Event — Workshop

Institutional Voids during State Re-scaling

This international workshop aims to combine the insights and findings from the two previous workshops on institutional voids and state re-scaling respectively. The goal is to look at the crisscrossing between these two frontiers of research so as to generate new research questions and scholarly agenda.

This international workshop aims to combine the insights and findings from the two previous workshops on institutional voids and state re-scaling respectively. The goal is to look at the crisscrossing between these two frontiers of research so as to generate new research questions and scholarly agenda.

Click here for the workshop programme

The Workshop

The national state has been under increasing pressure to re-articulate and re-territorize in relation to both sub- and supra-national scales. A strategic response, often formulated in conjunction with mobilised business and other interest groups, involves adapting institutional, regulatory, and spatial configurations to meet the demands of transnational investments, cross-country financial operations, internal and international migrations, and so on (Friedmann 1995, Brenner 2004). This sets off a highly contentious process that hinges upon a redefinition of state-market relations as well as a redistribution of state power between the national administration and the other levels of authorities. It also brings about severe competition between sub-national regions when they all aspire to become an epicentre for growth (Brenner 1998). New alliances between local authorities, domestic producers, and international investors are being forged, which in some cases has set in motion a counter-movement among forces opposed to these alliances and to globalization forces generally.

During this contentious process, the boundaries of the political are redrawn, and economic and political scales redefined. Many countries have experienced institutional voids with regard to the new challenges posed by state re-scaling. The current financial crisis in the Euro zone is a case in point. This also applies to the management of cross-border water and natural resources, the coordination of regional developments, the regulation of human and capital flows, and so on. Existing scholarship has long studied societies where the absence or weakness of particular institutions inhibits social and economic development. Yet until more recently insufficient attention was paid to the questions of how and under what circumstances institutional can voids be filled. Whereas a growing number of studies ( eg. Khanna and Palepu 1997) have documented intriguing cases where entrepreneurial actors – public and private, organizational and individual – have trespassed on the boundaries of formal rules and institutions to create new space of governance that performs important coordinating functions, there is still a dearth of evidence concerning the problems of void-filling during state re-scaling. This workshop seeks to address this gap in the existing scholarship.


Objectives of the Workshop

The workshop is the third event in a series of joint symposiums and workshops. The first symposium on Institutional Voids and the Governance of Developing Economies took place on 16 May 2011. The second workshop on State Restructuring and Rescaling in Comparative Perspective will be held on 3-4 December 2012. The fourth workshop is planned to take place in December 2013.

The current workshop aims to combine the insights and findings from the two previous workshops on institutional voids and state re-scaling respectively. The goal is to look at the crisscrossing between these two frontiers of research so as to generate new research questions and scholarly agenda.

Specifically, the workshop seeks to address the following questions:

  1. examination of empirical cases about the process of state restructuring and re-scaling in a globalizing world;
     
  2. identification of institutional voids as a result of scaling up or scaling down during the re-territorization of the national state;
     
  3. analysis of the social, political, coalitional, and economic contexts that facilitate the filling of voids by the creation of alternative forms of governance and the consequences; and
     
  4. reflection upon existing theories of the state, sub-national and supra-national politics, and institutional change, as well as conventional concepts about the national-international division, public-private boundary, and the state-market dichotomy.

 

Contact Information
The workshop will be hosted by the Erasmus Centre for Emerging Markets at the Rotterdam School of Management, and jointly organized by the IIAS Centre for Regulation and Governance, Centre d'Etudes de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (CEIAS) at CNRS-EHESS Paris, Centre for Governance, Institutions & Organisations (CGIO) at NUS Business School, and Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. The co-covenors are Marleen Dieleman, Mark Greeven, Loraine Kennedy, Tak-Wing Ngo, and Suzana Rodrigues.

For enquiries about the workshop, please contact: Martina van den Haak m.c.van.den.haak@iias.nl

 

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