PhD Projects
Current PhD projects
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The Mandating of UN Peace Operations
Supervision: Prof. Dr. Manuel Fröhlich; Prof. Dr. Christian Kreuder-Sonnen
The question of whether national interests or even self-regarding motives of the United Nations itself overlay the altruistic peace concept of the organization, broadly reflects the research interest of this dissertation project.
At first glance, peace operations seem to be a functionalist service to ensure international peace and security. But the process behind their mandate is much more complex. The conflict landscape has changed significantly and the new requirements entail an adapted mandate for UN peace operations. Nevertheless, power and influence play a major role. Both the member states and the organization itself endeavor to assert their own interests, regardless of whether they pursue a normative or power-based approach.
First, the concept of multidimensional peace missions is presented by means of a quantitative large-N content analysis. This is specified using the example of resolutions of UN peace operations and possible trends in mandates regarding current crisis situations. Second, the international work that is done behind this comprehensive peacekeeping is examined. On the basis of a qualitative analysis using process tracing, it is considered which influencing factors are decisive and which causal interrelationship exists between them. Therefore, the interests of the organization itself (organization-driven) and those of its member states (member state-driven) are in focus.
This research project sheds light on the emergence, character and intention of the resolutions of multidimensional peace operations and analyzes the motivations behind the differentiation of the UN mandates. Ultimately, this project contributes to a deeper understanding of international security and development.
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Global Governance in Tough Times
Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christian Kreuder-Sonnen, Prof. Dr. Andrea Liese (University of Potsdam)
Transboundary crises profoundly reshape global governance. Yet, crises rarely confront isolated international organizations (IOs). Instead, they unfold in complex institutional environments in which multiple formal and informal institutions simultaneously claim authority, pursue policy agendas, and implement crisis responses. This raises a central puzzle: Why do some crises generate coherent and coordinated governance responses across institutions, while others produce contradictory agendas, duplication of efforts, and fragmented crisis management?
This dissertation addresses this question through a theory-building analysis of how transboundary crises affect actor constellations and inter-institutional coordination in global governance complexes. While existing scholarship on crisis governance and institutional complexity has generated important insights, it has not yet systematically theorized how crises reshape governance complexes as such. Building on these literatures, the dissertation argues that crises initially intensify institutional overlap and raise coordination costs, thereby increasing the risk of disorder. At the same time, crises trigger ordering processes through which actors attempt to restore coordination. The dissertation distinguishes three crisis-induced ordering mechanisms: deference to a focal institution, steering by an orchestrator, and horizontal coordination among implementing actors. Whether these processes succeed is expected to depend on structural and relational properties of the governance complex as well as on the interests of major powers.
Empirically, the dissertation employs a structured, focused comparison of crisis episodes in global sovereign finance, global health governance, and global food security. By conceptualizing order in crisis as the complementarity of policy agendas and the coordination of implementation, the project develops a novel theoretical framework for explaining when transboundary crises stabilize or undermine coordination in global governance complexes.
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Between Authoritarian Liberalism and the Democratic Welfare State – Shifts in the European Union’s Political-Economic Order
Supervision: Prof. Dr. Christian Kreuder-Sonnen
The dissertation examines how the European Union’s decision-making processes and its chosen economic policy have changed over the last decade. In order to capture changes to the EU’s political-economic order, EU policy-making during the euro crisis and the Covid-19 crisis are examined. For this purpose, an analytical framework is developed that serves as a basis for the analysis of various EU crisis programs. This framework allows to examine whether the EU’s decision-making processes were rather democratic or authoritarian and whether the chosen economic policy was more neoliberal or social in nature. In the second part of the thesis, a critical discourse analysis is applied to identify and highlight reasons for changes in EU policy-making. The dissertation’s contribution to the field lies in the comprehensive presentation and explanation of changes in the EU’s political-economic order over the years. Driving factors of such change are identified and can be used both to explain European Union politics and to make sense of the policy-making of other transnational organizations.