"Each year, the Munich University Association (Münchener Universitätsgesellschaft) awards prizes to young researchers from a wide range of disciplines for their outstanding dissertations and habilitations. This year, the topics range from innovative methods for the early detection of cancer to the question of whether new risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) require new legal concepts. […]

Global power vs. global order

Dr. Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Faculty of Social Sciences, has been granted a doctoral award by the Munich University Society for his dissertation, After Exit: Alternative Leadership and Institutional Resilience after Hegemonic Withdrawal.

What is the relationship between state power and international order? How can international institutions cope with the withdrawal of a hegemonic power which they have created, supported, and shaped over many years? Tim Heinkelmann-Wild poses these highly topical questions in his dissertation and develops a leadership transition theory, which furnishes a persuasive explanation for the differential resilience of international institutions.

Empirically, the thesis investigates a comprehensive database on the withdrawal of the United States from international organizations and treaties after 1945 as well as case studies on the resilience of various institutions. The author shows, for example, that the withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) need not constitute a death blow. Rather, international institutions can survive the withdrawal of hegemonic powers if alternative leading powers such as the EU step in to fill the vacuum.

Tim Heinkelmann-Wild is a research fellow at LMU’s Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science and currently a visiting scholar in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge."