Perceptions of Nord Stream 2 – a discourse network analytical study with special consideration of legal opinions and legal-political opinions

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was a controversial energy infrastructure project from both a political and legal perspective even before Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine began. While legal discourses before the outbreak of the war focused strongly on European law, the discourse after the outbreak of the war finds a strong anchoring in international law. Based on the advocacy coalitions approach, this research project uses discourse network analysis to investigate the role of legal and legal policy argumentation in the political process for Nord Stream 2. In doing so, two perspectives are investigated. While the events before the start of the war are analyzed from a perspective that sees Nord Stream 2 as a case study of a large-scale energy infrastructure project in the context of fragmented approaches to energy transformation, the events after the start of the war of aggression are treated as an extreme case. Accordingly, several research objectives are pursued. The theoretical relevance of the first part of the study lies in locating the significance of legal and legal-political discourses in the context of the advocacy coalitions approach and deriving generalizable hypotheses. The practical research relevance stems from being able to understand the significance of legal and legal-political argumentation within fragmented energy transformation approaches. The following research questions are particularly central to this first part: Which legal or legal-political arguments were used by which actors? Which discourse networks arise from this? In the second part, in which Nord Stream 2 is considered as an extreme case, the following research questions arise: What are the effects of the war of aggression on legal discourses, discourse networks and the political process?

To what extent do actors find a way to deal with what is happening in their legal discourses? What conclusions can be drawn for the future design of legal relations in the context of the energy transformation.