JProf. Dr. Theres Matthieß
Political Scientist, Assistant Professor

Research

Research Profile

My research interests include Comparative Politics, Political institutions, Political Behavior and European and German Politics. I am interested in conducting theory-based, empirical political science. My research focuses on studying the behavior and attitudes of citizens and political actors at different levels. I use a variety of methodological approaches, such as text analysis, survey, and experimental research. In particular, I am interested in the following topics:

  • Political Parties
  • Minority and Coalition Governments
  • Voting Behavior
  • Election Pledges
  • Political Representation and Government Responsiveness
  • Political Inequality
  • Trust and Legitimacy

 

Please find below a summary of UNEQUALMAND, GROUPTA and the Manifesto Project - three externally funded research projects that I contributed to and participated in co-writing applications to the German Research Foundation (DFG). The output of these projects and other research projects can be found on my Publications & Data and Media & Public Outreach sites.

 

Unequal mandate responsiveness? (UNEQUALMAND)

  • Research grant awarded by the German Science Foundation (DFG)
  • Principal investigators: Dr. Elisa Deiss-Helbig, Dr. Isabelle Guinaudeau, JProf. Dr. Theres Matthieß
  • Funding volume: € 509,119
  • Project period: 2022-2025

Summary: UNEQUALMAND examines political (in-)equality in France and Germany through the lens of group representation, with a focus on mandates and their realization in the form of policies. The project looks at the supply as well as the demand-side of political competition. How do pledges and fulfilled policies appeal to groups with different characteristics? How, and under which conditions, do citizens respond to group targeting in electoral manifestos (prospectively) and pledge fulfillment (retrospectively)? These questions will be addressed using an innovative research design that combines data on electoral promises, surveys, experimental designs, and case-studies. The project is based at the University of Trier, University of Stuttgart, and Sciences Po.

Group targeting in election pledges (GROUPTA)

Summary: GROUPTA investigates the conditions under which citizens support political offers in the form of election promises (prospectively) and how they react to the fulfilment (and breaking) of election promises (retrospectively). The main question is how certain social groups are addressed in election promises and whether the assessment of election promises depends on whether the voters are personally affected or whether they perceive the respective group as "deserving".

 

Manifesto Project

  • Research grant awarded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) and the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR)
  • Principal investigators: Dr. Andrea Volkens (3rd phase), Prof. Dr. Bernhard Weßels (4th phase)
  • Funding volume: € 1,072,028 (3rd phase), € 1,383,395 (4th phase)
  • Project periods: 3rd phase (2016-2019), 4th phase (2019-2022)
  • Website: https://manifesto-project.wzb.eu/

Summary: The Manifesto Project analyses parties’ election manifestos in order to study parties’ policy preferences. The project addresses the collection and the comparative content analysis of parties’ manifestos. The provided Manifesto Project Dataset for the analysis of the policy preferences covers over 1000 parties from 1945 until today in over 50 countries on five continents. The projects main dataset provides access to manifesto texts and content-analytical data and gives accessible ways to easily explore and visualise the data and text corpus. The project aims to substantively analyse the role of parties at different stages of the political process and it specifically examines the quality of programmatic representation. It studies the programmatic supply of parties, the relation between parties and voters, the role of parties in parliament, and the translation of party programmes into policy output.

Coalition Pledge Fulfilment in Germany

  • Financed by the Bertelsmann Stiftung
  • Cooperation partner: Dr. Robert Vehrkamp
  • Project Periods: 1st phase (2017-2018), 2nd phase (2018-2021)
  • Website: https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de

Summary: This project monitors the performance of the German government with respect to the fulfilement of its coalition pledges since 2013. The study is conducted in cooperation with the Bertelsmann Stiftung. More information can be found here: Pledge Tracker & Media