The Centre for Comparative Politics of Germany and France engages in comparative political science with a focus on the politics and policies of France and Germany, as well as their role within the EU. Empirical problems, resulting from the interplay of state, economy and society in multi-level systems, form the basis of our theory-driven comparative analyses. Analytically and conceptually we favour actor- and institution-centered approaches, which are theoretically adaptable to a diverse range of research designs and comparisons, such as the comparison of states, policy fields and across time, as well as on mixed-methods designs, which combine qualitative case studies with comparisons of a moderate number of cases (N 30-90) and quantitative analyses.

Current research in the centre is organized in to three streams:

Comparative Public Policy

Conflict in the EU multi-level system

Representation

Moreover, the following Databases have been created by the Centre and are constantly updated:

• PEU Database
• SozPol Database