Prof. Dr. Thomas Dietz

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND LAW WITH A FOCUS ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
University of Muenster
Institute for Political Science

Room 303
Scharnhorststraße 100
D-48151 Münster

Tel: +49 251 83-24910
Fax: +49 251 83-25136
thomas.dietz@uni-muenster.de
Office hours: by appointment

Thomas is Professor for International Relations and Law. Before coming to Muenster he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of European and Comparative Law at the University of Oxford and a member of Wolfson College. Thomas holds an MA in political science from the University of Bonn and a PhD in law from the University of Bremen, where he also worked as a research fellow at the Collaborative Research Center 597 “Transformations of the State”. His research is focused on the areas of International Politics, International Law and Sustainable Development.

• New Publications

  Thomas Dietz (in production) The rule of law effects of commercial arbitration in a socio-legal per-spective , in: T. Schulz/F. Ortino (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of International Arbitration

  Thomas Dietz, Marius Dotzauer, Edward S. Cohen (2019) The legitimacy crisis of investor-state arbitration and the new EU investment court system, Review of International Political Economy, first published online: 02 Jul 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1620308

  Thomas Dietz, Janina Grabs, Andrea Estrella Chong (2019) Mainstreamed voluntary sustainability standards and their effectiveness: Evidence from the Honduran coffee sector, in: Regulation and Governance, first published online: 28 February 2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12239

  Thomas Dietz, Andrea Estrella Chong, Janina Grabs, Bernard Kilian (2019) How Effective is Multiple Certification in Improving the Economic Conditions of Smallholder Farmers? Evidence from an Impact Evaluation in Colombia’s Coffee Belt, The Journal of Development Studies, first published online: 09 July 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2019.1632433

  Thomas Dietz, Jennie Auffenberg, Janina Grabs, Andrea Estrella Chong, Bernard Kilian (2018) The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a composite index to assess and compare the strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the global coffee industry, in: Ecological Economics (150), 72-87, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.03.026

  Thomas Dietz, Jan Börner, Jan Janosh Förster, Joachim von Braun (2018) Governance of the bioeconomy: A global comparative study of national bioeconomy strategies, in: Sustainability 10/9, 3190. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10093190

• Research

  

  The research group TRANSSUSTAIN is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) have evolved into key transnational governance instruments to bind international markets to fundamental principles of sustainable development. As they continue to extend their influence in international markets, it is of increasing academic and public interest to study the effectiveness of VSS. TRANSSUSTAIN focuses on the effectiveness of VSS in global coffee value chains. The main research question is to what extent VSS are capable of turning global coffee production into a more sustainable industry. The group combines comparative institutional analyses of different VSS with on-the-ground impact studies in different Latin American countries. The group is based at the University of Muenster and INCAE Business School in Costa Rica.

  For further information see: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Transsustain/

  

  STRIVE is a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It aims at improving the knowledge base for the design of sustainable bioeconomy policies and regulatory frameworks at national and international level. The project focuses on the sustainability implications of transnational biomass trade, technological innovation, and innovation transfer in selected bioeconomy sectors with an emphasis on major biomass and knowledge producing countries and regions. Impacts of bio-based transformations will be evaluated against relevant sustainability dimensions, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on poverty eradication (1), food security (2), reduced inequality (10), responsible consumption (12), climate action (13), and terrestrial ecosystems (15). We have adopted an interdisciplinary research approach integrating economics with natural and political science and rely on methods such as, economic modelling, statistical and econometric analysis, life-cycle assessment, technology & innovation management, and qualitative as well as quantitative case studies.
  
  For further information see: https://strive-bioecon.de

  Research Project: International investor-state arbitration and public policy

  This research project is self-funded. Today, investor-state dispute resolution before private arbitration tribunals is negotiated and expanded in a series of bi- and multilateral free-trade agreements such as TTIP, TPP, and CETA. Thus not only emerging and developing countries but also highly developed countries are increasingly subject to an extra-legal system evolving beyond the nation state. This development is widely associated with an over-empowerment of international investors as well as undemocratic reductions of sovereign national policy spaces. However, until now these claims have not been subjected to comprehensive empirical research. Through a series of comparative studies this project aims to better understand how the rise of international investment law and investor-state arbitration affects politics and law-making de facto in highly developed countries.

  For further information see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692290.2019.1620308

• Research Team

  

  Karen Siegel is head of the research group “Transformation and Sustainability Governance in South American Bioeconomies”. She holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on the politics of sustainable development, natural resource governance and regionalism with a geographical focus on South America.

  

  Melisa Deciancio is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Münster. She is also Research Fellow at the National Scientific and Research Council of Argentina, based in the Department of International Relations at FLACSO Argentina. Melisa holds a PhD in Social Sciences from FLACSO. Her research focuses on the areas of International Relations Theory, Latin American Foreign Policy and Global Governance.

  

  Karla Rubio is a PhD candidate at the University of Münster. She has a broad experience working with development organizations in El Salvador, mostly in the monitoring and evaluation of social programmes and projects. She is interested in studying the determinants of the effectiveness of sustainability certificates at the producer level, especially for small producers.

  

  Paulo Mortara Batistic is a PhD candidate at the University of Münster.

  

  Marius Dotzauer is an academic assistant at the Institute for Political Science.

  

  David Navichoc is a PhD candidate at the University of Münster. He has a broad experience working in sustainable development in Latin America. His research focuses on the economic impact of voluntary sustainability standards on smallholder producers.

  

  Daniel Kefeli is a PhD candidate at the University of Münster. Before joining ABU Project, he worked as an economic advisor and industrial policy director at the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining in Uruguay. His research focuses on transformation and sustainability governance in South American bioeconomies.

  

  Guilherme de Queiroz Stein is PhD candidate at the University of Münster. He has background in Economics and Political Science, being responsible to the Brazilian case study in the research project about governance of bioeconomy in Latin America. His main research interests are related to bioeconomy, renewables energy, public policies, and democracy, aiming to understand how institutions affect the possibilities of a sustainable development.

  

  Elisa Benker is a Masters student of European Affairs at Sciences Po Paris and Freie Universität Berlin. She is a Research Assistant for TRANS SUSTAIN and has written her Bachelor thesis on Direct Trade coffee schemes.

  

  Laura Deal is a Masters student of National and Transnational Studies at the University of Münster. In TRANS SUSTAIN she is a Research Assistant currently working on developing policy briefs for VSS stakeholders.

  ---

  Former team members

  ---

  

  Janina Grabs is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at ETH Zurich. Her work focuses on the governance of sustainability in global value chains, with a special focus on tropical agricultural commodities such as coffee and palm oil. Janina was part of the first cohort of the TRANS SUSTAIN junior researcher group and obtained her PhD from the University of Münster in 2018. Her related findings on the effectiveness of coffee certification schemes are now published in her monograph “Selling Sustainability Short? The Private Governance of Labor and the Environment in the Coffee Sector” (Cambridge University Press).

  

  Andrea Estrella obtained her PhD candidate from the University of Münster in 2019. In her thesis she focused on the environmental and socio-economic effectiveness of market-based sustainability and conservation initiatives. She is now working for the Policy Research Institute IMPAQ.

• Publications

  Books

  • Thomas Dietz (2017) The Politics of Transnational Governance by Contract , Routledge (mit Claire Cutler, eds.)
  • Thomas Dietz (2014) Global Order Beyond Law, Hart Publishing Oxford.
  • Thomas Dietz (2014) International Arbitration and Global Governance: Contending Theories and Evidence , Oxford University Press (mit Walter Mattli, eds.).
  • Thomas Dietz (2010) Institutionen und Globalisierung: Eine empirische Untersuchung grenzüberschreitender Softwareentwicklungsverträge , Mohr Siebeck.

  Articles

  *with external peer-review, **double blind peer review

  • Thomas Dietz (forthcoming) The rule of law effects of commercial arbitration in a socio-legal per-spective , in: T. Schulz/F. Ortino (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of International Arbitration*
  • Thomas Dietz, Marius Dotzauer, Edward S. Cohen (2019) The legitimacy crisis of investor-state arbitration and the new EU investment court system, Review of International Political Economy, first published online: 02 Jul 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1620308 **
  • Thomas Dietz, Janina Grabs, Andrea Estrella Chong (2019) Mainstreamed voluntary sustainability standards and their effectiveness: Evidence from the Honduran coffee sector, in: Regulation and Governance, first published online: 28 February 2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12239 **
  • Thomas Dietz, Andrea Estrella Chong, Janina Grabs, Bernard Kilian (2019) How Effective is Multiple Certification in Improving the Economic Conditions of Smallholder Farmers? Evidence from an Impact Evaluation in Colombia’s Coffee Belt, The Journal of Development Studies, first published online: 09 July 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2019.1632433 **
  • Thomas Dietz, Jennie Auffenberg, Janina Grabs, Andrea Estrella Chong, Bernard Kilian (2018) The Voluntary Coffee Standard Index (VOCSI). Developing a composite index to assess and compare the strength of Mainstream Voluntary Sustainability Standards in the global coffee industry, in: Ecological Economics (150), 72-87, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.03.026 **
  • Thomas Dietz, Jennie Auffenberg, Janina Grabs, Andrea Estrella Chong, Bernard Kilian (2018) Indicators to compare and assess the institutional strength of voluntary sustainability standards in the global coffee industry, in Data in Brief (19) 570-585, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2018.05.048**
  • Thomas Dietz, Jan Börner, Jan Janosh Förster, Joachim von Braun (2018) Governance of the bioeconomy: A global comparative study of national bioeconomy strategies, in: Sustainability 10/9, 3190. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10093190 **
  • Thomas Dietz, Andrea Estrella Chong, Paulino Font Gilabert, Janina Grabs (2017) Women’s empowerment in rural Honduran coffee communities and its determinants, Development in Practice, 1/28, 33-50, https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2018.1402862 **
  • Claire Cutler, Thomas Dietz (2017) The Politics of Transnational Governance by Contract, Towards an Analytical and Theoretical Framework , in: C. Cutler/ T. Dietz (eds.) The Politics of Transnational Governance by Contract, Routledge*
  • Thomas Dietz (2017) Relational Contracts 2.0. The Changing Nature of Business Relations in the Digital Age , in: C. Cutler/ T. Dietz (eds.) The Politics of Transnational Governance by Contract, Routledge.*
  • Janina Grabs, Bernard Kilian, Daniel Calderón Hernández, and Thomas Dietz (2016): Understanding Coffee Certification Dynamics: A Spatial Analysis of Voluntary Sustainability Standard Proliferation, in: International Food and Agribusiness Management Review , Volume 19 Issue 3, 2016, https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.244667 **
  • Walter Mattli, Thomas Dietz (2014) Mapping and Assessing the Rise of International Commercial Arbitration in the Globalization Era: An Introduction , in: W. Mattli / T. Dietz (eds.) International Arbitration and Global Governance: Contending Theories and Evidence, Oxford University Press*
  • Thomas Dietz (2014) Does International Commercial Arbitration Provide Efficient Enforcement Mechanisms for International Trade? , in: W. Mattli / T. Dietz (eds.) International Arbitration and Global Governance: Contending Theories and Evidence, Oxford University Press.*
  • Thomas Dietz (2012) Contract Law, Relational Contracts and Reputational Networks in International Trade, in: Law & Social Inquiry, 37:1, p. 25-53. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-4469.2011.01281.x**
  • Thomas Dietz (2010) Relationale Verträge und Reputationsnetzwerke im internationalen Handel, in: Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie, 30:2, p. 163-182 = Wolfgang Kaupen-Award of the German Society of Sociology for the best socio-legal journal article 2010, https://doi.org/10.1515/zfrs-2009-0203**
  • Thomas Dietz, Holger Nieswandt (2009) The Emergence of Transnational Cooperation in the Software-Industry, in: V. Gessner (ed.) Legal Certainty beyond the State. Empirical Studies and Theoretical Debates on Institutional Support for Global Economic Exchanges, Hart Publishing Oxford, p. 87*
  • Gralf-Peter Calliess, Thomas Dietz, Wioletta Konradi, Holger Nieswandt, Fabian Sosa (2008) Transformations of Commercial Law: New Forms of Legal Certainty for Globalised Exchange Processes?, in: A. Hurrelmann/S. Leibfried/K. Martens/P. Mayer (eds.) Transforming the Golden Age Nation State, Palgrave Macmillan: London, p. 83
  • Gralf-Peter Calliess, Thomas Dietz, Wioletta Konradi, Holger Nieswandt, Fabian Sosa (2008) Transformation des Handelsrechts? Neue Formen von Rechtssicherheit in globalen Austauschprozessen, in: A. Hurrelmann/S. Leibfried/K. Martens/P. Mayer (ed.) Zerfasert der Nationalstaat? Die Internationalisierung politischer Verantwortung, Campus: Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 143

  
  Working papers

  • Thomas Dietz, Börner, Jan., Förster, Jan. Janosh und Joachim von Braun. 2018. Governance of the bioeconomy: A global comparative study of national bioeconomy strategies. ZEF Discussion Paper 264, Center for Development Research (ZEF). Bonn.
  • Thomas Dietz, Marius Dotzauer (2015) Political Dimensions of Investment Arbitration: ISDS and the TTIP Negotiations ZenTra Working Paper in Transnational Studies No. 48 / 2015
  • Thomas Dietz, Jennie Auffenberg (2014) The Efficacy of Private Voluntary Certification Schemes: A Governance Costs Approach , ZenTra Working Papers in Transnational Studies 39/2014
  • Thomas Dietz, Holger Nieswandt (2006) Cross-border Cooperation. The meaning of Cognitive and Normative Expectations for the emergence of global Research and Development Cooperation,Transstate Working Papers, 63, Bremen: Sfb 597 “Staatlichkeit im Wandel”.