Transnational justice and democracy
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”.