Timeline

It takes time from the first idea to the finished thesis. Therefore, it is important that you start early with the conception of your thesis - at the latest one semester before your planned graduation.

Choosing a Topic

Theses in the context of European and Global Governance should be thematically oriented to the teaching and research areas of the chair. It is possible to propose your own topic from across the entire European and Global Governance spectrum.

Supervisor

To be considered for supervision of your thesis, you should have taken at least one course with the person who will be supervising you. Please contact the member of the chair you would like to have as supervisors for your topic by e-mail as early as possible. You only need one supervisor for your thesis.

Specification of the Topic

As soon as you have thought about the topic and structure of your work in more detail, you can make this more precise together with your supervisor during office hours. Please make an appointment by e-mail.

Registration of the Thesis

If your supervisor agrees with the topic, you can register your thesis with your responsible academic advisor.

Exposé

In the next step, please draft an exposé of your planned thesis for discussion during office hours. Please send the exposé at least two weeks in advance by e-mail to your supervisor. Please read the instructions for how to write an exposé.

Chair Colloquium

Work supervised by the chair must be presented in the colloquium. This gives you the opportunity to receive feedback from an extended group of people. Please make an appointment with your supervisor.

Submission and Evaluation

Please submit your work as a PDF file by e-mail via the HfP-Grade and Examination Administration. Please remember the Declaration of Authorship, including consent to the plagiarism check. Evaluations will be completed within two - three months of submission.

Requirements

If you have any further questions, please contact

governance(at)hfp.tum.de

The exposé should outline the following points on 3-5 pages (Bachelor) or 5-8 pages (Master):

Research Problem

Which topic do you deal with in your thesis? In the first section of the exposé, you first explain the relevance of the overarching topic of your thesis and develop a specific research problem that you will tackle in your thesis. The research problem can arise either from scientific debates and controversies, or from empirical "puzzles" for which no satisfactory theoretical explanations have yet been found in the literature.

Reserach Question

An appropriate research question should neither be trivial, i.e. it should not be possible to answer it from an everyday understanding without a scientific investigation, nor should it have already been conclusively answered. In other words: In your thesis, you should work independently on a particular research problem. The clearer and more precise you formulate the research question, the easier it will be for you to work on the topic. In this case, it is useful to concentrate on a single research question instead of raising several questions at the same time, which can at best be touched upon and ultimately not be answered.

Also pay attention to what you can really work on in the time-limited framework of a thesis. It is therefore advisable to postpone all too ambitious and excessive research projects in favour of "workable" and limited questions. Avoid anything that does not directly serve to answer your question.

State of Research

Which studies relate to your topic? Which studies have already analysed the same or a similar research question? On the basis of which cases and for which periods of time? This section presents relevant research papers and explanatory approaches as objectively and balanced as possible. An important task, however, is also to point out the limits and weaknesses of previous work. Here you can, for example, refer to the theoretical argumentation, the research design or the empirical data. The justification for your own work results from the deficits of the state of research.

Working Hypotheses

What correlations of effects do you expect for your object of research? Even if you often cannot formulate differentiated theoretical expectations at the time of the exposé, it is helpful to form preliminary working hypotheses on the basis of the state of research. What correlation is expected for the relationship between independent and dependent variables? Are there intervening variables? Which combinations of conditions are necessary and/or sufficient for the occurrence of the outcome to be investigated?

Research Design

How will you methodically address your research question? Do you intend to carry out a statistical analysis, a comparative study of several cases, or an individual case study? Will you use analysis programs such as SPSS, STATA, fsQCA, MAXQDA or other software for your work?

Regardless of whether you want to investigate one, several or many cases, you will need to justify your case selection in the Research Design section. What is the selected individual case exemplary for? To what extent are your cases suitable for systematic comparison or statistical analysis?

Finally, you will discuss the data on which the empirical part of your work is based. Which primary and secondary sources would you like to use? Which additional data would you like to collect yourself in the form of interviews or questionnaires?

Outline

In this section, you outline a draft of your structure in descriptive or table form. This facilitates further work and gives you a basic framework for the further procedure, which you can refine and modify step by step. When planning your work, it may be useful to specify the expected scope of the individual sections in page numbers.

List of References

In the bibliography, you list the primary and secondary literature that you have already reviewed or which you wish to use for further work. As a rule, quality before quantity also applies here - an intensive examination of some relevant and influential studies on your question will be more fruitful for your thesis than an attempt to consider a large number of sources of different relevance.

The official registration of your thesis (= the start of the working period) is done through the Grades and Examinations Administration Office of the HfP. Please fill out this form and submit it to your supervisor.

With the declaration of authorship, you confirm that you have written your academic work independently. The declaration of authorship is at the end of your thesis. You are welcome to use the TUM template.

• A Comparative Analysis of Mass Media Coverage of Minority Groups Affected by Climate Change
• A Constructivist View on ICAO: Analyzing the Efforts of the International Civil Aviation Organization to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of the Aviation Industry
• A Machine Learning Approach to Measuring Democracy
• Air Pollution Policy in Beijing and Delhi: Analyzing Differences on a Municipal Level
• Climate Justice: MEP's Representative Claims in Climate Change Debates after the 2015 Paris Agreement
• Conceptualizing Identity Management Policy in the European Union through the Lens of Neofunctionalism: A Case Study of the European Digital Identity Framework
• Der Autonomieverlust afrikanischer Staaten durch die «Delegation» quasi-staatlicher Kompetenzen an die Wagner-Gruppe
• Die Auswirkung sozio-ökonomischer Faktoren auf die Beliebtheit von populistischen Parteien in Deutschland
• Die Entwicklung des Spitzenkandidaten Systems im Blick des Historischen Institutionalismus
• Die Reform des Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakts: Auswirkungen auf die Stabilität der europäischen Wirtschaft
• Die Rolle der IAEA für das Iran-Atomabkommen
• Digital Democracy in Germany: Internet Usage and the Influence Towards Political Participation
• Does Control Over Staff in International Organizations Translate into Agency Slack? An Empirical Analysis of Three United Nations System Organizations: the WIPO, the UPU, and the FAO
• EU Vakzindiplomatie: Die gemeinsame Impfstoffbeschaffung der EU in Zeiten der Coronapandemie betrachtet aus dem Blickwinkel des liberalen Intergouvernementalismus
• European Integration in the Field of Cybersecurity
• Eurosceptic Populism in the CEE Region - The Effects of EU Regional Funds on Electoral Results in Croatia
• Germany and the EU Sanctions Against Russia: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach
• Government and Identity in the Digital Age: A Comparative Analysis of the Influence of Regime Type on eGovernment and Function Creep in National eID Systems
• Green Central Banking at the ECB
• Green Subsidies: Party Partisanship and Effect of Green Parties Coalition in Governments
• Green Waves and Populist Issue Competition - Comparing the Salience of Environmental Protection Policies in Party Manifestos across Western Europe
• Harnessing Local Governance: Non-State Actors' Role in Mitigating Deficiencies in EU Asylum Policies for Refugee Integration into the German IT Labor Market
• Has EU Economic Policy During the COVID-19 Pandemic Influenced Euroscepticism in the EU?: A Comparable Case Study of the NextGenerationEU's Influence on Eurosceptic Developments in Italy and Spain
• How Engagement with a Specific Issue Affects Wider Political Participation: A Look at Transgender Rights As an Emerging Topic
• Hybrid Global Governance Regime and Ideological Conflict in the Modern ICT Domain
• International Organizations on the Edge of the "Zombie Zone": A Case Study of WHO's Funding 2010 - 2021
• IOM as a Policy Entrepreneur? Studying the Case of UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement
• Is Cash Still King? Explaining the Difference in Uptake of Cashless Payments between Germany and Sweden
• It's Naver too Late! Combating Platform Power - Why the Democratic Republic of Korea Outperforms the European Union in Developing Competitors to US Platforms: Ideas, Interests or Institutions?
• Linkages Between Ideologically Motivated Violence and Populist Party Stratagems
• Lobbying Against Their Own Interest - A Liberal Approach of US Trade Politics with China
• Metaverse and Democracy: How Do Democratic Values Affect the Metaverse? A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration of the Metaverse through Habermas' Public Sphere Theory
• Political Mobilization by Platform Companies
• Politicization and Media in the Digital Age - The Case of Newspapers and Plastic Pollution in the UK
• Populism as a Political Strategy: An Analysis of Boris Johnson's 2019 General Election Campaign
• Propaganda's impact on diplomacy in a digital and multi-stakeholder environment
• Public Participation in Practice - A Look at the Effects of a Citizens' Council
• Race for technological Supremacy: An Analysis of the Factors that enabled China to develop itself from a Latecomer in Information and Communications Technology Standardization into a First-Mover in the Case of 5G Standardization
• Regulating Cryptocurrencies in the European Union, A Review From Neofunctionalism
• Risk- and Opportunity-based Regulation of FinTech in Europe: Status Quo, Causes and Diffusion Mechanisms among European Member States
• The Chinese Communist Party's Motivation for Green Finance: Why has China Assumed a Leading Role in Green Finance?
• The EU Data Governance Act: An Analysis of the European Union's Policy Framework for Data Exchange between European Member States
• The Evolution of Sentiment and Online Discourse Surrounding Renewable Energy Following the Ukrainian War
• The Impact of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Right-Wing Populist Parties in Europe
• The Influence of National Economic Systems on EU Trade Policy. A Macro-Qualitative Approach to Understanding the Politicization of Free Trade Across Europe
• The Motivations Behind the EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive - A Comparative Analysis of the Legislative Strategies across Major Policy Stakeholders
• The Politics of High-Speed Rail: Understanding the Role of Intellectual Property Rights and Technology Standards in China`s Overseas Rail Investments
• US´ Intervention in Venezuela
• Web3.0 and Open Democracy in the Digital Age
• When Migrant Workers Meet the Social Credit System: Envisioning an Alternative Future for Neglected Labour Rights in China
• When the European Union Decides to Regulate Large Online Platforms: An Analysis of the Causes Leading to the Digital Markets Act from a Historical Institutionalist and Neo-Functionalist Perspective
• Wie beeinflussen die Hilfsgelder der Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank die Stimmkoinzidenz der Nehmerländer mit China in der UN-Generalversammlung?
• Zwischen Hoffnung und Hindernissen: Nordmazedoniens EU-Beitrittsprozess im Lichte des liberalen Intergouvernementalismus