Social, just and sustainable institutions

Social, economic and cultural sustainability can be a prerequisite for environmental sustainability. In particular, equal inclusion requires resilient, transparent and effective institutions built on the rule of law and equal access to justice and administration. This insight has been incorporated into SDG 16. It reads "Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels." This emphasizes the role of the social rule of law at all levels for a just transformation. Conflicts over the transformation and the distribution of the associated burdens should not be stalled, but should be able to be resolved under the rule of law.

Freedom, equality, solidarity

The rule of law is hereby not to be conceptualized as purely formal legal equality, but to be measured by its material outcomes for freedom, equality, solidarity (Ottmann 2020) and sustainability (Welti 2015). SDG 16 emphasizes the importance of the inclusiveness of societies and institutions and thus their positive interrelationship as a goal. This is to be related to the inclusion of disadvantaged life situations (precarious work) and groups (women, people with disabilities, racially discriminated), and the inclusion of long-term interests (preservation of livelihoods and resources, preservation of health and labor).

Social conflicts due to structural change

What appears to be rational for society as a whole can, however, lead to individual and regional conflicts. One example is the structural change from coal to renewable energies with its various social consequences: Job loss, economic restructuring, or construction of wind turbines near inhabited areas or in near-natural areas. In a materialist perspective, the conflictuality between collective and individual rationality is comprehensible. In processes of structural change we observe social distortions that can be traced back to the control and disposal of social surplus as well as struggles for recognition and participation. The theoretical discussions about radical democracy (e.g., Mouffe 2007; Abensour 2012), in conjunction with sociological research in regions of structural change (Dörre 2020; Hochschild 2017), demonstrate the need for concrete and materially reconnected participation of all in order to avoid an authoritarian dissolution of societal conflictuality (Eribon 2016; Löwenthal 1990; Rensmann 2020). Theoretically, this opens the way to a conception of democratic co-determination that builds on robust institutional and rule-of-law foundations and is both locally, communally, nationally, and globally coupled and can actually dispose of resource distribution (Neumann 1978 [1931]). In the graduate programme, this cross-institutional perspective is confronted with questions about intra-firm co-determination and diversity as well as sustainability in corporate governance.

Sustainability principles for the future

Human rights today must not be realized in the short term at the expense of future opportunities for the realization of human rights and their natural conditions, as the BVerfG states in its climate protection decision (BVerfG 24.03.2021, 1 BvR 2656/18 et al.). The Corona crisis has highlighted shortcomings in sustainable crisis prevention in the world of work and in the health and education systems (Welti 2020). The transfer of sustainability principles to social policy and social rights is already controversial in pension, health and basic security policy. Here, social sustainability is a contentious point of discussion. We want to clarify with research and with the help of ecological and economic findings and theories how today's actions concretely affect future opportunities for realization and by what mechanisms. Here, we need to differentiate between the extent to which the intertemporal dimension is based on the irreversible destruction of livelihoods (climate protection), on the build-up of resources that will be useful in the future (education, social infrastructure), or whether it is primarily a specific distribution mechanism (pension insurance, public debt).

In this respect, SDG 16 requires a materially substantiated theory of legal and political requirements for intertemporal and long-term effective institutional action (Aust 2017; Ekardt 2011; Laskowski 2010; Welti 2004). In legal terms, we particularly consider the right and duty of governmental and supranational levels to plan for the future over long time horizons (Fischer-Lescano/Möller 2012), which affect corporate actions (product-, energy-, and process-related environmental law), distribute and manage scarce goods such as land and water (spatial, urban, and landscape planning), and determine future expenditures for social purposes (social insurance, social infrastructure planning). The need for long-term sustainable planning must be made compatible with democratic and participatory principles (Fisahn 2002; Mathis 2017).

In terms of political science, the barriers and counterforces to the rule of law, equality, and inclusion that strive for hegemony need to be examined. The institutions of liberal democracy, the social state andnk rule of law have proven vulnerable to privileged interests, populist and authoritarian ideologies (Schulz 2019). Peaceful and inclusive societies and their institutions have enemies whose interests and strategies must be deciphered if SDG 16 is to be realized. Effective institutions are those whose structures and principles of action- for example, through expanded participation such as co-determination and self-governance and through the inclusion of scientific expertise - are more resilient to undemocratic and authoritarian currents. In this respect, the principle of hierarchical state administration must be reviewed and supplemented. Here we take up, for example, the system of self-administration in social insurance schemes or trade union discussion on economic democracy from the company to the societal level as well as institutions of consumer protection with ecological and social goals and the question of constructive and destructive effects of digitalization on institutions. We ask about the possibilities of autonomously shaping one's own living conditions and chances for the democratic participation in transformation processes and about their democratic-inclusive design without being pseudo-participation. There are many examples from the past and in international comparison: Structural change in East Germany, in the Central German lignite mining area and in the Ruhr region, electromobility in the area of conflict between employee rights, municipal water supply and job creation in future industries (Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide), and many more.

Doctoral projects in the subjects of law and political science could have the following topics, for example:

Work with a theoretical focus on fundamental issues

• The safeguarding of future fbasic and human rights as a justification for today's fundamental rights barriers
• Sustainability through participation - tensions and theoretical foundations

• Authoritarianism as a reaction to transformation: Are reactionary alliances of privileged and underprivileged classes emerging?
• Old-age security, intergenerational contract and sustainability

Empirical research with a view to institutional practice and law and its implementation

• Ecological transformation as an object of company co-determination and corporate co-determination

• Social and environmental sustainability as the purpose and object of social self-governance in the social insurance system
• The SDGs in federal legislation using the example of labor and commercial law
• Is the financing of municipalities designed for sustainable task fulfillment, especially in social and ecological structural change?

Working with participative-methodical conceptions

• New impulses for sustainability through new participatory actors using the example of representatives of severely disabled persons in the workplace and associations of disabled persons in health care policy

• How does associational legal protection contribute to inclusive institutions?
• Do international human rights covenants and the SDGs create and change awareness for participation?
• Municipalities in Transformation - Participatory Regional Development in Structurally Weak Regions