Thomas Gehring

// CURRENT POSITIONS
 

• Professor of International Relations
• Faculty Member of the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences
• Chairman of the University Senate

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// SUPERVISION

Professor Dr. Thomas Gehring is particularly interested in supervising PhD projects related to the European Union and international organizations as actors in international relations; institutional (or regime) complexes and institutional interaction; autonomy of, and decision-making within, international organisations; as well as delegated decision-making and agencies in the European Union and international institutions.


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// RESEARCH

Current research focuses on the emergence of collective agency of international organizations and the EU. From a moderate rational choice approach, we address two issues: (1) How can these institutions gain the ability to act and influence world politics in their own right (separate from their member states)? We argue that they acquire action capability when being authorized to make binding or effective decisions, e.g. adopting regulation or allocating funds. (‘What can an IO decide’?). (2) How do IOs gain autonomy, so that their decisions do not simply reflect the preferences of their member states? We argue that even in the absence of strong secretariats, IOs may develop an organizational rationale and become a separate source of influence that shapes organizational decisions, through e.g. path dependence, specialized bodies and decisions processes. (‘How do IOs decide’?). Empirically we focus on non-traditional IOs with small or no secretariats, like the United Nations Security Council or multilateral environmental institutions.

RESEARCH PROJECTS
 

• Collective Agency of Horizontal Regulatory Organizations in Global Environmental and Financial Market Governance

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// SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Thomas Dörfler and Thomas Gehring 2021: Analogy-based Collective Decision-making and Incremental Change in International Organizations; in: European Journal of International Relations, 27(3) 753–778.

Manuel Becker, Thomas Dörfler, Thomas Gehring 2018: Credible Commitment without Independent Regulatory Agent. Evidence from the Security Council's United Nations Compensation Commission; in: Regulation and Governance 12:3, 395-412.

Thomas Gehring, Kevin Urbanski und Sebastian Oberthür 2017: The European Union as an Inadvertent Great Power. EU Actorness and the Ukraine Crisis; in: Journal of Common Market Studies, 55:4, 727-743.

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