Responsibilities
Political Systems and European Integration
Party competition, coalition politics and policy outputs in multi-level systems; Local politics; EU Cohesion policy; Political representation and responsiveness; Text analysis.
Contact
Department of Political Science
Chair for Political Systems and European Integration
Oettingenstr. 67
80538 Munich
Germany
Room:
G 106
Phone:
+49 (0) 89 / 2180-9047
Fax:
+49 (0) 89 / 2180-9042
Email:
Martin.Gross@gsi.uni-muenchen.de
Office hours:
During the semester break: By appointment via email.
Work group
DFG project "Representation and inequality in local politics"
Local politics has far-reaching consequences for the quality of life of local publics, not least due to decisions about urban development. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to understand whose interests are reflected in local policy choices. Based on this proposition, the project investigates the patterns and determinants of representation in German cities. Building on the notion that cities are made up of sociostructurally homogeneous quarters, representation of the city population is equivalent to the representation of social strata. Consequently, the project aims to understand which interests are taken into consideration in local politics, whether there are notable disparities, and, if so, which factors can explain them. To investigate the patterns of local representation, the project studies data from 75 major cities in 13 German Länder plus Bremerhaven with automatic and manual text analysis. Specifically, the project considers three dimensions of local representation. First, by analyzing plenary protocols, we study the systemic dimensions of local political representation. Second, we consider the partisan dimension of local representation with an analysis of local party manifestos and coalition agreements. Third, we investigate individual representation by evaluating the questions and inquiries by members of the local assemblies. With the study of representation patterns in German city councils, the project pursues three goals. The descriptive project goal is to systematically describe patterns of representation in local politics. The analytical project goal is to explain disparities in local representation. This entails associating the observed patterns with local turnout, local electoral behavior, local electoral law, and the characteristics of local party competition. The prescriptive project goal is to synthesize the project results with a view toward the effects of the local electoral laws to make recommendations for future reforms of the local political institutions. Specifically, the prescriptive project goal asks which institutions and political contexts are most likely to ensure equality in local political representation.
Further Information
Website: www.gross-martin.de
Publikationen
Eine Übersicht der Publikationen von Dr. Martin Gross finden Sie hier.
Vita
Dr. Martin Gross studied Politics and Public Administration (Bachelor of Arts) at the University of Konstanz as well as History and Politics of the 20th Century (Master of Arts) at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. From 2009 to 2012 he worked as a research and teaching assistant and lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Furthermore, he held a Ph.D. scholarship from the Jena Graduate Academy (2011-2012). From September 2012 to February 2016 he worked as a research associate and teaching assistant at University of Mannheim. From 2015 to 2016 he worked in the project “Where Is My Party? Determinants of Voter Agreement about the Ideological Positions of Political Parties”, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) and located at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES). From March 2016 to September 2017 he was a post-doctoral researcher in the Horizon 2020-project “COHESIFY: The Impact of EU Cohesion Policy on European Identification”, funded by the EU and located at the MZES. His dissertation with the title „Koalitionsbildungsprozesse auf kommunaler Ebene: Schwarz-Grün in deutschen Großstädten“ has been published with Springer VS and has been awarded for the best dissertation in political science in 2015 at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Together with Dr. Michael Jankowski, he is leading “The Local Manifesto Project (LMP)”. This app is a new resource for analysing local party competition by providing scholars with the opportunity to use several text scaling and topic modelling techniques. Further information on “The Local Manifesto Project (LMP)” can be found here.
Research interests: Party competition, coalition politics and policy outputs in multi-level systems; Local politics; EU Cohesion policy; Political representation and responsiveness; Text analysis.
Lehre
Wintersemester 2019/20
- Grundkurse: Politisches System BRD (2x)
- Seminar: Position-taking and issue emphasis in European multi-level systems
- BA-Kolloquium
Sommersemester 2019
- Grundkurs: Vergleichende Kommunalpolitikforschung
- Grundkurs: Koalitionsregierungen in vergleichender Perspektive
Wintersemester 2018/19
- Grundkurs: Politisches System BRD
- Seminar: Democratic and Authoritarian Systems Revisited
Sommersemester 2018
- Grundkurs: Koalitionsregierungen in vergleichender Perspektive
- Seminar: The European Union and its Citizens – Institutional Structure, Public Opinion and Democratic Quality