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The right to vote is an important part of a democracy. But not everyone makes use of it. A researcher at the University of Basel has investigated the possible causes of this.

How does the increasingly heated public discourse on feminist and LGBTIQ+ issues affect individuals and communities in everyday life? What difficulties do they face in Germany and how do they confront them? The Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts investigated these questions as part of the European Horizon project RESIST.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have been working with researchers from Ukraine and Germany to investigate how to rebuild Ukraine's destroyed energy infrastructure based on renewable energy. They have determined that solar and wind energy would quickly deliver a distributed power supply system and prevent corruption.

A new EPFL developed tool, Quotebank , has helped researchers provide the first large-scale data-driven evidence of a drastic shift towards a more negative political tone beginning at the start of Donald Trump's primary campaign in June 2015. A vast majority of Americans believe that the tone and nature of political debate in the United States has become more negative in recent years and more than half have the impression that Donald Trump is responsible.

An international research group with ETH professor Dominik Hangartner has found that solidarity with refugees in Europe has remained stable, despite repeated refugee crises. While there is a tendency to view refugees from Ukraine more positively, this does not come at the expense of other groups. Russia's attack on Ukraine has resulted in one of the largest movements of refugees since the Second World War.

In Sweden, immigrants are allowed to participate in regional elections even if they don't have a Swedish passport. Researchers at the University of Basel recently investigated whether this affects naturalization numbers. Their findings could also be of interest for Switzerland. In most countries, the right to participate in the democratic process is reserved for citizens, so anyone who wants to be able to vote must first go through the naturalization process.

Directors, trustees, Executive Board members: members of Switzerland's Federal Parliament often have other duties in addition to their political office and occupation. Researchers in political science at the University of Basel have investigated how these alliances affect political developments. The interest group ties of politicians are a popular topic for discussion.

The introduction of the general right to vote for women in Switzerland contributed significantly to their emancipation. Researchers at the University of Basel have now retrospectively statistically evaluated and quantified the effects on employment, education and the family model. The anonymous petition by women in Zurich demanding women's suffrage in 1868 as part of the constitutional reform had no chance of success, as did many other initiatives to this end.

The path to peace usually leads through a ceasefire. In an international project, researchers have shown the conditions under which parties to civil wars are willing to stop fighting - and why they decide to do so. Abstract Between 1989 and 2020, a total of 2202 ceasefires resulted from 109 civil wars in 66 countries.

Whether a hydroelectric power plant is built, a pesticide is banned or a moor is placed under protection - a wide variety of political decisions have an impact on biodiversity. But does biodiversity play any role at all in such decisions? Researchers at Eawag and WSL have investigated this question and examined Swiss policy over the past 20 years.

ETH Zurich and UNIGE establish an interdisciplinary unit dedicated to science in diplomacy in the heart of international Geneva. This joint lab will bring scientific insights and methods into diplomatic, international conflict resolution and help address the global challenges our societies are facing.

The EU funded project DAFNE has developed a methodology for avoiding conflicts of use in transboundary rivers. The model-based procedure allows for participatory planning and cooperative management of water resources. The aim is now for the DAFNE methodology to be implemented in other regions of the world.

The ease of creating fake virtual identities plays an important role in shaping the way information - and misinformation - circulates online. Could 'pseudonym' parties, that would verify proof of personhood not proof of identity, resolve this tension' Social media platforms have completely changed the way information flows online.

If both camps take a more empathetic approach when there's an argument, it generally makes it easier to listen to what the other side is saying and alleviate tension. This isn't the case, however, when the conflict is about immigration. Discussions about immigration are heated, even antagonistic. But what happens when supporters and opponents undertake to show more empathy and engage in perspective taking, two types of behaviour that can ease tension?

Exploration and utilisation of resources from the world's oceans is not equally distributed across the globe. Although many of these resources originate in the Global South, they are mostly being researched by just a few countries from the North. Accordingly, this is also where most of the benefits and profits are flowing to, despite the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Where various ethnic groups live together, cities grow at a slower rate. That is the conclusion reached by a researcher from the University of Basel and his colleagues based on worldwide data that shows how the diversity of language groups in 1975 has influenced urban growth 40 years later. The scientists have reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

ETH Zurich researchers are reexamining the causes of soil erosion around the world - and have found that countries themselves have a surprisingly strong influence on their soil. This country effect was previously undetected. Soil erosion is a global problem that threatens food security and the functioning of ecosystems.

The political leeway for carbon taxes is greater than commonly assumed. Political scientists at ETH have shown how carbon taxes could find acceptance in Germany and the US. What matters most is the intended use of the tax revenues and that all industrialised nations implement the taxes. Useful to fight climate change, but politically risky: carbon taxes are widely regarded as a double-edged sword.

Is trade liberalisation shifting environmental burden from industrialised countries to poorer ones' This question was investigated by a research team at ETH Zurich led by Thomas Bernauer. In particular, they analysed whether, and if so how, commerce driven by free trade agreements is transferring environmental impacts from industrialised countries to poorer ones.

The number of immigrants the Swiss are willing to take in on an annual basis depends greatly on the quantified proposal (i.e. high or low) put forward to them - as recently revealed by a team of UNIGE researchers.