Peter Flora

Among Flora's early goals was the edition of the writings of his model, of the far too early deceased Norwegian Stein Rokkan. But the idea to publish the collected works of Rokkan was given up, with respect to the fact that Rokkan's publications hid many duplications. Thus, supported by his colleagues Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin, they decided to reconstruct from Rokkan's scientific work the essentials of his theory of Europe and to bundle them in the sense of a theory of European state and nation formation. In order to achieve this goal, first all publications of Rokkan's publications were collected and made machine-readable by scanning them (building what is today the Stein Rokkan-archive), with the intention to produce a summarizing book (State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Based on his collected works. Edited by Peter Flora, 1999). This book was first published in English language; afterwards it was translated into the German by Elisabeth Fix and into the Italian by Daniele Caramani. The German pocket book edition, published by Suhrkamp, is a good seller.

Since 1999 he is a member of the Academia Europaea.

In his long career, Peter Flora has organized a large number of meetings and conferences. One of the most important ones for the MZES was the conference on The New Europe of the Committee on Political Sociology of IPSA and ISA held at the MZES in Mannheim from 21 to 23 February 1991.

Flora aimed at giving comparative macrosociology, based on official statistics, a systematic basis, a basis which comparative survey research already had received by the way of diverse archives and Summer Schools. His vision was to establish a centre which could become a permanent basis for European-comparative data collection and data processing. Thus, he responsibly wrote an application in order to establish a Mannheim Centre for the Social Sciences which was set up since 1989 by means from the Government of the Land Baden-Württemberg. From 1989 to 1993, Flora acted as founding director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) of today and accomplished here the decisive pioneering work. The main organizational emphasis was placed on the establishment of a European Library, an electronic data processing unit, and of the European Data Archive. From 1996 to 1998 he completed a second time period as director. The West European Data Archive (WEDA), later renamed Research Archive Eurodata, became part of the MZES as an infrastructural department. This archive should document and perpetuate the time series data collections from the HIWED and Growth to Limits projects. At the same time, the archive was intended to support research projects at the MZES. From 1995 to 2002/03, the archive published its own Eurodata-Newsletter.

From 1987 to 1993 he was Chairman of the Committee on Political Sociology of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and the International Sociological Association (ISA).

In 1982, Peter Flora accepted a call by the Faculty for Social Sciences of the University of Mannheim, to become the successor of M. Rainer Lepsius. In his lectures, he predominantly represented and read on topics of macrosociology and the comparative study of European societies. But one of his central achievements is institution formation i.e. the setting up of the Mannheim Centre for Social Sciences.

In the HIWED project the analysis of redistribution processes by the welfare state played a central role. After Flora had received a call by the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (Italy) in 1979, the expansion of the West European welfare states after World War II moved to the foreground of a large comparative research project titled: Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States Since World War II. When consciously reversing the title of the famous book Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows and Dennis L. Meadows, published in 1972, not only a gimmick in order to create publicity was found, but the central hypothesis of the project was formulated as well: with the extension of the catalogue of life risks secured by the welfare state, and the comprehensive inclusion of almost all population groups in the welfare state programs, the welfare state has attained its limit of extension and ends in a phase of consolidation. Among Flora's most important collaborators in this project, carried through in Florence with numerous doctoral candidates from the member states of the European Union, was mainly Jens Alber, who had already collaborated with him in the HIWED project.

From 1979 to 1982 Peter Flora was editor of the Zeitschrift für Soziologie.

Only three years after receiving his doctoral degree, in 1976 at the age of 32, Peter Flora has been qualified for lecturing in sociology at the University of Mannheim with a habilitation thesis on Modernization and the Development of the European Welfare States. Expert opinions were delivered by M. Rainer Lepsius and Wolfgang Zapf.

Still in the same year, in 1976, Peter Flora attained a C 3 professorship for sociology at the Research Institute for Sociology of the University of Cologne; there he taught and did research until 1979. The HIWED project was continued by a research project funded by the VolkswagenStiftung in order to build up the so-called West European Data Archive (WEDA). The general goal was to produce a historical data handbook on Western Europe, the theory of Stein Rokkan forming the background, and a series of data-supported analyses on the modernization of West European societies which should pick up and develop further Rokkan's ideas.

In 1972, when Wolfgang Zapf accepted the professorship of the third chair for sociology (Lehrstuhl für Soziologie III) at the University of Mannheim, Peter Flora moved with him as assistant to Mannheim. Both together applied for the project on Historical Indicators of the Western European Democracies (HIWED) which became funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. Results of this research project consisted of a larger number of presentations, contributions to journals and books, the working paper series of the HIWED-Reports, two dissertations and finally the two-volume data handbook State, Economy, and Society in Western Europe 1815–1975, published in 1983 and 1987 respectively.

Peter Flora belongs to the fathers of the renaissance of comparative historical sociology based on macrodata. In Germany he has contributed decisively to redirect German sociology from its occupation with the own nation during the 1970s towards a comparative and European perspective. The systematic comparison of societies in a historical perspective has received decisive impulses from his publications, by his activities in official positions of the sociological profession and as academic teacher, and furthermore by his pioneering role when establishing the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research.

His years as an assistant from 1969 to 1973 he completed at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main and Mannheim at the chair of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Zapf; both together organized the QUAM-project (Quantitative Model of Modernization). Based on data collected in this project he received a doctorate in 1972 at the University of Constance on a subject which would occupy him as well as his supervisor Wolfgang Zapf for many years: modernization research. The doctoral dissertation was published in 1974 and 1975 respectively in two parts with the Westdeutscher Verlag.

Peter Flora attended primary and secondary school in Innsbruck. At 21 years he started his studies studying sociology, political science and statistics at the Universities of Tübingen, Berlin, and finally Constance in sociology, political science and statistics (from 1965 to 1969). He concluded his studies in 1969 (aged 25 years old) with a Master of Arts degree of the University of Constance. His Master of Arts thesis dealt with Proposals in Order to Determine the Term and the Investigation of the Phenomenon of Conservatism.

Peter Flora (*3 March 1944, in Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria) is an Austrian citizen and taught until his retirement in spring 2009 as a professor of sociology at the University of Mannheim. Peter Flora is a son of the Austrian drawer, caricaturist, graphic artist and illustrator Paul Flora.