The Cologne Center for Comparative Politics brings together junior and senior political scientists at the University of Cologne, who work on comparative research related to political institutions and comparative political economy. The Center is currently comprised of 2 faculty members (Prof. Dr. André Kaiser and Prof. Dr. Christine Trampusch), 6 post doctoral fellows, 10 doctoral students, and 9 affiliated researchers. André Kaiser is Professor for Comparative Politics and Christine Trampusch is Professor for International Comparative Political Economy and Economic Sociology. Her professorship is also the Liaison Chair (Brückenprofessur) to the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Society (MPfG).

The Center closely cooperates with the MPIfG and the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE). The IMPRS-SPCE is a unique international three-and-a-half-year doctoral program in the fields of economic sociology and political economy that is offered jointly by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG), the University of Cologne's Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Duisburg-Essen. André Kaiser and Christine Trampusch are faculty members of the IMPRS-SPCE.

The Center’s primary goals are to promote scientific comparative political research that uses innovative research methods, and to provide a stimulating intellectual environment for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. To this end, the Center faculty offer BA and MA/PhD courses covering a range of topics in comparative politics. Additionally, the Center conducts various international research projects, hosts international research workshops as well as guest researchers.

A central mission of the Center is plurality in theories and methods and to promote the use of a diverse set of innovative research designs. Projects hosted at the Center apply various approaches, ranging from comparative qualitative research and case study methods, causal inference methods for observational data, multimethod research designs, quantitative research, and computational and text analysis approaches. The Center’s substantive research activities are organized around two interrelated areas: 

1. Comparative Political Economy

The research area of Comparative Political Economy (CPE) encompasses studies of the social and political foundations of economies in advanced capitalist democracies and analyzes the institutional, political, and economic forces that influence economies and shape the power relations between political and economic actors. It assumes that the analysis of capitalism involves more than the analysis of exchange and allocation processes in markets and the individual preferences of actors. Instead, CPE adopts a structural perspective and conceives of the market and the state as co-constitutive: the state defines and shapes the genesis and development of markets, and markets define and shape state intervention in markets and public policies. Specific current topics of the CPE research group at the Center include the political economy of financialization, digitalization, and climate change.

2. Political Institutions

Political institutions set the rules of the political game. Research at the Center on Political Institutions explores both how institutions are adopted, how they change, and what effects they have on representation and decision-making. This encompassing view of institutions allows us to examine general issues related to group decision-making and majority rule as well as specific institutions in the political process. These include representative institutions, such as electoral systems, parliamentary institutions and their effects on government-opposition conflict, and institutions in multi-level systems, including the European Union, and federal or decentralized political systems. This focus is complemented with studies focusing on institutional change and design at the national and European level.