European and International Politics - Prof. Dr Jürgen Neyer
Professorship for European and International Politics
Welcome!
We work on various issues of European and international politics. Current research projects examine the conditions of European integration and inter-state co-operation as well as the possibility of cross-border dialogue. This includes the dynamics of European narratives and their impact on European sovereignty, the integration of civil society actors in international organisations and the analysis of the motives of female fighters in Kurdistan. Together with the Bauhaus University Weimar, the chair is also developing and applying AI-based instruments for teaching.
Heide Fest
Chair holder
Prof Dr Jürgen Neyer holds the Chair of European and International Politics at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder). Previously, he held positions in research and teaching at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, the University of Bremen, the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, the European University Institute in Florence and the University of Berkeley in California. He was also a visiting professor at the Universities of Haifa, Israel, and Ottawa, Canada, and he has been awarded a Humboldt Fellowship from the DFG and an Opus Magnum Fellowship from the Volkswagen Foundation.
Jürgen Neyer was the Founding Director of the European New School of Digital Studies, Vice President of the European University Viadrina and Dean of the Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences at the European University Viadrina. He now heads the "Social Science AI Lab for Research-Based Learning" (together with Bernd Fröhlich, Katrin Girgensohn and Benno Stein). His current research focus is on the use of AI/ML in higher education and analysing parliamentary discourse in Europe.
Special Issue on Transnational Civil Society, International Organisations and Practices of Global Order published with Global Society
Christiane Cromm and Christian Volk have co-edited a Special Issue on Democracy and Practices of Global Order. It contains the introduction by the authors "A Partnership of Convenience? Transnational Civil Society, International Organisations, and Practices of Global Order" and an article by Christiane Cromm on "Speaking the Right Language: Transnational Rule and Symbolic Power in Dialogue Forums".
Podcast episode: "Tracing the political visions: Do we need a new European idea?"
In the podcast "Lass uns über Politik reden" (Let's talk politics), Prof Dr Jürgen Neyer discusssed the great visions and challenges of Europe with Minister of State Prof Dr R. Alexander Lorz.
Cupać, Jelena/ Sienknecht, Mitja 2024: "Regulate against the machine: how the EU mitigates AI harm to democracy", Democratisation, p. 1-24.
Democracies are under attack from various sides. In recent years AI-powered techniques such as profiling, targeting, election manipulation, and massive disinformation campaigns via social bots and troll farms challenge the very foundations of democratic systems. Against this background, demands for regulating AI have gotten louder. In this paper, we focus on the European Union (EU) as the actor that has gone the furthest in terms of regulating AI. We therefore ask: What kind of instruments does the EU envision in their binding and non-binding documents to prevent AI harm to democracy? And what critique can be formulated regarding these instruments? To address these questions, the article makes two contributions. First, by building on a systematic understanding of deliberative democracy, we introduce the distinction between two types of harm that can arise from the widespread use of AI: rights-based harm and systemic harm. Second, by analysing a number of EU documents, including the GDPR, the AI Act, the TTAP, and the DSA, we argue that the EU envisions four primary instruments for safeguarding democracy from the harmful use of AI: prohibition, transparency, risk management, and digital education. While these instruments provide a relatively high level of protection for rights-based AI harm, there is still ample space for these technologies to produce systemic harm to democracy.
