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Transnational civil society networks have become increasingly important democratizing actors in global politics. Still, the exploration of democracy in such networks remains conceptually and methodologically challenging. Practice theory provides a framework to study democracy as routinized performances even in contexts of fluid boundaries, temporal relations and a diffuse constituency. The author attempts to understand how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and their structural environments.During recent decades, the arenas of political decision-making have increasingly shifted from national governments to intergovernmental and transnational political forums. At the same time, the number and relevance of non-state actors in international politics is steadily growing. These trends have led political scientists to study and theorize about new forms of democracy beyond the national political arenas (Archibugi 2004, Bexell et al. 2010, Nasström 2010). However, democracy beyond the nation state is difficult to conceptualize with the idea of an institutionalized democracy within the borders of nation-states. Therefore, many political scientists emphasize the role of civil society actors as a cure for the democratic deficit in inter-national politics (Steffek & Nanz 2008). Yet, normative and empirical problems arise over the extent of access, selection and role of civil society actors in international organizations (Tallberg et al. 2013). Furthermore, the normative relevance of transnational civil society actors makes it necessary to study their own democratic legitimacy.While international organizations are mostly institutionalized and hierarchical governing bodies, the ever growing diffuse conglomerate of non-state actors is characterized by fluid structures, blurry boundaries and a multi-level setting of interaction (Keck & Sikkink 1998). Thus, in studying democratic practice in transnational civil society networks, we must ask: How institutionalized does ...

Wer darf für wen jenseits des Staates sprechen, und welche Identitäten werden durch dieses Sprechen erst angeboten und erzeugt? Auch wenn die theoretische wie praktische Relevanz dieser Fragen klar zu ersehen ist, bergen sie eine Reihe von Herausforderungen. Wir möchten in einer Replik auf eine 2020 erschienene Debatte Verweise auf sehr relevante wie schwierige Fragen zu transnationaler Repräsentation mit der These verbinden, dass die feministische Beschäftigung mit transnationaler Repräsentation exemplarisch Ansätze zur Verbindung von normativer und empirischer Forschung zur Verfügung stellt. Bedauerlicherweise wurde die feministische Repräsentationstheorie und die Inspiration, die von ihr ausgeht, in der Debatte nicht beachtet. Über eine fokussierte Besprechung der Beiträge der Internationalen Beziehungen und der Politischen Theorie zeigen wir, dass feministische Interventionen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Theorie und Praxis stetige Kritik an aufkommenden Ungleichheiten und Identitätskonstruktionen leisten. Darin schließlich tragen sie zu einer Verunsicherung von theoretischen Vorannahmen bei, die für eine empirisch informierte Politische Theorie entscheidend ist. ; Who is allowed to speak for whom beyond the state, and which identities are offered and created by this act of speaking? The theoretical and practical relevance of these questions is clear, but the questions imply a number of challenges. In a response to a debate published in 2020, we zoom in on questions of transnational representation before we argue that feminist studies of transnational representation provide critical examples for how to address transnational representation through approaches that combine normative and empirical research. Feminist representation theory and the inspiration that can be derived from it have been left out of the debate. Hence, and through a focused discussion of the contributions of international relations and political theory, we show that feminist interventions bridge theory and practice and provide constant ...