IMES unites researchers on themes such as transnationalism, citizenship and ethnic and religious diversity, political mobilization, radicalization, labor and entrepreneurship, urban public space, and social mobility and generational changes.
The IMES research programme is supported by the programme groups Challenges to Democratic Representation; Political Sociology; Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas and Transnational Configurations, Conflict and Governance.
What are necessary and sufficient conditions under which democratic regimes
can maintain stability and safeguard basic principles of democratic
accountability, representation and legitimacy. In this research program, we
address this classic theme from the perspective of normative democratic theory
and by way of empirical inquiry. Recognizing that democracy is also a
historically contingent politically practice, issues of change over time will be
embedded in our analytic approaches as well.
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The programme group ‘Political Sociology – Power, Place and Difference’
researches evolving relations of conflict and cohesion in various national and
international settings. Their research on citizenship, politics, policies,
social movements and the state extends beyond actor-centred approaches through
relational analyses and a keen eye for power differentials.
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The social consequences of the mobility of people and goods constitute the
central focus of this research programme. This group explores migrating people
and moving commodities as well as the shifting networks (of solidarity,
remittances, knowledge, meaning and power) that result from such practices.
Their approach is sociological and anthropological, with an emphasis on the
historical dimension.
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In recent decades, there has been a growing divergence between the
organisation of society and the inherited conceptual framework of the 20th
century political sciences.The group seeks to re-examine established notions of
identities, categorizations and boundaries defined by classical political
science concepts through different forms of empirical investigation.
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