Drittmittelprojekte
Drittmittelprojekt: The Whiteness of Wealth Management: Colonial Economic Structure, Racism, and the Emergence of Tax Havens in the Global South
Projektbeteiligte / Kontakt:
- Hakelberg, Lukas (Wissenschaftliche Projektleitung)
- Everton Carneiro da Silva (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter)
- Leonie Hubert (Studentische Hilfskraft)
- Fernanda Soares Povill de Souza (Studentische Hilfskraft)
Beschreibung:
Tropical islands are often stigmatized as tax havens. But only a few tropical islands are important exporters of financial services. This is surprising since many of them feature attributes associated with tax havenry. They are small, sovereign, reachable from major financial centers within a few hours, and practice British common law. Why have so few applied tax havenry as a development strategy, nonetheless?
Conventional wisdom suggests that political stability, often measured with contemporary indicators of good governance, makes the difference. The perception of political stability among foreign investors is, however, interwoven with racist biases. Previous research shows that tropical islands had to emphasize their British heritage, essentially a code for whiteness, to attract foreign capital during decolonization.
WOWMA’s objective is thus to explain why some tropical island jurisdictions were better able than others to convey stability through an image of whiteness in this historical period. In contrast to previous research emphasizing the rule of law, WOWMA investigates the hypothesis that the absence of income taxes paired with white control over government distinguished emerging tax havens from other tropical islands.
To this end, WOWMA (1) proposes a new theory on the emergence of tax havens in the Global South, linking an island’s economic structure under colonial rule to the absence of income taxes and the persistence of white oligarchy; (2) applies causal inference methods on original historical data gathered from archival sources; and (3) probes the persistence of racist biases in investment decisions through conjoint experiments.
The project provides unprecedented depth in the study of small island states’ political and economic development. It foregrounds the entanglement of racism with perceptions of political stability and develops new strategies for its measurement.
Akronym | WOWMA |
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Zeitraum | 01.04.24 → 31.03.29 |
Verknüpfte Publikationen:
The Cool Water Effect: Why Human Civilization Turned towards Emancipation in Cold-Wet Regions
Projektbeteiligte:
Welzel, Christian (Wissenschaftliche Projektleitung)
Beschreibung:
Since Jared Diamond, there is a burgeoning literature on the long-term drivers of Western civilization's emancipatory dynamic. Contributing to this scholarship, I intend to elaborate on an under-theorized observation evidenced in my own work: most long-term drivers cited in the literature are confounded with a particular geo-climatic configuration – the Cool Water (CW-) condition, that is, the combination of cold seasons with continuous rain. Taking this observation as the point of departure, I wish to examine three propositions in-depth. First, the CW-condition embodies the seed of emancipatory dynamics because it endows people with vital grass-roots autonomies, like autonomy in water access, food production and household formation. Second, the seed began to germinate as more complex social organizations – from private corporations to voluntary associations to state administration – formed: in the presence of grass-roots autonomies, social organization evolves through emancipatory struggles in which groups claim freedoms, which then become increasingly firmly encultured. Third, accelerating globalization is transplanting emancipatory struggles into world regions without the CW-condition, thus loosening geography's grip on social choice.My proposed project is global in coverage and long-term in its temporal orientation. Indeed, I plan to use data for all countries of the world. These data capture conditions along a sequence of historical layers, from the eve of the colonial, industrial and information ages until today. I intend to explore the linkages leading from preceding to subsequent layers of history.Overall, the goal of this project is two-fold: (1) THEORY - further developing the arguments informing my three main propositions; (2) EMPIRICS - consolidating and expanding the already existing, albeit preliminary evidence.
Status | Laufend |
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Zeitraum | 01.01.18 → 31.12.26 |
Links | http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/354195873 |
Trust in European Democracies - WP4: Democratic systems and national cultures: transition and interplay of values
Projektbeteiligte / Kontakt:
- Welzel, Christian (Wissenschaftliche Projektleitung)
- Institut für Politikwissenschaft
- Professur für Politische Kulturforschung
- Institut für Vergleichende Umfrageforschung. Eurasien Barometer
- Metropolitan Universität Prag
- Centre de Recherches Politiques de Sciences Po
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Universität der Peloponnes
- Universität von Salerno
- Universität Bukarest
- Comenius-Universität Bratislava
- Universität Ljubljana
- Aktiebolaget Bikupan
- Nationale W.-N.-Karasin-Universität Charkiw
Beschreibung:
Political trust has long been regarded as an important element of regime support and factor of regime stability; it is widely associated with a number of positive outcomes in representative democracies. Political trust drives citizens’ interest and engagement in politics, increases voting turnout and makes law-abiding behavior more common. Political trust is frequently equated to diffuse regime support and thus linked to the effective functioning and stability of the political system. The proposed research effort will monitor the structural (long-term) drivers of political trust but also emphasize the strategies which can be employed by diverse actors and agencies to strengthen accurate and informed judgments of agency trustworthiness. The objective of this ambitious project is twofold. First, we aim to design and implement a complex research effort to collect comprehensive evidence on the judgments of trustworthiness in a range of European states. Second, the project will develop a comprehensive and transparent toolbox of short-term and long-term policy interventions including recommendations, and methodologies for enhancing trust in political institutions, boosting transparency, and inclusiveness of representative systems in Europe. While there is a growing concern about the crisis of democracy and democratic backsliding, this research effort will provide an innovative theoretical perspective on the sources of regime support and strategies for trust building in the public domain. The project looks at the different drivers of 'positive high trust in democracy' and 'negative high trust in autocracy'. The project will facilitate development of a new paradigm of political trust and trust-building and will inspire emergence of new insights on the multi-facet origins of political trust and multi-factor nature of trustworthiness. The project has partners in Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Ukraine.
The aim of this WP is to study the mechanisms and examine the patterns of interplay between political values, support for democracy and political trust on one side, and social, cultural, religious, and other values that constitute an important component of the national cultures in the EU, on the other. This WP will identify those social and cultural values, attitudes and beliefs which are congruent with the support for democracy and reinforce political trust, and those which hinder it.
The findings will contribute to the complex understanding of the mechanisms of reproduction of political trust in the society, various types of trust and relevant policy measures to tackle it.
Akronym | TRUDEM |
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Status | Laufend |
Zeitraum | 01.01.23 → 31.12.25 |
Links | https://doi.org/10.3030/101095237 https://www.truedem.eu/ |
Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung:
Verknüpfte Publikationen:
Forschungsprojekt der Gerda Henkel Stiftung : „Re/Präsentation. Neue Formen der politischen Ansprache und Fürsprache in der kommenden Gesellschaft“
Projektbeteiligte / Kontakt:
-Prof. Dr. Astrid Séville (Politikwissenschaft, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
-Prof. Dr. Julian Müller (Soziologie/Politikwissenschaft, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg)
-Prof. Dr. Christian Kirchmeier (Germanistik, Universität Bremen)
Beschreibung:
Die demokratische Gesellschaft der Gegenwart befindet sich inmitten eines tiefgreifenden Wandels der Orte und Medien des Sozialen. Begegnungen und Kooperationen, aber auch Auseinandersetzungen und Konflikte finden immer häufiger in neuen technisch-medialen Kontexten statt. Dabei verändern sich die traditionellen Formen politischer Repräsentation. Etablierte Muster sozialer und politischer Identifikation wie Parteibindungen und Milieuzugehörigkeiten sind brüchig und weniger erwartbar geworden. Zudem haben sich die Muster und Orientierungspunkte politischer Kollektivierung verschoben: zugunsten einer Pluralisierung und Singularisierung, aber auch zugunsten einer bisweilen populistischen Infragestellung der Legitimität kollektiv bindender Entscheidungen.
Parallel dazu entstehen neue Formen der Selbst-Präsentation politischer Subjekte und neue Möglichkeiten, sich politisch zu entwerfen und zu erzählen. Politische Selbstdarstellungen der Gegenwart finden neue Erzählanlässe und neue Inszenierungsweisen und suchen nach neuen Formaten für die eigene Positionierung im politischen Raum. Dabei werden etwa Konsum- und Lebensstilentscheidungen, nicht selten nah im Umfeld des eigenen Körpers, zu einem zentralen und nicht weiter diskutablen Fundament des eigenen Daseins aufgewertet und politisch aufgeladen. Es handelt sich nicht selten um eine privatisierte Form der Politisierung, aus der sich jedoch nur schwer ein verallgemeinerbares politisches Programm ableiten lässt auch und gar nicht abgeleitet werden soll.
Das Projekt geht von der These aus, dass der Wandel der politischen Repräsentation und der Wandel politischer Selbst-Präsentation nicht nur zeitgleich stattfinden, sondern aufeinander bezogen sind. Sie müssen daher zusammen gedacht und zusammen beobachtet werden. Die Forschungsgruppe untersucht deswegen das Wechselverhältnis medialer Formen einer Präsentation von Subjekten und ihrer politischen Repräsentation in der politischen Kommunikation. Dabei stehen zwei Formen politischer Kommunikation im Vordergrund, die mit den neuen Dynamiken von Repräsentation und Selbst-Präsentation korrelieren: einerseits Formen der Fürsprache im Namen von Gruppen, Milieus oder einem abstrakten Allgemeinen; andererseits Formen der Ansprache, die als vermeintlich authentische, konkrete Darstellungsform von Einzelnen im politischen Diskurs fungiert.
Die Forschungsgruppe verbindet politikwissenschaftliche, soziologische und literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. „Re/Präsentation. Neue Formen der politischen Ansprache und Fürsprache in der kommenden Gesellschaft“ wird von der Gerda Henkel Stiftung gefördert. Im Projekt finden Veranstaltungen, Tagungen und Workshops statt, zudem entsteht eine Promotion von Tobias Lappy unter Betreuung von Astrid Séville.
Zeitraum: 2021-2025
Link: https://re-praesentation.de