Under the current research programme “Contested Authority in Transnational Governance”, INEF's research activities are organized our into three research areas:

I. Global Governance for Sustainable Development

II. Human Rights and Regulation in the Global Economy

III. Social Conflicts and Resilience

How authority - especially at the inter- and transnational level - is constituted, what it is based on, and what specific forms of regulation this produces in each case is the focus of INEF research in the two research areas “Global Governance for Sustainable Development” and “Human Rights and Regulation in the Global Economy”. In the research area “Social Conflicts and Resilience”, the focus of our work is more on existing authority being challenged and how this influences conflict. “Authority” occupies a different analytical status in the respective INEF research, revealing the fragmentation and contradictions of the different uses of the term. Since our research is empirically focused on different regions (especially Africa) and countries, we also take a closer look at possible regionally or country-specific determinants.