15344

WiSe 12/13: Sociology meets International Relations: the Political Sociology of International Institutions

Michael Zürn; Sebastian Bödeker

Kommentar

Dozent/in: Prof. Dr. Michael Zürn mit Sebastian Bödeker (Dipl.Pol.) Kommentartext: Over the last couple of decades we have witnessed an enormous increase in the number of international Institutions which are present in almost every issue area, including security, economics, human rights and environment. The proliferation of international institutions has involved a substantial transfer of authority from the national to the international level. Many International Organizations now fulfil a whole range of governance function, including not only decision-making but also monitoring or adjudication. At the same time as international authority has increased, global governance has become more contested. International Politics is no longer the exclusive domain of states negotiating in isolation about intergouvernmental agreements. More and more societal actors (Interest Groups, Social Movements, parties, media) are active at the global level, leading to an increase of conflict and debate about the future direction of global governance itself. The seminar will analyze and discuss these empirical developments in more detail. We will look at the development of international authority and its growing contestation over time in different policy areas: Is there an increase of contestation? Do societal interests increasingly mobilize on the international level in order to achieve preferred policy goals? Which actors are involved? What are the drivers of this process? Is there an increased awareness about the importance of international institutions? And what may be the short term and long term consequences for the future of global governance? These questions about the empirical developments also have consequences for the theory development in International Relations. They open up new ways of interdisciplinary thinking and theorizing. On the theoretical level we will, therefore, confront classical questions of international relations about global order and development with question from political sociology, broadly defined as the study of state-society relations. The import of theories and concepts from sociology provides us with a toolbox to analyze, explain and understand the ongoing process of growing contestation in international relations. In a nutshell: "Sociology meets International Relations"! Schließen