Project Details
Projekt
RISS II project 3: Losers of the Reconfigured Knowledge Society? Analyzing the Political Preferences, Politicized Identities, and Behavior of the Low-Educated
Applicant
Professor Dr. Julian Garritzmann
Subject Area
Empirical Social Research
Political Science
Political Science
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 439346934
The project is part of the research group “Reconfiguration and Internalization of Social Structure” (RISS). The project focuses on the group of the low-educated as the most obvious “loser” group of today’s knowledge societies that are characterized by massive educational expansion, large-scale social-structural reconfiguration, and a shift towards post-industrial knowledge economies. While existing work does point at the crucial role of education and educational groups in contemporary societies and politics, most work focuses on the high-educated, studying their preferences and behavior. This project, in contrast, zooms into the group of the low-educated, arguing that substantial and systematic variation exists within this group. We analyze the political preferences, politicized identities, and political behavior people in the low-educated group, aiming to uncover the major social-structural subgroups and their political implications. The objective is to contribute to a better, theoretically-guided and empirical-sound understanding of the political dynamics within this group, which is crucial to better understand major political phenomena of our time, including the rise of (radical right) populism or electoral realignment. Empirically, we employ several research designs, combining descriptive social-structural analysis with state-of-the-art survey research. More specifically, we study the political preferences, politicized identities, and political behavior of low-educated people in-depth with new survey data and survey experiments (to be collected with the RISS group) as well as across a large range of countries around the globe, and over time.
DFG Programme
Research Units
