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// Personal Overview |
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Short Bio |
Since September 2005, I am a Researcher in the Department
of Social and Political Science
at the
European University Institute, Florence, Italy. I work on
a PhD in political science with the working title "The new spirit of
technocracy? Expertise and UN peace operations" supervised by Friedrich Kratochwil. Previously I was a Research
Associate at the
Institut für Sozialforschung at the Johann
Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, where I was working in a research
project on the 'micro politics of bioethical expertise institutions'
. As a Visiting Lecturer in the
Faculty
of Social Sciences (University of Frankfurt), I taught
seminars on international relations theory, security theory and
post-positivist policy studies. Prior I studied political science, sociology
and law philosophy at the Universities of Frankfurt and Lund and received a
Diplom (masters level) in political science from University of Frankfurt.
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/ Research Interests |
Keywords that describe my areas of interest are: International Relations
Theory / Sociology of the (Social) Science / Practice Theory / Critical
Security Studies / United Nations / Peace Operations / Afghanistan / Science Policy Relations
/ Organization of Expertise |
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[download cv]
[start]
[personal overview]
[PhD project]
[publications]
[useful links] |
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// PhD Project: The New Spirit of
Technocracy? Peacebuilding, Experts and the United Nations (working title) |
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Theme |
Is world politics becoming more
democratic and more participative? Students of global governance suggest
this is the case. Yet others suggest rather the opposite and see worlds
politics as drifting towards a closed technical system, in which decisions
are made by bureaucrats and technical experts in the first place. Are we on
a path towards a global democracy or a global technocracy? The project
adresses this question in investigating newly established practices of
organizing peacebuilding. Only by careful empirical investigations of in
situ practices can we gain insights on technocratic and democratic
tendencies as they unfold. Peacebuilding is an ideal case to investigate
this, as here is a regime in emergence, that is since the 1990s one of the
core domains of international activity. Reconstructing the construction of
this regime is the objective of this project. The project asks who are the
actors in peacebuilding and what are there practices.
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Relevance |
The project makes three core
contributions to the theoretical and empirical literature of International
Relations. (1) Its theoretical approach will be of interest for those
working on the development of sociological practice theories to study world
politics. (2) Its empirical results contribute to the study of global
bureaucracies and their working practice and impact in world politics. (3)
For students of UN peace operations the project is of interest concerning
the organization of peace operations through coordination boards and best
practice technology.
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Research Design |
The project follows a relative
unconventional research design. In understanding the role of the researcher
similar to that of a criminal investigator, the reader is taken on a journey
through the UN bureaucracy and the sites in and outside of the UN, in which
peacebuilding is ordered and organized. Drawing on qualitative interviews
and textual analysis the following sites are investigated in more detail:
(1) The Department of Peacekeeping Operations with a focus on the work of
the Peacekeeping Best Practice Section; (2) the Peacebuilding Commission and
the Peacebuilding Support Office; and (3) the Joint Monitoring and
Coordination Board for Afghanistan. In all three cases the different
practices of actors are carefully reconstructed and scrutinized in the light
of the question of a technocratic drift. |
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Results |
The project is currently in
its final phase. First publications are expected for Summer 2009. If you are
interested to learn more about the project, want to review draft chapters of
the project, or have questions on the results of the project, please contact
me by email. |
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[start]
[personal overview]
[PhD project]
[publications]
[useful links] |
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// Publications and Working Papers |
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Peer Review |
| / 2008 |
Büger, Christian, and Frank Gadinger. 2008. Praktisch
Gedacht! Praxistheoretischer Konstruktivismus in den Internationalen
Beziehungen. [Think Practical! practice-theoretical constructivisms in
international relations].
Zeitschrift fuer Internationale Beziehungen 15 (2):273-302.
The article discusses recent proposals for
introducing practice theory to international relations theory. It is argued
that practice theories present at least four crucial challenges to IR
theory. First, the repetitive character of practice, and
the degree of stability reached in social orders, second, materiality and
the quest of material agency, third, a moderate reflexive understanding of
scientific practice highlighting the social consequences of scientific
reasoning, and, fourth, a reconsideration of the spectrum of methods in IR.
The contribution provides an analytical summary of the turn to practice in IR, and an identification of the key challenges associated with it.[pdf]
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| / 2007 |
Büger, Christian and
Trine Villumsen. Beyond the Gap: Relevance, Fields of Practice and the
Securitizing Consequences of (Democratic Peace) Research. Journal of
International Relations and Development 10(4): 417-448. 2007. Paper
criticizes contemporary thoughts about the relation between theory and
praxis and develops an alternative based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and
Bruno Latour.
We provide some evidence by discussing the case of the interaction between peace research
and US security policy via research on the Democratic Peace.
[abstract]
[pdf]
Büger, Christian, and Frank Gadinger. 2007. Reassembling
and Dissecting: IR Practice from a Science Studies Perspective.
International Studies Perspectives 8 (1):90-110.
Paper discusses IR's disciplinary sociology
debate and shows the different ways the relation between science and policy
is conceptualized. It develops an alternative comparative research design
based on contemporary Science Studies.
[abstract]
[pdf] |
| / 2006 |
Büger, Christian, and Frank Gadinger. 2006. Große Gräben,
Brücken, Elfenbeintürme und Klöster? Die ‚Wissensgemeinschaft Internationale
Beziehungen' und die Politik - Eine kulturtheoretische Neubeschreibung.
[Gaps, Bridges, Ivory Towers and Cloisters? The knowledge community IR and
politics - Towards a new cultural vocabulary] In
Forschung und Beratung in der Wissensgesellschaft:, edited by G.
Hellmann. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Chapter questions if the contemporary metaphors used to describe IR's
relation with its environment are adequate in the light of an upcoming
knowledge society. An alternative vocabulary is developed based on actor
network theory.
[pdf]
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Other |
| / 2006 |
c.a.s.e., collective. 2006. Critical
Approaches to Security in Europe. A Networked Manifesto. Security
Dialogue 37 (4):443-487, contributor.
- A collective paper written with 25
fellows, that tries to summarize recent developments in critical security
studies and identifies future agendas.
[abstract]
[pdf]
Büger, Christian. 2006. Das Auswärtige Amt auf dem Weg zu
einer neuen Beratungskultur? Der Dialog zwischen externem Fachwissen und
Politik im Feld der Außenpolitik. [Is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the
way to a new advisory culture? On the Dialogue between Expertise and
Politics in the field of foreign policy]. In Handbuch Politikberatung, edited
by S. Falk, D. Rehfeld, A. Römmele and M. Thunert. Opladen/Wiesbaden: VS
Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. - a
discussion of recent changes in the foreign policy advisory system in
Germany and its consequences for the dialogue between science and policy.
[pdf]
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| / 2005 |
Büger, Christian, and Holger Stritzel. 2005. New European
Security Theory: Zur Emergenz eines neuen europäischen Forschungsprogramms.
[On the emergence of a new research program] Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 12 (2):117-126.
Paper provides an overview over recent
developments in European security studies (Securitization Theory, Field
Theory, Critical Security Studies, Identity, Security Expertise) and questions the German
contribution to this debate.
[pdf]
Büger, Christian .
2005. The used key is always bright? Zu den Folgen der Verwendung
sozialwissenschaftlichen Wissens in der Außenpolitik: Der Fall des "Demokratischen
Friedens". [On the consequences of using social science knowledge in
foreign policy: The case of democratic peace]. In Diskurse der Gewalt - Gewalt der Diskurse, edited by M.
Schultze, J. Meyer, D. Fricke and B. Krause. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang.
- a reflection on the usage of the
Democratic Peace theory in US Foreign policy and the effects the thesis has.
[pdf]
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earlier |
Büger, Christian. 2002. Bedeutung und Legitimation der
NATO - Spuren des Demokratischen Friedens?. [Meaning and Legitimacy of NATO
- Traces of Democratic Peace Theory?] Diploma Thesis, Department of
Social Science, Frankfurt University, Frankfurt/M. Thesis -
conducts a discourse analysis of German and
US foreign policy towards NATO enlargement and tries to trace the role the
Democratic Peace thesis had in this discourses. A model is developed how the
interlocking nature between scientific and policy discourses functions. |
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Work in progress (Comments more than welcome!) |
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Boundary Objects |
Human Security - What's the Use of it?
On Boundary Objects and the constitution of new global spaces, mimeo, under
review.
Paper argues that if we view Human Security as a boundary object, the
concept offers the opportunity to de-technocratize contemporary security
practice and foster participation in security politics. It does so by
introducing a novel perspective to IR, the symbolic-interactionist social
worlds/area theory.
[pdf]
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Coordination |
Coordination for Building
Peace - What's At Stake?, mimeo.
Paper discusses what problems of coordination in peacebuilding can be
identified. It is suggested to differentiate between different types of
coordination problems. A differentiation is made along the different root
metaphors used to describe the collective of peacebuilders (community,
network, machinery( and the different objects of coordination (functional,
spatial, regional, epistemic, private-public, principal0agent).
[pdf] |
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Practice Theory |
Culture, Terror and Practice
in International Relations: An Invitation to Practice Theory, paper
presented at the workshop "The (Re-)turn to Practice: Thinking Practices in
International Relations and Security Studies", 18-19 May 2007, European
University Institute, Florence
(with Frank Gadinger).
Paper reviews current literature from IR and social theory to investigate
how we can make use of practice theory in IR. Different strands and
vocabularies are identified and the relative values of each are discussed.
To show how practice oriented research can look like in IR the example of
terrorism is discussed.
[pdf] |
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Disciplinary Sociology |
Paradigms, Cultures and Translations: Seven Ways of Studying the Discipline
of International Relations, paper presented at the Annual Conference of
the ISA, Chicago, February 2007.
The paper provides an overview of the emerging field of a disciplinary
sociology of IR, reviews it and attempts to challenge its achievements. I
argue that current disciplinary sociology is an important mean in the
current 'intellectual crisis' of IR, but so far is not sufficiently
mobilizing the resources of sociology of science and is too narcissistic. I
sketch how a disciplinary sociology explicitly drawing on the 'Cultural
Studies of Science' (Joseph Rouse) might avoid these tendencies and help
re-directing the sociology of IR.
[pdf]
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[start]
[personal overview]
[PhD project]
[publications]
[useful links] |
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// Useful Links and Ressources |
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/ European Report on Development
2009 |
Since spring 2009 I participate
in the European Report on Development Project. The Report is a new initiative
by the European Union and some member states to conduct academic reflection
on the state of EU development policy and its contemporary challenges, as well
as to develop guidelines for these policies. The Project is based at the EUI's
Robert Schuman Center. The 2009 Report focuses on situations of fragility in
Sub Sahara Africa. For further information, and paper I have contributed to,
see the
official
webpage of the ERD.
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/ Practice Theory Workshop 2007 |
In May 2007 we hosted a
workshop on theories of practice in political science at the EUI. Please visit the documentation page for information
on papers, participants and background literature.
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/ Actor Network Theory |
Visit the Lancaster based bibliography on
Actor Network Theory. |
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/ Academic Networks |
The
webpage of the c.a.s.e collective. A page that
introduces critical security studies in Europe, contains various information
on upcoming events and recent publications. The webpage of the
strategy as practice
working group, which is a joint endeavor to use theories of practice to
study the everyday processes, practices and activities involved in the making
of strategy. |
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/ Colleagues |
Please see also the pages from
some of my friends and colleagues working in similar directions:
Frank Gadinger,
Philip Liste,
Gunther Hellmann,
Benjamin Herborth,
Trine Villumsen,
Vincent Pouliot,
Ole Jacob Sending,
Julian Junk,
Hendrik Wagenaar. |
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/ Research Networks |
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[start]
[personal overview]
[PhD project]
[publications]
[useful links] |
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