Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Politisches Verhalten im Vergleich

Lehrangebot SoSe 2020


Im Sommersemester 2020 bieten wir folgende Kurse an:

Masterstudiengang Sozialwissenschaften

 

Heike Klüver

Heike Klüver:

Due to the Corona outbreak, the courses by Prof. Klüver will be taught via Zoom during the summer term.

As long as the daycare facilities in Berlin are closed, the courses will take place at the following times:

On Thursday

12:30-14:00 Quantitative Text Analysis
14:00-15:30 Research Seminar Demography, Democracy and Public Policy

15:30-17:00 Forschungsseminar Politisches Verhalten im Vergleich

Quantitative Text Analysis

 

This seminar will provide you with an overview of quantitative text analysis methods that allow you to systematically extract information from political texts. The seminar will combine more traditional approaches such as manual hand-coding with recent advances in political methodology that treat words as data. The seminar will begin with important concepts in content analysis such as content validity and intercoder reliability. We will afterwards take a closer look at manual coding approaches such as the  Manifesto Project before turning to computer-assisted dictionary-based text analysis techniques. This will be followed by an extensive discussion of Wordscores and Wordfish, two cutting-edge techniques that allow you to automatically extract policy positions from political texts. Finally, we will deal with document classification and learn how to automatically classify texts into categories such as classifying thousands of press releases into policy areas. The seminar will combine theoretical sessions with practical exercises to allow participants to immediately apply the presented techniques.

Research Seminar Demography, Democracy and Public Policy
Forschungsseminar: Politisches Verhalten im Vergleich

Bachelorstudiengang Sozialwissenschaften

 

Jochen Rehmert:

Applied Categorical Data Analysis with R

 

This course offers an applied introduction to the diverse statistical models designed to accommodate categorical dependent variables. We will cover the theoretical background of various models including logit/probit, multinomial, conditional and ordered logit as well as models for count data (poisson and negative binomial). We will also discuss hurdle and zero-inflated models. Using the statistics software R, we will have hands-on examples on how to implement these models, visualize effects and discuss model-of-fit measures. Prior knowledge of R is not necessary, but is certainly helpful. Students should have completed Statistik I and Statistik II.

Japanese Politics

This course is an introduction to the politics and government of post-war and contemporary Japan. As the oldest Asian democracy and one of the most powerful economies in the world, Japanese politics are not well understood beyond its borders. In this course we will cover Japanese party politics, policymaking, political economy and foreign policy, as well as the administrative reforms of the 1990s and their consequences. The objective of this course is to become familiar with the Japanese political system and to understand the often quoted Japanese “uniqueness” not as a product of culture alone, but as rational behavioral answers to the incentives of extant institutional arrangements. No prior knowledge of Japan, Japanese politics, or the Japanese language is required.

 

 

Fabio Ellger:

Democratic Responsiveness and Representation

 

This course focuses on empirical analyses of responsiveness and representation in today’s democracies. We all regularly participate in elections to select political actors that ideally serve our best interest. But how can we ensure that once votes have been counted and governments formed, politicians really stick to the plans and promises they made on the campaign trail?

This class combines institutional and behavioural approaches to look at the conduct of parties and individual politicians in day-to-day politics. We will start with discussing the concepts of responsiveness and representation in empirical social science and continue to review contemporary research in the field of comparative political behaviour. We will investigate different ways in which democratic institutions try to keep politicians accountable, whether parties do respond to preference shifts in the electorate, and look at the responsiveness of individual politicians towards their constituents.

Students should be familiar with basic statistical analysis to get an insight into contemporary theory-guided empirical research. They will prepare a presentation and write a final paper (in English or German) to receive full credit.

 
Heike Klüver

Heike Klüver:

Forschungsseminar: Politisches Verhalten im Vergleich

Postanschrift

 

Sitz

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät
Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
Unter den Linden 6
10099 Berlin

 

 

Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
Universitätsstraße 3b
10117 Berlin

(Lageplan)