Leviathan

Christian Democratic parties are generally considered conservative. However, this article demonstrates that throughout its history, Christian democracy has incorporated a variety of conservative ideologies. On the one hand, the movement's self-image...

The assumption of contingency is based on a formal definition of being human that justifies why there can be no ultimate reasons in the political sphere. The difficulty of radical democratic approaches in demarcating from anti-emancipatory movements...

The reply to Lucas von Ramin outlines a form of democratic critique that is not based on normative concepts but rather emphasizes the political constitution of normative orders. For a political theory that focuses on such a democratic critique, as...

This article analyzes how the integration of Indigenous knowledge into a Eurocentric understanding of science reproduces epistemic violence. It uses global climate politics as example. The distinction between Indigenous and scientific knowledge is...

To examine the emancipatory potential of citizenship approaches in relation to urban social movements, I propose the concept of „horizontal citizenship“. For this purpose, I discuss approaches of performative and urban citizenship and question...

The contribution gives an overview of Harrison White’s theory of social structures and discusses it in the context of contemporary sociological theory. White focuses on social constellations on the meso-level. These are conceptualized as networks...

Since President Trump took office in 2025, US science has been under financial and political pressure: Billions in research funding cut, academic freedom, DEI programs and international mobility and collaborations curtailed. Universities are seen as...

The aim of this article is to analyze the difficulty of implementing government digitalization projects. While the agreement mechanisms known from other cross-cutting issues work for digitalization legislation and the joint initiatives to promote...

Emotions are increasingly central to public debates about science, where they become the subjects of reflexive deliberation. Drawing on case studies, we examine how emotions feature in these debates. Our analysis highlights the social and epistemic...

What happens when cars are deprived of the space they’ve long occupied as a given? How stable is car dominance in Germany, and can real-world labs disrupt it? This study draws on the MLP model to explore these questions. Using Berlin’s...

The article uncovers media-produced knowledge about the coronavirus vaccination in Germany. The analysis of articles from both opinion-leading media and selected blogs shows, among other things, an interdependent radicalisation on the fringes, but...

Theories of radical democracy are characterized by a comprehensive understanding of contingency through a critique of norms and norm-based rule. However, it is discussed whether the abolition of oppressive conditions and the idea of...

The democratic dimension of the German debt brake remains largely undiscussed in the public debate – although its introduction, according to the argument of this article, represents significant economic partisanship of the constitution. It can be...

Explaining climate policy delay cannot be done by focusing only on what causes the limited effectiveness of public critique. The boundaries of what can be articulated in terms of critique matter, too. Often, these boundaries are attributed to the...

While physical violence is still rare in German conflicts about ecological transformation, violence talk is highly prevalent. This article analyzes the discursive construction of violence and non-violence in ecological conflicts and examines its...

The article deals with the question of how contemporary societies adjust to climate change in terms of time. Using the example of the constitutional approach to climate change, two contrasting concepts of time – risk and catastrophe – are...

In response to the accusation of a normativity deficit, representatives of radical democratic theory argue for a concept of freedom that, understood as a democratic opening logic, is intended to offer a normative reference point. However, it is an...

Socio-ecological conflicts are differentiated into conflicts of interests, of justice, of values and environmental conflicts. They result from conflicting and changing constellations in the societal areas of technology, economy, politics and...

Germany has been discussing its relation to the People’s Republic of China and its party rule for a while. Based on the German government’s China strategy, we ask for a framework of analysis and evaluation. We criticize the failure to recognize...

The development of modern communication technologies not only allows information to be spread more quickly, but also addresses and mobilizes people for a wide variety of projects. Techniques, according to an early thesis of Walther Benjamin, thus...

Metaphors of maternity have always determined the perception of nature and the environment. This article analyzes mother-nature tropes in pop music. It aims on highlighting hidden, un-negotiated aspects of today’s environmental conflicts by...

Non-fungible tokens have been known as a new commodity of the digital economy since 2021 at the latest. In this article, I argue that the NFT market reproduces hierarchical power structures instead of democratization. On the other hand, I explain in...