Mannheim Centre for European Social Research

ABSTRACT The 2024 state elections in eastern Germany became a focal point of debate, not only because of the AfD's strong performances. These elections witnessed the debut of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in German state politics. Research suggests that the left-conservative and populist stance of this new party could affect the AfD's voter base, potentially attracting significant support, particularly in eastern Germany. This study investigates the impact of the BSW on the AfD in the 2024 state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. It aims to determine whether and how the Sahra Wagenknecht-led alliance affects the AfD's electorate. By leveraging GLES survey data, which includes oversampling for the eastern German state elections, the study examines the direct competition between AfD and BSW. We assess whether the factors that previously motivated AfD voters are now also driving support for BSW – or whether BSW is attracting these voters for different reasons. Furthermore, the study uses the popular German voting advice application Wahl-O-Mat to analyse the programmatic alignment between BSW, AfD, and other parties. This analysis aims to provide a thorough understanding of the dynamics introduced by new political players and their influence on AfD's prospects in the eastern German state elections.

Abstract This study investigates the effectiveness of protection orders in reducing intimate partner violence (IPV) recidivism. Protection orders are legal measures imposing restrictions on aggressors to prevent them from approaching or contacting their victims. These legal measures have seen rapid international expansion in recent years. However, understanding the extent to which they work remains an ongoing challenge. To contribute to this debate, we employ Cox standard proportional hazards models and Prentice–Williams–Peterson gap-time models for recurrent events using a new dataset, which includes comprehensive registry data from an entire cohort of more than 6000 aggressors sentenced for at least one IPV crime over a five-year period, followed for at least four years. Our findings unveil an initial, average adverse effect of protection orders on recidivism. This effect becomes non-significant after excluding breaches of the orders and after controlling for judges’ tendency to impose these measures on high-risk offenders. Moreover, we observe that the effects of protection orders vary over time: While there is an adverse immediate impact of holding an order, a positive temporal cumulative effect counteracts it after a few months.

Abstract How responsive are individual politicians to their constituents’ issue priorities? While parties compete nationally, candidates must navigate varying local issue salience. We investigate whether candidates adjust their emphasis on migration to district-level priorities in Germany’s mixed-member electoral system. Using survey data on voter issue salience and over a million candidate tweets from the 2017 Bundestag election, we apply supervised classification to assess issue congruence. Our findings reveal that MPs elected by their district are significantly more responsive to their constituents’ migration concerns than candidates elected via party lists. However, overall, candidates do not systematically align their communication with district-level preferences, suggesting that party strategies and electoral incentives shape responsiveness. These results underscore the role of electoral mandates in structuring political representation, highlighting the varying degrees of accountability in mixed-member systems.

BackgroundThe integration of artificial intelligence (AI) holds substantial potential to alter diagnostics and treatment in health care settings. However, public attitudes toward AI, including trust and risk perception, are key to its ethical and effective adoption. Despite growing interest, empirical research on the factors shaping public support for AI in health care (particularly in large-scale, representative contexts) remains limited.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate public attitudes toward AI in patient health care, focusing on how AI attributes (autonomy, costs, reliability, and transparency) shape perceptions of support, risk, and personalized care. In addition, it examines the moderating role of sociodemographic characteristics (gender, age, educational level, migration background, and subjective health status) in these evaluations. Our study offers novel insights into the relative importance of AI system characteristics for public attitudes and acceptance.MethodsWe conducted a factorial vignette experiment with a probability-based survey of 3030 participants from Germany’s general population. Respondents were presented with hypothetical scenarios involving AI applications in diagnosis and treatment in a hospital setting. Linear regression models assessed the relative influence of AI attributes on the dependent variables (support, risk perception, and personalized care), with additional subgroup analyses to explore heterogeneity by sociodemographic characteristics.ResultsMean values between 4.2 and 4.4 on a 1-7 scale indicate a generally neutral to slightly negative stance toward AI integration in terms of general support, risk perception, and personalized care expectations, with responses spanning the full scale from strong support to strong opposition. Among the 4 dimensions, reliability emerges as the most influential factor (percentage of explained variance [EV] of up to 10.5%). Respondents expect AI to not only prevent errors but also exceed current reliability standards while strongly disapproving of nontraceable systems (transparency is another important factor, percentage of EV of up to 4%). Costs and autonomy play a comparatively minor role (percentage of EVs of up to 1.5% and 1.3%), with preferences favoring collaborative AI systems over autonomous ones, and higher costs generally leading to rejection. Heterogeneity analysis reveals limited sociodemographic differences, with education and migration background influencing attitudes toward transparency and autonomy, and gender differences primarily affecting cost-related perceptions. Overall, attitudes do not substantially differ between AI applications in diagnosis versus treatment.ConclusionsOur study fills a critical research gap by identifying the key factors that shape public trust and acceptance of AI in health care, particularly reliability, transparency, and patient-centered approaches. Our findings provide evidence-based recommendations for policy makers, health care providers, and AI developers to enhance trust and accountability, key concerns often overlooked in system development and real-world applications. The study highlights the need for targeted policy and educational initiatives to support the responsible integration of AI in patient care.

ABSTRACT Survey‐based research on national identity has long grappled with a ‘tangle’ of conflicting concepts, inconsistent use of measures and inconclusive empirical findings. This article addresses the measurement side of this tangle, evaluating whether social identity theory (SIT) can serve as a conceptual framework to clarify and organize existing indicators. Drawing on methods from content validity analysis, we examine survey instruments from the National Identity module of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The analysis shows that all items can be related to SIT's central components, including identification and content dimensions. However, many items cannot be unequivocally assigned to a single concept within SIT, and the degree of ambiguity varies across items. These findings highlight both the promises and the limitations of SIT as a structuring tool for addressing empirical challenges in national identity research and point to the need for further theoretical and methodological refinement in this field.

Preferences for homogamous partnerships, not only in terms of having a partner with the same ethnicity, but one with the same religion, are an important factor in explaining low levels of interethnic partnerships in Western countries. However, previous research has rarely explicitly focused on the role of preferences for partnership formation patterns. Using data from a factorial survey experiment, which was implemented in the 9th wave of the “Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries” among young adults in Germany (CILS4EU-DE), this study explores patterns of religious homophily in partnership preferences among young adults in Germany. It thereby specifically focuses on individuals belonging to two major religious groups: Christians and Muslims. It investigates the effects of religious denomination, religiosity, type of intimate partnership, and gender differences for religious homophily in partnership preferences. Both male and female respondents were found to prefer partners of the same religious denomination, with this effect being stronger among Muslims than Christians. Muslim respondents showed no or little disapproval of more strongly religious partners, whereas Christian respondents showed strong disapproval of more religious partners. Among Christian and male Muslim but not among female Muslim respondents, preferences for religious homophily were lower for casual partnerships than for marriage. Overall, the findings suggest that religious homophily and religion play an important part in shaping partnership choices among young Christian and Muslim adults in Germany.

Trotz eines gut ausgebauten Gesundheitssystems bestehen in Deutschland teils erhebliche soziale Unterschiede in der Gesundheit. Besonders sozial benachteiligte Menschen sind von höherer Krankheitslast und Mortalität betroffen. Ein großer Teil dieser Ungleichheiten lässt sich durch Unterschiede in gesundheitsrelevanten Verhaltensweisen wie Ernährung erklären.Dieser Artikel beleuchtet theoretische Ansätze und aktuelle empirische Befunde aus der Perspektive von Behavioural and Cultural Insights – einer interdisziplinären Perspektive, die den Einfluss soziokultureller Faktoren auf Gesundheitsverhalten berücksichtigt –, um soziale Unterschiede in der Ernährung besser zu verstehen und gezielt zu verändern. Dabei spielen sowohl strukturelle als auch individuelle Faktoren eine wichtige Rolle: Die Ernährungsumgebung in sozial benachteiligten Regionen ist oft durch eine höhere Dichte von Fast-Food-Angeboten und mehr Werbung für ungesunde Nahrungsmittel geprägt. Gleichzeitig zeigen sich Unterschiede in verhaltensbezogenen Determinanten und deren Einfluss auf das Ernährungsverhalten.Zur Verringerung sozialer Unterschiede in der Ernährungsqualität und damit verbundener gesundheitlicher Ungleichheiten sind Strategien sowohl auf struktureller als auch auf individueller Ebenen notwendig. Regulative Maßnahmen – etwa Werbebeschränkungen für ungesunde Lebensmittel, eine verbesserte Verfügbarkeit gesunder Angebote oder fiskalische Anreize – können die Ernährungsumgebung positiv verändern. Zeitgleich sind Interventionen nötig, die individuelle Fähigkeiten und soziale Ernährungssysteme stärken, beispielsweise durch frühzeitige Ernährungsbildung, gesündere Rahmenbedingungen in der Gemeinschaftsverpflegung oder Programme zur Förderung von Selbstwirksamkeit.

ABSTRACT With Euroskeptic parties being on the rise across European Union (EU) member states, dominant parties are pressured to reconsider their positions regarding a further European integration. Yet, dominant parties’ positional reactions to Euroskeptic challenger parties are not limited to the national level but are also required at the regional level. Transferring insights regarding party competition at the national and European levels to the regional level in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (2008–2017), we show that regional dominant parties shift towards more positive EU positions in response to electorally successful Euroskeptic challenger parties, particularly when these challenger parties emphasised EU issues to a larger extent. These findings have important implications for our understanding of party competition in European multi-level systems in the electoral arena, for the intricacies of regional party competition in Europe, and for dominant parties’ strategies when faced with Euroskeptic challengers.