Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Department of Social Sciences - Berlin Graduate School of Social Science

Cohort

BGSS Generation 2025

Title

Populist Concepts and Shaping of Political Neutrality – A Comparative Analysis of the Educational Administrations in Germany, France, and Poland

Supervisor

Prof. Dr. Michael Wrase

Abstract

The principle of political neutrality is legally derived from the constitutions of several European democracies. It obliges civil servants to exercise restraint in political expression and thereby ensures equal opportunities among parties in political competition. In recent years, the legal principle has become increasingly contested and politicised. In this, populist parties accuse state institutions and their officials of violating their duty of political neutrality, using the principle to question the legitimacy of the public administration and its rule-making.

My dissertation addresses this issue by first theoretically conceptualising political neutrality as a multidimensional legal and political principle, integrating insights from constitutional theory, public administration research, and political philosophy. In a second step, it empirically examines how populist and mainstream parties reconceptualise political neutrality in party discourse. Furthermore, it assesses to what extent the partisan interpretations influence legislation and the practice of civil servants.

The education sector provides a particularly revealing field of inquiry: obligations to political neutrality intersect with the normative duty to transmit civic values, rendering this field a recurrent arena of partisan contestation and reform. A comparative analysis of Germany, France, and Poland examines how party politics, legal frameworks, and administrative traditions interact in reshaping the principle of political neutrality in the governance of education. The research thereby advances both the theoretical and empirical understanding of political neutrality as a contested norm of contemporary democratic governance, with particular attention to its institutionalisation and vulnerability in the education sector.

Institution

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Employee Profile)

Personal LinkedIn: Jakob Florian Geweke