdoc to start 01 January 2021 please apply by 14 September https://bit.ly/politsolid_postdoc_en Please share widely.
04.12.2019 - Achim Goerres added a project goal This ERC Consolidator Grant project POLITSOLID investigates the micro-foundations of political solidarities in fast-changing European polities. It analyses why some ordinary citizens show a high overall willingness to shoulder costs of public redistribution to other people in a polity, while others do not; and why ordinary citizens have multiple levels of willingness to shoulder costs depending on who receives the benefit. Relevance: Having high levels of political solidarities is important for modern democracies to deal with exogenous shocks and long-term structural changes in their societies, which create pressures on the political system. Recent exogenous shocks in Europe that brought the necessity of political solidarities to light were the financial crisis (2007/8) with its extensive transnational bail-out policies across the European Union and the large refugee intake (2015/16). Relevant long-term structural changes are population ageing, rising income inequality and mass immigration. POLITSOLID answers the overarching research question: What drives political solidarities in modern European democracies? Objectives
New project members and other updates
Dear all
We are pleased to announce that two new researchers are joining the POLITSOLID project team.
(Philipp Chapkovski) will join the POLITSOLID team in March as a postdoctoral researcher. He will use his experience with online experiments to contribute to the further development of our online virtual state "Novaland".
Philipp Kemper will join the POLITSOLID team in February as a pre-doctoral project officer .
Achim Goerres and Mark Vail recently published a research article on how national models of solidarity shaped public support for policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Frontiers of Political Science.
Patrick Clasen recently published a research article on how responsibility attributions shape citizens’ fiscal solidarity with other EU countries in the Journal of European Social Policy
In December we completed the data collection of a two-wave panel survey in Germany. The first working paper with data from this survey is (available on SSRN), and we received helpful comments on the paper at the Virtual APSA meeting in February.
In the coming months we will focus on developing our online virtual state "Novaland" and revising our working papers for submission.
24.07.2023 - Achim Goerres added an update ResearchGate project function no longer available
ResearchGate stopped offering its project function. The last RG update were thus posted in March 2023, see below.
We are now entering another phase of the project. We are currently in the field with an online survey where we test stuff for a large comparative international survey. Moreover, we are bringing Novaland to higher server capacity and to sequential data collection.
We are also working on many papers from our online survey in Austria and Germany from May 23 and from Novaland in May 23.
We gave plenty of presentations in spring and summer 2023.
14.03.2023 – Achim Goerres added an update New project homepage POLITSOLID and follow project members
Dear all,
please follow the people involved in POLITSOLID on ResearchGate Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper @Joshua-Claassen @AchimGoerres to continue receiving project news.
Please book mark the new project homepage with all publications and links http://achimgoerres.de/politsolid Here are some further news. Jan Karem Höhne will join the University of Hannover as Assistant Professor of Survey Methodology on 01 May 2023 and continue to work on our project. Joshua Claassen https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Joshua-Claassen will join the project team as junior project officer and PhD student on 01 May 2023. We are currently collecting data in two countries on simulatenous interactive instruments of solidarity (with Markus S. Tepe) and further developping our virtual online state.
10.11.2023 – Jan Karem Höhne added an update Artificial Online State NOVALAND
Yesterday, we successfully conducted the first large-scale study of the artificial online state Novaland with more than 300 participants that were recruited via social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Here are some first-hand insights into data collection.
22.08.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update We are at the ECPR General Conference 2022 We'll present our work this week at the ECPR General Conference 2022 in Innsbruck. First talk coming up today: The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree Where? Building: D, Floor: G, Room: HS1 When? Monday 13:00 - 14:45 (22/08/2022) The second talk takes place on thursday: Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities Where? Building: A, Floor: 1, Room: SR1 When? Thursday 14:00 - 15:45 (25/08/2022) I would be very happy to meet with you if you're interested in our work.
27.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Two presentations at EPSA Annual Conference 2022 On friday, I presented two papers at the EPSA Annual Conference in Prague. We are very grateful for the comments and questions from the discussants and the audience. In the paper "Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities" I presented first results from the experiments in our artificial state Novaland. In the paper "The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree" I presented our online implementation of the solidarity game by Selten and Ockenfels (1998) and the plans we have to use this measurement instrument.
11.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree I presented first results from a pilot study we conducted together with Markus Tepe at the Annual Conference of the Section Methods of Political Science (DVPW), 10 June 2022. Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree Authors: Jakob Kemper, Achim Goerres, Jan Höhne, Markus Tepe Political psychology and sociology frequently aim to measure the multi-dimensional concept of political solidarity using survey measures. This is done in major surveys, such as the World Values Surveys (WVS). However, political scientists point to methodological shortcomings of survey measures and argue for the use of (experimental) behavioural measures that are collected via behavioural games, such as the solidarity game. The main reason is that political scientists are usually not primarily interested in the attitudes per se, but in the behaviour these elicit. Most frequently, games are conducted in lab rather than in field settings reducing external validity. Solidarity-based behaviour is difficult to measure in the field, but measuring it could help to better understand contributions to a political community. The open-source platform oTree allows researchers to conduct browser-based, interactive experiments and surveys. The programming of the experiment can be done visually via a user-friendly interface in oTree studio or in the programming language Python. In this talk, I present a solidarity game programmed in oTree, and the results from pilot tests with participants from a convenience sample. The game will enable political scientists to measure political solidarity behaviour in a simple way. In addition, I present my research agenda regarding the use of behavioural measures in the study of political solidarities. Measuring human behaviour in an experimental setting allows political scientists to better understand and predict human behaviour in the real world. The transfer of methods from behavioural economics to political science will open new avenues for research.
31.05.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update First results of artifical online state experience presented in Munich Living in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States and Public Policies in an Artificial Online State? Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and programmer Raphael Hürler invited by Christoph Knill, LM University of Munich, 31 May 2022 What if we could experimentally manipulate all characteristics of states and public policies and estimate their effects on citizens? This presentation puts forward the first evidence from a pilot of Novaland. Novaland is an artificial liberal democracy that only exists online and that has characteristics realistically drawn from German, Romanian and US contexts. The pilot consists of an experimental online platform based on text, images and audio in which volunteers (a) are surveyed before they go into the experience, (b) are randomly assigned to different experiences, such as defined by income, quality of government or state corruption, (c) interact with each other simultaneously and (d) thereby co-create collective decisions, such as elections or donation pools, that then determine the course of Novaland and thereby the subsequent experiences of the participants. The pilot gives us many insights into the usefulness of such full experiential simulations in the social sciences. Can this technically and organizationally be done? Do participants behave in an externally valid manner? Do they behave sincerely? What is the potential of such an approach for finding causal effects?
28.04.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update Workshop Politsolid in Duisburg Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and I are organising the first workshop in Duisburg 28-30 April. We have guests from Norway, the UK, Austria and Germany who are coming to Germany. a whole workshop on the politics of solidarities
21.02.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update We R learning O-tree and programming new behavioural instruments We have started working with Markus S. Tepe to develop new measures of solidarities for the online framework Otree. Jakob Jonathan Kemper is taking the technical lead on Otree and will present first results on 10-11 March at the 24h Political Psychology Network meeting in Chemnitz.
22.01.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update New PhD student and project officer Jakob Kemper, two new working papers, one new presentation Jakob Jonathan Kemper joined the POLITSOLID project in November 2021 or 3 years as project officer and PhD student. Jan Karem Höhne and I have a new paper under review about how to optimally measure political solidarities in survey Mark Vail and I have a new paper under review about public responses towards the Covid crisis in the US and DE, using the concept of national models of solidarity. I gave a presentation at the Research Institute for Social Cohesion Germany. Materials can be found here www.achimgoerres.de/politsolid Jan, Jakob and I submitted the first-year deliverables to the ERC as to data protection, data management and ethics management. Prof Peter John of King's College London is our ethics advisor for the rest of the project. Objectives for 2022
- get rich and famouswhile we are wating for that
- Jakob Jonathan Kemper will define his PhD thesis and craft his first paper
- we are working with Markus S. Tepe to create behavioural instruments to measure solidarity in online and offline surveys
- we are developing a pilot of an online platform to create an artifical world where volunteers can interact
- we are organising a workshop on solidarity with colleagues from economics, sociology and political science
25.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update Recruiting Predoc ERC-CoG project POLITSOLID We are recruiting a predoc for three years for th ERC-project POLITSOLID. 1700 € net salary after taxes and health insurance in Duisburg The ideal candidate should care about why individuals behave politically as they do and in cutting-edge experimental and survey methods. Deadline is 14 July 2021 Start http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_EN http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_DE
16.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update First POLITSOLID paper: Achim Goerres and Mark I. Vail As part of the theory development, I have co-authored a paper with Mark Vail from Wake Forest @MarkVail about the ways in which the United States and Germany reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic and what we can learn from that about political solidarities. Solidarities, Fairness, and Economic Governance in Advanced Capitalism: The Cases of COVID-19 Responses in Germany and the United States This paper addresses the theoretical question of how competing models of social and economic solidarity shape patterns of economic governance in periods of economic crisis. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a signal case, we seek to understand how changes in public opinion in response to similar social and economic shocks are informed by deeper ideational structures among citizens relating to their capacity for empathy, mutual support, and willingness to support and trust public policy interventions. Drawing on scholarly literatures related to moral economies and the social embeddedness of economic relationships, we undertake an empirical study of how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped patterns of support for social and economic policies. We focus on Germany and the United States, countries with widely divergent modes of integration of capitalist markets and, therefore, potentially different levels of support for particular kinds of policy responses. We trace American and German policy responses since March 2020 across a number of domains, complemented by a systematic analysis of public opinion in the two countries, drawing from fifteen different sources of public-opinion data, in order to assess the pandemic’s effects on public support for individualized and collectively-oriented policy responses. The paper is available here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868185 https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x37qr (the second still needs pre-approval). The paper will be presented next week at the virtual Annual Conference of the Council for European Studies
24.02.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update We R live: Research Agenda online Jan Karem Höhne and I started working on POLITSOLID. Find the Research Agenda for five years here as an online paper http://ssrn.com/abstract=3792243
27.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Presentation at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Cologne On 27 November 2020, I am giving a presentation in German More with one another and more against one another? Political Solidarities during the Corona Pandemic. find a pre-recorded presentation here https://vimeo.com/484330436 and the slides below Goerres_MPIfG_Institutstag_20201127.pdf
16.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Postdoc recruited I am happy to report that I could recruit Jan Karem Höhne as the leading postdoc for POLITSOLID. Jan Karem Höhne is currently working in the research cluster The Political Economy of Reform at the University of Mannheim. He will start in Duisburg in January 2021.
07.09.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update I am recruiting a postdoc to start 01 January 2021 please apply by 14 September https://bit.ly/politsolid_postdoc_en Please share widely.
04.12.2019 - Achim Goerres added a project goal This ERC Consolidator Grant project POLITSOLID investigates the micro-foundations of political solidarities in fast-changing European polities. It analyses why some ordinary citizens show a high overall willingness to shoulder costs of public redistribution to other people in a polity, while others do not; and why ordinary citizens have multiple levels of willingness to shoulder costs depending on who receives the benefit. Relevance: Having high levels of political solidarities is important for modern democracies to deal with exogenous shocks and long-term structural changes in their societies, which create pressures on the political system. Recent exogenous shocks in Europe that brought the necessity of political solidarities to light were the financial crisis (2007/8) with its extensive transnational bail-out policies across the European Union and the large refugee intake (2015/16). Relevant long-term structural changes are population ageing, rising income inequality and mass immigration. POLITSOLID answers the overarching research question: What drives political solidarities in modern European democracies? Objectives
- To create a novel theoretical and empirical framework that allows simultaneous modelling of multiple political solidarities and that includes the individual as well as the macro levels to enable better predictions about how people behave.
- To test causal mechanisms with a range of mostly experimental methods to get a better understanding of causality where observational studies have so far dominated.
- To isolate effective levers that political actors can pull to create political solidarities.
10.11.2023 – Jan Karem Höhne added an update Artificial Online State NOVALAND
Yesterday, we successfully conducted the first large-scale study of the artificial online state Novaland with more than 300 participants that were recruited via social media networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Here are some first-hand insights into data collection.
22.08.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update We are at the ECPR General Conference 2022 We'll present our work this week at the ECPR General Conference 2022 in Innsbruck. First talk coming up today: The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree Where? Building: D, Floor: G, Room: HS1 When? Monday 13:00 - 14:45 (22/08/2022) The second talk takes place on thursday: Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities Where? Building: A, Floor: 1, Room: SR1 When? Thursday 14:00 - 15:45 (25/08/2022) I would be very happy to meet with you if you're interested in our work.
27.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Two presentations at EPSA Annual Conference 2022 On friday, I presented two papers at the EPSA Annual Conference in Prague. We are very grateful for the comments and questions from the discussants and the audience. In the paper "Piloting Experimental Tests of Macro-Micro-Level Effects in an Artificial Online State: How Income Inequalities Affect Political Solidarities" I presented first results from the experiments in our artificial state Novaland. In the paper "The behavioural consequences of political solidarities: Validating the solidarity game on a representative online sample with real-time interaction in oTree" I presented our online implementation of the solidarity game by Selten and Ockenfels (1998) and the plans we have to use this measurement instrument.
11.06.2022 - Jakob Kemper added an update Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree I presented first results from a pilot study we conducted together with Markus Tepe at the Annual Conference of the Section Methods of Political Science (DVPW), 10 June 2022. Economic games in political science: Testing the Usability of Solidarity Game Experiments using the open-source platform oTree Authors: Jakob Kemper, Achim Goerres, Jan Höhne, Markus Tepe Political psychology and sociology frequently aim to measure the multi-dimensional concept of political solidarity using survey measures. This is done in major surveys, such as the World Values Surveys (WVS). However, political scientists point to methodological shortcomings of survey measures and argue for the use of (experimental) behavioural measures that are collected via behavioural games, such as the solidarity game. The main reason is that political scientists are usually not primarily interested in the attitudes per se, but in the behaviour these elicit. Most frequently, games are conducted in lab rather than in field settings reducing external validity. Solidarity-based behaviour is difficult to measure in the field, but measuring it could help to better understand contributions to a political community. The open-source platform oTree allows researchers to conduct browser-based, interactive experiments and surveys. The programming of the experiment can be done visually via a user-friendly interface in oTree studio or in the programming language Python. In this talk, I present a solidarity game programmed in oTree, and the results from pilot tests with participants from a convenience sample. The game will enable political scientists to measure political solidarity behaviour in a simple way. In addition, I present my research agenda regarding the use of behavioural measures in the study of political solidarities. Measuring human behaviour in an experimental setting allows political scientists to better understand and predict human behaviour in the real world. The transfer of methods from behavioural economics to political science will open new avenues for research.
31.05.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update First results of artifical online state experience presented in Munich Living in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States and Public Policies in an Artificial Online State? Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and programmer Raphael Hürler invited by Christoph Knill, LM University of Munich, 31 May 2022 What if we could experimentally manipulate all characteristics of states and public policies and estimate their effects on citizens? This presentation puts forward the first evidence from a pilot of Novaland. Novaland is an artificial liberal democracy that only exists online and that has characteristics realistically drawn from German, Romanian and US contexts. The pilot consists of an experimental online platform based on text, images and audio in which volunteers (a) are surveyed before they go into the experience, (b) are randomly assigned to different experiences, such as defined by income, quality of government or state corruption, (c) interact with each other simultaneously and (d) thereby co-create collective decisions, such as elections or donation pools, that then determine the course of Novaland and thereby the subsequent experiences of the participants. The pilot gives us many insights into the usefulness of such full experiential simulations in the social sciences. Can this technically and organizationally be done? Do participants behave in an externally valid manner? Do they behave sincerely? What is the potential of such an approach for finding causal effects?
28.04.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update Workshop Politsolid in Duisburg Jan Karem Höhne Jakob Jonathan Kemper and I are organising the first workshop in Duisburg 28-30 April. We have guests from Norway, the UK, Austria and Germany who are coming to Germany. a whole workshop on the politics of solidarities
21.02.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update We R learning O-tree and programming new behavioural instruments We have started working with Markus S. Tepe to develop new measures of solidarities for the online framework Otree. Jakob Jonathan Kemper is taking the technical lead on Otree and will present first results on 10-11 March at the 24h Political Psychology Network meeting in Chemnitz.
22.01.2022 - Achim Goerres added an update New PhD student and project officer Jakob Kemper, two new working papers, one new presentation Jakob Jonathan Kemper joined the POLITSOLID project in November 2021 or 3 years as project officer and PhD student. Jan Karem Höhne and I have a new paper under review about how to optimally measure political solidarities in survey Mark Vail and I have a new paper under review about public responses towards the Covid crisis in the US and DE, using the concept of national models of solidarity. I gave a presentation at the Research Institute for Social Cohesion Germany. Materials can be found here www.achimgoerres.de/politsolid Jan, Jakob and I submitted the first-year deliverables to the ERC as to data protection, data management and ethics management. Prof Peter John of King's College London is our ethics advisor for the rest of the project. Objectives for 2022
- get rich and famouswhile we are wating for that
- Jakob Jonathan Kemper will define his PhD thesis and craft his first paper
- we are working with Markus S. Tepe to create behavioural instruments to measure solidarity in online and offline surveys
- we are developing a pilot of an online platform to create an artifical world where volunteers can interact
- we are organising a workshop on solidarity with colleagues from economics, sociology and political science
25.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update Recruiting Predoc ERC-CoG project POLITSOLID We are recruiting a predoc for three years for th ERC-project POLITSOLID. 1700 € net salary after taxes and health insurance in Duisburg The ideal candidate should care about why individuals behave politically as they do and in cutting-edge experimental and survey methods. Deadline is 14 July 2021 Start http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_EN http://bit.ly/politsolid_doc_DE
16.06.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update First POLITSOLID paper: Achim Goerres and Mark I. Vail As part of the theory development, I have co-authored a paper with Mark Vail from Wake Forest @MarkVail about the ways in which the United States and Germany reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic and what we can learn from that about political solidarities. Solidarities, Fairness, and Economic Governance in Advanced Capitalism: The Cases of COVID-19 Responses in Germany and the United States This paper addresses the theoretical question of how competing models of social and economic solidarity shape patterns of economic governance in periods of economic crisis. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a signal case, we seek to understand how changes in public opinion in response to similar social and economic shocks are informed by deeper ideational structures among citizens relating to their capacity for empathy, mutual support, and willingness to support and trust public policy interventions. Drawing on scholarly literatures related to moral economies and the social embeddedness of economic relationships, we undertake an empirical study of how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped patterns of support for social and economic policies. We focus on Germany and the United States, countries with widely divergent modes of integration of capitalist markets and, therefore, potentially different levels of support for particular kinds of policy responses. We trace American and German policy responses since March 2020 across a number of domains, complemented by a systematic analysis of public opinion in the two countries, drawing from fifteen different sources of public-opinion data, in order to assess the pandemic’s effects on public support for individualized and collectively-oriented policy responses. The paper is available here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868185 https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/x37qr (the second still needs pre-approval). The paper will be presented next week at the virtual Annual Conference of the Council for European Studies
24.02.2021 - Achim Goerres added an update We R live: Research Agenda online Jan Karem Höhne and I started working on POLITSOLID. Find the Research Agenda for five years here as an online paper http://ssrn.com/abstract=3792243
27.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Presentation at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies Cologne On 27 November 2020, I am giving a presentation in German More with one another and more against one another? Political Solidarities during the Corona Pandemic. find a pre-recorded presentation here https://vimeo.com/484330436 and the slides below Goerres_MPIfG_Institutstag_20201127.pdf
16.11.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update Postdoc recruited I am happy to report that I could recruit Jan Karem Höhne as the leading postdoc for POLITSOLID. Jan Karem Höhne is currently working in the research cluster The Political Economy of Reform at the University of Mannheim. He will start in Duisburg in January 2021.
07.09.2020 - Achim Goerres added an update I am recruiting a postdoc to start 01 January 2021 please apply by 14 September https://bit.ly/politsolid_postdoc_en Please share widely.
04.12.2019 - Achim Goerres added a project goal This ERC Consolidator Grant project POLITSOLID investigates the micro-foundations of political solidarities in fast-changing European polities. It analyses why some ordinary citizens show a high overall willingness to shoulder costs of public redistribution to other people in a polity, while others do not; and why ordinary citizens have multiple levels of willingness to shoulder costs depending on who receives the benefit. Relevance: Having high levels of political solidarities is important for modern democracies to deal with exogenous shocks and long-term structural changes in their societies, which create pressures on the political system. Recent exogenous shocks in Europe that brought the necessity of political solidarities to light were the financial crisis (2007/8) with its extensive transnational bail-out policies across the European Union and the large refugee intake (2015/16). Relevant long-term structural changes are population ageing, rising income inequality and mass immigration. POLITSOLID answers the overarching research question: What drives political solidarities in modern European democracies? Objectives
- To create a novel theoretical and empirical framework that allows simultaneous modelling of multiple political solidarities and that includes the individual as well as the macro levels to enable better predictions about how people behave.
- To test causal mechanisms with a range of mostly experimental methods to get a better understanding of causality where observational studies have so far dominated.
- To isolate effective levers that political actors can pull to create political solidarities.
PI Prof Achim Goerres, University of Duisburg-Essen
Project Manager Phillip Chapkovski, University of Duisburg-Essen
Senior Project Officer Jakob Kemper, University of Duisburg-Essen
Expert and Collaborator Joshua Claaßen, University of Duisburg-Essen
Expert and Collaborator Prof Dr Jan Karem Höhne, Assistant Prof of Survey Methodology at the University of Hannover
Expert and Collaborator Prof Mark I. Vail, Wake Forest University
Expert and Collaborator Prof Markus Tepe, University of Oldenburg
Expert and Collaborator Dr Johannes Vüllers, University of Duisburg-Essen
Project Manager Phillip Chapkovski, University of Duisburg-Essen
Senior Project Officer Jakob Kemper, University of Duisburg-Essen
Expert and Collaborator Joshua Claaßen, University of Duisburg-Essen
Expert and Collaborator Prof Dr Jan Karem Höhne, Assistant Prof of Survey Methodology at the University of Hannover
Expert and Collaborator Prof Mark I. Vail, Wake Forest University
Expert and Collaborator Prof Markus Tepe, University of Oldenburg
Expert and Collaborator Dr Johannes Vüllers, University of Duisburg-Essen
Presentation 21 January Institute for Social Cohesion Bremen
Präsentation Achim Goerres 21.1.22 Forschungsinstitut für Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt
Working Paper on Germany and the US
Goerres Vail National Models of Solidarity and the Covid-19 Crisis_Version20211217
Präsentation Achim Goerres 21.1.22 Forschungsinstitut für Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt
Working Paper on Germany and the US
Goerres Vail National Models of Solidarity and the Covid-19 Crisis_Version20211217