Acknowledgments

Working on this project came with the privilege of spending time at fascinating places – especially Berlin, Florence, and New York – as well as meeting an extraordinary group of individuals. Their generosity, insights, and friendship have profoundly enriched the years that went into this book. I extend my deepest gratitude to each of them, as well as to the many others I cannot name individually here.

First and foremost, my immense gratitude goes to Professor Matthias Ruffert for his unwavering support, the freedom he granted me throughout this adventure, and the intellectual guardrails he provided, which proved invaluable in refining what was, at times, a somewhat wayward undertaking. Equally, I want to deeply thank Professor Christoph Möllers, whose early belief in this project and argumentative creativity was both humbling and motivating. Writing my PhD within a structured program – a rarity in German academia – was a true sanctuary. Among my colleagues at Humboldt’s graduate school Dynamic Integration, I am especially grateful to Paul Friedl, Friederike Grischek, Lukas Huthmann, Charlotte Langenfeld, Carolin Lerch and Jakob Gašperin Wischhoff. I owe special thanks to Meret Plucis for her sharp mind, incisive criticism, and for patiently discussing many of the themes explored in this book.

In Florence, I am particularly indebted to Professor Deirdre Curtin for her incisive feedback and encouragement, as well as to the entire Digital Public Sphere Working Group, especially Francisco de Abreu Duarte, Valerie Albus, Francesca Palmiotto, Sarah Tas, and Anna Morandini.

Now in New York, this book – and my life – has entered a new chapter. I owe immense gratitude to Professors Benedict Kingsbury and Joseph H. H. Weiler for inviting me over and generously continuing to support my endeavors. A special thanks also goes to Professor Thomas Streinz, who, despite now being in Florence, remains one of the most generous mentors I encountered at NYU.

Further, I wish to extend my enduring gratitude to those whose invaluable support, offered in various capacities and at different stages – sometimes unknowingly – proved instrumental and motivational, including Michael Beauvais, Maxim Bönnemann, David Boss, Anja Bossow, Josh Cowls, Philipp Dann, Philipp Darius, Sebastian Darius, Joyce De Coninck, Claudia Golden, Giovanni De Gregorio, Niklas Eder, Martin Eifert, Veronika Fikfak, Angelina Fisher, Daniel Holznagel, Martin Husovec, Patricia Jeronimo, Thomas Kadri, Kate Klonick, Andrew Krochalk, Aysel Küçüksu, Scott Martingell, María Paula Mondragón, Päivi Neuvonen, Enrico Peuker, Oreste Pollicino, Robert Post, Katherine Rizkalla, Sofia Ranchordás, Ximene Rego, Dominiquo Santistevan, Kerstin Schuster, Rüdiger Schwarz, the late Heike Schweitzer, Nathalie Smuha, Max Steinbeis, Bent Stohlmann, Katherine Strandburg, Yirong Sun, Nicolas Suzor, Yane Svetiev, Rodrigo Vallejo, Nils Weinberg, Claire Whitman, Thomas Wischmeyer, Raphaële Xenidis, and Friedrich Zillessen.

A particularly warm thank you goes to all interviewees, who took the time in their often very busy jobs to talk to me for this book. I was deeply humbled by the richness of their perspectives and dedication to their work. Although academic custom demands to engage critically with the empirical material, I believe the eventual result of these many hours of conversations paints a fair picture of the opportunities and challenges of governance by emulation.

I am deeply grateful to Professors Mark Dawson, Laurence Gormley, and Jo Shaw for including this book in the esteemed Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy. My heartfelt thanks also go to Matt Gallaway, Sharon McCann, Gemma Smith, Sri Hari Kumar Sugumaran, and Helen Kitto of Cambridge University Press for their invaluable guidance in bringing this project to fruition. Additionally, I am profoundly appreciative of Humboldt University’s Open Access Fund, whose generous support has significantly contributed to making this book accessible to a wider audience.

This book was made possible through the generous support of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) via the graduate school Dynamic Integration at Humboldt-University of Berlin, as well as the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst). I am deeply thankful for their contributions, which provided the foundation for this research. In its final stages, the work benefitted immensely from the gracious support of Guarini Global Law & Tech at New York University School of Law, for which I am equally grateful.

I am wholeheartedly grateful to the European Public Law Organization, the European Law Faculties Association, the Faculty of Law at Humboldt-University, the Konrad-Redeker-Foundation, and the Institute of World Business Law at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for their generous recognition of my thesis – whether through awarding prizes or, in the case of the ICC, shortlisting it for consideration.

Lastly, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my family, especially my sister, whose support and occasional prod made all of this possible.

To you, dear reader: My apologies for the lengthy preliminaries. As this is my first endeavor of this kind, I trust you will indulge me. With that, I hope these six chapters offer something to provoke thought, complexify, persuade, or at the very least, entertain.