A. Transformations of the State: Legal Certainty in Globalized Exchange Processes

The societal mega-trends of the past four decades, such as a globalizing economy and an aging society, have challenged the understanding of the state in OECD countries. The resulting “transformations of the state” are the subject of an interdisciplinary research agenda established at the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 597 in Bremen, Germany. A total of twenty projects from political science, law, and economics explore changes of statehood which take place in two different dimensions: first, the internationalization and, second, the privatization of activities and functions which were traditionally performed by and ascribed to the democratic, constitutional and interventionist state. While the first research phase (2003-2006) aimed at founding empirical descriptions of these internationalization and privatization processes, the current phase (2007-2010) is dedicated to explaining the observed changes in statehood. Within this general framework, the authors’ research project on “New Forms of Legal Certainty in Globalized Exchange Processes” deals with changes in the institutional organization of commerce.

In spite of all efforts to harmonize private law and to facilitate judicial cooperation, the state and its legal system still appear largely unable to effectively regulate global commerce. Depending on the specifics of the involved jurisdictions, cross-border transactions face varying degrees of legal uncertainty. In sum, international trade operates under circumstances which are appropriately described under the eye-catching term of "lawlessness". At the same time, a plethora of private governance mechanisms are available to international commerce. Occasionally, such private legal services are bundled into effective private governance regimes or private legal systems, stepping in the place of national regulatory structures. Empirical research, conducted as part of the above mentioned research project during the past four years, has revealed an increasing transnationalization as a basic pattern in the governance of cross-border transactions. Triggered by the globalization of commerce, economic governance, understood as the provision of "good order and workable arrangements"
Read the Complete Contribution as a PDF Document