Research Themes
While pursuing the highest standards of academic excellence, the Kellogg Institute is equally committed to values. It focuses academic and research activities on five major themes:
Democratization and the Quality of Democracy
What are the prospects for new democracies? Research on this theme studies the founding, institutionalization, and quality of democratic political regimes, primarily in Latin America but also in Europe, Asia, and Africa. It seeks to understand conditions that enhance democratic governability, the rule of law, accountability, the expansion and consolidation of human rights, and the quality of public life.
Growth and Development
What factors explain economic growth, development and welfare in a globalizing economy? This theme considers, using an interdisciplinary approach, the processes and policies that potentially influence national and regional economic growth in the context of an increasingly global economy. Research considerations include the roles of economic, political, social, and cultural institutions, government policies, market structures, distributional issues, international trade and finance, and economic geography in explaining economic growth, development, and welfare.
Public Policies for Social Justice
How can government policy foster social well-being? Research on this theme examines the way policies, market activities, and social change combine to affect social equity. It seeks to illuminate designs for public policies that improve equity without undermining economic growth or democracy and ways to foster innovative interfaces between government and the private sector, including business, interest groups, and nonprofit organizations.
Religion and Society
How does religion shape public life? Dealing mainly but not exclusively with Latin America, this theme focuses on past and present trends in Catholicism and other religious traditions, on the role of religion in popular cultures, and on the influence of churches and religious belief upon political, social, and cultural change.
Social Movements and Organized Civil Society
What fosters a vigorous civil society? Researchers working on this theme study the formation and activity of social groups, including women's movements, labor unions, peasant organizations, religious communities, nongovernmental development organizations, and other grassroots associations. These studies aim to elucidate the way politics and society include or exclude groups, focusing on conceptions of citizenship, characteristics of labor markets, patterns of economic development, and types of political regimes.
