A GLOBAL THEORY OF REFLEXIVE DEBT (DELIBERATION)

Modern capitalism is essentially built on the institution of debt.

The unlimited conception of debt reinforces an infinite growth logic and drives economic, political, cultural and ecological unsustainability. A crucial research question is how to constitute debt as more sustainable socio-economic medium.

The RESOLVENCY project aims to shape a new (socially) reflexive debt paradigm by rethinking insolvency law as reflexive (democratic) debt deliberation.

The project intends to set up a global theory of debt deliberation (for firms, consumers and states), which outlines a new RESOLVENCY paradigm for insolvency law reintegrating over-burdened debtors into the economic system (making them re-solvent) and incorporating other social (political, cultural, ecological) perspectives.

Resolving debt conflicts requires a collective procedure including debtor, creditors and all other private (employees, inhabitants) and public (communities, environment) interests involved.

Advancing PIs novel discursive normative grammar (DNG) methodology and combining it with empirical methods, the project has four main objectives: (A) to reconstruct a universal argumentative frame (an insolvency DNG) for debt deliberation integrating normative principles (values) from corporate, consumer and sovereign insolvency theories across different jurisdictions; (B) to newly classify insolvency laws worldwide with a global comparative insolvency law theory based on this DNG; (C) to model and experiment with legal designs of reflexive debt deliberation procedures (RESOLVENCY law); and (D) to outline a model of reflexive debt (RE:DEBT) and analyse its ex ante effects on credit markets.

The project does not only impact any legal and economic research on insolvency, but also debt theory in all social and sustainability sciences.

In advancing PIs DNG method, it enhances general understanding of deep normative architectures of legal reasoning and its constitutional effects for society at large.