Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS)

The Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS Zurich) was founded in 1997 under the leadership of Prof. Kurt Spillmann as a way of bringing together political science scholars from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the University of Zurich. Today, the Center includes a dozen faculty members and about 150 Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers and other scientific and administrative staff from the ETH Zurich’s Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the University of Zurich’s Department of Political Science. CIS Zurich has two campuses, one in the heart of Zurich and one in Zurich Oerlikon.

In an era of rapid global transformations and ever denser multilateral networks, national and international politics are becoming more and more intertwined. At CIS Zurich, we, therefore, seek to integrate the study of national political systems and the study of international politics, focusing on the complex interconnections between domestic, international and transnational political processes, structures, and institutions. In doing so, our research concentrates on a variety of topics, including: - Democracy, Democratization and Public Governance - Conflict Research and Security Studies - International Political Economy - International Development Cooperation - Policy Analysis - Swiss Politics - European Politics - Social Science Research Methods Our methodological approaches range from formal theory, qualitative case studies and field and experimental research to econometric methods and computational modeling.