GRK 136:  System Efficiency and System Dynamics in Developing Countries ? The Micro-Foundation of Macro-Processes of Economic, Political and Social Transformation

• Subject Area: Economics ; Social Sciences
• Term: from 1994 to 2004
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270081

The present transformation processes in a big variety of countries in Asia and Africa are challenging the standard approaches of explaining economic and political change. Again, the question whether priority should be given to either the promotion of political or economic factors is raised. At the same time, the future of the national states is disputed and uncertain: cultural, religious and ethnical identities gain of importance.Scientific progress is been made in identifying the inter-relations between partial systems and in the micro-foundation of macro-processes: the political and the administrative frame in which economic transformation happens is explicitly integrated in modelling and analyses. The interdisciplinary PhD program is following the path in focussing on the interdependencies between actors, actor groups and intermediaries on the micro-level. The aim of that approach is the identification of those conditions which sometimes support, sometimes hinder the transfer of dynamical changes from one micro-subsystem to an other to gain additional insights in the transmission of impulses from the micro- to the macro-level.

• DFG Programme: Research Training Groups
• Applicant Institution: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Volker Nienhaus
• Participating Researchers: Professor Dr. Uwe Andersen; Professor Dr. Dieter Bender; Professor Dr. Heiner Dürr (†); Professor Dr. Gerhard Endress; Professor Dr. Wolfgang Klenner; Professor Dr. Willy Kraus; Professor Dr. Stefan Reichmuth; Professor Dr. Werner Voß; Professor Dr. Joachim Wolf; Professor Dr. Jürgen H. Wolff