Research Center SFB 884

Political Economy of Reforms

Our society faces great economic and social challenges. There is widespread consensus that reforms are necessary to cope with these challenges. Yet, we experience that reform initiatives are frequently delayed, compromised, or fail altogether.

The goal of this interdisciplinary SFB 884 is to provide scientific insights into success and failure of reforms, determined by competing interests (Group A), contexts (Group B) and the political process of reform-making (Group C). As the core infrastructure, a data center will collect new data on these three dimensions.

The SFB 884 brings together about 150 researchers from economics, political science, sociology, statistics and computer science. Their joint interest is to advance the theoretical and empirical foundations of quantitative research on societal decision-making in general, and the understanding of reform-making in particular.