Armin Schäfer Senior Fellow 2025–2026
- Discipline
- Political science
- Fellowship duration
- April 01, 2026–June 30, 2026
- Academic or artistic job title
- Professor of Comparative Political Science
- Home institution
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, DE
- Contact
- Links
- Personal website
- Institutional website
- Associated with
Armin Schäfer is Professor of Comparative Politics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany). His research lies at the intersection of comparative political economy, democratic theory, and empirical social science—examining whether democracy can live up to its promise of political equality and what happens when it does not.
He currently pursues this question through two projects. Together with Claudia Landwehr, he is completing a book for Oxford University Press that develops a citizen-centered, evidence-based theory of democracy. A second project investigates how the growing educational divide in Western democracies shapes political representation and citizens’ sense of voice.
Armin studied political science and economics in Marburg (DE) and Canterbury (UK) and received his doctorate from the University of Bremen (DE) in 2004. After thirteen years at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies and professorships at Osnabrück and Münster (DE), he has been at Mainz since 2022. From 2018 to 2021, he served as president of the German Political Science Association (DVPW).
Project