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Research Unit on

the Emergence of Collective Agency

RUECA stands for six DFG-funded projects working together in a Research Unit on the Emergence of Collective Agency. RUECA is also the Spanish word for a tool used in spinning, that holds the fibers while they are combined by the spindle into one unified strand.

The DFG funded projects in this research unit focus on understanding the patterns and underlying mechanisms on the emergence of non-hierarchical collective agency.  The members of this research unit based at universities in Bamberg, Bayreuth, Berlin, and Darmstadt investigate the rarely examined phenomenon of horizontal collective agency theoretically and empirically, focusing on a wide range of such actors in political life, such as parliaments and their committees, international institutions, and policy networks.

News & Events

Latest Publications

Member-dominated international organizations
as actors: a bottom-up theory of
corporate agency

This article introduces an innovative theoretical conception of the corporate agency of international organizations (IOs). [...] Drawing on general conceptions of corporate agency in International Relations, sociology, and philosophy, we elucidate how IOs can develop corporate agency, even if the member states prepare and adopt all organizational decisions themselves. [...]

Thomas Gehring & Kevin Urbanski

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