When Contestation Runs Deep: Normative Structures and the Transformation of the Liberal International Order

A FAU-CHREN Colloquium with Gemma Lligadas González

10 November 2026, 6:15-7:30 pm

Abstract

How can we distinguish the ordinary contestation through which normative orders adapt from deeper forms capable of transforming the orders themselves? This article advances a structural account of deep contestation within the Liberal International Order (LIO). It argues that deep contestation is distinctive not simply because disagreement becomes more intense or polarized, but because it displaces foundational normative commitments from the core towards the periphery of an order. Because core norms form an interconnected normative structure, such displacement should generate effects beyond the domain in which contestation originates. Using process tracing, the article examines this proposition through contestation surrounding migration and asylum at Europe’s external borders within the framework of the long-standing tension between territorial sovereignty and the universalism of human rights. The 2026 Ceuta migration crisis shows how the re-positioning of territorial sovereignty over human rights constraints on border control reverberates through the broader European normative architecture and liberal commitments. As a deeply institutionalized embodiment of the liberal order, the European Union provides a demanding test of the argument. The article thus identifies positional displacement as the causal mechanism through which deep contestation transforms an order, structural propagation as its observable causal-process evidence, and reflects on its implications for human rights and the global order they sustain.

Speaker Biography

Gemma Lligadas González is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen–Nürnberg (CHREN), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). She holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where she was an Oxford-Radcliffe Scholar, a Master’s in International Law and an LLB from Ramon Llull University, and a Joint Master’s in Legal Research from Comillas Pontifical University, the University of Deusto, and Ramon Llull University. She has held visiting research positions at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, and the Department of European and International Law at the University of Hamburg. Her interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of international law and international relations, with a particular focus on human rights, global governance, and the effects of global crises and geopolitical contestation on the legal and political structures of the global order. Her current research agenda seeks to develop a structural theory of global contestation, examining how dynamics of cooperation and competition shape the resilience and transformation of human rights, international law, and the global order.

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