Substitute Chair / Academic Councillor at the Chair of Political Systems and European Integration
Contact
Office Hours
Lecture-free period: Appointment by arrangement via e-mail
Work Group
New Project from PD Dr. Martin Gross: “The Politicisation of Sports” (POLSPO)
Not least through decisions on infrastructure and urban development measures, municipal politics has far-reaching consequences for social coexistence and the quality of life of the local population. In this context, the question arises as to whose interests are taken into account in municipal politics. The project takes this question as an opportunity to look at patterns and determinants of substantial representation in major German cities. The basic idea here is that socio-structurally homogeneous neighbourhoods often emerge in cities, meaning that the representation of the urban population coincides with the representation of social classes. Accordingly, it is important to find out which district interests are taken into account in municipal politics, whether there are significant imbalances in the patterns of municipal representation and how possible inequalities can be explained.
To investigate patterns of municipal representation, data from the city councils of 75 large cities in the 13 German federal states plus Bremerhaven is analysed using automatic and manual text analysis. The project takes into account three levels of municipal political representation. Firstly, a systemic perspective is adopted, which examines the deliberations of city councils based on the minutes of their sessions. Secondly, a party-political perspective is considered through the evaluation of municipal election programs and coalition agreements. Thirdly, the focus is directed towards individual representation behavior through the analysis of inquiries made by individual municipal representatives.
The project pursues three objectives. The descriptive project objective is the systematic description of patterns of substantive representation at the municipal level. The analytical project objective aims to explain imbalances in the representation performance of municipal politics. This includes considering local voter turnout, local voting behavior, features of the municipal electoral system, and local party competition. Finally, the prescriptive project objective aims to synthesize project findings, particularly with regard to municipal electoral law, and to make recommendations for the reform of municipal political institutions. The central question is which municipal institutional framework and contextual conditions lead to particularly egalitarian patterns of representation.
Vita
Dr. Martin Gross studied Political and Administrative Science (Bachelor of Arts) at the University of Konstanz and 20th Century History and Politics (Master of Arts) at Friedrich Schiller University Jena. From 2009 to 2012, he was a research assistant and lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, as well as a scholarship holder at the Jena Graduate Academy (2011-2012). From September 2012 to February 2016, he worked as a research assistant at the University of Mannheim. From 2015 to 2016, he also worked on the DFG research project “Where Is My Party? Determinants of Voter Agreement about the Ideological Positions of Political Parties” at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES).
From March 2016 to September 2017, he worked as a project staff member in the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project “COHESIFY: The Impact of EU Cohesion Policy on European Identification” at MZES, before taking up a position as an academic councillor at the Geschwister-Scholl Institute for Political Science at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich in October 2017. His dissertation entitled “Coalition Formation Processes at the Municipal Level: Black-Green in German Cities” was published by Springer VS in 2016 and awarded the 2016 PhD Prize of the Friends of the Institute of Political Science at Friedrich Schiller University Jena e. V. Together with Dr Michael Jankowski, he leads the “Local Manifesto Project (LMP)”. This app provides a new resource for analysing local party competition by allowing researchers to apply various text scaling techniques and topic models directly in the app. More information on the Local Manifesto Project (LMP) can be found here.
His main research interests include party competition, coalition formation and policy content in multi-level systems and local politics, but also European cohesion policy, political representation and responsiveness and textual analysis.
Teaching
Winter Semester 2023/2024
- Introductory Course: Parteien und Parteienwettbewerb in Deutschland
- Introductory Course: Die kommunale Ebene im politischen System der BRD
Summer Semester 2023
- Lecture: Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft
- Exercise: Coalition Governments
- Seminar: Die Regionalpolitik der EU
- Seminar: Political Representation in Comparative Perspective
Winter Semester 2022/23
Summer Semester 2022
- Exercise: Coalition governments
- Exercise: Kommunalpolitik in vergleichender Perspektive
- Seminar: Die Regionalpolitik der EU
- Seminar: Dynamic party competition in European multi-level systems
Winter Semester 2021/22
- Introductory Course: Das politische System nach der Bundestagswahl 2021 (2x)
- BA- und MA-Kolloquium
Summer Semester 2021
Publications
- Gross, M. et al. (2023) Navigating complexity: exploring the changing dynamics of coalition avoidance in Germany, 1946–2023. Regional & Federal Studies.
- Gross, M. (2023); Chapter from the Book “Politik und Regieren im Saarland“: “Die Koalitionen, Koalitionsbildungsprozesse und Landesregierungen des Saarlands”
- Velimsky, J. A., Block, S., Gross, M., & Nyhuis, D. (2023). Probing the Effect of Candidate Localness in Low-Information Elections: Evidence from the German Local Level. Political Studies, 0(0).
- Gross, M. et al. (2023) Do voters want their parties to be office- or policy-seekers in coalition negotiations?. West European Politics.
- Gross, M. (2023). Determinants of Government Membership at the Subnational Level: Empirical Evidence from Large Cities in Germany (1999–2016). Government and Opposition, 58(1), 145-161.
- Gross, M., Krauss S. & Katrin Praprotnik (2023). Electoral strategies in multilevel systems: the effect of national politics on regional elections. Regional Studies, 57:5, 844-856
- Wegschaider, K., Gross, M. & Schmid, S. (2022). Studying politics at the local level in Germany: a tale of missing data. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 16, 753–768
- Gross, M. (2022). Does Anyone Care? Cohesion Policy Issues in Sub-national Politics. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 60: 1538–1555.
- Gross, M., & Chiru, M. (2022). Time is on my side? The temporal proximity between elections and parties’ salience strategies. European Political Science Review, 14(4), 482-497.
- Jaich, M. & Gross, M. (2022). Digitalisierung der öffentlichen Verwaltung: Die Umsetzung des Onlinezugangsgesetzes in niederbayerischen Kommunen. dms – der moderne staat – Zeitschrift für Public Policy, Recht und Management, 15(1-2022), 208-231.
- Baumann, M., Debus, M., & Gross, M. (2021). Strategic issue emphasis in parties’ election campaign statements. Party Politics, 27(3), 515-527
- Braun, D., Gross, M., & Rittberger, B. (2020). Political Behavior in the EU Multi-Level System. Politics and Governance, 8(1), 1-5.
- Gross, M. & Jankowski, M. (2020). Dimensions of political conflict and party positions in multi-level democracies: evidence from the Local Manifesto Project, West European Politics, 43:1, 74-101.
- Calca, P. & Gross, M. (2019) To adapt or to disregard? Parties’ reactions to external shocks, West European Politics, 42:3, 545-572
- Gross, M. (2018). Sowing the Seeds of Love’? Determinants of Local Coalition Formation and Termination between the CDU and the Greens, 1994–2016. German Politics, 27:3, 339-358
- Gross, M. & Debus, M. (2018). Does EU regional policy increase parties’ support for European integration? West European Politics, 41:3, 594-614
- Gross, M., Debus, M. (2018). Gaining new insights by going local: determinants of coalition formation in mixed democratic polities. Public Choice 174, 61–80.
- Gross, M., Niendorf, T. (2017). Determinanten der Bildung nicht-etablierter Koalitionen in den deutschen Bundesländern, 1990–2016. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 11, 365–390.
- Baumann, M., Debus, M., & Gross, M. (2017). Strength of weakness? Innerparteiliche Heterogenität, divergierende Koalitionspräferenzen und die Ergebnisse von Koalitionsverhandlungen in den deutschen Bundesländern. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 58(2), 179–204.
- Debus, M., & Gross, M. (2016). Coalition formation at the local level: Institutional constraints, party policy conflict, and office-seeking political parties. Party Politics, 22(6), 835-846.
- Gross, M. (2014). Koalitionsbildung in deutschen Großstädten: Empirische Befunde aus Nordrhein-Westfalen. Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft : ZPol = Journal of Political Science, 24(1/2), 109–143.
Projects and Interviews
- “The Politicisation of Sports” (POLSPO)
- The DFG-funded project “Representation and inequality in municipal politics”
- The DFG-funded project “Resource Mobilisation in International Administrations: Strategies of Financing International Policies”, part of the DFG Research Unit “International Administrations”
- PD Dr. Martin Gross zu der Bayernwahl 2023
- Interview mit PD Dr. Martin Gross: “Abgrenzung zur AfD – Wie stark ist die Brandmauer?”
- WELT-Interview mit PD Dr. Martin Gross: „Dann muss man den AfD-Antrag ablehnen und selber einen inhaltlich gleichen einbringen“
- Einschätzungen von PD Dr. Martin Gross zum veränderten Ton im bayerischen Landtag
Politische Systeme und Europäische Integration 