Public Administration and Politics

At the intersection of public administration and politics, the Working Group for Public Administration and Politics focuses on the management of public organizations and their impact on politics and society.

The Working Group studies the phenomenon of administration in its entire scope, from the local level, the interaction between officials and citizens and the employment of artificial intelligence to international organizations and their influence on global policy making and implementation.

A methodological focus at the Working Group is research into the use of computer-assisted text analysis and machine learning for the study of political phenomena.

The Working Group conducts several multi-year research projects at the Leibniz University Hannover and in cooperation with international partners and universities:

Innovations in Local Crisis Management (InnoLoK): Building on the preceding HybOrg project on the so-called refugee crisis, the project examines the societal impact of variations in local crisis management, with a particular focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Artificial Intelligence and Administrative Language in Citizen–Government Interaction (BiASE-AI): Funded by the European Research Council (ERC), the project examines how communication between public administrations and citizens changes when artificial intelligence complements or replaces human interaction. It analyzes both real-world and experimental conversations to assess the effects of different forms of communication on clarity, fairness, and trust. The aim is to provide public authorities with evidence-based recommendations for citizen-friendly, clear, and fair communication in the digital age.

Explaining the Performance of International Organizations: International organizations and their administrations are increasingly becoming the focus of criticism and politicization. The project investigates how these dynamics affect organizational performance in policy implementation. Using text mining and natural language processing methods, a dataset of more than 20,000 evaluation reports will be compiled and analyzed. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The Working Group offers courses in the fields of public administration, policy studies, and organizational research. Advanced and specialization courses provide organizational perspectives on international administrations in global political processes, particularly in the areas of peace and security, while also focusing on local administrative action at the interface between the state and society. In addition, the Working Group occasionally offers applied research seminars in which participants develop practical skills in specific research methods and data collection techniques.

The goal of the Working Group’s teaching is to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of public organizations. Particular emphasis is placed on the encounter between theory and practice: students learn core theoretical perspectives on public institutions and discuss them using practical and contemporary examples of policy design and implementation. Through engagement with scientific research methods, students are also equipped to conduct independent research projects.

Current courses offered by the Working Group can be found in the annotated course catalog.