Duisburg - October 2018 and March 2019
The ongoing debates around Polycentric Governance change continuously. While they once focused on the emergence of new actors and orders, the recent interest in modes and practices of polycentric governing emphasizes how it has become ever more visible as tangible experience in our everyday lives. The dynamic term ‘governing’ refers here to processes of regulation and ordering in society. By constructing, implementing and securing societal rules, governing brings notable degrees of consistency and predictability to social relations. Governing can also create new possibilities for intervention and transformations. However, these processes have become increasingly ambiguous and raise many questions: How are we being governed today? Which techniques and practices are used? What are obvious and hidden power dynamics within governing? How is governing legitimized; and lastly, where does resistance to various forms of governing take place? For its upcoming book project (DIS)ORDER: Techniques, Power and Legitimacy in Polycentric Governing (working title), the research group on “Polycentric Governance” of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research invited international researchers for two authors workshops in October 2018 and March 2019 debating current objectives in polycentric governance research. The book project is in collaboration with the centre’s alumni, current fellows and scholars from external affiliations.
Providing a unique and interdisciplinary approach, scholars from various disciplines such as comparative literature, cultural studies, gender studies, international legal theory, international relations, political science and sociology elaborated on the prospective questions in individual book chapters discussed at the workshop. The joint framework for the project focuses on three major aspects in polycentric governing: techniques, power and legitimacy. Beyond interdisciplinary approaches addressing complex governing arrangements and their current effects, the workshop has created a rich dialogue across different disciplines and offers with its upcoming publication innovative insights to as well as new understandings of contemporary issues in polycentric governing.
The book will be edited by Frank Gadinger and Jan Aart Scholte and is forthcoming in 2020.
Venue: Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Schifferstr. 44, 47059 Duisburg
