Completed Projects

This project conceived by Florian Böller and Welf Werner book offers an assessment of the ongoing transformation of hegemonic order and its domestic and international politics. Under the Trump administration, international order was thrown into crisis. the USA has ceased to unequivocally support the institutions it helped to foster. China’s power surge, contestation by smaller states, and the West’s internal struggle with populism and economic discontent have undermined the liberal order from outside and from within. While the diagnosis of a crisis is hardly new, its sources, scope, and underlying politics are still up for debate. This reading of hegemony diverges from a static concept, toward a focus on the dynamic politics of hegemonic ordering. This perspective includes the domestic support and demand for specific hegemonic goods, the contestation and backing by other actors within distinct layers of hegemonic orders, and the underlying bargaining between the hegemon and subordinate actors. The case studies in the book that came out of this project thus investigate hegemonic politics across regimes (e.g., trade and security), regions (e.g., Asia, Europe, and Global South), and actors (e.g., major powers and smaller states).

In the context of the knowledge society, knowledge-intensive industries are seen as a chance for urban economic prosperity and development. However, many of these claims have not yet been tested thoroughly or have even been refuted. Moreover, it might be that the strong focus on education, creativity, and social networks adds to increased cleavages between different social groups instead of opening up opportunities for disadvantaged inhabitants. The project therefore takes a closer look at the impact of the knowledge-based industries on disparities in cities.

It analyzes social inequalities in seven different cities and how they relate to these so-called creative cities. All cities investigated are in different countries, all have large and prestigious universities, and all share a strong focus on the knowledge-intensive industries. By comparing them, the participating scholars assess differences and similarities in inequalities and relate them to recent trends in the context of the knowledge society. Associated partners are: Professor Ulrike Gerhard (Heidelberg), Dr. Michael Hölscher (Heidelberg), Professor David Wilson (Urbana-Champaign), Professor Thomas Hutton (UBC Vancouver), Professor Linda McDowell (Oxford), Professor David Giband (Montpellier), Dr. Ferenc Gyuirs (Budapest), and Dr. Justin Beaumont (Groningen). Findings of this project were published in 2016 as Inequalities in Creative Cities: Issues, Approaches, Comparisons.

The neoliberal creative city discourse has been one of the most significant urban discourses driving public policy interventions and urban restructuring in cities across the globe. However, the notion of everyday mobility practices, on the one hand, and the (re)production of mobility in cities and the politics this produces, on the other hand, have been largely overlooked in research on the creative city, even as (the reshaping of) mobility and its spaces appear to play significant roles in the making of the creative city. Thus, in this Habilitation project Gregg Culver is investigating whether and how neoliberal creative city strategies impact the production and politics of local mobility regimes and what this means for concerns over ever-increasing social inequality. Using the empirical example of the surprising, and as of yet largely unexplained, re-emergence of streetcar development projects in dozens of cities throughout the United States, this research aspires to make substantive theoretical and empirical contributions to urban, transport, and mobilities geographies.

"Planetary Urbanization" is the new term to study recent urbanization processes throughout the globe. It criticizes the classic dichotomy between rural and urban and extends urban research beyond the traditional urban boundaries. There is "no outside to the urban" since we live in a completely urbanized society (Lefevbre). Thus we have to think the city not as a form or function but as a new theoretical concept. This opens possibilities to study cities throughout the world from different angles, diverse scales, and critical perspectives. The mega city should not stand as a metonym for the city in the global south, whereas the global city is not just a phenomenon of the global north. Neoliberalism is not the only quintessential narrative of urban development in the twentieth century but just one way to understand increasing inequalities within and between cities. This new epistemology of the urban provides new grounds to study North American cities from an interdisciplinary perspective.

In times of economic uncertainty and financial crisis, economic advice is in high demand across the industrialized world. The United States and Germany represent two very different models of making economic expertise available to policymakers and society at large. Dr. Martin Thunert, together with Professor Andrea Römmele of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, received a substantial grant to research economic policy advice in the United States and Germany from a comparative perspective. The project started in late 2013 and terminated in early 2018 with the submission of the project’s main findings to the Böckler-Foundation. The year 2017 was devoted to drafting and editing the final report.

Funding has come from the Hans-Böckler-Foundation, affiliated with the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), the Confederation of German Trade Unions. The project analyzes the rules, mandates, and procedures and then evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of selected advisory bodies in both countries – from in-house policy units to expert committees and think tanks. In line with the Hans-Böckler-Foundation's support for research linked to the world of work, the project pays special attention to the question of how the perspective of workers can inform actors, institutions, and processes of economic policy advice in both countries. Dr. Martin Thunert's work was supported by Michael Kühlen, M.A., who served as his research associate between February and November 2014, when he left for a position at the Hans-Böckler-Foundation. Gordon Friedrichs, M.A., who has been with the HCA since 2012, took over this position as research associate between December 1, 2014 and September 30, 2016. In late 2015 Hanna Thiele, B.A., a former student in the HCA’s BAS program and now a master student of international relations at Frankfurt University, joined the project as a student research assistant, while Natalie Rauscher, M.A., a graduate of the MAS program and a doctoral student at the HCA came on board as a graduate student research assistant in February 2016. Both provided assistance to Martin Thunert in the process of drafting and editing the final report in 2017 and early 2018, especially with improving graphics as well as with upgrading bibliographic and statistical information. The final report with the working title “ Muster der Politikberatung: Wirtschaftspolitische Beratung in Deutschland und den USA im Vergleich” co-authored by Gordon Friedrichs, Dorota Stasiak, and Martin Thunert with the help of Natalie Rauscher and Hanna Thiele is currently in the final copyediting stage and will be published online as an edition of the online-publication series “Study” of the Hans-Böckler-Foundation in the first half of 2019.