Helmut Weidner, political scientist; is senior researcher at the Social Science Research Center (WZB) and adjunct professor at the Free University Berlin. Major topics of research: Cross-national analysis of environmental policy and capacity building; climate policy and equity; mining and sustainable development. Selected publications: Capacity Building for Ecological Modernization: Lessons From Cross-National Research. In: David A. Sonnenfeld and Arthur P. J. Mol (eds.), Globalization, Governance, and the Environment, Special Issue: American Behavioral Scientist, 45 (9), 2002, 1340-1368; German Climate Change Policy: A Success Story With Some Flaws. In: The Journal of Environment & Development, 17, 2008, 356-378 (with Lutz Mez).

With respect to the Indian-European Research Network the main focus of his current research is on the changing roles of the state and central government actors in German climate policy and their effects. The research aims at identifying factors, variables and their configuration relevant for the type and quality of climate policy using a combination of the capacity building and the path dependency approaches.