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In the last couple of years, Critical Realism has established itself as an alone-standing intellectual movement in International Relations (IR). It not only seeks to challenge the idea of the middle ground on which most of the more moderate versions of constructivist thought base their convictions, but it also seeks to provide own answers to basic scientific problems around the relationship between facts and values, causation and causality, or agents and structure. If one would want to characterise Critical Realist positions, one has to point to their attempted resurrection of ontology. Taking inspiration, in particular, from Bhaskar's Possibility of Naturalism and subsequent works, different strands of Critical Realism are tied together in their conviction that epistemology has had too much influence on scientific debates ever since Kant changed the structure of philosophical reasoning by asking how objects were determined by concepts rather than the other way round. The prevalent focus on epistemological questions is not only biased and asks the wrong questions, but it starts from false premises in the first place, as Wight and Patomäki once put it: every theory of knowledge must also logically presuppose a theory of what the world is like (ontology) for knowledge (epistemology) to be possible.

The idea that our world is not just a mixture of unrelated incidents but shows some intelligible characteristics is probably the starting point of every analysis in International Relations (IR). We assume that what happens shows structure and significant connections of processes and flows. Unfortunately, opinions diverge soon thereafter: how does that assumed structure relate to our minds? Is it independent of our theories, cultural presuppositions, or opinions? What kind of objectivity can we hope for? Critical realists and radical constructivists seem to entertain different ideas about what the 'ontological status of reality' is and whether and how we can know about it. An intellectual encounter between Colin Wight and Friedrich Kratochwil has shown to what extent related questions about intersubjectivity, reference, and meaning touch upon questions aboutthe logos. Interestingly enough, both agree that the 'classic' bivalent logic provides only an insufficient grounding for an adequate understanding of the world. Yet both are silent on providing reasons why this is the case. Hence, it might well be that constructivists and critical realists actually do share some reservation or critique.

In the current attempt to develop a Global Political Sociology, the concept of functional differentiation increasingly attracts attention. Functional differentiation seems to promise an avenue to describe global processes beyond a methodological nationalism. In this contribution I argue that while we have already made some progress in describing the spatial implications of functional differentiation, less effort has been spent on the temporal side of the story. This contribution highlights this aspect and points to shifting temporalities in the context of finance and international law. This perspective suggests that many "governance problems" might be due to the clash of different temporalities co-existing in world society. Adapted from the source document.

Sowohl die eigenmittelbezogene als auch die kapitalmarktrechtliche Regulierung von Finanzderivaten haben in der Vergangenheit falsche Anreize gesetzt. Der Autor betrachtet vor diesem Hintergrund grenzüberschreitende OTC-Derivateverträge, bestimmt deren wechselwirkende Risiken ("Strukturrisiko") und den aufsichtsrechtlichen Umgang damit. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Erörterung der Risiken, die durch die Verwendung von Standard-Rahmenverträgen (ISDA oder DRV) entstehen, wenn es zur Anwendung konfligierender Rechtssysteme kommt. Unter Berücksichtigung des Strukturrisikos wird das Verhältnis der Marktteilnehmer untereinander, das häufig durch unterschiedlich ausgeprägte Expertise im Umgang mit Finanzderivaten geprägt ist ("strukturelles Ungleichgewicht"), betrachtet. Der Autor löst das strukturelle Ungleichgewicht auf, indem er die institutionelle, aufsichtsrechtliche Kompetenz der Marktteilnehmer im Rahmen des "Modells typisierter Information" fruchtbar macht. Der Autor ist Rechtsanwalt in Frankfurt am Main sowie Lehrbeauftragter an der GGS - German Graduate School of Management and Law in Heilbronn

AbstractInternational law has changed significantly since the end of the Cold War. As long as the international was thought to be populated by sovereign states predominantly, international law was conceived of as a means for peaceful dispute settlement. That is: the reference to state sovereignty not only divided public from private international law, but structured most of public international law itself; from the very definition of and associated rights and duties to the attribution of responsibility. With the emergence of the post-national constellation, a reduction of law to questions of states' practices is increasingly problematic. At the same time, the post-national constellation denotes more than just a structural shift in the world polity. It challenges established dogmas rooted in an individualistic philosophy of science and thereby calls for a different understanding of how the world is (made) known. What uncertainty has to offer is the provision of a different vocabulary detached from the state through which we can reconsider some changes in international law.

Forum article on international political sociology and phenomenology focuses on the problem of intersubjectivity within international relations. Adapted from the source document.

While security and finance are certainly different social spheres, the fact that we can detect similar shifts in both points to the existence of something that precedes these 'realities'. If finance and security are said to be different, intertwined and related, the question then arises as to what it is that constitutes the differences and similarities between them. This article argues that further inquiry into the boundary between the two leads us to understand processes of securitization and financialization as constitutive processes by which actors, behaviours, practices or communications are considered to be economic or securitized. To capture processes of financialization, the article draws on systems theory in general and the concept of functional differentiation in particular.