Cross-section Area: "International Relations"

The intensification of relations across national borders has been a determining factor in the developments of the past decade, and will continue to be so in the coming decade. It is therefore important that this continuing process be accompanied by scholarly studies and evaluations.

The fields of politics, law and economics are especially important in this connection. Whereas the economy has been quick to seize the chances that the increasing irrelevance of national borders offers, politicians have experienced much greater difficulty in taking cross-border action both regionally and world-wide. Politics is still to a large degree confined to matters within the territorial limits of the state. Similarly, legal systems have problems in keeping up with the pace at which international relations have intensified. Nevertheless, increasing international relations must be followed by a matching process of law if we do not wish the civilized standards that have become established in limited territorial areas to be lost again in the process of globalization. What the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung is particularly interested in supporting are investigations into the interactions between the processes of de-territorialization in the economy, law and politics - processes which in each of these areas have taken very different courses.

The Foundation assumes that for such an undertaking cooperation between German and foreign institutes, research groups and individual scholars would be particularly useful, and therefore deserving of support.