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ICCR Foundation

The Background: Research for a Sustainable and Democratic Europe

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences was founded in 1986 as an independent and international research institute in Vienna. Its mission is policy analysis in a comparative perspective with the main focus on Europe and its neighbours. Policy analysis in the view of the Centre has a clear normative perspective: Its aim is the advancement of democracy. Against this background the efficiency and effectiveness of politics and policies matter and ought to be integrated into a coherent political programme. This is the challenge the interaction between social sciences, political system and the economy is confronted with.

Ever since its founding, the Institute has continuously expanded its expertise in analysis and evaluation. The main focus is on European integration, with respect to:

• research and science policies,
• social policies,
• environmental policies and sustainable development and
• infrastructure and transport policies, as well as
• European developments in general aiming at creating a legitimised democratic polity.

Roughly, these topics can be summarized as relevant to sustainable and democratic developments. The serious work of the Centre has led to its expansion into an excellent and international research facility.

In its origins, the ICCR understood itself as a bridge between East and West in an emerging bigger European space. In the meantime, a complex Europe with its 27 Member States and its new neighbours creates a fascinating field of research.

The Centre has expanded to around 17 staff members from various cultural backgrounds. It generates more than 2 Mio. € in research turnover from national and international sources. Since Austria became a member of the European Union, the ICCR has submitted over 100 comparative and trans-national proposals to the European Commission, of which 40 have already been successfully completed, most of them with the ICCR as project co-ordinator.

In 2000, against the background of the Europeanization of (social science) research, the ICCR established a sister-institute in Paris. The co-ordination between the institutes made it necessary to create a foundation aiming at increasing the organizational stability and the financial independence of the ICCR. On 3 March, 2005, at the City Hall of Vienna, the ‘ICCR-Foundation’ was founded, also to guarantee the economic independence of the centre.

The ICCR-Foundation and the mission of social sciences and humanities

On the occasion of the ceremonial founding act of the Foundation, Prof. Nico Stehr, an internationally renowned social scientist and chairman of the scientific board of the Foundation, underlined the mission of the social sciences. Their vocation is 'passion and optimism' in a correct understanding of the applied orientation: social sciences can generate a deeper understanding of societal developments, provided they do not specialize in a superficial policy consulting.

This is in line with the research programme of the Foundation: dissemination of the results of scientific research to the societal and political actors as well as to industrial and economic 'users' is one of the main goals of the Centre and thus supported by the Foundation. Maintaining the independence of research is linked to full transparency about the research principles, basic assumptions and methods. Indeed, this transparency includes the information about what source was used to enable the funding of the research.

Executive Board

• Ronald J. Pohoryles
• Liana Giorgi
• Volker Kier

Supervisory Board

• Martin Schuppich (Chairman of the Supervisory Board)
• Raoul Kneucker (Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board)
• Erhard Busek
• Rudolf Scholten
• Heide Schmidt
• Peter Engelmann
• Manfred Katzenschlager
• Thomas Madreiter
• H. Christian Ehalt
• Michael Steibl

Scientific Board

• Nico Stehr (Chairman of the Scientific Board)
• Ali Kazancigil (Vice-Chairman of the Scientific Board)
• Philip Schlesinger
• Tal Soffer
• Alan Pearman
• Henrik Kreutz
• Tadeusz Zoltowski
• Barbara Adam
• John Crowley
• Aaron Benavot
• Hans-Liudger Dienel
• Riccardo Cappellin
• Chris Caswill
• Evelyn Goodman-Thau
• Martin Peterson
• Tamar Rapaport
• Andrei Rezaev

Contact

ICCR Foundation
Schottenfeldgasse 69/1, 1070 Vienna, Austria

Phone: +43.1.253 1400-0
Fax: +43.1.253 1400-200
Email: office@iccr-foundation.org

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