Economic Property and Political (In)equality: Economic Property and Political (In)equality:

Building on these findings, the project analyzes the impact of property on representative democracy in Germany using a mixed-methods research design with three new research foci: 

First, we examine whether our previous findings indicate increasing importance of financial resources in politics or even a structural shift towards an "unequal democracy" in Germany. This question will be answered by a longitudinal extension of our previous studies: Our qualitative panel study on recruitment in the constituencies will be continued in a second wave with an expanded focus on parliamentary careers. In addition, the database on the careers of legislators and members of government will be maintained by including an additional legislative period as well as periods after parliament and government. To study long-term changes in attitudes and policy positions of legislators, we compare them with previous MP surveys.

Secondly, the so-called "revolving door effect", which describes the movement between leading positions in politics and business, is used to examine in greater depth the influence of economic interests on politics, and thus — in addition to sideline jobs already studied — another suspected mechanism for unequal representation. In this context, we investigate the careers of individuals after they leave politics, and thereby the interactions and entanglements between political and economic elites. This area is of particular interest for analyzing the invisibilization of the effects of property and the relationship between the state and the economy. Third, we examine how the spatial context influences unequal access to parliament and unequal representation in Germany. East-West differences in campaign financing, as well as the qualitative interviews conducted in the districts during the first funding phase, point to spatially contingent property effects. In order to investigate the interplay between social inequality and spatial concentration or inequality of property, existing individual-level data will be linked to spatial context variables at the district level and analyzed using multilevel analyses. All findings are consolidated in an integrated analysis that studies the impact of property on political recruitment and representation, as well as possible indication of an “unequal democracy” in Germany. Thus, this project makes a central contribution to the Collaborative Research Center's core questions about the effects of property and property-induced structural transformations.