Thomas Gehring (political scientist)

Thomas Gehring (born June 9, 1957 in Kiel ) is a political scientist at the Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg and primarily deals with European and environmental policy.

biography

After graduating from high school in the summer of 1976 and an educational trip by bicycle through the Middle East and parts of Africa, Gehring first completed a trade training as a concrete and reinforced concrete constructor .

From 1981 he studied political science , Islamic studies and journalism at the Free University in Berlin . After a three-month internship at the United Nations Secretariat in New York City , he graduated in Political Science with an additional subject in Islamic Studies in the Political Science Department of the Free University of Berlin. He wrote his diploma thesis together with Markus Jachtenfuchs on liability and the environment: conflicts of interest in international space, nuclear and maritime law .

In 1992 he received his doctorate from the Free University of Berlin on Dynamic International Regimes: Sectorally Integrated Normative Systems . In September 1995, Thomas Gehring went to the Robert Schuman Center of the European University Institute in Florence as a Jean Monnet Fellow for one year . Since 1998 he has been a member of the European Union's Concerted Action Network on the Effectiveness of International Environmental Agreements .

In 1999 he completed his habilitation at the Free University of Berlin and has been Professor of Political Science, especially “International Politics”, at the Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg since April 1, 2000 . Since 2006 he has held the chair of "International Relations" and since 2009 has also been the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences.

European Union

plant

In the work “The European Union as a Complex International Organization. How social order arises through communication and decisions ”, the author explores the question of how things are B. the EU succeeds in integrating governmental and non-governmental action into the social order and what questions arise from it. A theory of international institutions shows that it is always about communication and decision-making processes. Orientation problems are solved by international institutions, which in turn creates new decision-making processes. The problem with this is that the individual members of these international institutions would lose influence. Gehring also investigates this problem in the project “The European Union as an International Institution”, which began in 1995. It examines how the EU is gaining autonomy vis-à-vis its member states and what consequences this results in for decisions made within the framework of the EU.

Projects

In addition to the project mentioned above, Gehring is the initiator of two other projects.

The project “Rationality through Process. The restriction of the possibilities for the effective representation of particular interests through the functional differentiation of decision-making processes in the European Union “deals with the question of the extent to which selected EU decision-making processes in the area of ​​internal market regulation have an impact on the decisions made. It will be examined in detail whether processes have developed within the EU that systematically produce results oriented towards the common good; What mechanisms of action generate these results and to what extent a link to cross-case content specifications plays a role here.

In his latest project “Administrative Decisions in International Institutions: Using Rules and Deliberation to Make Decisions Compatible with the Common Good?” Aims to clarify whether and on the basis of which social mechanisms complex decision-making processes systematically lead to results that are more oriented towards the common good. It is assumed here that international regimes have differentiated decision-making processes in which many different actors are involved. To this end, international systems are designed as decision-making systems that assign opportunities for action to the state and non-state actors involved.

Environmental policy

plant

In the paper from 1988 (Volume 7 of the series “Völkerrecht und Internationale Politik”), Gehring deals with liability for environmental damage in space, nuclear and maritime law. So far, states have tried to make the risk-creating industry liable (e.g. through oil liability funds) and only assume liability under international law if this serves to enforce their interests (e.g. in the case of space travel or nuclear energy).

Criticism of the WEO

Together with Sebastian Oberthür, Gehring argues in the article “Reform of International Environmental Policy: An Institutionalist Critique of the Proposal for a World Environment Organization” against the establishment of such a world environmental organization (WEO). According to the authors, such a WEO does nothing to improve environmental policy, since environmental policy is determined by international agreements, against which a WEO is anyway powerless. An improvement in international environmental policy can only be achieved through institutional changes aimed at a reorganization of the decision-making processes and / or institutional responsibilities.

Works

• together with Markus Jachtenfuchs: Liability and the environment: Conflicts of interest in international space, nuclear and Maritime law. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Lang 1988 ISBN 3-631-40341-0
• Dynamic international regimes: institutions for international environmental governance. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Lang 1994 (Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 1992) ISBN 3-631-47631-0
• together with Sebastian Oberthür (ed.): International environmental regime: environmental protection through negotiations and contracts. Opladen: Leske and Budrich 1997 ISBN 3-8100-1702-7
• The European Union as a complex international organization: how communication and decision create social order. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2002 (partly also: Berlin, FU, Habil.-Schr., 1999) ISBN 3-7890-7877-8
• Rationality through procedures in the European Union: European drug approval and standardization of technical goods. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2005 ISBN 3-8329-1170-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Thomas Gehring in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of the institute at the University of Bamberg
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Gehring at the University of Bamberg