The Collaborative Research Center 597 "Transformations of the State"

The Collaborative Research Center known as "TranState", funded by the German Research Foundation, was set up at the University of Bremen and Jacobs University Bremen in January of 2003. Scholars in political science, law, sociology and economics work together to determine if, and precisely how, pressures from globalization and liberalization over the past thirty years have changed the core institutions and functions that define the classical nation state.

The first phase of research (2003-2006) at TranState, based on comparative studies of a selection of OECD countries that includes the world's most mature nation-states, revealed that globalization has indeed resulted in fundamental changes in the role of the state. But the oft-heard pronouncements that politics and the nation-state are on the fast track to extinction and multi-national companies are usurping governing powers, appear to be exaggerated. Our results indicate that the state has generally withdrawn from the supply of services such as telecommunications, electricity, postal distribution, and even some aspects of the military services, but maintains political responsibility and is still held to account for them by the citizens.

In the second phase of research at TranState (2007-2010) we are attempting to determine the precise causes and driving forces behind each of the observed changes in nation state services and institutions. In the third phase (2011-2014) we will examine how the changes are affecting the supply of the state's normative services such as security, welfare, and legitimacy.

Two volumes give an overview of the work of this 90-person undertaking: Transformations of the State? (Cambridge University Press 2005) and Transforming the Golden-Age Nation State? (Palgrave Macmillan 2007). TransState's theory of the state is explored in the essay Transformations of the State – From Monopolist to Manager of Political Authority (2008). We form part of a wider discourse in Germany on the changing nature of the state. Palgrave Macmillan has published many of our studies in its series "Transformations of the State".
 

Spokesman of the CRC 597
Prof. Dr. Stephan Leibfried
University of Bremen
Linzer Str. 9a, R 2017, 28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218 8740, Fax +49 421 218 8721
E-Mail: stephan.leibfried@sfb597.uni-bremen.de