Christian Welzel

Christian Welzel is a German political scientist and Vice - President of the World Values ​​Survey.

Career

Welzel studied at the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken, political science and economic history. After a Master of Arts (MA) in 1996, he earned a doctorate in political science at the University of Potsdam with the work "Democratic Elite Transition: The renewal of the East German elite democracy - sociological point of view ." In the following years, Welzel worked as a research assistant at the Science Centre Berlin for Social Research and his habilitation in 2000 with the monograph " Diminishing Human Development: The Foundations of Democracy and the causes of its spread " in political science at the Free University of Berlin. Then he taught and did research for a year at the University of Potsdam as a visiting professor at the Department " system of government of the Federal Republic of Germany ". In 2001, Welzel as an Associate Professor of Political Science at Jacobs University Bremen, where he received the title of professor in 2006. Here he oversaw as program coordinator of the study program " Integrated Social Sciences " ( Integrated Social Science undergraduate and graduate program) and the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. Since 2010 teaches and researches Christian Welzel at Leuphana University in Lüneburg Professor of Political Culture Research at the Institute of Political Science and Center for the Study of Democracy. Also in 2010, he acquired a research professor at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg in Russia. In addition to Russia and Germany Christian Welzel research since 2006 as an associate visiting researcher at the Center for the Study of Democracy ( CSD) at UC Irvine University of California, Irvine.

Research interests

His research interests relate in particular to the topics:

  • Modernization, social change, and human empowerment
  • Democratization, democracy measurement and quality of governance
  • Values ​​formation, cultural change and public opinion
  • Protest participation and social movements
  • Civil society and social capital

Value orientations, values ​​change and the World Values ​​Survey

Christian Welzel research focuses primarily on the question of how the value orientations of ordinary people to change the political culture in contemporary societies. His research is based on data from the World Values ​​Survey. Since 2008, Christian Welzel Board Member and Vice - President for Research for the World Values ​​Survey Association. Currently, researchers from around the world in the implementation of the sixth wave of the survey in the context of this survey. Christian Welzel is leading the project in Germany. 2000 people who come each half of West Germany from East Germany and half were interviewed in 2013 for this purpose to their moral concepts. Subsequently, the subjects participated in an online experiment to investigate the relationship between the values ​​of a person and his willingness to cooperate. The project is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG ) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF ).

Publications

In the research field to value orientations and values ​​change Welzel has published, among other things, about development processes that transform political cultures and how these transformations affect political institutions, especially in democracies. His most recent book was published in 2013 under the title "Freedom Rising," published by Cambridge University Press. Along with Amy Alexander, Maria Goeppert professor at the Georg -August- University Göttingen, he researched and analyzed also the role of emancipatory values ​​in the empowerment of women. In addition, researches and publishes Welzel together with Ronald Inglehart, the Skyttepreis winner and founder of the World Values ​​Survey.

World Values Survey Cooperation Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Post-materialism Digital Object Identifier
186572
de