Growth in Politics (GRIP)

GRIP explored how MdBs form arguments regarding the possibility and limits of economic growth and communicate them in the everyday business of politics. The research centred on the analysis of arguments regarding growth in the political communications found in parliamentary documents (records of speeches, parliamentary questions, etc.). In order to put the lines of argumentation in context, we conducted 17 detailed guided interviews with MdBs. In so doing, we paid particular attention to the ‘MdB office’ as a virtually familial unit within which parliamentarians develop their interests. It is particularly within the confines of the parliamentarian’s office, which is connected to the public sphere by certain channels, that we expected to – and partially did – find sources of reflexivity. And since the parliamentarian’s staff play a key role in forming this space, a representative written survey of those employees supplemented the qualitative investigations.

The project was accompanied by research seminars at the University of Potsdam. Another offshoot of GRIP was a study of the discourse on the ‘growth paradigm’ in the German media, which was published by the Oekom Verlag in summer 2016. First results of the project itself were published as IASS Study in October 2016; several journal articles were to follow in 2017 and 2018.