International and Transnational Relations

Project Overview

This research cluster spans the era of the World Wars, the Cold War, and the North-South divide, through to the dramatic changes of 1989/91 and on to the present day. The cluster centers, firstly, on research into international relations in a dynamically globalizing world. Particular attention is paid here to the structures of changing state systems, and processes of integration and disintegration. The Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History offers a high level of expertise in the area of basic research through its collection of central sources in Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (“Documents on the Foreign Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany”) and – in cooperation with German and international partners – with regard to the transfer of knowledge.

The cluster, secondly, looks at non-state, collective, and individual actors and networks in the fields of politics, economics, science, and society that have become major transnationally active players within the international system. Research here focuses on their influential ideas, strategies, and concepts of order as well as on their scopes of perception, experience, and expectation. The “International and Transnational Relations” Cluster looks at the developments in foreign and security policy as well as on economics, society, and culture from German, European, and global perspectives.