Projects

Christian Breunig (Political Science), Friedrich Breyer (Economics), Guido Schwerdt (Economics), Wolfgang Gaissmaier (Psychology) and Maj-Britt Sterba

Some societies are willing to tolerate certain forms of inequality in markets and society more than others. How much and in what form inequality is accepted is a collective choice. Political elites are able to make authoritative decisions affecting inequality. To determine how political elites make policy decisions is thus crucial. In this project we study how political elites, in this project elected representatives, learn and process information about inequality. We employ survey and experimental research designs to study how political elites acquire and process information about inequality when making decisions on (re-)distributional issues. We focus on three decision-making features:  policy-relevant information and its ability to change preferences, the role of the demands of the electorate, and heuristics and social sampling mechanisms.

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Christian Breunig und Chris Koski (Reed College)

Public budgets are characterized by periods of incrementalism interspersed with massive change. Both phases are conceptualized as parts of a punctuated equilibrium. The project aims at assessing how much agenda-setting and veto powers of governors contribute to the punctuations in budgets. We examine this question using budgetary from the American states since the 1980s.

Christian Breunig

The German agenda-setting project is developing several data sets on issue attention and policy-making in Germany. The following data are coded (1978-2008): Most important problem surveys, media, lobby groups, parliamentary questions, executive speeches, bill proposals and adopted laws. All data are classified by policy topic according to the Comparative Policy Agendas system and will become available at German Policy Agendas.