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Research Focus: The Liberal Script Under Pressure

The world has experienced a series of political shocks in the last two decades despite huge economic and social achievements that range from a decreasing number of interstate wars to a delcine of absolute poverty in many parts of the world.

Through its research programme, SCRIPTS has set out to investigate the puzzle of an increasing number and and frequency of contestations of the liberal script.

SCRIPTS Research Units (RU)

RU Borders

Borders determine who belongs to a group or society and who can be legitimately excluded. The liberal script grants a nation-state control over its borders while also limiting the extent to which it can be exercised. This control stands in an uneasy relationship with ideas of personal and economic freedom and mobility and, generally, universal human rights.

RU Orders

Orders refer to the institutional core of the liberal script, which enables political and social coordination within a given society. This RU addresses orders as principles and institutional arrangements that structure expectations and practice in social and political areas. These arrangements have an impact on social and political areas, such as the making of binding rules, policing and jurisprudence, economic exchange, and gender relations.

RU (Re-)Allocation

The liberal script involves rules and goals for the (re-)allocation of goods and life chances in the face of social and material scarcities. The free market is assigned as the key mechanism of (re-)allocation, which results in uneven outcomes. The welfare states attempt to reduce these. Against this background, the RU (Re-)Allocation investigates contestations, causes and consequences of unequal market outcomes and how they combine with other allocation pressures on the liberal script.

RU Temporality

Understandings of temporality and of progress provide information on time scales, imaginations of transience and eternity, and the reproduction of social structure. Time, in the liberal view, moves linearly toward a future of progress, and it presumes that rational actors optimally allocate time to market and non-market activities. The RU Temporality investigates challenges to the liberal notion of time and alternative notions of temporal horizons.

Cluster Professorships

Four professorships were established with SCRIPTS funding to strengthen the SCRIPTS-related disciplines through the duration of the project and beyond. Each of these positions complements the expertise of the Principal Investigators in research fields, such as Islam in Europe, that are of increasing importance in international research. Thus, the interconnection among SCRIPTS, its affiliated universities, and participating institutions is enhanced, while also anchoring the corresponding research topics within academic scholarship.

Junior Research Groups

Two Junior Research Groups (JRG) at SCRIPTS are dedicated to help young scholars make their way to a tenured position in the longer term. Each group is headed by a postdoc leader (postdoctoral researcher) assisted by two doctoral researchers.

Theory Network

The Theory Network is a Cross-Cutting Work Unit that cuts across the four topical Research Units of Borders, Orders, (Re-)Allocation, and Temporalities to foster interdisciplinary research. The network’s overall responsibility lies in strengthening the ties between these four Research Units.

Data and Methodology Center

SCRIPTS is a research consortium that builds on the systematic collaboration of scholars from disciplines across the social sciences, area studies, and humanities. This methodological pluralism and critical reflection about data and methods is one of the features, and strengths, of SCRIPTS.