The Liberal Script at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Conceptions, Components, and Tensions

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21st-century liberalism is being contested on multiple fronts and by a wide range of actors. To understand these challengers, it is important to have a better grasp of their common target. This book introduces the "liberal script" as an analytical concept that allows us to analyze and problematize liberal thinking, as well as its different components and linkages and the tensions that they produce. What happens when the pursuit of market efficiency is incompatible with social justice? It is these tensions between the different components of the liberal script that are at the heart of the challenges against it. Different societies have resolved these tensions in different ways, leading to a variety of liberal subscripts and their contestations. The volume integrates theoretical and methodological perspectives from different disciplines, including political science, sociology, law, history, philosophy, post-colonial studies, and educational science. In demonstrating the theoretical and empirical added value of using the concept of "liberal script", the volume presents a multifaceted and nuanced picture of what is at stake in the challenges to liberalism in the early 21st century.

This volume has emerged from research carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script - SCRIPTS", which analyzes the contemporary controversies about liberal ideas, institutions, and practices on the national and international level from a historical, global, and comparative perspective. It connects academic expertise in the social sciences and area studies and collaborates with research institutions in all world regions. Operating since 2019 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), SCRIPTS unites eight major Berlin-based research institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), the Hertie School, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the Berlin branch of the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), and the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO).

Tanja A. Börzel, Professor of Political Science and European Integration, Freie Universität Berlin,Johannes Gerschewski, Interim Professor in Political Theory and History of Ideas, Leibniz University Hannover,Michael Zürn, Professor of International Relations, Freie Universität Berlin

Tanja A. Börzel is Professor of Political Science and holds the Chair for European Integration at the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin. She is the director of the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script" (SCRIPTS).

Johannes Gerschewski is Interim Professor of Political Theory and History of Ideas at Leibniz University Hannover. He is also the academic coordinator of the Theory Network at the Cluster of Excellence "Contestations of the Liberal Script" (SCRIPTS).

Michael Zürn is Director of the Global Governance research unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Professor of International Relations at Freie Universität Berlin.