Research

Legitimacy of international institutions

The legitimacy of international institutions’ authority is of high relevance today because they are crucial to solve pressing societal and political challenges such as poverty, migration and climate change. At the same time, liberal norms and multilateral cooperation face increasing pressure from nationalist and populist forces.

My research addresses the normative foundations of international institutions’ legitimacy as well as specific organisations such as the UN Security Council, the European Court of Human Rights and the EU’s border regime.

The FWF funded project MultiLegit will develop a systematic account of normative legitimacy standards for different international institutions. Read more about it here.

Transnational democracy

My account of multilateral democracy proposes a transnational form of democracy that seeks to provide a third way between statism and cosmopolitanism based on a Kantian approach of autonomy. It contributes to both democratic theory and the normative debate about EU institutions. I have published papers on questions of the concept of the people, multilevel representation, and citizenship. I am currently finishing the revisions of a monograph entitled Multilateral Democracy and its Institutions: Rethinking Democratic Relations between Peoples and Individuals.

My continued research on this topic focuses in particular on challenges to democracy, such as rule of law and democratic backsliding in the EU. I will be part of the interdisciplinary research project ENROL: “Enforcing the Rule of Law: What can the European Union do to prevent rule-of-law deterioration from within?” at the University of Oslo. You can read more about the project here.