Research Training Group World Politics RTG 2225

My research project deals with the delegitimization of empire in world politics. The increasing and ultimately complete loss of legitimacy that imperial forms of organising political authority have experienced throughout the world constitutes one of the most apparent but still poorly studied developments in modern history. My project addresses the global delegitimization of empire by investigating semantic forms in which a specific type of empire has become to be observed over the course of the 20th century, namely that of informal empire. Commonly understood as a sort of international control or influence exercised through various (military, economic, political, cultural) means that leave the political sovereignty of the controlled or influenced states formally intact, informal empire – both as a political structure and a political semantics – can be regarded a product of the delegitimization of empire itself: In the one case it represents a form of empire building that takes into account a normative environment which in the course of the 20th century more and more enshrines anti-imperial norms of state sovereignty and national self-determination; in the other case it constitutes a form of observing political entities and their relations that requires and, at the same time, reproduces this very world political environment. Informal empire thus can be seen and used as a sort of indicator of the global delegitimization of empire.

In my project, I analyse the ways in which informal imperial relations have been addressed, understood, theorized, and criticized as illegitimate structures or actions within world politics roughly between the turn of the century and the late 1960. In several case studies, I focus on influential discourses (political, legal, and historiographical) and their particular forms and/or “formulas” of observing informal empire in this period. The studies provide insights into the development and global consolidation of conceptions of informal empire as an illegitimate but yet prevalent form of organizing political authority in world politics. They identify key aspects in the evolving understanding of this particular mode and model of imperial control and relate them to the concurrent processes of the structural delegitimization and transformation of empire in the 20th century.

• Hecke, S. (2023). Participation in the Workshop The Constitutive Force of Colonial Comparisons, organized by N. Al Bayaa, M. Petzke & R. Rapior, 21-22 June, Bielefeld University.
• Hecke, S. (with F. Meyhöfer) (2023). Organization of the Workshop 'Thinking against Empire’ with Julian Go (Chicago). 22 June, Bielefeld University.
• Hecke, S. (2023). Participation in the Laureate’s Colloquium with Susan G. Pedersen ‘Unlikely Actors in International Spaces’, Conveners: U. Davy and W. Steinmetz, 30 June, Bielefeld University.

• Hecke, S. (2022).' Die Polarisierung der Einflusssphären. Zu Wandel und anhaltender Umstrittenheit einer imperialen Semantik seit 1870'. Paper presented at the 41st Congress of the German Sociological Association (DGS): “Polarisierte Welten”, 26-30 September, Bielefeld University.

• Hecke, S. (2022). 'Unequal Treaties: Challenging International Order in the 1920s'. Paper presented at RTG workshop: “Global Challenges in World Politics: Discourses, Actors and Outcomes”, 06-07 September 2022, Bielefeld University.

• Hecke, S. (with L. Gertenbach) (2022). 'Wozu historische Soziologie? Eine Einführung'. Welcome Address and Introduction given at the Founding Conference of the Working Group ‘Historical Sociology’Founding Conference of the Working Group ‘Historical Sociology’ within the Section ‘Cultural Sociology’ of the German Sociological Association (DGS), organised by L. Gertenbach, S. Hecke, M. Leanza, D. Russ and J. Schubert, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Germany, 21-22 April, Bielefeld University.

• Hecke, S. (with L. Gertenbach, M. Leanza, D. Russ and J. Schubert) (2022). Organisation of the founding conference of the working group ‘Historical Sociology’ within the section ‘Cultural Sociology’ of the German Sociological Association (DGS), Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), 21-22 April, Bielefeld University.

• Hecke, S. (with J. Stafford) (2021). '“Unequal Treaties”: A Challenge for World Politics in the 1920s?’. Paper presented at the RTG Workshop ‘Global Challenges in World Politics: Discourses, Actors and Outcomes’, 14 December, Bielefeld University, online.

• Hecke, S. (2021). Participation in the workshop of the International Working Group 'Methods and Practices of Theorizing', 16 February, online.