Research Project A1 serves as an umbrella project spanning the individual projects that make up the SFB 700. Its purpose is to bring together research of the different projects and to integrate their results. A1 aims to build on the findings of the various projects and identify more general patterns while also further developing the concept of governance. To this end, A1 coordinates the three interdisciplinary working groups on  governance, spaces of governance, and normative questions (LINK!). During the second funding period of the SFB 700, project A1 focuses mainly on three research areas:

1. Analysis of the transferability of western forms of governance to areas of limited statehood. What kinds of transfer occur? How and under what conditions is (and was) transfer possible? Who are the agents of transfer? How does the transfer process shape its content? How do diffusion processes work? Which dynamics of adaption, resistance, and translation can be found?

2. Assessment of the normative implications of these processes (transfer, adaption, etc). For instance, is the conditionality of international organizations’ development aid legitimate? What are the normative implications of western legal experts (co-)writing the Afghan or Iraqi constitution?

3. Stocktaking and evaluation of existing political science data bases and failed states indices in order to integrate them into a meta-database framework. It is essential to differentiate systematically between indicators of governance and indicators of statehood, which normally does not take place.