The public’ and ‘the private’ in global governance

Call for Papers

Guiding Questions and Debates

The 2015 edition of the Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance asks how ‘the public’ and ‘the private’ are related in current structures of global governance. Key questions involve:

• Does it make sense to maintain a distinction between public and private authority, and if so, how ought “publicness” to be reformulated for the global sphere? What could take the place of the public/private distinction for structuring accounts of legitimacy and accountability in global governance?
• Do the authority and legitimacy of global governance, both normatively and sociologically, depend on the “publicness” of its institutions?
• How do institutions (including privately-created ones) generate, or seek to generate, “publicness” in their rhetoric, procedures and accountability mechanisms, and with what success?
• How do private actors, both national and transnational, participate in global governance regimes? What patterns of interaction exist between privately‐ and publicly‐created institutions?
• What success can the construction of a “global public law” as a law of global governance have?

Contributions from all related disciplines are welcome.

Submission of Proposals

Abstract proposals should not exceed 500 words in length and should include further ideas for discussion.  Preferred format for all submissions is PDF.

Please send your proposal as an attachment to info@bcnwgg.net and insert “Submission: Barcelona Workshop on Global Governance” as the subject line of the message.

The deadline for abstracts is 29 September 2014. All proposals will undergo peer review and notifications of acceptance will be sent out by 22 October 2014. Full papers are expected to be delivered by 8 January 2015 to be ready for circulation.

Format of the Workshop

The Workshop will last two days (January 15 and 16) and take place in Barcelona. The first day will be held at IBEI and the second day at ESADE Business School. Attendance will be open to interested researchers, students and practitioners.

Confirmed keynote practitioner speaches include Narcís Serra (former Spanish Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister) and Javier Solana (former NATO Secretary General and EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy). Confirmed keynote academic speaches include Andrew Hurrell (University of Oxford) and Jonas Tallberg (Stockholm University). Their contributions will provide an opportunity to bring together scholars and practitioners.

We would appreciate it if you could circulate this call for papers among your colleagues and other potentially interested parties. For more information, please contact us at info@bcnwgg.net.