Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance—Barcelona, Spain

ESADEgeo (ESADE Business School’s Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics) and IBEI (Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals) are jointly organizing the Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance January 9-10, 2014. Abstracts are due Sept. 27, 2013 (today).

The ongoing macrotrend of globalization and some of its most recent negative expressions -the overlapping economic and financial crises plaguing most of the globe since 2008- highlight the limitations nation-states face in solving economic problems unilaterally. In addition, the deterioration of the environment and global warming are environmental problems no country can solve alone. In effect, the notion of sovereignty is being defied by the global challenges humankind is facing. In this context, international and transnational institutions become ever more crucial to coping with problems that reach across borders and affect the entire world.

However, existing institutions are often critiqued for being ineffective and undemocratic, and at a time when global governance is most needed, there is simultaneously a sense of impossibility of reaching large-scale multilateral consensus and agreements (e.g. global financial regulation, Doha round trade negotiation, climate change agreements). Achieving fair and effective global governance of common problems -and finding the right forms for it- thus remains a major challenge.

The aim of the Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance is to provide a venue for the study of global governance -its structure, effects, and problems- from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together scholarship from international relations, law, sociology, public administration and history.

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