KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Am Marktplatz 2
85072 Eichstätt
simon.dudek@ku.de
Simon Dudek studied political science, geography and philosophy at the University of Bamberg. Since 2016 he has been a member of the Economic Geography working group at KU. In his doctoral thesis he reconstructs in a strategic-relational analysis how regional planning in Bavaria developed under the premise of austerity following the global financial and economic crisis. Simon also works on the subject of regional planning within the Bavarian section of the Academy for Spatial Development in the Leibniz Association. Since completing his doctorate, he has been concerned with a place-sensitive approach towards the financialisation of everyday life.
The Design of Debt Relief Support for Financially Weak, Small Municipalities in Germany: A Comparative Analysis with Special Consideration of Federal Structures
Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 507273414.
In the course of the global financial and economic crisis, the municipal budget situation in Germany deteriorated and is since then characterized by over-indebtedness. The motivation of our research project is to add a spatial and qualitative perspective to the existing research on municipal debt support granted by the states for their own municipalities. Building on the conceptual approaches of austere federalism and austerity management, the project aims to analyse both the local effects of conditional debt support on small municipalities in a federal comparison and the influence on spatial disparities. To this end, we study municipalities in the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Hesse and Bavaria. In a broader context, our project aims to contribute to the international scientific debate on spatial disparities and equivalent living conditions. Particularly in view of renewed municipal budget shortfalls in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the geopolitical unrest since the Russian war against Ukraine, the project also addresses a virulent sociopolitical field of conflict within and beyond the academic discourse.