ISA Catalytic Workshop Grant: Global Governance Through State Transformation

The multilateral gridlock afflicting the international liberal order is now widely acknowledged by scholars and policymakers. The workshop will evaluate what the convenors, Dr Tom Pegram (UCL) and Dr Shahar Hameiri (University of Queensland), have identified as a system-wide response to crisis: global governance through state transformation (GGST).

GGST challenges the orthodox segmentation of the global and the domestic, as powerful states, international organisations, private corporations, and other actors have sought to evade gridlock by pursuing efforts to transform domestic governance apparatuses towards managing transnational problems. These forms of global governance and regulation are thus manifesting not through supra-nationalism or even inter-governmentalism, but the transformation and transnational networking of ostensibly domestic state apparatuses. 

The workshop will bring together leading scholars working on GGST-related phenomena, including Philip G. Cerny (Emeritus Professor, Rutgers and Manchester Universities), Virginia Haufler (Associate Professor, University of Maryland), Miles Kahler (Distinguished Professor, American University), Abraham Newman (Professor, Georgetown University) and Susan Sell (Professor, Australian National University). Specifically, the workshop will facilitate a direct conversation on GGST between liberal-functionalist and critical political economy scholars. The former could benefit from the latter’s sustained focus on power and contestation in shaping the implementation of GGST, while the latter could benefit from the former’s pragmatic, problem-focused approach. The outcome should benefit the field’s development, but could also provide avenues for ameliorating pressing public policy problems in the world.