Call for Papers: What does Transnationalisation do with Sovereignty and the State? (ECPR Bordeaux, 4-7 Sep 2013)

What does Transnationalisation do with Sovereignty and the State? Normative Implications and Reconfigurations of Politics 
at ECPR General Conference 2013 in Bordeaux (Deadline for Paper Proposals: 1st February 2013)

Transnationalization has become a buzz word in research on globalization in political science and neighboring disciplines. Legal scholars debate the transnationalization of law and the emergence of legal arrangements alongside and beyond international law. Similarly, sociologists and historians increasingly emphasize the role of transnational processes in the (re-) shaping of social order.

Most of these approaches define the concept of transnationalization in opposition to state-driven international relations. By the concept of transnationalization they refer to and describe an ever-expanding process in which actors other than states generate and become involved in forms of social organization across and beyond territorial boundaries. In view of this process, scholars across the disciplines raise questions about the present and future of the concept of sovereignty and the national territorial state. While some argue that transnationalization amounts to an erosion of the state and of (state or national) sovereignty, others hold that the function and substance of the state and of sovereignty are altered or disaggregated by this process, but not effaced.

In this panel we wish to take up this debate and discuss the complex relation between sovereignty and transnationalization in an interdisciplinary setting. We assume that a better grasp of the “transnational” and its implications necessitates trans-disciplinary engagement. We wish to bring together scholars from different disciplines for the purpose of debating the question of how the interplay between transnationalization and sovereignty can be conceptualized in historical, sociological, legal and political terms and with what results. To what extent are foundations of modern political normativity renegotiated and contested in the process of transnationalization and how are political concepts (trans-) formed and (re-) appraised in the debate on it? How does this reshape the imaginary of politics?

Panel Chair: Christian Volk, University of Trier

Panel Co-Chair: Friederike Kuntz, University of Trier

Panel Discussant: Hauke Brunkhorst, Flensburg/ Oslo University College

Further information on the conference, the call for papers, and submission process on http://new.ecprnet.eu/Conferences/General/2013_Bordeaux/Default.aspx