The Politics of Plunder East and West
This project aims to bring together civil society experts, researchers and activists from Europe, Ukraine and Russia to discuss shared issues – namely the problems of kleptocratic regimes and how they are interconnected with Western neo-liberal elites. A parallel aim is to build pan-European links with Russian and Ukrainian civil society as well as inform the general public and make people aware of the dangers hidden behind the politics of plunder. The above issues will be discussed at a conference and public lecture on June 8th, 2016. For more information about the conference, click here.
Civil Society Dialogues on Transnational Justice
This project is premised on the insight that the impact of international justice and transitional justice instruments in conflict-affected states depends to a large extent on the engagement of civil society with these processes and mechanisms. How civil society actors use, adapt, develop, and contest justice norms and structures is an important factor for the success or failure of such instruments in advancing their immediate objectives and broader socio-political goals. These questions are particularly important in the Great Lakes and the Balkans, regions that have been marked by persistent conflict and insecurity but also by significant international justice interventions over the past two decades.
The project aims are twofold. First, to engage civil society actors in the Great Lakes and the Balkans in a dialogue on the role of civil society in transitional justice, which encourages self-reflection, knowledge transfer, and networking at two levels: a) between civil society actors from the two global regions; and b) between activists from Kenya and Uganda. Second, to harness the insights from the civil society dialogue in advancing the ‘Security in Transition’ research programme at the LSE, which seeks to assess the impact of novel instruments of international justice and transitional justice by examining how civil society interacts with them and with what implications.
Strategic Governance of Science and Technology Pathways to Security
The world is in the midst of a profound transition in the way that we understand and practice security with a range of competing security discourses- for example, counter-terror, geo-politics or human security. The Strategic Governance of Science and Technology Pathways to Security aims to assist the design and implementation of effective government security policy by improving our understanding of how the pathways and trajectories taken by science and technology shape, and are shaped by, these changing discourses on security. Investigating the ‘direction’ as well as the ‘rate’ of technical change, the interdisciplinary research sees innovation in non-linear terms, recognising diverse counterfactual options that are neglected as socio-technical systems become ‘locked-in’ to possibly undesirable configurations. The programme aims to understand which discursive pathways of security are being realised in technological innovation and infrastructure and to identify options to diversify and improve public policy, technology and practices. This will be done through a series of case studies about the way in which different technological pathways relate to different security discourses. These include Neuroscience, Advanced Robotics, Social Media, Geoengineering, Bioinformatics, and IED technologies. Methodologically, the research incorporates ESRC-STEPS ‘pathways’ approaches, scientometric mapping, and ‘Q-method’ techniques, with inbuilt outreach and dissemination strategies.
Subterranean Politics in Europe
Since 2011, when a series of ‘new’ protests and political initiatives bubbled up across the continent, the unit has been researching 'Subterranean Politics in Europe'. We use the term 'subterranean politics' to describe emerging forms of protest and debate; the term is close to our interpretation of civil society not as NGOs but as a medium through which individuals challenge, resist, reconceptualise, and/or reconstruct the centres of economic and political authority. The aim of the first stage of this project was to map the debate about the future of Europe, elucidate the emerging political dynamics and to identify key nodal points where change is possible. Our initial report was published in 2012 and is available here; a book on the project was published by Palgrave Macmillan.
During the second phase of our research, we are focusing on one of the primary findings of that report: namely, that there is a fundamental mismatch between the portrayal of the crisis in Europe by policy makers and in the mainstream media and the concerns of the groups and individuals engaged in subterranean politics. In collaboration with the LSE Euro Crisis in the Press team and with the contributions of academics from across Europe, we are examining the narratives of the crisis that dominate the so-called ‘public discourse’ across Europe, attempting to highlight key features of this mismatch. Both phases of this project have been carried out with the support of the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE).
Economic and Environmental Transitions
With the input of Mary Kaldor and Visiting Fellow Robin Murray, LSE Centennial Fellow Carlota Perez is developing the work that she started in her highly regarded 2002 book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. As a result of a lecture she gave at the LSE back in 2010, a dining club was established involving academics, company executives, green activists and local government officials to develop her ideas on a potential 'green' golden age; subsequently, this is being developed into a substantial research project.