GRADE Center Normative Orders

The Research Centre Normative Orders and its associated research projects pursue the changes in orders and ideas of order in an interdisciplinary manner and in close connection with normative and empirical analyses. The respective research ranges from new orders of digitality to questions of political trust (as part of the Hessian cluster initiative “ConTrust”), the democracy of the future, social cohesion, international cooperation and global or climate justice. In the context of the Frankfurt location of the “Research Institute for Social Cohesion”, the social struggles for recognition and participation and the productive power that can arise from such social and political conflicts are being researched in particular.

The research centre “Normative Orders” is at the heart of the profile area “Global Orders and Societal Transformations” ( Orders and Transformations for short), which deals with societal orders and structures and their upheavals. Upheavals occur when existing structures can no longer cope with changed circumstances. This can be seen in such diverse areas as man-made climate change, financial crises, the coronavirus pandemic, growing social inequality and the global rise of right-wing populism, which is changing democratic orders, migration and the associated challenges, as well as the persistent inequalities between the sexes. The war in Ukraine will also permanently change the international order. The research network examines the normative ideas that play a role in such processes and conflicts. The foundations of politics and law are analyzed from the perspectives of social sciences, law, economics and the humanities.