2011 International Studies Association Annual Convention

GEG Senior Researcher and Director of the Global Migration Governance project, Dr Alexander Betts, and Dr Jochen Prantl, Senior Research Fellow, represented GEG at the International Studies Association’s (ISA) Annual Convention this March. This year’s convention centered on the subject Global Governance: Political Authority in Transition. Betts and Prantl each presented papers on the panel “Challenged Institutions in Global Economic Governance,” which examined the situation of international institutions, which as a result of change in the distribution of power in the international system, the nature of the original problem for which they were created, or the wider institutional environment, find their original monopoly status within a given issue-area threatened.

Alexander Betts’ paper on ‘Challenged Institutions: How International Organizations Respond to State Regime Shifting’ began with the observation that many international organizations – such as UNDP, UNHCR, the IMF, for example – find themselves increasingly challenged by new institutional competition, and further developed a conceptual model for understanding state-IO strategic interaction in the context of regime complexity. Dr Prantl’s paper, ‘Explaining Cooperation Under Order Transition’, subsequently examined how core liberal international institutions in international security are being challenged by the power shift within the internatonal system. In particular, it set out a theoretical framework for understanding the interaction between formal and informal institutions in world politics, and the conditions under which the relationship is reinforcing or undermining of authority. The paper forms the basis of his forthcoming book, Whither liberal institutions? European Union, NATO, and United Nations in the Post-Cold War Order.

Dr Betts likewise chaired a roundtable discussion on the subject of ‘Global Migration Governance’. The roundtable brought together some of the leading scholars working on the international politics of migration to reflect upon Betts’ new book, Global Migration Governance.