Professorship of the Cluster of Excellence – Transnational Governance

Prof. Dr. Jens Steffek

The professorship for “Transnational Governance” lies at the interface between the traditional analysis of international relations, research on social actors operating across borders and normative questions of political theory, in particular democratic theory. These different strands of research are linked by the focus of the research area on questions of the legitimacy of governance beyond the nation state.

Legitimation as a social process and legitimacy as its result are phenomena that are characterized by the close interlinking of an empirical and a normative dimension, in the sense that in the concept of legitimacy the empirical validity of a political order is made dependent on normative considerations of correctness and appropriateness. Based on this core concept and an empirical-analytical as well as normative-theoretical interest in knowledge, we attempt to develop a new, critical perspective on the political handling of cross-border problems and conflicts.

The research activities can be roughly divided into three sub-areas: 1. legitimation narratives of international governance are examined, focusing on the justifications of international organizations as functional agencies that are not based on democratic participation and control. 2. the professorship examines the legitimation potentials of civil society participation, including in the context of the institutionalization of civil society participation in international organizations. And 3. the connection between the global order and the social question was examined in retrospect to the 20th century as well as with regard to current developments, such as in the context of the latest climate protection agreements.

Ad 1) The central thesis is that the advance of international organizations (both governmental and non-governmental) since the 19th century must be understood as part of the bureaucratization of political rule described by Weber and can therefore only be legitimized in rational-legal terms.

Ad 2) The central finding here is that the participation of non-state actors in the governance process can create a political public sphere to a limited extent, but hardly counteracts the basic trend towards a technocratization of transnational governance.

Ad 3) With regard to the possible end of redistributive multilateralism, it would appear that the shift in climate policy from legally secured to voluntary commitments, which began in Copenhagen and was reinforced in Paris in 2015, has also changed the concept of justice in global climate policy by invalidating the traditionally important justification of compensation for historical injustice.

The most important publications of this professorship of the Cluster of Excellence:

Holthaus, Leonie & Jens Steffek: “Experiments in International Administration. The Forgotten Functionalism of James Arthur Salter”, in: Review of International Studies 42(1), 2016, pp. 114-135.

McGee, Jeffrey & Jens Steffek: “The Copenhagen Turn in Global Climate Governance and the Contentious History of Differentiation in International Law”, in: Journal of Environmental Law Vol. 28(1), 2016, pp. 37-63.

Steffek, Jens: “Max Weber, Modernity and the Project of International Organization”, in: Cambridge Review of International Affairs, FirstView, DOI: 10.1080/09557571.2015.1020481, 2015.

Steffek, Jens. “The Cosmopolitanism of David Mitrany: Equality, Devolution, and Functional Democracy beyond the State”, International Relations 29(1), 2015, pp. 23-44.

Steffek, Jens: “Fascist Internationalism”, in: Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44(1), 2015, pp. 3-22.