International Institutions

Is it possible for norms to collapse? Or do they simply change in form over time? These questions have garnered in­creasing attention in recent years. The liberal opti­mism from the 1990s, which assumed that fun­damental norms had established themselves around the globe following the end of the Cold War, have seen them­selves lastingly thrown into doubt in recent years. Even the most basic human rights norms have not been spared from attacks: con­flict repeatedly erupts over international norms such as the ban on torture or the in­ternational responsibility to protect.

Research on the effects that conflict has on the ro­bustness of norms, and whether contestation leads to their strengthening or weakening, has been equally con­tested as the norms themselves. While one theory posits that con­testation intrinsically weakens norms, a competing theory identifies a normative force behind contestation that can strengthen the validity of norms through their continuous actu­alization. The research project “Norm Disputes: Contestation and Norm Robustness” in­vestigated which conditions lead norms to either be weakened or strengthened. The pro­ject followed how processes of contestation unfold for four sets of highly dis­puted norms (the international responsibility to protect, the International Criminal Court, the ban on tor­ture, the ban on commercial whaling) and con­trasted them with two cases in which norms completely eroded (slavery and privateering).

Project duration: July 2015 – June 2018

International insti­tutions are in crisis. In addition to states, criticism comes in particular from civil society actors. The world economic organ­izations in particular, which have repeatedly come into the focus of civil society protests since the 1990s, have consistently reacted by developing dialogue forums.

These forums are supposed to enable civil society repre­sentatives to enter into a direct exchange with repre­sentatives of the criticized institutions. Dialogue forums thus aim to take up civil society criticism and restore the questioned legit­imacy of inter­national organisations. Initially celebrated as the dawn of a new era in dealing with civil society criticism, these forums are now strongly criticised and accused of failure.

However, research has so far barely dealt with the dialogue forums of inter­national institutions explicitly. The project "Legitimacy Policy through Dialogue Forums" therefore focuses on dialogue forums and examines whether criticism of the opening of inter­national organisations and the creation of dialogue forums is justified. To this end, the design and practice of dialogue forums of different institutions will be examined over time and in comparison. In addition, research will be conducted into the reasons why dialogue forums do not fulfil the expectations placed in them.

The empirical work focuses on the Civil Society Policy Forum, the joint dialogue forum of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Public Forum, as well as the civil society Engagement Groups of the G20 and the G7.

The project has a duration of four years and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The Leibniz Research Alliance “Crises in a Globalised World” was founded in 2013 and brought to­gether 24 Leibniz institutions from four sections. PRIF was in charge of ma­naging and coordinating the Leibniz Research Alliance. Klaus Dieter Wolf has chaired the alliance since it’s founding and, with approval from all members of the steering committee, Nicole Deitelhoff assumed the role of chair as of April 2016. PRIF also was in charge of co­ordinating the alliance, managed last by Stefan Kroll. The re­search alliance was financed by member­ship fees from the member institutes as well as by funding from the Leibniz Senate Strategic Committee (SAS).

The alliance used a trans­disciplinary approach to investigate the mechanisms behind crises and their dynamics, with a focus on eco­nomic and financial, humanitarian, environ­mental and socio-political crises. Our researchers analyzed the on­going global delimitation of crises phenomena in all of these areas, and in­vestigated the connections among these phenomena in various policy areas. They also investigated the ways in which different forms of gover­nance can have an influence on effectively dealing with crises. By applying systematic analyses, this research under­taking aimed to generate know­ledge for practical applications that may serve to evaluate and deal with existent threats as well as to re­cognize developments that may culmi­nate in a crisis early on. PRIF was in charge of the working groups for humani­tarian crises and investigating crises of political orders. PRIF was also en­gaged in a multidisciplinary Handbook on crisis research, which includes re­search of the research alliance and was published in 2019.

Project duration: April 2013 – May 2020

A fundamental power asymmetry can be identified in the global M+E industry: While OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) in particular do­minate global value chains across national borders, transnational action competencies of local workers’ re­presentatives are usually only weakly developed (Ludwig & Simon 2019). Collective em­ployee representation bodies appear to be ill-prepared for the further differentiation of global value chains – even though workers in the M+E industry are under great pressure in view of particularly high substitution and outsourcing potentials. Never­theless, innovative – and so far largely unexplored (Simon 2021) – approaches to transnational networking of local workers’ interest groups in the glo­balized M+E industry can be identified in recent times. One such approach – the NWI of IG Metall – is to be accompa­nied in the pilot project by participant observation.

Three specific questions guided the case studies :

1. What are the effects of the global transformation of the M+E industry in the lo­cal contexts of the case studies? What are the employment struc­tures of the transnational/local value chains? What strategies are the actors pursuing to shape the transformation?
2. What are the approaches, potentials and challenges for trans­national networking of company actors? To what extent do they differ in a trans­national comparison?
3. What is the significance of local, regional, na­tional, and global employee representatives (trade unions, works councils, others) in the respective co­operation projects? What differences can be identified in the transnational comparison in the cooperation projects studied (formal to institutional: e.g. EWCs, global framework agreements; or ‘only’ in­formal exchange of information)?

Following on from relevant preliminary work by the project leader (Ludwig/Simon, 2017, 2019; Simon 2021), the pilot study was primarily de­signed as participatory-observational research. In order to apply this method, the project team intensively accompanied the NWI located in the Head Quarters of the IG Metall in Frankfurt, and created 2–3 case studies (Morocco; Mexico; South Africa).

Project duration: Until July 2024