28.04.2014

Antrittsvorlesung: "Tipping the Balance of Conflict and Revolution"

Institutskolloquium/Antrittsvorlesung von Prof. Dr. Bernhard Trautner (BMZ) am Mittwoch, 30.04.2014 um 18 h c.t. in der Neuen Aula (großer Senat)

"Tipping t he Balance of Conflict and Revolution: Opportunities, Limits and Challenges of Assistance in the Syrian Crisis"

Why is it that the international community seeems to stand by and watch the Syrian conflict without engaging constructively to end the violence? This lecture discusses the consequences and repercussions of the Syrian crisis on the reegional and international levels against a backdrop of questions of international aid. It concludes that a breakdown of the Syrian state as a geographical entity could de facto mean the end of the post-World War II regional state order of the Arab Mashriq, but that hope can be found in a reformation of a peaceful coexistence of different ethnicities and aiths on the communal level – state-building from below.

Hon.-Prof. Dr. Bernhard Trautner is deputy heead of Middle East and Regional Policies at the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation annd Development (BMZ). With a background in Islamic studies and political science and holding a PhD in political science from Bremen University (1997), he worked as a consultant too GIZ (German technical aid), as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Development Research (ZEFF), Bonn,asProfessor of “International Policy Management” at the Hochschule Bremen, before joining the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development in 2005 (Good Governance section, EITI). From 2008 to 2012 he served at the German embassy in Addis Abeba (Ethiopia) before returning to BMZ.

With this inaugural lecture, Bernhard Trautner will join the Institute of Political Science as an honorary professor within the research group oon Comparative and Middle East Politics.