Project description
A deeper understanding of the conflicting forces shaping our global landscape
In a world marked by complex global politics, questions abound regarding the nature of conflicts and divisions. Are these conflicts predominantly territorial, or do they stem from broader socio-economic and cultural dimensions that transcend geographic borders? Funded by the European Research Council, the GLOBAL project embarks on an empirical analysis spanning centuries. Specifically, it will examine the evolution of international divisions, from core-periphery dynamics to civilisational contrasts, and their transformation into functional conflicts based on class and education. GLOBAL seeks to determine whether international divisions such as core-periphery disparities, North-South divides or civilisational contrasts are gradually giving way to conflicts rooted in socio-economic and cultural groups.
Objective
This project investigates the dimensionality of global politics. It analyses the cleavages that structure world politics and asks whether
conflicts are shaped territorially or along functional dimensions cutting across world regions. The question of whether individuals
worldwide are opposed territorially or according to socio-economic and cultural groups is addressed in a long-term empirical analysis
spanning historical phases from the 19th century to the present. The goal is to establish if, and under what conditions, international
divisions opposing world regions – core−periphery, North−South, or civilizational contrasts –increasingly blur giving way to conflict
lines that oppose groups functionally, such as class or education. This is done at the level of citizens, actors and institutions. GLOBAL
combines a comparative approach (to detect convergence between world regions) and supranational one (to detect functional
dimensionality in global discourse and institutions). The project categorizes cleavages according to three types of inequality: socioeconomic,
political-military and cultural. Unlike economic work, it focuses on the politics of inequality, i.e. how actors compete to
politicize different inequalities, with narratives legitimizing a more or less equitable redistribution of resources to correct for
inequalities. A multi-pronged research strategy based on statistical, scaling, GIS and network methods is used to analyse electoral,
socio-economic, roll-call, text, survey and organizational data. GLOBAL will be led by Daniele Caramani and hosted at the European
Governance and Politics Programme (European University Institute), of which he is the director. It will lead to an authored book by the
PI that follows – as third instalment with common theoretical foundations – the volumes on the nationalization and Europeanization
of politics (Cambridge UP, 2004, 2015), as well as a special issue, an edited volume and 11 journal articles by the researq
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
50014 Fiesole
Italy