Axel Heck

1. Research Interests

My research is focusing on theoretical, methodological and empirical questions relating to the constitution of political power in international relations. Classical and contemporary approaches to hegemonic and imperial power-relations are at the core of my research interests.

Beside material factors, language, and especially images and visualizations have an enormous impact on the construction of social power relations. Therefore, the analysis of “visual” justifications of military action is an additional subject of my research. The use of visuals in IR-research raises fundamental methodological questions, which I am working on with international colleagues in the context of the International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies. Based on the outlined theoretical and methodological background my empirical studies encompass US-foreign policy, transatlantic relations, and European Foreign and Security Policy.

Short descriptions of current research projects

Responding to the European Challenge

No other great power in history has achieved an economic and military power comparable to the United States. Although some experts proclaimed a unipolar moment after the end of the Cold War – meanwhile some pundits are even talking of a unipolar era – I am arguing that we are witnessing a corrosion of American hegemony - especially in the transatlantic relationship. In my dissertation thesis, reasons and causes why this process is happening are only secondary because much research has been done on this issue. Instead, I ask how a certain decline of American hegemony is taking place, by reconstructing the discursive formations of transatlantic debates referring to the development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP).

Imagining Europe’s Security Engagement in Africa –
Narratives of Justification and the Use of Force

Images and visuals are playing an important role in international politics. States and International Organizations such as the UN, NATO or the EU make increasingly use of pictures, photographs, podcasts and other visualizations to present themselves in specific ways to the world public. Sometimes, pictures and visualizations are used to justify security policies (military interventions, state of emergency, use of force). Due to their visual grammar, visual representations are able to enfold an overwhelming political power when utilized within public debates as “narratives of justification”. Although IR and Political Theory as a whole have been interested in linguistic narratives of justification for some time, studies on visual narratives of justification are rare. In collaboration with a colleague (Gabi Schlag, University of Frankfurt) we are focusing on the ESDP-missions in Africa and analyzing how visual narratives of justification work and discursively enable military action.

2. Publications

2010
Imagining Europe’s security engagement in Africa – Justification narratives and Visual Culture, presented at the 51st annual conference of the International Studies Association (ISA) in New Orleans, USA (in english) [pdf]

2009
Humanitarian by “Pictorial Force” - Visual Representations and the Public Diplomacy Strategy of the European Union in Africa, presented at the 50th annual conference of the International Studies Association (ISA) in New York City, USA (in english) [pdf]

U.S.-Außenpolitik im Zeichen des War on Terror, in Politische Vierteljahresschrift 49 (4), with Frank Gadinger and Herbert Dittgen †

2008
Responding to the European Challenge. Representations of the EU in the US-Foreign Policy Discourse, presented at the 2nd Global International Studies Conference 2008 in Ljubljana, Slowenien (in english)

Visual Representations of the ESDP in the Western Discourse, presented at the 2nd. Global International Studies Conference in Ljubljana, Slowenia, with Gabi Schlag (in english)

Responding to the European Challenge. Representations of the European Security and Defence Policy in the U.S.-Foreign Policy Discourse, presented at the 48th annual conference of the ISA in San Francisco, USA (in english)

2007
The United States and Europe “After Iraq”. Three Fictional Scenarios About the Future of US-Hegemony and the Atlantic Alliance, presented at the 48th annual conference of the ISA in Chicago, USA (in english)

2004
John Kerry – der europäische Kandidat?, Analysen und Argumente Nr. 13 2004, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (ed.), Berlin