Call for Papers: Regionalism, International Organizations and Global Challenges in Fragmented World
How do international organizations (IOs) and regional IOs influence the global order and domestic politics? What challenges do they face and how do they confront them? How global and regional governance change over time, considering the rebirth of nationalist and authoritarian trends in the world politics? Analysis and understanding of the impact of global and regional organizations (in such areas as environmental policy and commitments, migration, energy, democratic backsliding, transformations in financial governance, internet governance and cyber-security) became an important challenge for academia and policy-makers.
The role of IOs in these transformation can often be counter-intuitive. IOs traditionally were considered as, for example, democracy-reinforcing actors (the EU and the US-led international organizations). However, recent studies also demonstrate the contradictory impact of organizations on democracy. Recent findings indicate that even IOs led by and composed of democracies may encourage democratic backsliding, corruption and even environmental degradation in their member-states. Modern autocracies also choose to form and develop their own regional IOs, thus imitating the behavior of democratic regional clubs (e.g., EU) and strengthening ties among their allies (e.g., China-led the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization). The proliferation of these formal organizations is paralleled by a number of informal initiatives such as new transregional governance initiatives (e.g., the Belt and Road Initiative).
On the other hand, well-established democratic regional clubs, the European Union, faces a number of challenges: Brexit, increase of Euroscepticism, and the rise of nationalist parties. All these changes challenged the idea of regional integration. In Washington, there is a widespread perception that American, Western-led multilateral organizations (the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO) lose their influence in their fields of action, a process that could be aggravated by the re-birth of isolationist trends in American Politics under the Trump administration.
These new developments and findings call for better understanding the contradictions, challenges, and the interplay between global and regional governance institutions, as well as their different consequences for transformations at national, regional, and global levels.
This is the 3rd Workshop organized within framework of research project “Regionalism and Regional International Organizations in a Fragmented World” Co-Directed by Anastassia V. Obydenkova (IBEI, Fung Fellow 2016-2017) and Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira (University of São Paulo, Fung Fellow 2016-2017). Previous workshops of this project took place at Oxford University (December 2017) and at Princeton University (November 2018).
Venue
The workshop is organized and sponsored by IBEI (Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals) with participation of Fung Global Program of Princeton University, and will be held on 17 and 18 February in Barcelona (at IBEI).
Confirmed speakers
Confirmed speakers include Laurence Whitehead (Oxford University), Philippe Schmitter (European University Institute), Neil MacFarlane (Oxford University), Mads Dagnis Jensen (Copenhagen Business School), and Kutsal Yesilkagit (Leiden University).
Paper submissions
We invite abstract proposals from interested scholars from all disciplines. Proposals should not exceed 500 words in length. Preferred format for all submissions is PDF. Please send your proposals an attachment to anastassia.obydenkova@eui.eu and insert “Submission: IBEI Workshop Regionalism, IO and Global Challenges” as the subject line of the message.
The deadline for abstracts is 1 November 2019.
All proposals will undergo peer review and notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 15 November, 2019. Essays-summary (minimum 3000 words) are expected to be delivered by 1 February 2020 for circulation among participants.