Justifying Inequality as Equality: Germany and the Reform of Voting Weights in the Council of the European Union

ABSTRACT

Weighted voting institutionalises inequality in international organisations. How is it possible that states accept rules that formally privilege some over others even though this contradicts the sovereign equality of states and norms of democratic decision-making? This contribution to a special issue about global stratification shows that arguments about equality can actually serve to justify inequality in international institutions. This can be seen in moves by the German government to justify its proposals for a reform of voting in the Council of the European Union (1995–2008). Successive German governments focused on arguments about democracy based on the equality of states and of citizens to justify their push for a more privileged position for Germany in the Council. Efficiency also figured as a justification but was clearly less prominent.     

German Arms Exports: Between Normative Aspirations and Political Reality

Deciding on arms exports is a delicate matter in western democracies. Potential economic and security gains have to be weighed against normative and security concerns. This article explores how this tension is solved in Germany, a country that holds strong moral aspirations but at the same time lists among the top arms exporting nations worldwide. Using a newly compiled dataset, we quantitatively analyse German exports of major conventional weapons (MCWs) from 1992 to 2013. Our statistical findings do not support the claim that the human rights situation in recipient countries plays an important role for German arms export decisions. Our two-stage model therefore supports a trading state rather than civilian power reading of Germany, at least when it comes to arms export practices.     

The Role of University Spinout Companies in an Emerging Technology: The Case of Nanotechnology

This study examines the role of university spin-out (USO) companies in the emergence of a new technology, in our case nanotechnology. Three unique data-sets based on patents, co-publications, and firm data pertaining to the unfolding field of nanotechnology in the UK were developed. Subsequent analysis suggests that USOs play an important though not a dominant role. Furthermore, the results indicate that USOs in certain subfields of nanotechnology do not have a strong and growing proprietary technology base, raising questions about the commercial sustainability of these ventures. Overall, we observed that USOs are important contributors to technological change in specific subfields of nanotechnology, but that other actors, notably, large firms and (non-university affiliated) new technology-based firms are even more significant agents of technological change.     

Symposium: The Contribution of Laclau’s Discourse Theory to International Relations and International Political EconomyIntroduction

This symposium explores the value of Poststructuralist (or Political) Discourse Theory (PDT) for the analysis of world politics. PDT was originally developed by the late Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau, in early works together with Chantal Mouffe, and has entered the margins of International Relations (IR) in recent years, mainly by bringing in poststructuralist concepts that had previously been ignored by the more critical strands of theorizing. Against this background, the introduction (1) discusses the disconnect between PDT and research on world politics, primarily in IR, as well as PDT’s potential contribution, (2) provides an overview of PDT’s central theoretical tenets, in particular with respect to its social ontology and its theoretical concept of change, and (3) introduces the contributions to the symposium.     

Discursive Dislocation: Toward a Poststructuralist Theory of Crisis in Global Politics

In the discipline of International Relations (IR) and beyond, the concept of crisis is essentially contested, and one specific usage, it seems, is called into question by alternative uses of the term. The article develops the argument that crisis must not be misunderstood as exogenous to social construction; indeed, the very notion of crisis only makes sense if understood as produced entirely in what we will later specify as discourse. In this way, it can be illustrated how allegedly objective crises are expressions of particular configurations of social forms of power. The discourse theoretical notion of dislocation will be introduced in order to develop an understanding of crisis as a qualitative as well as constitutive feature of the social crisis. Crisis can in this sense be seen as a permanent attribute of the social, not some transitory condition that appears from time to time.