Major Fields of Research and Related Projects and Publications

Click here to access Joachim Blatter's publications (including full texts)

Our main research focus is on the contemporary challenges that Western democracies face. We believe that we have to rethink and transform our understanding of democracy in order to cope with the technical, socio-economic and cultural challenges of the 21st Century. The main transformations can be scrutinized as follows:

• The transformation from national self-determination to cooperative decision-making in multi-layered systems
• The transformation of political interests formation and mediation from "representation" to "presentation" in multimodal systems of communication
• The transformation from exclusive to overlapping demoi through migration, mobility and multiple citizenship

While many commentators and most political scientists assume that the current challenges to democracy will lead to a crisis and even perhaps to its demise, our aim is to analyse both dangers and opportunities for democracy. In particular, we assume that new understandings and conceptualizations of democratic politics are needed. The "first transformation of democracy" (and democratic theory) occurred with the transformation from the direct and elitist democracy of the ancient Greek republics and early modernity to the representative national democracies of modern nation states. Assuming that we are currently experiencing a "second transformation of democracy," we need to ask the following questions:

• Which aspects of modern democratic rule are getting contingent, become politicised and in turn form the basis for a reconstitution of democracy? What are the main drivers and factors that influence these processes and their outcomes (positive analysis of the ongoing transformation of democracy)?
• Which principles, institutions and practices are necessary or helpful so that we can also speak of a legitimate and democratic political order after the second democratic transformation (normative evaluation of ongoing and proposed changes; development of own proposals)?  

Projects and Publications

• Lecture "The Second Transformation of Democracy" (German)
• Lecture "Transnational Democracy" (German)
• Project "Changing Boundaries of the Demos"
• Article "Horizontal Federalism and Swiss Democracy" (German)
• Article "Dual Citizenship and Theories of Democracy" (in Citizenship Studies)
• Article "Contingent Critique on the Basis of a Complex Theory of Reflective Democracy" (German)
• Article "Efficiency and Democracy"
• Article "Democracy and Legitimacy" (German)
• Article "Legitimacy" in the Sage Governance Encyclopedia
• Article "Glocalization" in the Sage Governance Encyclopedia
• Article in the NZZ: "Demokratie - republikanische und liberale Sicht" (German) 

Migration is seen mainly as a problem for the socioeconomic and political integration of nation states, in both public discourse and in most research within the social sciences. In contrast, many theorists and activists see migrants at the forefront of a transnational or cosmopolitan citizenship. In our research we aim to look at the interaction amongst national, transnational and cosmopolitan citizenship and their particular forms of political engagement (interests, identification, participation and solidarity). Theoretically, our main aim is to clearly differentiate between transnational (i.e. multinational) and cosmopolitan (i.e. supranational) citizenship. Empirically, we look at the extent to which the status of dual citizenship has an impact on political information, participation and identification in the country of residence and on the development of transnational and cosmopolitan political involvement. 

Projects and Publications 

• SNSF-Project "Dual Citizens" (with Andrea Schlenker)
• Article "Dual Citizenship and Theories of Democracy" (in Citizenship Studies)
• Article "Dual Citizenship for Ethnic Minorities in Neighbouring Kin States" (in an EUI Working Paper)
• Presentation "Dual Citizenship and Political Participation" (presented at the EUI / EUDO Citizenship in Florence)
• Article "Conceptualizing and evaluating (new) forms of citizenship between nationalism and cosmopolitanism" (with Andrea Schlenker; in Democratization)
• Working Paper "Between Nationalism and Globalism" (with Andrea Schlenker) 

The notion of Governance allows for a multi- and transdisciplinary conceptualization of political steering and integrations by bringing together a multiplicity of theories from diverse fields of the social sciences and from cultural studies. This permits for a wider understanding of politico-societal steering and integration. Core elements from economics, sociology, psychology as well as cultural and communication studies can be loosely connected trough a typology of forms of Governance. All ideal types are characterized by specific micro-foundations (theories of individual behaviour) and by the corresponding institutional structures and mechanisms. 

Paradigms and real cases of political steering and integration are analysed and interpreted with the help of such typologies. Whereas the dissertation focused on forms of governance in European and North American border regions, the Habilitation work looks at changes in the underlying conceptions (paradigms) towards political steering and integration at US metropolitan regions from 1850 until 2000. The empirical analysis makes it clear that the latest paradigm shift is characterised by the change of a rational-instrumental to a reflexive-constitutive approach towards socio-political steering and integration. 

Publications 

• Article "Beyond Hierarchies and Networks" (in Governance)
• Article "Debordering the World of States" (in EJIR)
• Article "Governance als transdisziplinäres Brückenkonzept" (German)
• Flyer of the Habilitation "Governance"
• Presentation EUROLOC 2006: "Metropolitan Governance in the U.S." 

Case studies play an important role in Political Science. In recent years, we have witnessed an unprecedented methodological reflection on this research approach. Together with colleagues, Joachim Blatter has contributed to the methodological discourse. In his own research and in text books, he has combined case studies with other qualitative methods, especially Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA).

Textbooks 

• Case Study Methods: Explanatory Approaches in Small-N Research. Palgrave (with Markus Haverland). Scheduled for June 2012; download flyer; order the book
• Qualitative Politikanalyse. Eine Einführung in Forschungsansätze und Methoden. Grundwissen Politik 44, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, (with F. Janning und C. Wagemann), 2007. download flyer 

Contributions to the methodological discourse 

• Conference Paper ECPR 2012, Antwerp: "Taking Terminology and Timing Seriously: On Ontological and Epistemological Foundations of Causal-Process Tracing"
• Conference Paper SPSA 2012, Lucerne: "Innovations in Case Study Methodology: Congruence Analysis and the Relevance of Crucial Cases"
• In search of co-variance, causal mechanisms or congruence? Towards a plural understanding of case studies. Swiss Political Science Review,14(2), 115-156 (with Till Blume), 2008; download
• Co-Variation and Causal Process Tracing Revisted: Clarifying New Directions for Causal Inference and Generalization in Case Study Methodology. Qualitative Methods - Newsletter of the American Political Science Association Organized Section for Qualitative and Multi-Method Reserach, 6(1), 29-34, 2008; download
• Frontiers of Methodological Progress in Qualitative Research. Special Issue of German Policy Studies, 7, 3, 2011 (co-edited with Fritz Sager) 
• Introduction: Frontiers of Methodological Progress in Qualitative Research. German Policy Studies, 7, 3, 2011, 1-7 (with Fritz Sager); download 

Major applications of case study and QCA methods 

• Performing Symbolic Politics and International Environmental Regulation. Tracing and Theorizing a Causal Mechanism beyond Regime Theory. Global Envirnomental Politics, 9(4), 81-110, 2009; download
• Preconditions for Foreign Activities of European Regions. Publius - The Journal of Federalism (mit Matthias Kreuter, Michaela Rentl und Dan Thiele), 40 (1), 171-199, 2009; download