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Janne Mende

Visiting Scholar

Interests

Research Interest(s): human rights, global norms, global governance, international institutions, non-state actors, climate governance, business and human rights, authority, power and legitimacy, qualitative research

Program Area(s): Political Theory; International Relations

Subfield Specialties: International Organizations and International Law; Law and Politics

Biography

Janne Mende is currently visiting professor at Northwestern. Her home institution is the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, where she leads a senior research group dedicated to studying the different forms of power, legitimacy and governance authority of non-state actors, with a focus on the United Nations and the European Union. In addition, she heads research projects in the issue area of business and human rights. Since 2024, Janne Mende is elected vice-president of the German Political Science Association. She was deputy professor for Transnational Governance at the Technical University of Darmstadt, and held visiting positions at the European University Institute in Florence and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Geneva, among others. In her latest monograph, she develops a contextual and normative but open universalism of human rights.


Publications:

  • Mende, Janne (2024): Liberal–Democratic Norms under Contestation: Norm Relations and their Decoupling in the US Supreme Court’s Decisions on Abortion, in: Global Constitutionalism, online first, https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045381724000042
  • Mende, Janne (2024): Substance- or Legitimacy-Oriented (De)legitimation of Global Governance Institutions. The Double-Edged Role of Complexity, in: Globalizations, 21(7), 1233-1250, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2330171
  • Mende, Janne (2023): Public Interests and the Legitimation of Global Governance Actors, in: Politics & Governance, 11(3), 109-119, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v11i3.6778
  • Mende, Janne (2023): Corporate Human Rights Responsibilities: Dismantling the Public-Private Divide, in: Nordic Journal of Human Rights, 41(3), 255-264, https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2023.2254969
  • Mende, Janne (2023): Business Authority in Global Governance: Companies Beyond Public and Private Roles, in: Journal of International Political Theory, 19(2), 200-220, https://doi.org/10.1177/17550882221116924
  • Drubel, Julia/Mende, Janne (2023): The Hidden Contestation of Norms: Decent Work in the International Labour Organization and the United Nations, in: Global Constitutionalism, 12(2), 246-268, https://doi.org/10.1017/S2045381722000259
  • Mende, Janne (2022): Extended Qualitative Content Analysis: Researching the United Nations and other International Institutions, in: Qualitative Research Journal, 22(3), 340-353, https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-11-2021-0127
  • Mende, Janne (2021): Are Human Rights Western – And Why Does it Matter? A Perspective from International Political Theory, in: Journal of International Political Theory 17(1), 38-57, https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088219832992