Closely connected to the pluralism of liberalism is the need to understand the changing nature of the global. The research group is centrally concerned with understanding the historical process by which Western or European international society became global and the implications for the world in which we now live. Much of what is taken to be the modern liberal international order was not created by US or western hegemony; rather it emerged out of the competition, social transformations and revolutionary upheavals that took place across the non-Western world during the struggles against western dominance and the conflicts of the Cold War years. The research group is therefore concerned with contestations in the making of modern global international society during the period of decolonization and of the emergence of what came to be call the Third World and Global South; with the way in which a wide range of liberal languages and liberal claims about global order emerged, evolved and came into conflict in this period, viewed both from the perspective of western states and those resisting western dominance, and embodied in intellectual visions, political movements and international institutional practices; and with on-going contestations over the nature of international and global order visible in the international relations of developing and emerging states in the post-colonial world, and over possible alternative futures, liberal and non-liberal.

This part of the Einstein Research Group is led by Professor Andrew Hurrell.

Money, Expertise, and other Means of Domination: Philanthropic Foundation and the Global Spread of Some Liberal Ideas

A second part of the Einstein Research Group is being carried out by Dr Álvaro Morcillo. The main goal of this project is to understand whether human rights activism was “endemic” to the Global South or whether this activism resulted from the programs for human rights promotion initiated by foreign donors like the Ford Foundation in the late 1970s. To achieve this goal, the project raises questions such as: when do donors create rather than merely collaborate with activist organizations? Afterward, when does continued donor support transform a local human rights organization from being dominated by the ideal interests of activists to one tainted by the material ones of its employees? What part did carriers [Träger] like donors’ officers, who learned their ropes in South American and were then posted to field offices in Africa and Asia, play in the worldwide expansion of human rights activism? Among the means that donors use to support human rights, i.e. money and expertise, are some more prone than others to cause resistance rather than buttress domination? And finally, why have donors like Ford and Open Society maintained a core element of the liberal script like human rights in their international programs? In brief, to study human rights promotion and local resistance thereto will reveal under which condition this aspect of the liberal script has been adopted or contested as a foreign cultural imposition.

Global International Society and the Liberal Script through the Lens of Latin America

This part of the work of the Einstein research group takes some of the principal themes of the SCRIPTS programme and considers them through the lens or prism of Latin America. This builds directly on the current work of Dr Álvaro Morcillo (described above) and on previous work by Professor Andrew Hurrell on the international relations of the Americas and, in particular, of Brazil. The goal is to form a bridge between this specific region of the world and the broader concerns of the SCRIPTS Cluster. The region, after all, connects directly and in analytically important ways to many questions about a liberal international order. While not being part of the wealthy Western core, Latin American countries have a longer history of independence than other parts of the Global South. It is within this region that core political and normative claims were raised that only later does Western liberalism take to be self-evident, for example to do with international law, sovereign equality and non-intervention; with regionalism and regional institutions, with race and claims for racial equality, and with understandings of capitalism and economic development. Being part of, but distinct from, many understandings of the ‘West’ also raises important methodological questions both about how liberal ideas travel and about how different liberal scripts might be identified and compared. This part of the research programme involves the convening of two major workshops and extensive international collaboration.