The Political Economy of Conflict and Cooperation

Panels in this section will examine prospects of conflict between and within states and cooperation on common challenges in an era of globalisation. Many emphasise the conflict inducing aspects of globalisation, such as how the internationalisation of political and economic processes and increasing transnational flows make actors more interconnected and potentially vulnerable to new challenges to sovereignty and security, such as terrorism, migration, and contagion of fiscal crises. However, greater interconnectedness and more serious challenges can in turn also increase the potential benefit of cooperation. The European Union and its ever-evolving decision making structure are a particularly notable expression of this trend. Panels in this section may include papers that examine the effects of globalisation on relations between states, inequality, polarization, and conflict within societies, the ability of the states and the international community to respond new security challenges in a globalised world, the promise and perils of institutional arrangements in managing conflict and fostering cooperation among actors, and the nature of collective action dilemmas in efforts to launch coordinate efforts to address new challenges in the contemporary world, such as terrorism currency crises, and failing states. Panels and papers will also focus on the question of how European institutions and in particular the European Union react to these challenges. The section will be sponsored by the ECPR standing group on Political Geography and will particularly seek to include papers that apply a special perspective on conflict and cooperation, although panels will not be limited to papers that apply geographical perspectives.