16.01.2023 Welcome at the Center for Conflict Studies, Nils Strecker!

Nils is new to the field of political science, as he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Geography at the universities in Bonn and Marburg. During his studies, he predominantly researched the processes behind regional innovation networks.

His current and future research focuses on political inequality and the dynamics of local politics. Making use of his background in economic geography, Nils adopts perspectives from Geography, Economics and Political Science in his approach. Methodologically, he implements both qualitative and quantitative methods, although his main emphasis is on spatial statistics.

Nils’s interest in local politics and public spending was sparked by his frustration about the last decades of resource distribution in his hometown of Bonn. Somehow, there were always seemingly unlimited funds to build classical music venues, but never enough money to maintain sports facilities or public swimming pools.

With his research, he aims to contribute to answer questions like: Who do local governments spend their money on? Do certain socioeconomic groups benefit disproportionately? Do politicians reward their own voters and/or are they rewarded for their distributive decisions at the next election?

Specifically, in his PhD-project “Political output inequality in local politics – An analysis of budget allocation in German municipalities”, Nils seeks to understand how the budget of German cities gets allocated across their municipal area. He uses budget reports to locate public spending and matches it with census and electoral data.

Additionally, as part of Prof. Dr. Pellicer’s team, Nils will work with other members of the Social Science Faculty on different research projects.