{"id":2474,"date":"2020-01-08T11:22:43","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T11:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=2474"},"modified":"2020-01-08T11:22:49","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T11:22:49","slug":"2474","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=2474","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cooperating Across Global Regions:<\/strong> Societal Actors, Transnational Mobilization,\u00a0and Regional Integration 1960s-2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

K\u00e4te Hamburger Kolleg\/Centre for Global Cooperation\nResearch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duisburg, Germany, 8-9 June\n2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Call for Papers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convener: <\/em>Professor\nWolfram Kaiser (University of Portsmouth) in cooperation with the Centre for\nGlobal Cooperation Research (University of Duisburg-Essen)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Societal actors like political parties, trade unions,\nbusiness organizations and non-traditional non-governmental organizations\n(NGOs) forge and maintain transnationally constituted informal networks and\nformalized organizational structures. Much has been said about how they\ncooperate at the regional level as in the context of the European Union (EU) or\nglobally, where they interact with International Organizations (IOs). Instead, this exploratory workshop will focus on\ntheir cooperation at the trans-regional or trans-continental level<\/strong>, for\nexample between Europe and Latin America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cooperation at this intermediate trans-regional level\nmay have been, or may continue to be induced, by historical experiences with\ncontemporary impact (e.g. Empire, political exile), cultural proximity or\nlanguage commonalities. Alternatively, or in addition, such mobilization could\nhave been, or could continue to be, geared towards fostering common ideological\ngoals like social justice, or more concrete policy objectives in delineated\npolicy areas like market liberalization or environmental protection.\nCooperation among societal actors at the trans-regional level may also have\nbeen directed at supporting processes of de-colonization and national\nindependence as in Africa during the 1960s, or regime transition and democratic\nstabilization as in Latin America during the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, such cooperation has frequently also sought to\ninitiate and support the formation of regional integration organizations (RIOs)\nin different global regions. Transnationally constituted societal actors have\nused RIOs to create, maintain and strengthen transnational identities. They\nhave often also seen RIOs as suitable intermediate governance structures for\npromoting their political visions and policy objectives, or they have\nchallenged these organizations as frameworks for implementing reforms\ncriticized as neo-liberal for their allegedly negative consequences e.g. for\nemployment conditions or the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against this background this workshop will take an interdisciplinary perspective on the\norigins, practices and implications of trans-regional cooperation among\ntransnational societal actors<\/strong>. The workshop will adopt a globally\ncomparative approach and include relations among transnational societal actors\nfrom Western Europe as well as e.g. Latin America, Africa, and South-East Asia.\nIt will seek to mobilize research focussing on the origins of such cooperation\nfrom the 1960s up to the present day, taking as its starting point the\nconsolidation of Western European integration in the late 1950s and the 1960s,\nde-colonization in the Global South in the same period and the formation of\nRIOs such as the Organization for African Unity (OAU, now AU) in 1963, the\nAssociation of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 and Mercosur created in\n1991 after the transition to democracy in Latin America in the 1980s. At the\nsame time, the workshop also invites papers based on ongoing social science\nresearch to conceptualize and study empirically the role of societal actors in\ntrans-regional cooperation in conjunction with the formation and consolidation\nof RIOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relevant disciplines include, but are\nnot limited to (contemporary) History, Area Studies, Political Science,\nSociology. We especially welcome papers that contribute to answering one or\nmore of the following research questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Who\nhas initiated, or initiates, trans-regional cooperation among societal actors,\ne.g. individual policy entrepreneurs, established national or transnational\nregional organizations, or RIOs that require societal interlocutors?<\/li>
  2. What\nhave been, or are, the original motivations for forging trans-regional links,\ne.g. access to material resources, exchange\/transfer of political ideas,\ncreating transnational solidarity, effecting regime transition, or building\nmomentum for the creation of RIOs?<\/li>
  3. How\ndoes cooperation take place? Is it more informal or formalized? How is it\nfunded? Are the relations characterized by dependencies or are they among\nequals?<\/li>
  4. What\nare the roles of trans-regional cooperation among societal actors for\ngovernance at different levels, i.e. do they strengthen policy debate and\nfacilitate the transfer of political ideas and policy solutions? Do they feed\ninto the politics of RIOs or of free trade agreements like between the EU and\nMercosur, for example, and in what ways?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Please submit your proposal in one Word document<\/strong> with two elements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n