FRA_F_04 Political Conflict Regulation and Social Cohesion

Objectives/ Research Questions

This project focuses on the political-institutional sources of social cohesion by investigating the relationship between forms of political conflict regulation and social cohesion. Specifically, it is about the question of how conflict regulation affects citizens’ attitudes towards concrete policies and general political regulatory action, i.e. a dimension of social cohesion. We examine this in two conflict-prone fields of political action: (1) the management of religious diversity and (2) the design of infrastructure measures.

(1) The processes of religious demographic change in recent years have accentuated a variety of conflicts over the acceptance of religious diversity. The central working hypothesis is that the acceptance of religious diversity and Muslim immigration is a crucial function of their political regulation (cf. Helbling / Traunmüller 2016). Central to this hypothesis is the question of how state actors regulate religious diversity and in what way they try to let the majority society participate in such decisions. This opens up an analytical perspective that does not primarily focus on the opposition between the host society and religious newcomers – the majority society and the religious minority – but on the conflict between citizens and political elites and is thus directly relatable to current discussions about political polarization and “populism”.

(2) With infrastructure projects, a field of action comes into view that is already traditionally structured by hard social conflicts. Conflicts, such as the one over Runway 18 West at Frankfurt Airport, have led to a strong willingness to get involved in innovative participation procedures in many of the following conflicts, i.e. participation procedures to let citizens participate directly in planning decisions (cf. Geis 2005; Renn 2013). Although research has produced a large number of studies on these “democratic innovations” (cf. Smith 2009; Geissel / Newton 2012), there is often a lack of comparison with conventional regulatory procedures in order to be able to assess the effects of participation procedures. Our guiding hypothesis is that the effects of participation procedures strongly depend on the types of conflict to which they are applied. We will work on this field of action in close cooperation with project HAN_F_03, which analyses the participation procedure in the context of power line routing over time while comparing different procedures.

Thematic Reference to Social Cohesion

The project starts from the premise that the sources of cohesion in a heterogeneous society are not only a question of individual dispositions, values, and attitudes, but also shaped by conflict management through state action and institutions (cf. Coser 1965; Dubiel 1997). Clever political conflict regulation can generate cohesion by producing win-win situations, i.e. granting rights to religious minorities without taking away rights from others (e.g. a pork-free meal as an additional offer or an additional religious holiday). But it can also produce conflicts if parts of society feel that tolerance of religious minorities threatens their own traditions and customs (e.g. no more pork in day-care centres and cafeterias or rededication of an existing holiday). How political regulation can bring about maximum acceptance and thus strengthen the cohesion of society is the central research question of this project.

Literature

Coser, Lewis 1965: Theorie sozialer Konflikte, Neuwied.

Dubiel, Helmut 1999: Integration durch Konflikt?, in: Friedrichs, Jürgen; Jagodzinski, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): Soziale Integration, Wiesbaden, 132-143.

Geißel, Brigitte; Newton, Ken (Hrsg.) 2012: Evaluating Democratic Innovations Curing the democratic malaise? London, New York, 163-183.

Geis, Anna 2005: Regieren mit Mediation, Wiesbaden.

Helbling, Marc; Traunmüller, Richard 2016: How State Support of Religion Shapes Attitudes Toward Muslim Immigrants. New Evidence from a Subnational Comparison, in: Comparative Political Studies 49:1, 391-424.

Renn, Ortwin 2013: Partizipation bei öffentlichen Planungen. Möglichkeiten, Grenzen, Reformbedarf, in: Keil, Silke L.; Thaidigsmann, Isabelle (Hrsg.): Zivile Bürgergesellschaft und Demokratie. Aktuelle Ergebnisse der empirischen Politikforschung, Wiesbaden, 71-96.

Smith, Graham (Hrsg.) 2009: Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen ­Participation, Cambridge, 829.