David M. Grundmanns

David M. Grundmanns

University of Mannheim

Ph.D. Candidate

Biography

I am a Research Associate at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research and Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences. I research in the field of judicial politics, specifically on interdependent strategies of judicial and political actors. Making use of text as data for statistical modeling is at the core of my methodological interests.

As a part of the C4 project of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 884 "Political Economy of Reforms", I scale the German Federal Constitutional Court’s decisions based on textual features, utilizing Bayesian ideal point estimation. In consequence, I derive the Court’s positions towards political reform.

Furthermore, I teach “Data Analysis” as an employee at the Chair of Political Science, Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim.

Interests
  • Judicial Politics
  • Text as Data
  • Bayesian Inference
  • Separation of Powers
  • Political Methodology
Education

  • Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, since 2019

    Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Mannheim

  • M.A. Political Science, 2019

    University of Mannheim

  • B.A. Political Science, 2017

    University of Mannheim

Talks

The impact of external actors on judicial decision-making
Jun 24, 2022 9:00 AM — 10:30 AM Prague Congress Centre, Czech Republic
Mobilizing the Public - The Importance of Mediators for Judicial Decision-Making
Sep 2, 2021 10:15 AM — 12:00 PM https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDetails/10870
Give them the word, they sharpen the sword. How high courts use language to exert political and societal power
Jun 24, 2021 3:30 PM — 5:45 PM https://coms.events/epsa2021/data/sessions/en/session_51.html

Research

The impact of external actors on judicial decision-making. Evidence from the German Federal Constitutional Court.
Highest courts make final decisions but lack the means to enforce them. Consequently, their external environment can change utility calculations behind judicial decision-making, as well as the subsequent policy implementation by governments. This raises the question: How do external actors impact judicial …
PDF
A Common Policy Space. Estimating positions of highest courts and political actors using amici briefs.
What are the positions of highest courts towards political reform? Answering this question requires to place courts in a common space with political actors. Americanists rely on individual votes to estimate justices’ positions. Comparativists face challenges: First, votes are not published everywhere. Second, positions …
Mobilizing the Public. The Importance of Mediators for Judicial Decision-Making.
Highest courts need to rely on external actors to enforce compliance with decision-making. Therefore, courts seek to mobilize the public to hold governments accountable. In doing so, courts become constrained in their action by the environment. This raises the question: How do external actors moderate judicial …
PDF
Mobilizing the Public. The Importance of Mediators for Judicial Decision-Making.
Do Constitutional Courts Write Their Opinions Differently Under Public Scrutiny?
How does public scrutiny affect the opinion-formation of highest courts? Established scholarship shows that public opinion impacts the outcome of judicial decision-making. However, while the focus of judicial politics research rests with outcomes of decisions, the impact of public scrutiny on the whole …
PDF

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Research Associate
University of Mannheim
Oct 2021 – Present Mannheim, Germany
‘Collaborative Research Center 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”. Project C4. Quantitative Text Analysis of German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) decisions to reveal latent policy preferences of the court by Bayesian estimation.’
 
 
 
 
 
Course Instructor
University of Mannheim
Feb 2021 – Jan 2022 Mannheim, Germany
Instructor for graduate course “Multivariate Analyses” and undergraduate course “Data Analysis” at the Chair of Political Science.
 
 
 
 
 
Research Associate
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
Nov 2020 – Sep 2021 Mannheim, Germany
“Get the Word Out. The Formation and Political Impact of Judicial Opinion-Writing” - Text analysis on judicial decision text and traditional + social media content to measure impact of the judiciary
 
 
 
 
 
Research Associate
University of Mannheim
Sep 2019 – Dec 2019 Mannheim, Germany
Collaborative Research Center 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”. Project C4. Quantitative Text Analysis of German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) decisions to reveal latent policy preferences of the court by Bayesian estimation.
 
 
 
 
 
Research Assistant
University of Mannheim
Oct 2018 – Aug 2019 Mannheim, Germany
Collaborative Research Center 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”. Project C4.
 
 
 
 
 
Coder
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research
Jun 2014 – Nov 2014 Mannheim, Germany
Media content analysis for the “German Longitudinal Election Study” (GLES), pre-electoral TV News codification

Teaching

Course Instructor

Chair of Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences, University of Mannheim

  • Multivariate Analyses

    Graduate - M.A. Political Science, M.A. Data Science, Ph.D. Political Science

    Evaluations: 2021

  • Data Analysis

    Undergraduate - B.A. Political Science

    Evaluations: 2021

Awards

Best insights
DataFest Germany 2019 May 2019
Team award at DataFest 2019, Mannheim, Germany.
See certificate
Best use of outside data
DataFest Germany 2018 Mar 2018
Team award at DataFest 2018, Munich, Germany.
See certificate

Skills

Languages

  • English fluent, C1
  • German native
  • Latin

Software

  • R
  • Python
  • Stan
  • Shiny
  • HTML

Projects

Get the Word Out. The Formation and Political Impact of Judicial Opinion-Writing
Benjamin G. Engst, Thomas Gschwend, David M. Grundmanns
Measuring a common space and the dynamics of reform positions: Non-standard tools, non-standard actors

Contact