Current and recent (please go to „work in progress“ or the project websites to access working papers) :
Joint project by myself, Simon Bornschier, Delia Zollinger, Lukas Haffert and Marco Steenbergen (all UZH)
See our new open access Cambridge Element on „Cleavage formation in the 21st Century – How Social Identities Shape Voting Behavior in Contexts of Electoral Realignment“
Read our article in Comparative Political Studies.
Electoral politics in advanced democracies have undergone major upheaval in recent decades. The last fifty years have seen the rise of culturally connoted identity politics and the relative decline of political conflict over economic state intervention. Party politics in many countries have changed beyond recognition. Strands of social cleavage theory constitute comprehensive attempts to make sense of these developments. They posit that socio-structural divisions are translated into politics through the mobilization of shared collective identities. However, many studies of social cleavages operate with outdated notions of socio-structural categories and mobilization patterns.
Our project integrates theories and concepts of social identity theory, political psychology and social cleavage theory to study the formation of group identities, their mobilization and the formation of new cleavages structuring electoral politics in the 21st century through public opinion surveys in Germany, the UK, Switzerland and France.
Recent papers from this project focus on partisan block-formation between the moderate and the far right parties; on the link between education and universalist identities across the EU; and on the perceived representation of social groups, which we call „mental maps“ of electoral group-party alignments;
Jointly with Profs. David Dorn (director), Nir Jaimovich and Matthias Mahlmann, I co-direct the UZH Research Priority Program “Equality of Opportunities”, which runs from 2020 to 2028. The URPP Equality of Opportunity aims to investigate the economic and societal changes that give rise to inequality, their politicization, as well as the policies that are developed, discussed and implemented to address inequality of opportunity.
At IPZ, we conduct several sub-projects within the URPP. The project at our research group focuses on the Politicization of Inequalities and their link to partisan and electoral politics. Our Team involves a.o. Tabea Palmtag and Delia Zollinger.
Our studies so far have mainly focused on the relationship between party competition and inequality perceptions among electorates, as well as on inequalities and issue ownership. Currently, we expand our agenda to the study of policy demand in reaction to the perception of inequalities.
With Tabea Palmtag and Thomas Kurer, we currently also focus on the link between structural inequality conditions and perceived inequalities in Switzerland. More specifically, we ask how the perception of opportunities moderates the link between experiences of inequality and political outcomes.
Beyond our project, the URPP Equality of Opportunity funds projects on labor market inequalities and social mobility (PI Prof. Thomas Kurer), geo-strategic inequalities and domestic politics (PI Prof. Stefanie Walter), and the Unequal Representation of countries in international organizations (PI Dr. Thomas Malang).
We have also been able to repeatedly support a range of excellent projects on political science inequality research through the IPZ Inequality Research Fund.
And we regularly hold a series of online talks on the politics of inequality. TOPIQ
The question whether and how governments can effectively address the fallout of structural change (occupational change, technological change, globalization) by means of social and labor market policies has been at the heart of my research agenda for a very long time. While I have focused on dualization and social investment in the past, recent and ongoing research focuses especially on the perceived (distributive) effects of social policies in the eyes of voters. Most fundamentally, we ask whether social policies can respond to both material, non-material and socio-tropic needs and demands of voters.
I have worked on these questions mainly in the context of two research strands recently.
A first strand focuses on the links between knowledge economy (dis)advantage and social policy demand and social status expectations. I collaborate on this topic with Fabienne Eisenring and Reto Bürgisser in particular.
A second strand related to the Norface project TECHNO (together with Thomas Kurer , Reto Bürgisser and Susana Tavares de Pinho). TECHNO (funding period 2020-2024) has addressed political consequences of rapid technological progress. Ongoing works in progress focus on the question whether investive or consumptive social policies can moderate the political backlash against structural change, and on the perception of digitalization policies in Europe.
The Project has been a cooperation between four research teams, led by Prof. Henning Finseraas (Institute for Social Research, Oslo), Prof. Alex Kuo (University of Oxford), and Prof. Dr. Aina Gallego (UB and IBEI, Barcelona)
I have been working on the transformation of the left partisan field in several contexts over the past years:
- In my own research and across several ongoing papers from different projects (e.g. the URPP inequality project or the social identities project), I study the transformation of the electoral potential of social democratic parties and how this transformation affects welfare politics.
- Jointly with Tarik Abou-Chadi (UZH), Markus Wagner (Uni Vienna), Reto Mitteregger (UZH) and Nadja Mosimann (UZH), we have studied the determinants of electoral preferences for different programmatic profiles of Social Democratic parties via different types of observational and experimental survey designs. One of our studies on this topic is forthcoming with World Politics : “Trade-offs of social democratic party strategies in a pluralized issue space: a conjoint analysis” (see publications)
- Jointly with Herbert Kitschelt, I have led the project “Beyond Social Democracy: Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies”, whose output is a book (edited volume) that has been published with Cambridge University Press in 2024 (see publications), and which is followed by further studies and manifold exchanges with political actors and think tanks across Europe.
- Jointly with Tarik Abou-Chadi, Reto Bürgisser, Matthias Enggist, Reto Mitteregger, Nadja Mosimann and Delia Zollinger, we have published a book (in German, geared to a broader audience) on the electorate and strategic perspectives of the Swiss Social Democratic Party („Wählerschaft und Perspektiven der Sozialdemokratie in der Schweiz“, published with NZZ Libro Verlag in 2022 (see publications).
- I co-organize the Progressive Politics Research Network, which engages in translational research and communication between scientific studies on the changing electoral sociology and policy dynamic in the broad progressive field of politics. Our recent publications have focused on testing widespread „myths“ about progressive policies, and on progressive climate policies (see „outreach“).
(watch interview)
The welfarepriorities-team has consisted of myself, Macarena Ares, Reto Bürgisser, Matthias Enggist, Michael Pinggera, Fabienne Eisenring, Jimmy O’Hare; in the fall of 2022, Delia Zollinger was also joining the team.
Recent publications from this project include (see publications)
‣ Ares, Macarena, Silja Häusermann, Matthias Enggist, Michael Pinggera (forthcoming 2025). «Attitudinal Consistency in Citizen’s Social Policy Preferences”, Journal of Politics.
‣ Garritzmann, Julian, Silja Häusermann and Michael Pinggera (2024). «Under what conditions do citizens support future-oriented welfare reforms? Public opinion and second dimension welfare politics”, European Sociological Review.
‣ Enggist, Matthias and Silja Häusermann (2024). «Partisan Preference Divides Regarding Welfare Chauvinism and Welfare Populism – Appealing only to Radical Right Voters or Beyond?”, Journal of European Social Policy.
For details, see the project website.
WELFAREPRIORITIES has been a large project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) (funded from September 2017 to March 2023). The goal of the project has been to rethink social policy conflict. In times of austerity, the politics of the welfare state involve tough choices and even trade-offs: whose risks should benefit from social solidarity in a context of shrinking resources? Should the welfare state prioritize the needs of the elderly or those of the young? Those of people in the workforce or outside of the workforce? Of natives or of immigrants?
How countries answer these key questions depends on the welfare state priorities of citizens, political elites and economic elites. However, we know still very little about these priorities and their determinants, and we know even less about the mechanisms that foster support for social solidarity – i.e. support for inclusive social security beyond self-interest. This project made use of new methodological strategies to investigate precisely these priorities and mechanisms.
We are in the process of publishing several studies based on the data collected in the project. In particular
- A book on „Inclusion of Segmentation – The Politics of Welfare Reform in 21st Century Western Europe“ , forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
- Research articles on knowlege economy optimism/pessimism (with Fabienne Eisenring), on the social policy preferences of universalist and particularist voters (with Matthias Enggist and Reto Bürgisser), and on perceived distributive effects of social policies (with Fabienne Eisenring and Reto Bürgisser).
Our two volumes were published 2022 with Oxford University Press.
The two volumes assess the political conditions for the development of social investment policies, investigate the politics of Social Investment in Europe, Latin America and East Asia along the following three questions:
- What explains the content of the social investment agenda? (empirically: identify framing and the effect of institutional legacies – constraints, economic strategy- on the social investment agenda in different regions of the world)
- How does political conflict over social investment map onto other conflict lines and cleavages? (empirically: identify actor positions, dimensionality, links between actor positions on different issues).
- What political coalitions support or prevent a social investment turn ? (empirically: identify reform coalitions and the institutional and structural conditions that produce them)
Current follow-up projects include contributions on the different policies of social investment and the use of typologies in political science research:
Garritzmann, Julian L., Silja Häusermann, and Bruno Palier (2025, forthcoming). Social Investment – A (Mis)Leading Paradigm? Why We Need to Distinguish Different Types of Social Investment. Acta Sociologica.
Garritzmann, Julian, Silja Häusermann, Bruno Palier (2022). “Social Investments in the Knowledge Economy: The Politics of Inclusive, Stratified, and Targeted Reforms Across the Globe», Social Policy & Administration Volume 57, Issue 1 p. 87-101.
Completed projects:
SNF Grant100017_159341; CHF 348’553.-, main applicant
with Denise Traber, Thomas Kurer and Michael Pinggera
Under what conditions can welfare states be reformed? More specifically: how can established social policy programmes be adapted to changing demographic, economic and social constraints? These are the key questions in today’s welfare state politics, and they have consequently become the key questions in political science research on the welfare state. In this research project, we made use of the exceptional conjunction of theoretical advances in the relevant literature, methodological innovation in public opinion research and the unfolding of the most ambitious and encompassing pension reform in Switzerland in decades to provide answers to precisely these questions
With regard to the literature on welfare state reforms, one of the key insights of research over the past decade has been that welfare politics are multidimensional. This means that individuals are not just “in favor or against social policy”, but they hold specific preferences for different aspects of social policy. One major difficulty – for researchers as well as policy-makers – is, however, that the relative importance that individuals or social groups attribute to these different dimensions is almost impossible to observe reliably in standard survey analysis. Conjoint analysis is an experimental survey method that allows to measure whether changes in the composition of a reform package lead to sizeable shifts in support among the public as a whole, or among specific groups. The Swiss pension reform “Altersvorsorge 2020” was an ambitious attempt at reforming the entire system of old age income protection. It therefore provided the perfect opportunity to combine the insights in welfare state theory regarding multidimensionality with conjoint analysis. We conducted a panel study which accompanied the political reform process.
SNF Grant 100018_153140; CHF 176’717.-, main applicant
with Denise Traber
This research project analysed European parties’ policy strategies during the recent economic crisis. The crisis puts into question whether political parties are still able to provide voters with meaningful democratic choices. This research project first investigated whether we find convergence or polarisation of parties’ policy offerings with regard to macroeconomic policy, and second, it analysed parties’ responsiveness to their voters’ demands. More specifically, we proposed to study two aspects of parties’ policy strategies: the issues they emphasise and their macroeconomic policy positions shortly before and during the crisis. The research draws on a variety of different data sources from 25 European countries in the time period between 2005 and 2012.
SNF Grant 100017_146104; CHF 246’958.-, main applicant
with Bruno Wüest, Thomas Kurer and Matthias Enggist
This project was concerned with the political reactions of European citizens to the financial disaster and the harsh economic consequences that hit them from the late 2008 onwards. Starting from a political economy perspective, we asked how European citizens reacted towards the crisis and what implications these individual reactions had for the variation of protests at the societal level. By integrating previously separate research on social movements, economic voting and social risks, we offered an encompassing analytical argument to explain the variation in protest reactions across Europe.
SNF Grant 100018_153140; CHF 279’122.- , co-applicant with Hanspeter Kriesi with Hanspeter Kriesi and Dominik Geering This project dealt with the electoral transformations of political parties in advanced post-industrial democracies and investigates the consequences of electoral change on distributive politics. It linked recent research on the transformation of party systems and party competition with current theory and research on institutional change. with Hanna Schwander and Thomas Kurer We worked on the dualization of labor markets and welfare states in Western democracies. We wanted to know to what extent, why and with which political and electoral consequences post-industrial societies become more and more divided in insiders and outsiders. Work in this project is situated in two institutional contexts:
a) The project was linked the the EU Network of Excellence „Reconciling Work and Welfare RECWOWE“. From the collaborative research in this project, we published the book „The Age of Dualization. The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies“ (2012, OUP). I am a co-editor, together with Profs. Patrick Emmenegger, Bruno Palier and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser. The book shows that dualization of labor markets and societies is not a mere structural trend, but rather the result of political decisions.
b) On dualization, I also worked with Hanna Schwander (University of Bremen) and Thomas Kurer (UZH), on the SNF-project „Who is in and who is out? The political representation of insiders and outsiders in Western Europe“ of which I am the main applicant (2011-2013, Grant number 100017_131994; 138’800.- CHF).