Promotionen und Habilitationen

Laufende Promotions- und Habilitationsprojekte (Auswahl)

Habilitationsprojekte:

• Dr. Elena Dück
  EU Foreign Policy Responses to a changing Neighborhood
  
  The increasing contestation of the liberal order in the European neighborhood as well as in some of its member states challenges the established instruments of EU foreign policy and democracy promotion efforts. The project focuses on the EU’s southern neighborhood, including, but not limited to Turkey and Tunisia. It examines the interplay of changing notions of political order within and outside of the EU, and the role of civil society in these processes. The publication based habilitation project contributes to the literature on EU foreign policy and democracy promotion and to a better understanding of the EU’s responses to changes in the global political order and their impact on the EU and its neighborhood. It also aims to develop policy recommendations.
   
• Dr. Philipp Gieg
  Kontestation in der Global Economic Governance durch Akteure des Globalen Südens (Arbeitstitel)
  
  The cumulative habilitation project investigates contestation by non-Western actors in global governance. It primarily explores how states from the Global South, but also non-Western international governmental organizations or non-state actors from the Global South challenge international norms. Building on this, the project examines the impact of these contestations on the global normative framework. Utilizing an analytical framework that integrates insights from Global Governance and Norms Research in International Relations, the project conducts sub-projects involving case studies, for example on development cooperation and infrastructure financing as well as on gender norms. This comprehensive approach aims to contribute significantly to our understanding of the dynamics at play in the ever-evolving normative landscape of global governance.
   

Promotionsprojekte:

• Steve Biedermann
  Unpacking Informality: Understanding Variations in the Design of Informal Intergovernmental Organizations (IIGOs) 
  
  Based on the observation that IIGOs such as the G20, BRICS, or the recently created Climate Club display very different institutional characteristics, this project explores the institutional variety of IIGOs and analyzes its implications. Starting with a systematic mapping of IIGO's institutional features, it first provides a dataset about IIGO's institutional designs, identifies different types of informal IOs, and discusses the relevance of specific design features. In a second step, it turns to the implications of the observed design variations, introduces the notion of governance capacity, and finds that IIGOs' exercise of informal governance is mainly shaped by the collective power of their members. In a third step, the project focuses on change in IIGOs and finds that it rests on the shared learning processes of IIGO members. This applies to modifications in IIGO mandates, membership, and their degree of institutionalization. In doing so, the project speaks to the research on the design, functions, and change of IOs and applies functional, power-based, and knowledge-based approaches to answer its main research questions. It extends our understanding of IIGOs and enables subsequent research by showing that they are no uniform entities and illustrating the significance of differences in their institutional designs.  
   
• Nea Solander
  
  Nea's dissertation focuses on the European Union's democracy promotion (EUDP) in its immediate neighborhood, encompassing 23 countries from Morocco in Northern Africa to Ukraine in Eastern Europe. The neighborhood consists of highly diverse countries marked by variations in governance quality, socio-economic progress, legacies of conflict, geographical positioning and cultural and political values. Furthermore, the neighborhood countries have substantial variations in their processes of democratization. As a common denominator,  these countries share their deep connections with one of the most influential democracy promoting actors in the global arena, the EU. However, despite the EU's efforts to safeguard democracy in its immediate neighborhood, its efforts in wider Europe are commonly regarded as inefficient. While the absence of accession conditionality is frequently cited as a reason for this perceived inefficiency, the EU possesses a range of democracy-promoting tools to influence the cost-benefit calculations faced by states considering democratic practices. This dissertation seeks to explore whether such incentives can entice democratic change in the European neighborhood. Unlike the qualitative methodologies commonly applied in analyzing democracy promotion within the neighborhood, this dissertation departs from various quantitative methods to complement existing literature, aiming to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the EU's role as a democracy-promoting actor and its impact in driving democratic transformations in its neighboring countries.
   
• Meaghan Gordon
  
  Migration and democracy present serious and sometimes contradictory security issues for the European Union, often leading to conflicting policy objectives. This research project seeks to delve into this dynamic by exploring how these elements interact in two less prioritised regions in migration studies: Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. Both areas face significant migration challenges which intersect with the EU’s interests in migration management through border externalisation as well as its regional security policy of democracy promotion. This is even more relevant at a point where both regions have increased security importance due to the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine. This research will explore the interplay of these elements over three different dimensions, first it will examine and map migration and democracy as competing EU policy objectives in the chosen regions. Second, it will seek to quantify any effects of migration security prioritisation on democracy promotion. Lastly, it will seek to understand repercussions for the EU’s credibility as a normative power to diffuse or spread democratic reform. Building on a constructivist ontology/epistemology, research will be split into three papers and incorporate qualitative case study, textual, archival and interview data with quantitative data from relevant statistical sources and survey datasets. Applying a mixed methods approach, data analysis will include thematic and content analysis, regression analysis and time series analysis methods. Once findings are integrated, this approach will provide a holistic and in-depth understanding of the impact EU migration policy has on democracy promotion in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans.