Responding to Socioeconomic Diversity in the European Union (and to Steven Klein’s Essay) with Democracy-Enhancing Conflicts Law

These comments summarize exchanges with Steven Klein that accompanied the development of his work on Karl Polanyi following a presentation on “The Crisis as Polanyi’s Double Movement” in my Law and Governance course at the Hertie School back in March 2017. Our exchange echoes our shared interest in the work of Karl Polanyi. Since we are both operating in different disciplines, we had to take the disciplinary specifics of our readings of this maître penseur into account—that is, to come to terms with our substantive and methodological affinities and differences. Interdisciplinary exchanges between social theorists and jurists are, of course, anything but new. They are nevertheless still demanding. Friedrich Kratochwil has provided us with a noteworthy characterization of the pitfalls of interdisciplinary exchange, as well as its potential. In a comment on Anne-Mary Slaughter’s seminal contributions to international relations theory, he distinguishes between (a) the “Chinese menu approach,” where studies...