CESSDA Podcast with Georg Lutz

The CESSDA podcast series explores the important world of data archiving and sharing and our researchers across disciplines and countries are benefitting from the CESSDA Data Catalogue.

This CESSDA podcast with Georg Lutz, professor of political science and Director of FORS Centre in Switzerland gives key insights into voting trends and changes in recent years and their impacts on political debate.

Linking the Swiss VOTO election surveys and data archives at the Centre with the CESSDA Data Catalogue, Prof. Lutz highlights how datasets reveal election behaviour in terms of voter drivers or lack of interest, as well as the implications for local environmental issues to climate change. He gives examples of voting behaviour variation, the demise of traditional party systems and the rise of populist politics, explaining how this is creating volatility but also barriers to tackling global challenges like climate change, which are heavily dependent on acceptance.

Finally, he highlights the value of sharing national data archives through the CESSDA Data Catalogue, which is fundamentally important not only for setting standards but showing just how valuable the data is. Through the implementation of the FAIR principles, FORS and other service providers are using the Data Catalogue to ensure accessibility and enable re-use of the data, especially unexplored data. This is extremely advantageous for the social sciences at large, as the most strongly connected discipline in Europe.