Dr Christian Opitz

CV

Christian Opitz works for the project “Recasting the role of citizens in foreign and security policy?“, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Having joined the Institute of International Politics at HSU Hamburg in 2018, he has been part of the project “Civic Participation in Foreign and Security Policy“ and of the DFG-project “Overlapping Spheres of Authority“, amongst others.

Conducted on-the-job, Christian Opitz completed his PhD titled “Formality and Informality Interlinked: Structural Conditions of Influence within an International Organisation – The Case of the Civilian Crisis Management of the European Union” at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in 2019 (Supervisor: Prof. Rafael Biermann). His dissertation received the Dissertation Prize 2020 by the University and was awarded the best dissertation by the Department of Political Science.

Christian Opitz studied Political Science as well as Peace and Conflict Studies in Freiburg (2005-2008) and Uppsala, Sweden (2009-2011). Earlier work experiences in Germany and abroad include the Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF), the German Federal Foreign Office and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

Research

DFG-Project (together with Prof. Dr Anna Geis and Prof. Dr Hanna Pfeifer): “Recasting the role of citizens in foreign and security policy? Democratic innovations and changing patterns of interaction between European executives and citizens”

Research areas

Participatory and deliberative policy-making in foreign and security policy
Organisations in foreign and security policy
Current developments in diplomacy
Formal and informal decision-making in international organisations

Publications

Most recent publications

Christian Opitz 2024: Democratic innovations beyond the deliberative paradigm: a re-conceptualization based on Luhmann’s systems theory, in: Democratization. Open access.

Christian Opitz 2024: Democratic Innovations Administered: The Organisational Embeddedness of Public Administrators’ Attitudes Towards Participatory Policy Making, in: Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 20: 1. Open access

Anna Geis/Christian Opitz/Hanna Pfeifer, 2022. Recasting the Role of Citizens in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 17(4): 614-627. https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191x-bja10136 .

Christian Opitz/Hanna Pfeifer/Anna Geis 2022: Engaging with Public Opinion at the Micro-Level: Citizen Dialogue and Participation in German Foreign Policy, in: Foreign Policy Analysis 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orab033 .

Hanna Pfeifer/Christian Opitz/Anna Geis 2020: Deliberating Foreign Policy: Perceptions and Effects of Citizen Participation in German Foreign Policy, in: German Politics 30(4): 485-502. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2020.1786058 .

All publications