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Jasper Theodor Kauth
Research Topic:
I am currently working on two related research projects:
First, in my dissertation project, I analyse the relationship of movement control and state building processes. By drawing from ideational critical juncture and institutional order arguments and by comparing political developments in Europe, the British Empire, and the United States, I show that there exist long exclusionary traditions of movement control in today’s Western democracies. I argue that practices of movement control are often underpinned by ideas about colonialism, race, and differential humanity. The monopolisation and institutionalisation of movement control in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is closely entangled with the rise of the modern nation state system.
Secondly, I am interested in the phenomenon of illiberalism in liberal democracies. I argue that what is commonly referred to as illiberalism should be analytically separated into two concepts: one anti-democratic variant termed disruptive illiberalism and one rooted in the politics of exclusion termed ideological illiberalism. By analysing these two strains individually, I develop a general theory of illiberalism in liberal democracies and try to answer the central question that motivated both of my projects: Why do even purportedly liberal democracies regularly and frequently engage in glaringly illiberal acts?
In my research, I combine approaches from history and the social sciences to uncover distal causes of political traditions and the interactions of ideas and institutions. My work employs qualitative, historical, and comparative methods. My primary supervisor is Desmond King. My secondary supervisors are Andrew Thompson (College) and Matthew Gibney (Department).
I offer undergraduate teaching in Prelims "Introduction to the Practice of Politics" (Section B) and of papers 205: "The Government and Politics of the United States" and 212: "International Relations in the Era of Two World Wars". I teach postgraduate seminars in Qualitative Methods.
Before starting the DPhil in Politics at Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College, I completed the MSc in Politics Research (St Hilda's College, Oxford). I hold a double-major BA in History and Political Science from Heidelberg University, Germany. During my studies at Heidelberg, I spent a year at St Hugh’s College. My Bachelor and Master's programmes in Heidelberg and Oxford were funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and St Hilda's College. My doctoral studies have been jointly funded by Nuffield College and the Economic and Social Research Council's Grand Union DTP (Migration Pathway). I previously acted as the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace Fellow (ARSP) at the Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, both Pittsburgh, PA, and as the Allianz Foundation Fellow at ARSP in Philadelphia, PA.
Publications
Illiberalism, in: European Journal of Sociology, 61 (2020), No 3, pp. 365-405. With Desmond King.
Fremdenrecht und Völkerbund. Das Scheitern der International Conference on the Treatment of Foreigners 1929, in: Archiv des Völkerrechts 56 (2018), No 2, pp. 202-228. English: Alien Law and the League of Nations. The Failure of the International Conference on the Treatment of Foreigners 1929.
“Ein Stück Polizeistaat“. Fremdenrecht und Ausweisungen in der ersten deutschen Demokratie, in: Geflüchtet, unerwünscht, abgeschoben. Osteuropäische Juden in der Republik Baden (1918–1923), ed. by Nils Steffen/Cord Arendes, Heidelberg 2017, pp. 185–214. English: “The Remains of a Police State.” Alien Law and Expulsions in the First German Democracy.
Der Fall Isaak Nouhim – ein bolschewistischer Spion in Baden?, in: Geflüchtet, unerwünscht, abgeschoben. Osteuropäische Juden in der Republik Baden (1918–1923), ed. by Nils Steffen/Cord Arendes, Heidelberg 2017, pp. 237–251. English: The Case Isaak Nouhim – a Bolshevik Spy in Baden?