Transnational Legal Development and Epistemic Communities


Research Program


Introduction
The TransLECS research project was initiated in April 2002 at the Chair of Prof. Sebastian Heilmann, Dept. of Political Science, Trier University and is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG.
Research is aimed at the influence of western legal co-operation programs on the course of legal and judicial reforms in the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Our research is directed at different legal co-operation measures conducted on the one hand by the governments of Germany and the United States as well as by the European Commission on behalf of the European Union. On the other hand, emphasis is also laid on the activities of German and American non-governmental organisations and academic institutions as well as international donors such as the World Bank and United Nations Development Program UNDP.
This said, special interest is laid on transnational relations developing between actors involved in legal co-operation and their specific interests driving this involvement.

Main Considerations
The TransLECS research project does conceptualize the western legal co-operation with the PRC and especially the "migration" of legal norms and ideas - i.e. the transfer of legal norms and ideas originating in western legal systems into the Chinese legal system - not as a purely "technical" process guided in the first place by jurisprudential considerations. Rather, TransLECS follows the hypothesis that the different actors - individual and collective - engaged in the Chinese-western legal co-operation as well as their specific interests are a primary force influencing the process of "migration" of legal norms and ideas. We are of the opinion that this influence so far has not been emphasized enough by research activities on the subject of "migration" of legal norms and ideas.

A New Analytical Tool
The work of the TransLECS research project is starting on the one hand with concepts related to the transplantation of legal norms and ideas originating in one legal system into another. These concepts have been developed by the judicial discipline of Comparative Legal Studies. But, these concepts are generally lacking explanations as to how, through which sort of "channels", a "migration" of legal norms and ideas occurs in the firt place. Thus, our research is aimed at extending these concepts by emphasising the influence of actors and their interests on the process of "migration" , thereby introducing an actor-centered, transnational dimension.
Analysing the interests of different actors involved in the Chinese-western legal co-operation the concept of 'epistemic communities', originally developed by Peter Haas, is of special importance for our research. 'Epistemic communities' are one variety of transnational relations. In the context of TransLECS, 'epistemic communities' are thought to describe networks of legal experts which develop between Chinese and Western jurists in the course of the Chinese-western legal co-operation. These 'epistemic communities' are important "channels" for the "migration" of legal norms and ideas across national and cultural frontiers. Thus, by making the process of "migration" possible in the first place, 'epistemic communities' are of special importance if it comes to change the Chinese legal system by this "migration" of legal norms and ideas.

Research Objectives and Guiding Questions
By analysing the actor-centred, transnational dimension of the process of "migration" of legal norms and ideas, TransLECS aims at the following three main objectives:
  1. To provide an empirical overview of the Chinese-western legal co-operation programs offered by Germany, the United States, and the EU as well as by German and American non-governmental organisations and international donors.
  2. To analyse the influence of different transnational actors' interests on the process of the "migration" of legal norms and ideas with the help of the concept of 'epistemic communities'.
  3. To further develop and refine the theoretical concept of 'epistemic communities'.

Given these research objectives, we will pursue the following guiding questions:
  1. Which main actors - Chinese as well as Western - can be identified in the area of Chinese-western legal co-operation? (Identification of actors)
  2. Which interests are pursued by these Chinese and Western actors? Is it possible to differentiate between officially declared objectives and objectives actually pursued? ( Identification of actors' interests)
  3. As far as concrete legal co-operation measures are concerned (case studies), is it possible to identify 'epistemic communities'? If so, how did these 'epistemic communities' influence the legal co-operation and thereby the process of the "migration" of legal norms and ideas? ((Detection of 'epistemic communities' and of their influence on the "migration" of legal norms and ideas)
  4. Can transnational relations such as the 'epistemic communities' - apart from the context of legal co-operation - be considered as a useful instrument for spreading internationally dominating standards and generally accepted "rules of the game" in order to make national institutional regimes adopt to these standards all over the world? (Further development of the concept of 'epistemic communities')