About the Department

Claus Offe, born 1940, was (until his retirement in 2005) Professor of Political Science at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he has held a chair of Political Sociology and Social Policy. He earned his PhD (Dr. rer. pol.) at the University of Frankfurt (1968) and his Habilitation at the University of Constance. Since 2006 he teaches on a part time basis at the Hertie School of Governance, a private professional school of public policy, where he holds a chair of Political Sociology. Previous positions include professorships at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bremen, where he has served as director of the Center of Social Policy Research. He has held research fellowships and visiting professorships in the US, Canada, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands. He was awarded an honorary degree by the Australian National University in 2007. His fields of research include democratic theory, transition studies, EU integration, and welfare state and labor market studies. He has published numerous articles and book chapters in these fields, a selection of which is recently reprinted as Herausforderungen der Demokratie. Zur Integrations- und Leistungsfähigkeit politischer Institutionen (2003). Book publications in English include Varieties of Transition (1996), Modernity and the State: East and West (1996), Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies (1998, with J. Elster and U. K. Preuss) and Reflections on America. Tocqueville, Weber, und Adorno in the United States (2006).