Institute for Development and Peace

Analysing processes and effects of globalisation, for instance climate change, transnational migration and most recently the global financial crisis, plays a central role in the research work of INEF. Such developments make it necessary for national and international policies to be adapted constantly and require new forms of governance. INEF traces these processes of change in its highly regarded publication series "Globale Trends", which it co-edits with the Peace and Development Foundation (Stiftung Entwicklung und Frieden, SEF). Every two to three years, political, economic, social and ecological developments are analysed in this book. The authors not only discuss the state of global governance but also map out perspectives for future developments. The latest issue, "Globale Trends 2010", analyses emerging trends "in the Shadow of the World Financial Crisis" which influence international politics in the long term and quite often entail new modes of problem solving.
In the search for such new approaches, more and more private actors have been included in international policy-making. Since the second half of the 1990s, a growing number of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) has become involved in a wide range of sectors such as health, water/environment and food. These are thematically focussed initiatives in which public and private actors engage in joint decision-making in an effort to address specific problems. What is interesting, however, is that PPPs also contribute to the further development of norms and standards. INEF concentrates in particular on the role of private foundations and their influence in shaping global health politics.
The "Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development" project, financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, BMZ), focuses on another type of private actor - companies. It aims to support companies in realising their human rights responsibilities and in linking their actions more closely to processes of sustainable development. To do this, the project analyses the possibilities of improving the use of existing instruments in international law to protect human rights. At the same time, it looks at how state instruments can be used more effectively to ensure corporate compliance with human rights standards, and develops approaches for enhancing the outreach of voluntary instruments and initiatives for corporate human rights responsibility in developing countries.
The role of private actors is central to a further collaborative project between European universities and civil society organisations. The overall objective of the "International Civil Society Forum on Conflicts" (INFOCON) project is to create a better understanding of how transnational communities and the civil society organisations representing them can contribute to preventing and resolving conflicts in Europe and in their regions of origin. Funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme, this 3-year research project was launched in April 2008. INEF is in charge of a case study on Berlin. Further case studies are being conducted in parallel on Amsterdam, Brussels and London. The project takes an innovative approach by involving not only the participating universities at all its stages but also civil society organisations, thus ensuring that they benefit directly from the findings in their work.
Traditionally, social sciences differentiate between public and non-governmental actors. However, in fragile states and post-war societies, political formations can often be observed which do not fall into either category. In these hybrid political orders, political control is exerted by a mixture of institutions and actors, public as well as informal. This runs counter to our ideal of the state as supreme authority, which is the lynchpin for the state-building activities of the international community. The question of how these hybrid systems develop and operate is still unsolved and remains both extremely topical and highly relevant to policy practice.
Since 2007, research on "Hybrid political orders in fragile states" has been conducted in close cooperation with the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (ACPACS, University of Queensland). This work is a follow-up to a project on local political order in Somalia and Afghanistan in 2005-2006, funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF). In this context, INEF also cooperated with the Crisis States Programme of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). This collaboration has now been extended to include the role of regional organisations in early-warning systems and in stabilising crisis regions. INEF contributes its experience in Africa and South Asia, while the ACPACS team has a wealth of expertise in various countries in the South Pacific. Thanks to financial support from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, DAAD) and the "Group of Eight", a consortium of the leading Australian universities, INEF and ACPACS researchers will have the opportunity to spend alternate research periods in Australia and Germany. These visits are intended to give the respective researchers an opportunity to systematically analyse the empirical material of both research groups, in part also to gain an insight into the legitimacy of these hybrid formations.