Project leaders: Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff, Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst, Prof. Dr. Peter Niesen and Prof. Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolf

This cooperative project from Political Theory and International Relations inquired into the normative concepts and empiricism of the formation of transnational political orders. The more concrete question of the project focused on the meaning of “justice” and “democracy” beyond individual states and the relationship between them. Both basic concepts of political thought were originally related to state communities and must be examined for their continued appropriateness now that the containment of problems and the provision of solutions in many political fields can no longer be achieved by individual states. Institutional responses to globalization can be broadly classified into four very different models, which have been selected not only on the basis of their empirical prevalence, but also on the basis of emerging characteristic legitimation efforts: I. deliberative internationalism (Nicole Deitelhoff), II. supranational governance (Peter Niesen), III. transnational ‘governance without government’ (Klaus Dieter Wolf), IV. transnational democratization through the establishment of diverse justificatory practices (Rainer Forst).

The skeptical counter-position outlined in the project proposal, which considers neither the concept of justice nor the concept of democracy to be applicable to contexts beyond individual states, has not been able to assert itself. This does not mean that standards of justice and democracy can be reflexively applied to any contexts without having first ascertained their internal structure. In a theory of justice with political aspirations, a purely goods- and recipient-centered way of thinking leads to losing sight of the basic political premises of justice – both nationally and beyond states (Forst, Rainer (2009): “Zwei Bilder der Gerechtigkeit”, in: Rainer Forst/Martin Hartmann/Rahel Jaeggi/Martin Saar (eds.), Social philosophy and criticismFrankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 205-228; Forst, Rainer (2012): “Transnationale Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie. On overcoming three dogmas of political theory”, in: Peter Niesen (ed.), Transnational justice and democracyFrankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 29-48; English translation (by Ciaran Cronin) (2013): “Transnational Justice and Democracy. Overcoming Three Dogmas of Political Theory”, in: Eva Erman/Sofia Näsström (eds.), Political Equality in Transnational DemocracyNew York: Palgrave Macmillan, 41-59). Ignoring the perspective of the actor exposes oneself to the accusation that the political order is ultimately based on natural law (Niesen, Peter (2010): “Internationale Politische Theorie – Eine disziplinengeschichtliche Einordnung”, in: Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 17(2), 267-277). The practice-internal logic of demands for justice can only be developed if one starts with existing intersubjective relations of violence, coercion and exchange, as scandalized by protest movements – i.e. with relations ofdomination (Forst, Rainer (2010): “Was ist und was soll Internationale Politische Theorie?”, in: Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 17(2), 355-363). Claims for justice presuppose a history of dependency and violation. The presupposition of a pre-existing common basic structure (Rawls), on the other hand, appears too broad and inflexible, as it must disregard non-institutional relations of domination and exploitation for the existence of demands for justice. A political theory of justice can make plausible how power-structured interactions within and outside institutions generate political obligations to justify and, in some cases, justified demands for new forms of institutionalization (Forst, Rainer (2011): Kritik der Rechtfertigungsverhältnisse, Berlin: Suhrkamp; English translation (by Ciaran Cronin) (2013): Justification and Critique.Towards a Critical Theory of Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press; Italian translation (by Enrico Zoffoli) (2013): Critica dei rapporti di giustificazione, Turin: Grapes; Spanish translation (by Graciela Calderón) (2015): Justificación y crítica, Buenos Aires: Katz Editores), which in turn can then be examined for justice and democratic legitimacy. However, globally articulated demands for justice and democracy are not always demands for global justice and democracy: some calls of cosmopolitan scope are conservative in their institutional orientation and related to the reform of individual states (Niesen, Peter (2011): “Demokratie jenseits der Einzelstaaten”, in: Andreas Niederberger/Philipp Schink (eds.), Globalization. An interdisciplinary handbook Stuttgart: Metzler, 284-291; Niesen, Peter (2012), “Kosmopolitismus in einem Land”, in Peter Niesen (ed.), Transnationale Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 311-339).

Like the applicability of the term “just”, the applicability of the term “democratic” is also subject to conceptual standards. An important result of the research initiative is that a normative conception of deliberative internationalism, i.e. horizontal-discursive exchange relations between states, can be better understood as a fairness-, i.e. justice-oriented approach than as a theory of the democratization of global relations. The legitimacy of inter-state discourses and negotiations increases with their sensitivity to cultural difference and with the material equalization of negotiating positions (Deitelhoff, Nicole (2009): “Fairness oder Demokratie? Zu den Chancen deliberativer Verfahren im internationalen Regieren”, in: Brunkhorst, Hauke (ed.): Demokratie in der Weltgesellschaft (Sonderband Soziale Welt), Baden-Baden: Nomos, 303-322; Deitelhoff, Nicole (2009): ” The Discursive Process of Legalization. “, in: International Organization 63(1), 33-66). However, they are only subject to democratic standards in relation to the internal organization of the states involved. The situation is different in contexts in which power relations are also diagnosed beyond the state (Deitelhoff, Nicole (2012): “Is Fair Enough? Legitimizing international governance through deliberative processes”, in: Niesen, Peter (ed.), Transnational Justice and DemocracyFrankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 103-130). Here, the demand for “justice instead of democracy” (Neyer) seems categorically untenable beyond individual states (Forst, Rainer (2010): “Justice and Democracy. Comments on J. Neyer, ‘Justice, not Democracy'”, in: Rainer Forst/Rainer Schmalz-Bruns (eds.): Political Legitimacy and Democracy in Transnational Perspective (Recon Report), Oslo: Arena, 37-42), as it must ignore demands for justice and democratization (Niesen, Peter (2014), “Jürgen Neyer, The Justification of Europe”, Politische Vierteljahresschrift55(3), 555-557), without, however, a catch-up “cosmopolitan” democratization being an alternative-free and unproblematic answer to the legitimacy deficits of governance beyond the state. State-analogue democratization beyond the individual states is confronted with three problems: How to peacefully travel the road to cosmopolitan democracy; what to do with resistant, non-democratic individual states; and finally, what to make of the already existing plurality of governance forms that perform political steering functions in a number of policy fields by way of private self-regulation, while also exercising political rule themselves. Supranational democratization at the global level should therefore respect two conditions: Despite its legal supremacy, it should leave sanctioning resources with the states and proceed in an autonomy-preserving manner with regard to other forms of coordination (Niesen, Peter (2011): ‘Demokratie jenseits der Einzelstaaaten’, in: Andreas Niederberger/Philipp Schink (eds.), Globalization. An interdisciplinary handbook Stuttgart: Metzler, 284-291). Finally, the analysis of transnational governance, i.e. the cross-border exercise of power in which private actors assume decisive roles, has brought about a further shift, which has also been substantiated by empirical developments in the period under review (global financial crisis since 2008). The previous focus on the internal democratization of governance structures on the basis of their accessibility, transparency and responsiveness (Steffek/Nanz) was abandoned in favour of a more state-centric perspective. Reflection on the concept of legitimacy reveals that it is not so much the internal forms of coordination that require legitimization, but rather the requirements and omissions on the part of public actors (states, intergovernmental institutions) in which the various forms of transnational private self-regulation are embedded, even in the space beyond the state, and which are legally contained in the sense of regulating self-regulation (Wolf, Klaus Dieter/Schwindenhammer, Sandra (2011): “Der Beitrag privater Sebstregulierung zu Global Governance”, in: Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik12(1), 10-28; Wolf, Klaus Dieter (2011): “Unternehmen als Normunternehmer: Global Governance und das Gemeinwohl”, in: Stefan Kadelbach/Klaus Günther (eds.), Law without a state? On the normativity of non-state lawmaking (Series: Normative Orders Vol. 4), Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 101-118; Wolf, Klaus Dieter (2012): “Legitimitätsbedarf und Legitimation privater Selbstregulierung am Fall der lex sportiva“, in: Peter Niesen (ed.), Transnationale Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie (Series: Normative Orders Vol. 6), Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 189-214).

The outcome of the project was a pluralistic perspective on various new forms of coordination and various actors relevant to legitimization: state, private-corporate and cosmopolitan. The claim of state communities to sole representation in terms of justice and democratic theory could be rejected. Nor could any of the different forms of coordination be privileged for normative reasons. Nevertheless, a resilience of the (transforming) state that is not merely factual, but legitimation-theoretical, has been demonstrated in three contexts. Firstly, in the lasting importance of horizontal negotiations and discourses between states; secondly, in the increasing importance of the cosmopolitan opening of individual states; and thirdly, as the lasting addressees for the functionality and legitimacy of governance mechanisms. In contrast to monistic conceptions, be they cosmopolitan (Held) or state-centered (Rawls, Nagel, Maus), the dynamics of state democracy and inter- and supranational coordination have emerged as a central object of investigation for legitimacy-oriented research in the context of the project.

Within the framework of the research project, all participating PIs organized two workshops on the overarching research topic “Transnational Justice and Democracy”, both of which took place at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg (Research Workshop, 25.06.2009; Final Workshop, 16.09.2010).Exemplary for the cooperation of the participating PIs resulting from the project were also the workshop “Europas Rechtfertigung” (workshop on Jürgen Neyer’s book project “Europas Rechtfertigung”, Bad Homburg, 20.7.2010), the panel “Staat, Demokratie, Gerechtigkeit in transnationalen Räumen” (State, Democracy, Justice in Transnational Spaces) at the DVPW Congress (25.9.2009) and the international conference “Internationale Politische Theorie” (10.-12.6.2010, funded by the DFG, the Cluster of Excellence and Nomos-Verlag), which were jointly organized and conducted by Prof. Niesen and Prof. Deitelhoff.

Central results of the project were published in a volume containing contributions by the project leaders and other people involved in the project: Niesen, Peter (ed.) (2012): Transnational Justice and Democracy (Series: Normative Orders Vol. 6), Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus.In addition to the four project leaders, a total of six employees or fellows were involved in the project, who were financed by funds from the Cluster of Excellence. A series of qualification papers were produced as part of the project.

Andreas von Staden, Lisbeth Zimmermann, Friedrich Arndt, Angela Marciniak and Linda Wallbott were involved in a research context on dealing with global order pluralism at the Darmstadt location. Based on intensive joint work by the Darmstadt project staff on global democracy and justice in view of overlapping orders, a working paper was produced: Zimmermann, Lisbeth/von Staden, Andreas/Marciniak, Angela/Arndt, Friedrich (2010): “Pluralization of normative orders and resulting norm conflicts: solution strategies and their success” (Normative Orders Working Paper 06/2010) and a journal article: Zimmermann, Lisbeth/von Staden, Andreas/Marciniak, Angela/Arndt, Friedrich/Wallbott, Linda (2013): ‘Muss Ordnung sein? Zum Umgang mit Konflikten zwischen normativen Ordnungen”, in: Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 20(1), 35-60. The study empirically examines the legitimacy and justice claims of those involved and affected when dealing with conflicts caused by regulatory pluralism. The doctoral students were also particularly involved in organizing the first two junior researcher conferences of the cluster. For example, they organized the first junior researchers’ conference “Normative Orders: Justification and Sanction”, (October 23-25, 2009) Lisbeth Zimmermann and Linda Wallbott organized the panel “Processes of Norm Diffusion. Linking the international and local levels”, and Friedrich Arndt: another panel on “Conceptualizing global orders”.

In the context of the project, Andreas von Staden also dealt with the question of legitimacy in governance beyond the nation state, including in a publication on legitimacy aspects of the European human rights system (von Staden, Andreas (2009): “Legitimitätsaspekte des europäischen Menschenrechtssystems”, in: Ingo Take (ed.), Legitimes Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaats: Unterschiedliche Formen von Global Governance im Vergleich, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 146-172). He also worked on Rule of Law beyond the nation state. He has also written several publications on this topic (including: von Staden, Andreas/Burke-White, William (2010): Private Litigation in a Public Law Sphere: The Standard of Review in Investor-State Arbitrations, in: Yale Journal of International Law 35, 283-346; von Staden, Andreas (2012): “The democratic legitimacy of judicial review beyond the state”, in: International Journal of Constitutional Law 10, 1023-1049; von Staden, Andreas (2012): “Zur demokratischen Legitimität der Überprüfungstätigkeit internationaler Gerichtshöfe”, in: Peter Niesen (ed.), Transnationale Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, pp. 215-250). Some of these individual publications also form the basis of his PhD at Princeton University, for which he received the Best Dissertation Award in the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 2010.

As part of her dissertation project, Lisbeth Zimmermann examined local reactions to the promotion of rule of law norms in post-conflict states. In this context, she analysed the tensions between notions of just and democratic governance at the global and local levels and localization processes of global norms. She organized a Germany-wide doctoral workshop on this topic (“Jenseits der Normübernahme – Normlokalisierungsprozesse unter der Lupe”, HSFK, 30.09.-01.10.2010) and an international panel “New Approaches to the Study of Norm Diffusion” (as part of the ISA Annual Convention, 2013 in San Francisco). In addition, an essay on this topic was published in an English-language journal (Zimmermann, Lisbeth (2014): “Same Same or Different? Local reactions to democracy promotion between take-over and appropriation”, in: International Studies Perspectives, 1-19), as well as two German-language journal articles (Zimmermann, Lisbeth (2009): “Wann beginnt der (Demokratische) Frieden? Regime change, instabilities, integration and their influence on the conflict between Ecuador and Peru”, in: Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, 16(1), 39-73; Deitelhoff, Nicole/Zimmermann, Lisbeth (2013): “Aus dem Herzen der Finsternis: Kritisches Lesen und wirkliches Zuhören der konstruktivistischen Normenforschung. A response to Stephan Engelkamp, Katharina Glaab and Judith Renner”, in: Journal of International Relations 20(1), 61-74). The doctorate was awarded with distinction in 2012 and has been published as: Zimmermann, Lisbeth (2017): Global Norms with a Local Face. Rule-of-Law Promotion and Norm Translation (Series: Cambridge Studies in International Relations), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

As part of her project, Linda Wallbott dealt with the question of how justice claims are constructed in international negotiations and which factors contribute to their effectiveness. From this perspective, she examined the negotiation processes of numerous international regimes, in particular the international climate and biodiversity regime. Her research project investigated the extent to which not only material differences between nominally equal negotiating partners have an influence on their normative effectiveness, but also non-material and socio-psychological factors play a role. The results of her research project have been published as: Deitelhoff, Nicole/Wallbott, Linda (2012): “Beyond soft balancing. Small states and coalition building in the ICC and Climate negotiations”. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 25(3), 345-366; Wallbott, Linda, (2012) “Political in Nature: The Conflict-fuelling Character of International Climate Policies”, in: Jürgen Scheffran/Michael Brzoska/Hans Günter Brauch/Peter Michael Link/Janpeter Schilling (eds.), Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict. Challenges for Societal Stability, Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol. 8, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer, 223-241.

Angela Marciniak devoted her dissertation project to the problems of security concepts in the history of political thought. Using selected works (Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, Hans Joachim Morgenthau), she reconstructed a history of ideas of political security and thus made security as a political concept useful and fruitful for contemporary normative political theory. The aim of this analysis of various security concepts and dimensions was not only to contribute to a deeper penetration of the concept of security, but also to derive from the criticism of existing security concepts an urgent opening of discourses on the subject of security, a pluralization of security understandings and a “democratization” of the same. The dissertation has been published as: Marciniak, Angela (2015) Politische Sicherheit: Zur Geschichte eines umstrittenen Konzepts, Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus.

In his doctoral thesis, Friedrich Arndt examined the relationship between democracy, democratic practice and power. He analyzed various traditions of democratic thought from a power and social theory perspective and, building on these insights, developed elements of a social theory of the “democratic”. In this context, he examined in particular the social construction of the environment in the context of international environmental policy (Arndt, Friedrich (2009): “The Politics of Socionatures. Images of Environmental Foreign Policy”, in: Paul G. Harris (ed.): Environmental Change and Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, London: Routledge, pp. 74-89), as well as the democratization of knowledge in global climate policy (Arndt, Friedrich/Mayer, Maximilian (2012): “Demokratisierung von Wissen und transnationale Demokratie in der globalen Klimapolitik”, in: Melanie Morisse-Schilbach/Jost Halfmann (eds.): Wissen, Wissenschaft und Global Commons. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 179-207). He also dealt with post-structuralist approaches to governance through discursive practices (Arndt, Friedrich/Richter, Anna (2009): “Weiche Steuerung durch diskursive Praktiken”, in: Gerhard Göhler/Ulrike Höppner/Sybille de la Rosa (eds), Soft control. Studies on control through discursive practices, arguments and symbols Baden-Baden: Nomos, 27-73), as well as the possibilities of a contemporary understanding of the subject (Arndt, Friedrich (2009): “Who is afraid of the anthropinon? Poststructuralist Understanding of the Subject after Ernesto Laclau”, in: Dirk Jörke/Bernd Ladwig (eds.), Political Anthropology. History – Present – Possibilities , Baden-Baden: Nomos, 149-164). The dissertation has been published as: Arndt, Friedrich (2013): Modes of the Democratic. On the relationship between power and democracy Nomos: Baden-Baden.

In her work, Ayelet Banai formulated an egalitarian concept of a right to self-determination. Based on this central claim of democratic thought and action, she developed a conception of international justice that distinguishes itself from both state-centered and cosmopolitan conceptions. The results of this work represent an application of this conception to various aspects of current debates on justice, as set out in, among others: Banai, Ayelet (2012): ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Political Belonging’, in: Niesen, Peter (ed.), Transnational Justice and Democracy (Normative Orders vol. 6), Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus, 77-102; Banai, Ayelet/Ronzoni, Miriam/Schemmel, Christian (2011): “Global Social Justice: The Possibility of Social Justice in a World of Overlapping Practices”, in: Banai, Ayelet/Ronzoni, Miriam/Schemmel, Christian (eds.), Social Justice, Global Dynamics, London: Routledge, 46-60). As part of the project, she was also involved in the organization and implementation of numerous workshops. One example is “Global Justice, Politics, Morality”, TU Darmstadt 12.12.2008 with Andrea Sangiovanni, on which she also wrote a commentary (“Coercion, Reciprocity and the Difference Principle”). Ayelet Banai received her doctorate from the University of Oxford in February 2010 with the thesis “Drawing Boundaries: Nations, States and Self-Determination”.

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Harald Müller

Since modern arms control emerged in the 1950s, some of its framework conditions have changed fundamentally. The bipolar system of the Cold War no longer exists; the only remaining superpower, the USA, has turned away from its former support for multilateral, universal security institutions and is pursuing – temporarily? – selective multilateralism and in some cases aggressive unilateralism; emerging powers such as India and China could transform the international system into a multipolar system. At the same time, with the end of the bloc confrontation, the contrast between the developing and developed world gradually became more and more apparent in security policy. These changes were also reflected in the regimes for controlling nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. However, the fundamental functions of arms control – the stabilization of inter-state relations, the reduction of the security dilemma and the prevention of uncontrolled arms races and wars – have lost none of their topicality and urgency. On the contrary, in view of possible transitions of power, new security policy challenges and current technological developments, the cooperative containment of instruments of violence and regulation of inter-state relations are still fundamentally important in order to achieve a stable system of global governance.
Neither specific questions about the legitimacy and legality of certain types of weapons or the fulfillment and interpretation of commitments entered into, nor more general questions about the distribution of power in the international system or North-South cooperation and development can be fully or even adequately addressed with neo-realist, institutionalist or liberal thought patterns alone. Rather, it can be assumed that ideas about appropriateness, correctness and justice play a role in all four areas, which have so far been underexposed in the theory and practice of arms control. This project is dedicated to researching their significance for a functioning normative order for the control of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Two sub-projects investigated A) where the normative positions of selected actors within the three regimes diverge or converge and how exogenous events affect the policies of these actors; what discourses of justice and conflicts of norms exist within the regimes and to what extent ethical concerns are embedded in the regimes themselves; and B) how the normative structures of international arms control regimes develop positively or negatively through the activities of “norm entrepreneurs”, through norm conflicts, through the interaction of norms and technological change and through the influence of external events.
The results of these sub-projects shed light on the role that ideas of justice play in the design of multilateral security institutions and which factors influence normative change. On this basis, praxeological concepts were also developed on how the regimes can be maintained and sustainably strengthened. Finally, the results of the sub-projects were brought together to answer the overarching research question of how and under what conditions a normative order for the control of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons is possible in the 21st century.
The research project was part of both the University of Frankfurt’s Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” and the HSFK’s research program “Just Peace Governance”.

The first years of project funding were primarily concerned with developing the conceptual framework and planning the approach. Following standards research, four variables were identified as possible “drivers” of standards evolution: Conflicts over the interpretation and weighting of norms and, in particular, conflicts over justice are seen as possible regime-inherent factors. External factors include technological changes and serious changes in the international environment such as the end of the East-West conflict, upheavals in the international power structure and shock events such as September 11, 2001. However, according to our initial assumption, which was ultimately confirmed, these three factors do not necessarily lead to norm change. Rather, it requires intentional actors, norm entrepreneurs, who use the windows of opportunity created by internal and external structural events to drive norm evolution and change the normative structure.
Whether, and if so, what influence the aforementioned variables have on the creation or change of international arms control norms was examined in individual case studies using content and process analysis methods.

The most important publications in the research project include:
Müller, Harald (2010): “The Little-Known Story of Deprofileration: Why States Give Up Nuclear Weapons Activities” (with A. Schmidt), In: W.C. Potter, G. Mukhathhanova (eds.): Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century. Vol I: The Role of Theory Stanford: Stanford University Press, 124-158.
Müller, Harald (2011): “A Nuclear Nonproliferation Test: Obama’ Nuclear Policy and the 2010 NPT Review Conference”, in: The Nonproliferation Review, 18 (1), 219-236.
Müller, Harald (2011): “Security Cooperation”, in: Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Leonardo Morlino (eds.): International Encyclopedia of Political Science, SAGE Publications.
Müller, Harald and Carmen Wunderlich (eds.) (2013): Norm Dynamics in Multilateral Arms Control: Interests, Conflicts, and Justice (Series: Studies in Security and International Affairs), University of Georgia Press.

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Gunther Hellmann

The project examined the security policy dimensions of the formation and transformation of the Western order. As a concept of order, “the West” is used ubiquitously in both political and academic discussion contexts. However, its routine usage all too easily obscures the constitutive vagueness and controversial nature of “the West”. However, “the West” seems to be able to develop its integrative power precisely because very different positions and projects can be justified “in the name of the West”. This is exemplified by the controversies surrounding appropriate forms of combating terrorism, in which almost every position articulated in Europe or the USA sees itself in agreement with the basic normative principles of the West, while opposing positions are accused of deviating from such basic principles. Against this background, it is interesting from a social science perspective to look at the different references to the West and their institutional consequences.

To this end, a methodologically innovative, open research approach was developed, which reconstructed the performative references in three different security policy fields in hermeneutic detailed analyses. The first field of research focused on the traditional dimension of great power rivalry. In security policy circles, the emergence of new powers, particularly China, but also the open development of Russia, is observed from the perspective of possible shifts in polarity. How to react to such possible shifts is controversial within the West and is therefore a suitable starting point for the reconstruction of performative references to the West. In politically diametrically opposed positions, clear similarities could be identified in the way in which the West was referred to. For example, the West appeared to both the proponents of a cooperative strategy towards China and the proponents of a more confrontational stance as a threatened space that must be protected at all costs. The assessment that the material foundations of the West’s supremacy are under threat typically went hand in hand with the rearticulation of the idea of the West’s normative and moral superiority and its role model function for emerging states. However, it is precisely because the West sees itself as morally superior that the scenario of the geopolitically threatened West can gain plausibility.

A second field of research focused on NATO as the central institutional embodiment of the West in terms of security policy. NATO emerged as a defense alliance in the strategic constellation of the East-West conflict, but in its self-descriptions it is always more than just a strategically justified alliance. As an institutional expression of the “Western community of values”, it initially saw itself as a line of defense against Soviet communism. After the East-West conflict and thus the end of bloc confrontation and systemic competition, NATO’s continued existence therefore requires justification. A detailed hermeneutic analysis of the relevant strategic documents showed that NATO made use of rhetorical strategies of self-empowerment, which can be traced back to the beginnings of the Alliance in variations adapted to the respective strategic constellation. The topos of a threatened West that must be protected at all costs reinforces this tendency towards self-empowerment and at the same time establishes a specifically Western conflict structure in transatlantic relations. Political differences of opinion between Europe and the USA are not described as ordinary differences of position and opposition, but rather as different interpretations of a shared Western foundation of values. The fact that the opposing party is always observed as a renegade who abandons this common foundation explains the specific escalation dynamic, but also the integration effect of transatlantic conflicts.

Finally, the third field of research dealt with the domestic political dimensions of the “war on terrorism”, in particular the example of the re-legitimization of torture and the tendency to suspend the protective provisions of the rule of law. It is well known and documented that the normative-institutional achievements of the democratic constitutional state tend to come under pressure in the course of the fight against terrorism. In a hermeneutic detailed analysis of the relevant torture memos, mass media treatments of the torture issue and the European controversy surrounding extraordinary renditions, the focus was rather on the question of the justification and justification of such restrictions. Here, too, the topos of the “threatened West” initially authorized extraordinary defensive measures, of which the creeping relegitimization of torture is only the most prominent example. Of analytical interest, however, was the question of how such restrictions could be made permanent. A discursive shift could be reconstructed that led away from the originally authorizing topos of the situational exception for the purpose of defence and towards a bureaucratic-technocratic risk semantics. Not the knowledge of a threat, but the ignorance of its temporal end thus became the central figure of justification. The non-committal communication created in this way enabled the European side in particular to immunize its toleration of and participation in the transfer of suspects to CIA black sites from public criticism.
In all three fields of research, a fundamental but at the same time always controversial tendency towards securitization of the West could be observed. In the critical security theory of the Copenhagen School, securitization refers to the discursive process by which an object of reference is described as existentially threatened in such a way that extra-legal measures appear justified for defence purposes. The reference objects in the literature are usually the state, occasionally also society or the environment. Introducing and analyzing the West as a reference object thus also makes an innovative contribution to the current discussion on security theory. The securitization of the West does not represent a necessary or irreversible development; rather, it should be understood as a practical consequence of reactions to terrorist threats in particular. The image of a securitized West that threatens to abandon its normative foundations in the name of self-defence is therefore always countered by the image of a genuinely Western culture of constitutional-democratic formalism. As equally virulent topoi in the security policy discourse, these contrasting self-descriptions of the West are in a polar tension with one another. Any securitization can be criticized with arguments based on the rule of law, just as any achievement of the democratic constitutional state remains threatened by the dynamics of securitization. Within this field of tension, however, a discursive shift towards an increasing securitization of the West has been observed, particularly since the attacks of 11 September 2001.

In addition to the subject-related research results from the individual fields and the resulting overall picture of the transformation of the Western order, the project also makes a fundamental theoretical and methodological contribution to the social science analysis of the formation of normative orders. By consistently observing normative orders under the aspect of their formation, it becomes possible to overcome static concepts of order and to focus on the process dimension of order formation. Order formation can then be understood as a practical consequence of the performative reference to concepts of order. Their reconstructive analysis is made possible by the basic conceptual instruments developed in the project.

The most important publications in the research project include
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin (2008): “Fishing in the Mild West. Democratic Peace and Militarized Interstate Disputes in the Transatlantic Community”, in: Review of International Studies, 34(3), 481-506.
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin (eds.) (2016): Uses of the West. Security and the Politics of Order Cambridge University Press.
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin/ Schlag, Gabi/Weber, Christian (2017): “The West: A Securitizing Community”, in: Journal of International Relations and Development, 20(2), 301-330.
Hellmann, Gunther/Herborth, Benjamin/ Schlag, Gabi/Weber, Christian: Securitizing the West? The Politics of Security and the Transformation of Western Order (joint monograph, forthcoming).

The project included the workshop “Securitization Theory and the Formation of Normative Orders, Theoretical Problems and Methodological Challenges”, 6-8 September 2008, Goethe University Frankfurt and the international conferences “Secur(itiz)ing the West – The Transformation of Western Order” 21-23 November 2008, SAIS Bologna Center, Johns Hopkins University and “Uses of the West: Security – Democracy – Order” 8-10 October 2009, Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg.

Head: Dr. Thomas Biebricher

The junior research group ‘Crisis and Normative Order – Variations of ‘Neoliberalism’ and their Transformation’ set itself the goal of investigating possible transformations of neoliberalism against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis from different (disciplinary) perspectives. The project was divided into four individual projects. Three of these projects were qualification theses (dissertations).

Frieder Vogelmann: Under the spell of responsibility

Frieder Vogelmann’s dissertation project was based on the following question: What does the steep career of responsibility mean (not only) in philosophy, and what price do we pay for it? According to the central thesis, the fact that large parts of modern philosophy have become addicted to it means that they are paying for it with blindness to the theoretical and practical effects of responsibility. In order to analyze it, responsibility must be understood as a discursive operator whose unity lies in the ambivalent self-relationship of the bearer of responsibility. Its practical effects are studied exemplarily in the practices of labor and crime, in which the responsible self-relation is intensified and at the same time decoupled from the precondition of substantial agency. In this way, responsibility helps to melt an entrepreneurial logic into the self-relationships of increasingly disempowered wage workers and the “unemployed” and to actively involve citizens in the preventive criminal policy of a society fixated on public safety.
The theoretical effects are analyzed on the basis of the genealogy of responsibility within philosophy, in which responsibility is transformed from an instrument in the metaphysical debate on free will into an independent moral problem and ultimately into a certainty with which other philosophical questions are explained. The fixed point of all reflections remains the ambivalent responsible self-relationship as an active approach to the fact of one’s own subjugation – both being subjugated and the subjugation of others. Submission declared to be a fact allows the subject to experience itself as sovereign independently of its actual power to act, and forms the hidden core of the responsible self-relationship. However, because responsibility is increasingly used to explicate the binding force of normativity as the very domain of philosophy, its attractiveness tempts us to overlook or deny this self-objectification and to ignore the practical use of the philosophical legitimizations of responsibility. In contrast, this work offers a diagnostic critique that, if not breaks the spell of responsibility, at least exposes it.
The dissertation has been published as: Frieder Vogelmann (2014): Im Bann der Verantwortung, (Series: Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie und Sozialphilosophie), Frankfurt/New York: Campus.

Greta Wagner: Neuroenhancement. Criticism and practice of pharmacological performance enhancement

Greta Wagner’s dissertation project was based on the following question: What is the social significance of neuroenhancement? As a phenomenon that has so far mainly been dealt with in bioethics, the non-medical use of prescription drugs to improve cognitive performance is examined sociologically for the first time here. Neuroenhancement is understood as a practice with participants and observers, whose interpretations are equally taken into consideration – on the one hand through the evaluation of individual interviews with consumers of performance-enhancing drugs and on the other hand by means of group discussions with students who comment on neuroenhancement, interpret the practice and discuss their fantasies, concerns and hopes with regard to pharmacological performance enhancement. The normative orientations of those observers who shape the discourse on neuroenhancement are assigned their own epistemic status using the theoretical tool of a sociology of critique. The study compares Frankfurt and New York, where the non-medical use of stimulants during exam periods is a largely normalized part of everyday student practice. In Frankfurt, on the other hand, neuroenhancement is far less common than the media attention given to the phenomenon in recent years would suggest. The interpretations of consumers and non-consumers, of Frankfurters and New Yorkers are set in relation to social-theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society and its culture of success. Consumers of performance-enhancing drugs try to increase alertness, attention, drive and motivation with the help of substances such as Ritalin – abilities that make the use of time more effective, especially for knowledge workers who are confident in their work. And the discursive debate on the subject also shows that neuroenhancement is a symbol of consolidation that refers to self-optimization in neoliberalism – as a concern for one’s own competitiveness.
The dissertation has been published as: Greta Wagner (2017): Self-optimization. Practice and criticism of neuroenhancement (Series: Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie und Sozialphilosophie), Frankfurt/New York: Campus.

Michael Walter: Visions of reform. On the image politics of economic and socio-political reform initiatives of the years 2000-2006 in the Federal Republic of Germany

Michael Walter’s dissertation examines the image and campaign politics of economic and social policy reform initiatives in the years 2000 to 2006 in the Federal Republic of Germany from a hegemony theory perspective. The work is located in the field of post-structuralist sociology and aims programmatically to combine post-structuralist theory formation and interpretative, empirically oriented social research. In the theoretical section of the work, poststructuralist theoretical elements following the discourse and hegemony theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe are used as a framework for the empirical analysis of specific visual forms of representation, which have so far been largely ignored in hegemony theory. The empirical section of the work consists of two parts. In the first part, the hegemony-theoretical perspective reconstruction of the reform initiatives and their campaign politics as an overall phenomenon of contemporary history takes place. In the following main part, the image politics of the reform initiatives Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft, BürgerKonvent and the media campaign Du bist Deutschland are reconstructed in the sense of a theoretical sampling with the help of the developed analytical framework. The analysis shows that the image policies of all three reform initiatives are characterized by their distinctly popular character. By producing popular images, the campaigns ‘translate’ the abstract reform topics of the specialized discourses from science, politics and business into the everyday world of individuals and make complex economic and socio-political phenomena visible and tangible at the level of everyday understanding. According to a fundamental result of the analysis, these ‘translations’ are always linked to a transformative moment: the image politics of the reform initiatives in the period in focus can be understood as a hegemonic practice that seeks to establish new collective models, ‘reform visions’ and visibility relationships in order to adapt the common sense of individuals to supposedly changed socio-economic conditions.
The dissertation has been published as: Michael Walter (2016): Visions of reform. On the image politics of economic and socio-political reform initiatives Konstanz: UVK Verlagsanstalt.

Thomas Biebricher: The Political Theory of Neoliberalism.

Based on a definition of neoliberalism that takes its historical context of origin as a starting point, the work examines the works of the central thinkers of neoliberalism and questions the corresponding approaches, particularly with regard to their political dimension. Contrary to the stereotypical view that neoliberalism is nothing more than market fundamentalism, the study shows that neoliberal thinking in its different variants does contain ideas about the state, democracy and science, freedom, equality and justice, as well as power, the concept of man and history. These are compared and subjected to a critical analysis. The second part of the thesis examines the question of how the effectiveness of certain (neoliberal) ideas can be theorized for concrete political practices and institutions. The central argument is that crises (such as that of 2008) represent moments of fundamental uncertainty that open windows of opportunity for new ideas/theories or lead to a return to basic and fundamental ideas that are seen as reliable even under conditions of fundamental uncertainty. The latter is happening – according to the concluding time-diagnostic thesis – in the course of the financial and debt crisis, in which the German political-economic elites in particular are returning to ordoliberal core insights and accordingly working towards a regime of sanction-proven regulatory systems while at the same time securing monetary stability. The result is a transformation of European governance structures in accordance with the requirements of ordoliberal political theory, whose democratic-sceptical and technocratic orientation can be seen in the example of European crisis management.
The results of this project are presented in, among others: Thomas Biebricher (2012): Neoliberalismus zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius-Verlag.

The events organized by the junior research group include: “Normative Theory and Social Critique.” Conference at the Cluster of Excellence Normative Orders. Participants include Hans Jürgen Bieling, Kendra Briken, Rainer Forst, Stefan Gosepath, Jürgen Neyer, Frank Nullmeier, Jens Steffek. Frankfurt, December 8/9, 2011 (with Florian Rödl); “Capitalism – Sociology – Critique.” Workshop at the Cluster of Excellence Normative Orders (together with the Institute for Social Research). Participants included Hartmut Rosa, Klaus Dörre, Stefan Lessenich, Axel Honneth. Frankfurt, December 17-18, 2010 and “Michel Foucault and Ordoliberalism.” Conference at the Cluster of Excellence Normative Orders. Participants among others Lars Gertenbach, Nils Goldschmidt, Felix Heidenreich. Frankfurt, June 10-11, 2010 (with Rainer Klump/Manuel Wörsdörfer).

In addition to the monographs mentioned above, the following book and journal articles have emerged from the work of the research group:
Biebricher, Thomas (2011): “The Biopolitics of Ordoliberalism”, in: Foucault Studies 12, 171-191.
Biebricher, Thomas (2013): “Europe and the Political Philosophy of Neoliberalism”, in: Contemporary Political Theory 12 (4), 338-375 (Critical Exchange with responses by David Jabko, Josef Hien and Anita Chari).
Biebricher, Thomas and Frieder Vogelmann (2012): “Governmentality and State Theory: Reinventing the Reinvented Wheel?”, in: Theory and Event 15(3), online at‘http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v015/15.3.biebricher.html’(accessed September 5, 2012).
Vogelmann, Frieder (2011): “Die Falle der Transparenz. Zur Problematik einer fraglosen Norm”, in: Leon Hempel, Susanne Krasmann and Ulrich Bröckling (eds.): Visibility regimes. Surveillance, security and privacy in the 21st century Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 71-84.
Vogelmann, Frieder (2012): ‘Neosocial Market Economy’, in: Foucault Studies 14, 115-137.
Wagner, Greta (2014): ‘Neuroenhancement in der Kritik. Normative interpretations among students in Frankfurt and New York”, in: Neuroenhancement – fantasies of self-optimization. Focus issue of WestEnd. New Journal for Social Research , 2.2014, Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
Wagner, Greta (2013): “Leveling the Playing Field: Fairness in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate”, in: Elisabeth Hildt and Andreas G. Franke (eds.): Cognitive Enhancement. An Interdisciplinary Perspective Dordrecht/Heidelberg/New York/London: Springer, 217-231.
Wagner, Greta (2010): “Leistung aus Leidenschaft. On the social handling of cognitive enhancement,” in: polar. Politics – Theory – Everyday life , No. 8, Frankfurt/New York: Campus; Walter, Michael (2013): “Zur Bildpolitik der Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft”, in: Alice Pechriggl/Anna Schober. (eds.): Hegemony and the power of images. Klagenfurt contributions to visual culture (Volume 3), Cologne: Herbert von Halem.
Walter, Michael (2012): “Das Komische und die Lebenswelt. A mouth-phenomenological analysis of comic constructions”, in: Jochen Dreher (ed.), Applied phenomenology. On the tension between construction and constitution VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 277-310.

An anthology was also published:
Neckel, Sighard and Greta Wagner (eds.) (2013): Performance and exhaustion. Burnout in a competitive society , Berlin: Suhrkamp, which contains another essay by a project collaborator: Neckel, Sighard and Greta Wagner, ‘Exhaustion as “Creative Destruction”. Burnout and social change”, 203-217.

Project managers: Prof. Dr. Andreas Fahrmeir , Prof. Dr. Gunther Hellmann and Dr. Miloš Vec

The project was based on a conceptual problem. The development of the understanding of “international politics” is closely linked to the establishment of what is commonly referred to in International Relations (IR) as the “Westphalian system of states”. However, if the historical consideration of “foreign policy” is related to the peculiarities of the Westphalian system, the history of foreign policy is reduced to the “early” and “late” modern period – i.e. to the era in which “states” can be identified without great difficulty and in which the modern vocabulary of describing foreign policy comes into use – a perspective that is both “presentist” and “Eurocentric”.
In contrast, the project was based on the hypothesis that a vocabulary for the description of foreign policy can be developed that focuses on the construction of a certain form of demarcation that can be observed in all epochs and that – regardless of the vocabulary used to describe them – can be treated as functional equivalents of foreign policy in the modern sense. Developing such a vocabulary was one of the aims of the project, which was carried out in cooperation between IB, history and legal history and which organized two international conferences (in Bologna in 2011 and in Frankfurt in 2012) for this purpose.

At the same time, three projects on the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were used to more precisely determine continuities and caesuras between different forms of conceptualizing and shaping “foreign policy”, which focused on multiple boundaries between “inside” and “outside”: on the “old” empire, on the “European concert” and on the mandate system after the First World War.

The results were published in a conference volume edited by the PIs (Hellmann, Gunther/Fahrmeir, Andreas/Vec, Miloš (2016): The Transformation of Foreign Policy, Oxford University Press) and have been included in another edited volume (Hellmann, Gunther; Jacobi, Daniel; Stark Urrestarazu, Ursula (eds.) (2015): “Earlier, more decisive and more substantial”? The new debate on Germany’s foreign policy Wiesbaden: Springer-VS).

The most important publications in the research project also include:
Hellmann, Gunther (2017): “Linking Foreign Policy and Systemic Transformation in Global Politics: Methodized Inquiry in a Deweyan Tradition”, in: Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 13, Issue 3.
Hellmann, Gunther/Stark Urrestarazu, Ursula (2013): “Theories of Foreign Policy”, in: David Armstrong (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stark Urrestarazu, Ursula (2010): Us and Them. Culture, identity and foreign policy (Forschungsberichte international Politik, vol. 41), Münster: LIT-Verlag.
Vec, Miloš (2010): “Intervention/ Nichtintervention. Verrechtlichung der Politik und Politisierung des Völkerrechts im 19. Jahrhundert”, in: Ullrich Lappenküper, Rainer Marcowicz (eds.): Power and law. International law in international relations Paderborn: Schöningh, 135-160.

The project included a workshop “The Emergence and Transformation of Foreign Policy” with Iver Neumann and Johannes Paulmann, December 16, 2010, Goethe University Frankfurt and two international conferences on “The Emergence and Transformation of Foreign Policy” in Bologna, June 10-12, 2011, Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna Center and May 25-27, 2012 at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am Main.

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Jens Steffek

The starting point of the research project was the observation that in the current debate on the democratic deficit of international governance, the view is often held that international governance can be legitimized without parliamentary rule-making procedures, without direct citizen participation or increased control of the executive. Giandomenico Majone and Andrew Moravcsik in particular advocate a functional legitimation of international organizations (IOs) and the European Union (EU). These institutions are understood as agencies that are endowed by national executives with narrowly defined mandates for setting and applying technical rules. Their independence from day-to-day political business and their rather technocratic character are seen as an advantage, not a disadvantage. In this view, a “democratization” or “politicization” of international organizations is not necessary and is downright dangerous, as it opens up IOs to political dynamics and distributional struggles that they cannot successfully deal with. International organizations and the EU should therefore not legitimize themselves through democratic procedures, but through the social benefits and quality of their policy outcomes.
Empirically speaking, this argument has also been taken up by authors who do not share Majone and Moravcsik’s normative standpoint. In the form of a historical before-and-after comparison, it is assumed that IOs legitimized themselves through their regulatory output in the period before the emergence of talk of a democratic deficit and therefore also found social acceptance. This thesis is plausible, but has hardly been empirically researched to date. How exactly was international governance legitimized and how was it perceived at the civic level? The second part of the question can hardly be answered because it is no longer possible to reliably survey citizens’ attitudes after decades. The first part of the question, on the other hand, is accessible to empirical research, because the legitimation narratives, i.e. stories about the reason, form and purpose of international governance with a justifying intention, have been handed down in the relevant literature.

Our initial suspicion with regard to this legitimacy narrative was that, beyond the pure output performance of international organizations in terms of policy outcomes, there could be other aspects of good functional governance that could be legitimizing and are reflected in current work on the idea of “good governance”. The aim of this project was therefore to explore the legitimation narrative of good functional governance from a historical perspective, as very little is known about its genesis and the authors involved. The project investigated justification narratives of international governance from the period from 1900 to around 1970, based on academic publications on international governance and statements by employees of international organizations in positions of responsibility, such as the League of Nations, the United Nations or the European Community. The project team identified a number of important historical continuities. The following four central argumentation figures can be found throughout the 20th century:
– Historical necessity: the transnational interdependencies brought about by economic globalization and technological innovation can only be dealt with by political institutions that are located at the same level of aggregation.
– Objective orientation: transnational institutions can ensure that problems are dealt with solely on the basis of objective criteria, and better than previous historical forms of international diplomacy.
– Legal form: transnational institutions ensure that transnational problems are dealt with in a legal form.
– Orientation towards the common good: transnational institutions are not oriented towards particular national interests, but towards a global common good.

In the course of the project work, two new focal points emerged on the basis of these findings. Firstly, it became clear that the envisaged role of international law in the project of social and political modernization needs to be analysed even more closely, namely as it was put forward by proponents of functional international organization between 1900 and 1945. The project leader now takes the view that these authors were striving for the realization of ‘Weberian’ modernity on a global level, namely the transformation of international politics – at this time still strongly marked by all kinds of jingoism and aggression – into a form of rational public administration. The project team’s relevant research focused on four Anglo-Saxon political scientists of the interwar period who represent the so-called ‘functionalist’ tradition in thinking about international relations: Paul S. Reinsch, James Arthur Salter, David Mitrany and Pitman B. Potter. For them, law served to modernize international relations by shielding a technocratic mode of governance from political interference and thus helping to preserve the rationality of decisions made: juridification thus became an aspect of the ‘objectification of tyranny’, as Max Weber understood it. This process was ostensibly about the modernization of international relations (understood as relations between states), which included in particular the eradication of war. In practice, however, international public administration also exerted a strong influence on the domestic policies of states. Of the four early functionalists considered in the project, only David Mitrany openly and fully admitted that such interventions would be a consequence of the intended project.

Subsequently, the research project increasingly focused on modernization theory, in particular the rational bureaucratization of the world, as described and analysed in the work of Max Weber in particular. Legal-rational modernization, as it is called in reference to Max Weber, is a process in which social and economic organization is increasingly based on technical knowledge and scientific insight, on the depersonalization of procedures and capillary control. For Weber, this was characteristic of the Western path to modernity as it unfolded in Europe and North America; however, he also found examples of temporary phenomena of modernization in other cultural contexts. The penetration of formal law into all areas of society is a core element of this modernization process, as it helps to establish control, predictable behaviour and stable expectations. The characteristic organizational form that accompanies the process of legal-rational modernization is bureaucracy, both in the private and public sectors. At the level of public governance, legal-rational modernization creates a system of rule that minimizes the contingencies of political arbitrariness by delegating tasks to civil servants, experts and lawyers.

Unlike many international law scholars, who readily acknowledge the bureaucratic nature of IOs, political scientists have often conceptualized their activities as a manifestation of intergovernmental cooperation. Only in recent years have some constructivist IO scholars systematically used Weber’s studies of bureaucracy to research IOs. In general, however, it can be said that social scientists rarely place IOs in the context of bureaucratic modernization; this is somewhat perplexing given that the social sciences emerged at a time when public administrations were expanding at the national level, professionalizing and becoming less dependent on political influence in many countries. In international relations theory, however, the concept of modernization is often associated with the Enlightenment project in general rather than with bureaucratization and formalization as a more specific social phenomenon. While the Enlightenment is certainly understood as a programmatic intellectual project, empirical transformations in the organization of international politics are often interpreted as pragmatic and almost ‘mechanical’ reactions to changing contextual conditions, such as the globalization of the economy and the increasingly dense network of cross-border social relations that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries.
However, the legal-rational modernization of international relations was more than an inevitable adaptation to changing circumstances. It was a veritable political project. From a historical perspective, this project can be understood as a technocratic variant of the multifaceted phenomenon of programmatic internationalism. The narratives of transnational or, even more so, global modernization analysed in this research project are characteristic of the early 20th century; however, they still seem attractive as a justification strategy for international governance.

The most important publications in the research project include
Jens Steffek (2013): “Mandatskonflikte, Liberalismuskritik und die Politisierung von GATT und WTO”, in: Michael Zürn/Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt (eds.),Gesellschaftliche Politisierung und internationale Institutionen, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 213-239.
Jens Steffek (2012): “Die Output-Legitimität internationaler Organisationen und die Idee des globalen Gemeinwohls”, in: Leviathan: Berliner Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft 40 (Sonderheft 27), 83-99.
Steffek, Jens/Holthaus, Leonie (eds.) (2014): “Jenseits der Anarchie: Weltordnungsentwürfe im frühen 20. Jahrhundert” (Series: Normative Orders, Volume 13), Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
The dissertation project started as part of this research project has now been published as:
Holthaus, Leonie (2018): Pluralist Democracy in International Relations: L.T. Hobhouse, G.D.H. Cole, and David Mitrany. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

The project included the workshop “Jenseits der Anarchie. Weltordnungsentwürfe im frühen 20. Jahrhundert”, TU Darmstadt, 12-13.07.2013.

Project leader and project manager: PD Dr. Anja Jakobi and Prof. Dr. Klaus Dieter Wolf

The project analyzed various forms of international crime prevention and how violent actors are dealt with. The focus was on which different international cooperation options are used and how effective they are. In particular, the role of non-state actors – such as business and civil society – was examined.

In a comparative analysis of different regulatory approaches in various areas of transnational organized crime and the use of violence by non-state actors, it was examined where, to what extent and under what conditions the effectiveness of global crime governance actually increases with the involvement of non-state actors and the practice of new, less prohibitive and more enabling forms of political governance:
Assuming that the challenges posed by transnational private armed groups cannot be successfully countered by strategies of securitization and criminalization alone, but that their causes can also lie in conflicts over claims to recognition and procedural or distributive justice, global crime governance could require a normative reorientation. This concerns both the content of regulations and the status attributed to private actors of violence – which can range from a criminal organization to a “co-producer” of peace-relevant governance services.
A comparative analysis of these approaches to combating crime in different areas (piracy, human smuggling and trafficking, money laundering and corruption, illegal arms trafficking and terrorism) was carried out on the basis of an inventory of existing regulatory approaches, which differ in terms of the constellation of actors and forms of political control. On this basis, mechanisms were sought under which certain forms of governance have prevailed over others. Finally, the relationship between the type of regulatory approach and its effectiveness was examined in order to generate policy recommendations for dealing appropriately with threats posed by transnationally organized non-state armed groups.

The most important publications in the research project include
Herr, Stefanie (2015): Non-state armed groups and international humanitarian law. SPLM/A and LTTE in comparison (Series: Studien der Hessischen Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Vol.29), Baden-Baden: Nomos (submitted as dissertation in 2013).
Jakobi, Anja P. (2013): Common Goods and Evils? The Formation of Global Crime Governance Oxford: Oxford University Press; Wolf, Klaus Dieter; Jakobi, Anja P. (eds.) (2013): The Transnational Governance of Violence and Crime. Non-State Actors in Security . Houndmillls: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jakobi, Anja P. (2010): “In Pluribus Unum? The global anti-corruption agenda and its different international regimes”, in: S. Wolf/D. Schmidt-Pfister (eds.): International Anti-Corruption Regimes in Europe, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 87-100.
Jakobi, Anja P. (2010): ‘OECD Activities against Money Laundering and Corruption’, in: K. Martens/A.P. Jakobi (eds.): Mechanisms of OECD Governance. International Incentives for National Policy-Making? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 139-160.

The most important events in the project were Jakobi, Anja P.: “Changing Coalitions and Practices in a New Security Environment.” Panel. ECPR Standing Group of International Relations (SGIR), Stockholm, September 2010; Wolf, Klaus Dieter/Jakobi, Anja P.: Panel: “Promoting Just Peace or Just Fueling Conflicts? The Ambivalent Role of Private Actors”, 28.08.2011 at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), 25.08.-27.08.2011, European Consortium for Political Research, Reykjavik (Iceland), 2011 and Wolf, Klaus Dieter (together with Susanne Schröter): “Cultural Approaches to Crime and Non-State Violence”, Cluster Workshop, Frankfurt, November 12, 2010.

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff

The project dealt with the question of how normative orders deal with criticism. Specifically, it dealt with the role and function of political opposition in the system of global governance.
The project aimed to explore the role of opposition in governance beyond the state. What opportunities do opposition actors have to bring their criticism to the decision-making bodies? Conversely, how do they react to opposition?
The question of opposition has so far hardly played a role in research on global governance. On the one hand, the sphere of global governance has been regarded as governance without government, so that conceptually there is hardly any room for opposition in the classical sense. In addition, the sphere of global governance continues to rely on the idea of purely horizontal coordination between nation states based on voluntary agreement of rules and institutions.
The project, on the other hand, attempted to show that this idea has become obsolete and that governance has long been characterized by supranationalization on the one hand and informalization on the other, which increasingly undermines the idea of voluntary consensus. Under these conditions, it becomes crucial what possibilities there are for opposition to exert influence and how opposition is and can be dealt with in a system that has no unified decision-making center or even a government.

In order to answer these questions empirically and normatively, several case studies were conducted on various oppositional actors directed at international institutions. The aim was, on the one hand, to find out how these oppositional actors understand their own role and what their goals are and, on the other hand, to examine the reactions of institutions to this opposition. Do institutions open up to criticism or do they ignore it? Are there differences in how they deal with different oppositional actors and what could be the reason for this?
The research was guided by the assumption that opposition becomes increasingly radicalized the less space (i.e. opportunity for participation) it is given in the institutions. In addition to the empirical analysis, the project also drew on republican and aversal theories of democracy in order to examine the normative significance and potential institutional anchoring of opposition in non-classical systems of rule.
The empirical case studies on the conflict between the African Union and the International Criminal Court (Dr. Theresa Reinold) and the anti-globalization movement and global economic institutions (Nicole Deitelhoff) initially confirmed the basic assumption. In both cases, it could be observed that the oppositional actors radicalized their criticism (both in their goals and in their actions) the less space they were given to express their concerns. At the same time, however, the two case studies also made it clear that considerably more and deeper empirical research is needed to assess the plausibility of the hypothesis. At the same time, it has become clear that the basic assumption that political opposition is playing an increasingly important role in global governance is valid. A number of collaborations with other researchers working on related topics have emerged during the project period, including at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (Prof. Michael Zürn) on the politicization of international institutions and at the European University Institute in Florence (Prof. Donatella della Porta) on transnational social movements. For this reason, a larger research network was developed following the project, which comparatively examines the connection between rule and resistance across several sub-projects (see point 5.). In the meantime, the project has been incorporated into a larger research network on international dissidence, which comparatively examines the connection between rule and resistance in transnational spaces across several sub-projects (see www.dissidenz.net). In addition, a permanent lecture series has been developed in the cluster (“Protest – Resistance – Uprising. Dispute over political orders”), in which colleagues from different disciplines and with different perspectives have been looking at rule and resistance since the summer semester of 2012.

In addition to the empirical work, the conceptual-theoretical development of the function and role of political opposition formed the focus of the project work. Classical theories of democracy have only a very limited understanding of opposition, either ascribing to it a function of controlling power or viewing it as a source of ideas for public deliberation. Both, however, tend to exclude institutionally unbound and more radical forms of opposition. In contrast, the project attempts to position conflict-theoretical readings of democracy that distinguish opposition as the normative core of democracy and develop a critique of the current democratization efforts of international institutions. Dr. Thorsten Thiel has presented central works on the development of a republicanism of dissent and Nicole Deitelhoff and Thorsten Thiel have produced publications on conflict-theoretical orientations of post-national democracy. They were particularly interested in working out criticism as the normative core of democratic systems.

The most important publications in the context of the project include
Deitelhoff, Nicole (2012): “Empty Promises? Deliberation and Opposition in the Context of Transnational Legitimacy Politics”, in: Anna Geis/Frank Nullmeier/Christopher Daase: Der Aufstieg der Legitimitätspolitik, LeviathanSonderband27, 63-82.
Deitelhoff, Nicole (2010): “Parallele Universen oder Verschmelzung der Horizonte”, in: Zeitschrift für internationale Beziehungen 17(2), 279-292.
Thiel, Thorsten (2012): Republicanism and the European Union. A redefinition of the discourse on the legitimacy of European governance Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag.

Project leaders: Prof. Dr. Jens Steffek and Prof. Dr. Peter Niesen

The aim of this project was to systematically develop the concept of democracy with a view to the post-national constellation of political rule. The project was thus part of the cluster-wide research into global successor practices and institutions of state order formation, which were to be described and evaluated here from a democratic theory perspective. While the previous project “Transnational Justice and Democracy” was dedicated to the conceptual connections and tensions between transnational democracy and justice, this project focused on tensions and ambivalences within the ongoing universalization of democracy. The universalization of democracy has three dimensions: the worldwide spread of the democratic form of government (1), the development of democratic structures beyond the state (2), and the normative generalization of democracy as a standard of legitimate governance without alternative (3). All three understandings of universalization can point to converging empirical trends over the last two decades. The research question of the project focused on tensions and interactions between the three dimensions of universalization. It thus also challenged the position of Keohane, Macedo and Moravcsik, according to which national and international democratization are in a positive-sum relationship.

In our project, two particularly evident ambivalences of a universalization of democracy were examined: the increasing international spread and cross-border influence on the protection of democracy in individual states, as well as the increasing establishment of supranational control possibilities of national decisions. The first research question was the extent to which national and international mechanisms for establishing and maintaining democracy affect the democratic autonomy of the state populations concerned (Niesen sub-project). As in the nation-state context, the de-paradoxing of an authoritarian protection of democracy also poses great difficulties at the international level. In his own work, Peter Niesen has focused in particular on the universalization of past-political arguments in the domestic protection of democracy. The traditional paradigm of “militant democracy” proved to be insufficiently specific for diagnosing contemporary developments in different parts of the world. In contrast, the ideal type of “banning the former ruling party”, which could be derived from the post-war constitutions of the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy in particular, has since been implemented analogously in many countries around the world. However, the discussion of the case studies of Rwanda, Iraq and some post-communist states revealed that measures to protect democracy are often functionalized for both domestic and foreign policy purposes (Niesen 2010, 2012). In Sabrina Engelmann’s work, a distinction was established between democracy-protecting and state-protecting mechanisms, using the example of counter-terrorism (2012). On the other hand, Sabrina Engelmann examined the example of a binding protection of democracy under international law against the “resource curse” and discusses the theoretical foundations of democracy protection as a whole. She comes to a skeptical conclusion regarding the compatibility of repressive democracy protection with the principle of popular sovereignty. The monograph resulting from the dissertation was published in 2018 (see below).

The second research question was the extent to which individual rights of contestation in international organizations or courts can undermine nation-state democracy (Steffek sub-project). This sub-project thus investigated the triangular relationship between individuals, states and international organizations/courts of justice, which has been little analyzed to date and which becomes particularly problematic when international courts or arbitration tribunals reject democratically established national laws in response to a citizen’s complaint or suggest that the state amend the law. The work on this sub-project was divided into theoretical-conceptual work on the role of courts in a transnational democratic process on the one hand and an empirical study on the European Union on the other. In the theoretical part, transnational courts were located in the “editorial” dimension of the democratic process, drawing on the work of Philip Pettit. In this view, courts and comparable instances of conflict resolution without legitimation through elections (such as arbitration tribunals or ombudsmen) serve to confront a decision with its intended or unintended social consequences. These can, at least in the ideal case of the democratic theory model, be fed back from a court to the legislative democratic institutions in a kind of reflexive loop, so that the process of political deliberation ended by the authoritative political decision is reopened. At national level, this would be the case if a constitutional court were to declare a law unconstitutional and thus impose certain requirements on the legislature for a new version, without, however, being able to determine the specific content of the new regulation.

This common model of institutional interaction in a democratically constituted constitutional state, which can only be roughly outlined here, reaches its limits at international level due to the fact that in many cases there is no institutional counterpart to the national parliament and the intergovernmental “legislator” is usually restricted by the unanimity requirement and the enormous complexity of diplomatic package solutions. In the multi-level system of the European Union (EU), conflicts between European and national law that become evident through individual lawsuits are resolved by forcing national legislators to revise national regulations – but not by suggesting that European legislators revise the European legal order, which would also be conceivable in principle. Andreas Corcaci has examined this phenomenon in the EU in an empirical-analytical research study. His work shows that the establishment of “compliance” with ECJ decisions is a multi-layered process that is influenced by numerous factors simultaneously. On the basis of countless empirical research studies that are already available, Andreas Corcaci develops a new model of the establishment of compliance in the EU’s multi-level system as part of a meta-analysis. In normative terms, his empirical findings point us back to the precarious role of law in the post-national coalition. Resistance and protest against the perceived impositions of European legislation do not manifest themselves in a process of argumentative contestation that is as openly accessible as it is open-ended, but are instead discharged in avoidance strategies in which the affected states attempt to circumvent a literal implementation of European law wherever possible, which in turn often leads to lengthy processes of compliance production by the European institutions. As a result, this interplay does not manifest itself as an open political confrontation in which the European legislator would be confronted with the social consequences of its legislation (which would be a clear gain from a democratic theory perspective), but rather as a difficult-to-understand, decentralized negotiation and enforcement process that remains largely inaccessible, at least to citizens who are not directly affected.

The conclusion of this sub-project must therefore be that although the EU and a few other international organizations have granted citizens the right to take direct legal action, which in principle can be interpreted as a gain in the democratic nature of governance, these rights of action are primarily used to ensure national compliance with the law of international organizations. In contrast, the process of contestation triggered by citizens’ complaints is not linked back to the international level of legislation. This raises difficult questions regarding the legitimation of further juridification at the international level, which became the subject of a follow-up project in the second cluster phase (“Legitimation through international law and legitimation of international law“, Stefan Kadelbach and Jens Steffek, 2013-2015). The dissertation project that was started in this sub-project has also been brought to a successful conclusion in the meantime.

The project’s most important publications include
Engelmann, Sabrina (2018): Democracy and the protection of democracy. Dealing with a dilemma Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
*Engelmann, Sabrina (2012): “Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why Counterterrorism Cannot Be a Defense of Democracy”, in: Democracy and Security 8(2), 164-174.
*Niesen, Peter (2012): “Banning the Former Ruling Party”, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 19(4), 540-561.
Steffek, Jens (2012): “Accountability und politische Öffentlichkeit im Zeitalter des globalen Regierens”, in: P. Niesen (ed.), Transnationale Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie, Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 279-310.
*Steffek, Jens (2010): “Public Accountability and the Public Sphere of International Governance”, Ethics & International Affairs, 24(1), 45-67.

The project included the following events: an international conference “Cosmopolitanism and International Relations Theories”, TU Darmstadt March 2-3, 2012 (Peter Niesen and Jens Steffek); a workshop “Constituent Power and Radical Democracy” with Andreas Kalyvas, TU Darmstadt May 9, 2011 (Peter Niesen) and an international conference “Theories of Territory beyond Westphalia”, Goethe University Frankfurt, October 25-26, 2012 (with Ayelet Banai) (Jens Steffek). In addition, three panels were chaired at the 52nd Annual Conference of the International Studies Association in Montréal, March 16-19, 2011 on the topics “Norms and International Governance”, “Democracy and Dictatorships”, and “Democracy and the Evolution of Global Governance”.

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Christopher Daase

With reference to Immanuel Kant’s essay “On Perpetual Peace” (1795), the contemporary theory of democratic peace (DF) claims that consolidated democracies do not wage wars against each other or are even inherently more peaceful than other types of rule. This theory draws on numerous idealizing rationality assumptions about the institutions, political culture and action orientations of citizens and elites of liberal-democratic democracies. The roots of this branch of research in the civilization-optimistic legacy of the Enlightenment are unmistakable, but have problematic scientific and political consequences: Scientifically, it leads to questionable explanatory approaches and prognoses and politically to the consolidation of an overly positive self-image of Western states. In extreme cases, DF research is used to justify violent democratization or to justify demands for a “club of democracies”. In this respect, the DF theory serves to underpin a conflict-aggravating identity politics of democratic actors. Overall, since the end of the Cold War, research on democratic peace, which has become almost unmanageable, has become an influential justification narrative for Western foreign policy strategies and world order concepts: Global democracy promotion is seen as the long-term key to achieving greater stability and peace within the framework of a liberal world order.

This project took a critical look at the (meta-)theoretical foundations of DF theory and deconstructed its assumptions of rationality with the help of arguments and insights from state theory, democratic theory and the sociology of modernity. The aim was to show that the micro-theoretical foundations of DF rest on more than fragile ground. It was shown that potentially violence-promoting exclusion processes and threat constructions mean that peace within and between democracies will always be precarious. As a result, the project showed that political claims about the peace achievements of democracies are therefore idealized.

Dr. Geis wrote her habilitation thesis as part of the project and was habilitated in 2012. She has been a professor of political science at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg since 2016.

The project’s most important publications include:
*Geis, Anna (2011): “Of Bright Sides and Dark Sides: Democratic Peace beyond Triumphalism”, in: International Relations, 25(2), 18-25.
*Geis, Anna /Wagner, Wolfgang (2011): “How far is it from Königsberg to Kandahar? Democratic Peace and Democratic Violence in International Relations”, in: Review of International Studies, 37(4), 1555-1577.
*Geis, Anna/Wolff, Jonas (2011): “Demokratie, Frieden und Krieg. Der “Demokratische Frieden” in der deutschsprachigen Friedens- und Konfliktforschung”, in: Peter Imbusch/ Peter Schlotter/ Simone Wisotzki (eds.): Friedens- und Konfliktforschung – ein Studienbuch, Baden-Baden: Nomos (Series Forschungsstand Politikwissenschaft), 112-138.
Daase, Christopher (2011): ‘Neue Kriege und neue Kriegführung als Herausfoderungen für die Friedenspolitik’, in: Werkner, Ines-Jacqueline/ Kronfeld-Goharani, Ulrike (eds.), The ambivalent peace. Peace research faces new challenges Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 21- 35.