Just a few days ago my first piece in a peer reviewed sequential has made its way through the printing press. Nearly 18 months after my internship at the Zürich based Center for Security Studies (CSS) it is nice to be able to hold a concrete result in your hand. The research project we started deals with security in the public sphere from a holistic and critical perspective while grasping the principle of security in the public sphere as a dynamic space that is rapidly changing and contested from other principles and norms such as security dispositifs and democratic norms and basic rights.

We illustrate changing security dispositifs in three concrete public places in Switzerland. The cases are the St. Jakob Stadion in Basel, the Bundesplatz in Bern and the main trainstation in Zürich: Zürich HB. The project was initially planned to be a comparative study of a total of nine actual public places in three countries. We have held a number of qualititative interviews with all relevant actors involved in the places and their security in one way or the other. For the purpose of the first publication which made its way to the Swiss yearly Security Bulletin we have focussed our analysis on the swiss places. Nevertheless a follow up meeting in Zürich left me happy to conclude that together with the co-author Jonas Hagmann from the CSS we will continue working on the project and try to gain funding for the initially planned comparative case study. 

The link to the publication can be found here

On the 21st of november I visited an event of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) in cooperation  with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) with the title:

Bürgergesellschaft oder Zweiklassendemokratie - wem nützt die direkte Demokratie?
Civil society or two-class democracy- who gains from direct democracy?

A sceptical input keynote from Wolfgang Merkel as made to burst of a rather one sided debate on the podium afterwards. Merkels main argument was as follows: direct democratic decision making institutions (referenda and the like) are only voted on by a minority of the people eligiblie to vote. Actually less voters turn to teh ballot box for referenda than in generel national elections. Furthermore those people that do show up to issue their voice on a particular decision do tend to be the more well off in society. The segregation between rich and poor, educated and uneducated is even stronger than it is in representative elections. 

No doubt that the overly sceptic picture Wolfgang Merkel drew in his keynote do to some extend not diminish all positive effects that are entailed in direct democratic processes but nevertheless Mr Merkel pointed top some important shortcomings of direct democratic practioces from a theoretical perspective.

Unfortunately the debate on the podium was very one sided and all five participants -including the moderater from the NZZ which seemed to have forgiotten abour siwss neutrality- were shooting against Merkels arguments. To be fair some of the points were reasonable, others empirically flawed because relying upon `special` cases and yet again others totally missed the point of Merkels critique. Mr Merkel was given the opportunity to respond to those criticisms briefly from his place in the crowd. I found the fact that the podium was building such a united front against Mr Merkel and the members of the podium badly selected and even more badly moderated.

Another scientific expert would have guaranted at least some level of empirical substiantial coiritique and at least one nother ciritique of direct democracy would have sparked a much lifelier debate.  Furthermore the fact that the moderator took sides from the beginning against the keynote speaker was simply unprofessional as a moderator that is usually expected to take a neutral stands especially if all other podium guests shoot against the keynote speaker anyway.

Some articles in the run up to the events have been published in newpspapers and are also available online:

Tagesspiegel
NZZ
Zeit

The WZB Berlin Social Research Center and its Research Unit Democracy and Democratization (Research Area V “Dynamics of Political Systems”) headed by Professor Dr. Wolfgang Merkel is looking for a Senior Researcher

The position is to be filled full-time (currently 39 weekly hours of work) from 1 January 2014 for the expected period of three years. There is a possibility of extension. The salary will be in accordance with German Public Service Salary Scale (TVöD E14 or TVöD E15), depending on qualifications, experience and specific allocation of tasks.

Duties: According to background and qualification of the applicants, the position will be either in area A or area B:

A)
Modern and innovative Theory of Democracy approaches
Advancement/development of empirically usable theories of  democracy and democratization
Co-operation within the Research Unit
Assistance in the supervision of PhD candidates
B) 
Comparative research on democracy in the areas of participation, parties and democratic regimes
Co-operation within the Research Unit
Assistance in the supervision of PhD candidates

Requirements:
Very good PhD degree in Political Sciences
Proof of excellent papers in internationally and nationally visible publications on the aforementioned research topics

Applications with the normal documents (cover letter, CV, list of publications, and relevant references) and an one- to three-page outline of your research proposals about the aforementioned research topics should be emailed by 30 September 2013 to:

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
Gudrun Mouna, Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin, gudrun.mouna@wzb.eu