Comparative politics examines how political systems, institutions, and societies differ from one another and change over time. Research in Gothenburg focuses on areas such as democracy and democratization, corruption, governance, local development, state capacity, and political representation.
Ongoing projects
In this project the researchers will investigate what happens to people’s political participation, attitudes and voting behaviour when their occupations decline or disappear.
Principal investigator: Johannes Lindvall, professor.
Financier: European Research Council (ERC), ERC Advanced Grant, 2026.
In the project, the researchers will conduct in-depth interviews, public opinion surveys, and experiments in several war-torn countries. The goal is to understand what “justice” means to different people, which actors they trust to implement it, and how these perceptions shape the prospects for sustainable peace.
Principal investigator: Kristen Kao, Associate Professor.
Financier: The Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Wallenberg Academy Fellow, 2025.
This project investigated the underlying causes and consequences of how public services, such as policing, education, and healthcare, were organized in different countries during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Principal investigator: Johannes Lindvall, Professor.
The Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem) is an international research institute that measures democracy in a more nuanced way. It hosts the world’s largest database on democracy and democratic development, comprising over 600 indicators spanning from 1789 to the present and covering all countries worldwide.
The Quality of Government Institute (QoG) is one of the world’s leading research centers in the fields of corruption and governance quality. Its research focuses on corruption and the importance of reliable, impartial, non-corrupt, non-discriminatory, and competent public institutions. The institute examines the effects of governance on a wide range of policy areas, including health, the environment, social welfare, and poverty.
The Governance and Local Development Institute (GLD) brings together researchers from around the world in a joint effort to explain the relationship between governance and local development. Why do some communities provide safe environments, quality education, adequate healthcare, and other conditions that promote human development, while others do not? Research is carried out in countries such as Malawi and Tunisia.
DEMSCORE is a national research infrastructure at the University of Gothenburg that collects, coordinates, and provides access to extensive social science datasets on democracy, the environment, migration, social policy, conflict, and representation. The infrastructure is developed in close collaboration with four universities: the University of Gothenburg, Stockholm University, Uppsala University, and Umeå University.
By bringing together several leading data sources, DEMSCORE offers a unified platform that gives researchers free and consolidated access to high-quality data. This resource enables advanced comparative analyses, deepens the understanding of societal processes, and strengthens empirical social science research in Sweden.
