C_08 Regional Panel

This work package (WP) continues the quantitative Regional Panel (RP) in the twelve study locations from the first funding phase. As a repeated survey, it enables causal analyses of changes in local social cohesion within a regionally contextualized multilevel design and serves as the central data infrastructure of Research Area C, cutting across all three of its research focuses.

Drawing on international studies, the Regional Panel assumes that infrastructures and public goods are often associated with distributive and evaluative conflicts in regional contexts, and that their acceptance and effectiveness are closely linked to communal structures at the local level. The research design of the Regional Panel reflects this relationality between actors and regions in multiple ways, as it allows for neighborhood-level analyses as well as comparisons across federal states. The panel examines regional manifestations of social cohesion and brings numerous socio-spatial determinants into focus.

In this way, the panel bridges the guiding questions of the research area concerning (1) the binding or divisive effects of infrastructures and public goods on social cohesion and (2) the relationship between public responsibility and civil society initiative in the provision of public goods. More broadly, it asks which types of local forms of cohesion can be identified when examining the structure and practice of public goods and infrastructures.

Infrastructures and public goods, as well as the associated processes of negotiation and use, can on the one hand have a binding character (loyalty) by enabling participation and voice through access to infrastructures and public goods, thereby constituting a core element of a participation-oriented society and local social cohesion. On the other hand, infrastructures and public goods may also have exclusionary effects. These may manifest in disappointment or withdrawal resulting from insufficient or inadequate provision (exit). Structurally denied access to infrastructures and public goods thus has restrictive effects and may pose a threat to social cohesion in democratic societies.

Since the first survey wave in 2021, satisfaction with a wide range of specific infrastructures and their changes has been continuously assessed within the Regional Panel. This provides a differentiated empirical basis on which the work packages within the research focus can draw. For example, perceptions of local power relations and spatial orders are reflected in access to—or exclusion from—infrastructures and public goods, and can be empirically captured and incorporated in WP C_01. At the same time, the Regional Panel places particular emphasis on cooperation, participation, and inclusion in the context of infrastructures and public goods. Citizen cooperatives and other common-good-oriented infrastructures are examined as examples of cooperative and participatory forms of infrastructure provision, creating points of connection for WP C_03 and C_04.

In addition, the Regional Panel addresses facets of socio-ecological transformation and the consequences of human-induced climate change by systematically examining green and blue infrastructures and their perception (WP C_05, C_06, and C_07). Initial data on perceptions of climate change threats from the first funding phase and the second survey wave are already available and are being analyzed, among other purposes, for the 2025 Social Cohesion Report.

The WP thus serves, first, as a vehicle for collecting new regionalized data and as a data infrastructure for work packages across all research focuses within Research Area C, as well as for secondary analyses in other research areas (for example, B_06) and for central reporting. The data are also made available to researchers outside RISC. The panel is a core resource for the participating sites in Bielefeld, Göttingen, Halle, and Hanover. Through internal RISC calls for questionnaire modules, it further supports collaborative research across the center. Moreover, data from each survey wave are made available to the broader research community on an ongoing basis. Local social cohesion is operationalized as a composite of identification, trust, and collective efficacy. Initial empirical identification of spatial patterns of social cohesion was already achieved in the first wave. The repeated measurements and partial extensions of the survey instrument thus contribute to methodological foundational research and to the expansion of RISC’s data infrastructure and that of Research Area C.

Second, both within the research area and within the WP, social cohesion is not understood as a global phenomenon but rather in its place-based character and regional specificity. The spaces in which cohesion is produced, experienced, and enabled are conceptualized relationally. Accordingly, the individual-level data from the Regional Panel are enriched with spatial context data. In addition to socio-statistical indicators (demography, migration, unemployment, etc.), this allows current societal and political developments with implications for spatial variation in social cohesion to be taken into account.

Third, as a panel study, the WP observes temporal changes in residents’ experienced and socially produced social cohesion in democratic societies. Local experiences of cohesion have implications for perceptions of cohesion at the societal level—and vice versa. By the end of the second funding phase, a panel dataset comprising four waves (2021, 2023, 2025, and 2028) will be available. Context data are also collected longitudinally in order to analyze interdependencies between changes in local conditions and respondents’ answers. This is of central importance for the substantive questions of the Regional Panel, for example regarding socio-ecological transformation, and directly addresses the key question of Research Area C concerning changes over time in perceptions of infrastructures and public goods.

Finally, in its analytical framework, methodological approach, and disciplinary composition, the Regional Panel reflects the guiding prism of Research Area C. It pursues a consistently socio-spatial approach to social cohesion, combining individual survey data with representations of actors embedded in their institutional contexts through the inclusion of local—including political—characteristics. The data are therefore also well suited for analyzing dynamics of social cohesion in relation to elections held during the funding phase at various political levels, most notably the 2025 federal election, and for examining social cohesion both as an explanatory factor and as an outcome.