Katja Freistein conducts this Research Project together with Caroline Fehl (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt)

The Project is concerned with the inequality effects of international institutions. Drawing on sociological literature about (social) inequalities, we identify processes and mechanisms within and between international institutions that (re)produce or transform global inequalities. The potential trade-off between cooperation outcomes and inequality outcomes of institutional operations is an important observation that has been largely neglected by students of global politics. We aim to generate a model for empirical research that allows for observations across institutional fields and remains open for various research perspectives and methodological approaches. 

A further dimension of a stratified global order concerns status diplomacy. In a project with Thomas Müller (Bielefeld), we study a discursive global status order in which status symbols and different forms of capital are being negotiated.

Keywords  International Institutions; Global Stratification; Inequalities; Social Mechanisms