The project is part of the “Europe and Global Challenges” program, a joint program of research funding and net-working aimed at encouraging transnational and transdisciplinary research groups launched by the European foundations Compagnia di San Paolo in Turin, Italy, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in Stockholm, Sweden, and VolkswagenStiftung in Hanover, Germany.
PRIF is the leading member of the project, which joins PRIF experts and researchers from the USA, China, India, Russia, France and Great Britain. They study the new relations among great powers in the face of the rise of new great powers – such as China and India – in international politics.
“We are not only facing tremendous power shifts in the international system, but also a whole new set of great power relations. However, we are still lacking the appropriate instruments to deal with this development“, Prof. Dr. Harald Müller, executive director at PRIF, explains. Researchers will therefore analyze both positive and negative experiences gained from the so called “Concert of Europe“ – an informal, peacekeeping institution among the European states in the 19th century. Based on this model, researchers will elaborate a framework for an international peacekeeping, multilateral security architecture. Hereby, they will primarily focus on how the powers‘ different interests may be reconciled as cooperatively and peacefully as possible.
Thus, the project is outstandingly embedded into PRIF’s research program “Just Peace Governance“, Müller adds. The research program studies under what conditions implicit or explicit ideas of justice held by political stakeholders lead to violent conflicts and under what circumstances they can form the basis for sustainable peace.
The project's runtime is set to three years and funds of about 1 mill. Euros have been approved.