Rule and Resistance in International Politics

Research Project 1: Rule and Resistance in International Politics

The ongoing process of globalization leads not only to ever denser international and transnational relations, it also accentuates resistance against the global political order, as is evident in increasing opposition to liberal economic models, disregard for international regulations and open protest against ‘western values’, for example. This project studies the connection between transnational rule and transnational resistance. Partial orders of global politics are polycentric systems of rule that are not directly comparable to the sovereign ideal of the nation-state. Nonetheless, this machinery of power is manifest in regulatory norms, institutions and discourses, and it demands adaptation and compliance from its addressees. But how and when does resistance against this form of rule emerge? How and where is it articulated? These questions are largely unexplored. The project aims to elucidate international dissidence as the form of opposition that does not play by the rules of the system and uses unconventional forms of organization and articulation. Studying its manifestations is the key to reconstructing forms of international rule.

This research project is situated in Research Area 3 of the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”.