Crises in a Globalised World
In a globalised world, basic malfunctions of economic, social, political, and ecological systems are often interconnected in complex ways that endow crises with a new quality. If we are to cope with crises successfully, a comprehensive assessment of their causes is needed, as a basis for concerted action. Such an advance is only possible if exchange between scholars, political decision-makers, and the wider public is intensified. Against this background, the distinctive mission of the Leibniz Research Alliance ‘Crises in a Globalised World’ is to cut across three sets of boundaries— between disciplines, between different thematic fields in which crises figure, and between the academic, political, and societal spheres. The Alliance’s strategic goal is to gather together the expertise which the different participating institutes have accumulated—on financial and debt crises, environmental crises, food crises, and crises of political orders—and use this to generate generalisable knowledge about the processes, dynamics, and patterns of crises, about their systemic character, and about the suitability and social acceptability of policies devised to cope with them. This knowledge can then be applied in the resolution of future crises.