This internal workshop of project area B serves to ensure the exchange of information between the case study centred projects and to apply and further develop the theoretical concepts of causal chains and causal mechanisms.

• Governance of the A section
• Overarching conceptual issues of the data collection
• Guidelines and policies for the A section
• Delegation of issues to be decided upon by the Core Group
• Questions raised by the Data Collection group

The SFB 1342 presents its work to high school students who are interested in tasking up courses in political or social sciences.

Meeting point at 12:15 p.m.: Political Science information booth in GW 2.  

The event is part of the information day for prospective students at the University of Bremen. 

International Organizations (IOs) are vibrant actors in global social governance. They provide forums for exchange, contention and cooperation; they prepare, guide and supervise interna-tional treaties; they direct, finance, and implement projects, and exercise many more duties. The study of IOs in general has tremendously improved and advanced in recent decades. However, our knowledge about the involvement, influence and impact of IOs varies signifi-cantly by policy fields. While scholarship on IOs focuses often on issues areas like security, economics or environmental policies, we know comparatively little about IOs in issues areas related to social policies.

This workshop seeks to fill this gap in IO social governance. Papers prepared for this workshop have two purposes. On the one hand, they will shed light on IO involvement in a particular social policy field by describing the community of engaging IOs. They explore how a particular social policy field is constituted and which major or dominant IOs are setting the trends. On the other hand, the contributions will examine the leitmotifs these IOs promote in "their" field by exploring and analyzing the discourse they produce. By exploring the population of IOs setting and spreading ideas, the papers will provide novel knowledge about the architecture of arguments in global social governance.

The discussions will be guided by the following questions:

• What IOs are active in different social policy fields? How are the social policy fields constituted by specific types and constellations of IOs?
• What ideas are these IOs promoting? How can IO discourses over specific social policy issues be characterized? How has IO discourse developed over time? What were watersheds in the discursive framing of social policy ideas?
• Who are the addressees of IO discourses/activities? What kind of impact does the IO discourse/activity have on these addresses? (vertical perspective)
• How (and why) do IOs cooperate with other IOs/NGOs/commercial enterprises in so-cial policy fields? (horizontal perspective)

Generalising on the different fields presented, we hope to be able to present findings on a more encompassing definition of the "architecture of arguments" in global social governance, and the patterns of discourse characterizing global social policies.

Day 1 – May 24

12:00-13:00 Lunch in the University Mensa (optional)

13:00 Introduction
Alexandra Kaasch, Kerstin Martens, Dennis Niemann

13:15-14:30 – Slot 1
Chair: Michael Windzio
Global Family Policies and Gender Equality
Rianne Mahon
Disabilities as a "New" Global Social Theme
Nina Kolleck & Johannes Schuster
Discussant: N.N.
Followed by plenary discussion

14:30-15:00 Coffee Break

15:00-16:15 – Slot 2
Chair: Keonhi Son
International Standards in Education
Dennis Niemann, Kerstin Martens
Children's Rights
Anna Holzscheiter
Discussant: Rianne Mahon
Followed by plenary discussion

16:15-16:45 Coffee Break

16:45-18:00 – Slot 3
Chair: Fabian Besche
Employment and Youth
Ross Fergussen
Pension and Global Retirement Discourses
Mitchell Orenstein & Martin Heneghan
Discussant: Armando Barrientos
Followed by plenary discussion

18:00-18:30 Wrap-up day 1

20:00 Dinner (Ratskeller Bremen)

Day 2 – May 25

9:00-10:15 – Slot 4
Chair: David Krogman
Care and Migration
Nicola Yeates
Global Social Health Governance
Alexandra Kaasch
Discussant: Lorraine Frisina (University of Bremen, CRC 1342)
Followed by plenary discussion

10:15-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:00 – Slot 5
Chair: Helen Seitzer
Global Labour Standards
Friederike Römer
Climate Change as a Global Social Challenge
Ian Gough & Alexandra Kaasch
Discussant: Heiko Pleines (University of Bremen, CRC 1342)
Followed by plenary discussion

12:00-13:00 Buffet Lunch (in-house)

13:00-14:15 – Slot 6
Chair: Friederike Römer
Water Policies and Politics
Jeremy Schmidt
Food Security and Agriculture as Social Issues
Sarah Martin
Discussant: Chris Deeming
Followed by plenary discussion

14:30-15:00 Wrap-up day 2
and future plans

• Governance of the A section
• Overarching conceptual issues of the data collection
• Guidelines and policies for the A section
• Delegation of issues to be decided upon by the Core Group
• Questions raised by the Data Collection group

Philipp Rehm published together with Herbert Kitschelt and Jacob S. Hacker and became known for his argument on risk, risk inequality and the welfare state, an analytical reinterpretation of the very existence of the welfare state.

This internal workshop of project area B serves to ensure the exchange of information between the case study centred projects and to apply and further develop the theoretical concepts of causal chains and causal mechanisms.

• Governance of the A section
• Overarching conceptual issues of the data collection
• Guidelines and policies for the A section
• Delegation of issues to be decided upon by the Core Group
• Questions raised by the Data Collection group

The more the Internet innervates contemporary societies, the more Internet Governance emerges as an important and controversial global policy domain. Notwithstanding the crucial relevance of the issues at stake within this domain, and the long-standing and multifaceted debate around them, there is still a total lack of consensus about how to define Internet Governance, and an ample margin of ambiguity regarding both the concept of governance and the technical "boundaries" of the Internet.

These definitional uncertainties and conceptual ambiguities are not due to the inability of scholars and policy-makers in grasping the essential contours of an emerging policy field, nor to the fast pace of technological innovations. Rather, they depend on the highly controversial nature of political dynamics and institutions involved into this relatively new power arena. Since the early 1990s, in fact, different actors have been producing different definitions, conceptualisations and narratives of Internet Governance, in order to mark off specific sets of legitimated issues, actors and fora. In other words, definitions and discourses have been strategically used as regulative resources by actors struggling for the governance of the Internet.

The lecture will address definitional struggles and discursive interactions in the global Internet governance from a constructivist perspective. Particularly, drawing upon Maarten Hajer's discourse coalition framework, the main controversies around Internet governance issues will be scrutinised as they unfolded through time. Further, some mapping exercises of discourse coalitions in specific fora will be presented, and the hypothesis about an ongoing decline of the "multistakeholderist" discursive order will be discussed.

There will be two workshops running in parallel (one for project area A, and one for project area B) roughly until 4 pm, followed by a lecture addressing all CRC members.

Details on the workshops, lecture as well as the exact schedule and venues will follow in due time.

Recent theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences converge into the approach of "mechanism-based explanation". Originating from different disciplines such as analytical sociology, political sociology, comparative historical analysis and qualitative research in political science, mechanism-based approaches stress that phenomena cannot fully be explained by correlations between variables: Causal mechanisms are the "cogs and wheels" that scholars come across when opening the "black box" of correlations.

Despite the expanding literature on this topic, two deficits have not been resolved so far:

1. There is no convincing compilation of mechanisms that drive social and political processes. Previous proposals for a comprehensive list of mechanisms collect elements of very different scales and levels. There is no shared understanding on what level (micro, meso, macro) mechanisms should be allocated and what elements a mechanism should have to count as a mechanism.
2. There is also a lack of systematic applications of mechanism-based approaches to an entire policy field. So far, mechanism-based approaches have primarily been used in single case studies or comparative case studies with a limited scope and range. Adopting a mechanism-based approach for studying the transnational dynamics of an entire policy field might be a decisive test for the fruitfulness of mechanism-based approaches.

This conference aims to stimulate discussion on the characteristics of causal mechanisms, and to establish a closer link between these concepts and the study of social policy dynamics.

Confirmed speakers so far:
Renate Mayntz (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies)
James Mahoney (Northwestern University)
Peter Starke (University of Southern Denmark)

Download: Call for Papers

Call for Papers

For a combined, three-day event we invite proposals for papers on "International Knowledge Transfer in Social Policy: The Case of the Post-Soviet Region". The event takes place from 7-9 November 2019 in Bremen (Germany).

It begins with a two-day conference on "Causal Mechanisms in the Analysis of Social Policy Dynamics" in the House of Science in Bremen. Confirmed keynote speakers are: Renate Mayntz (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies), James Mahoney (Northwestern University), and Peter Starke (University of Southern Denmark).

On the third day there will be a workshop on "International knowledge transfer in social policy: The case of the post-Soviet region". Participants selected from this call are invited to join the conference and to present their papers at the third-day workshop, which takes place at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen on 9 November 2019. It intends to complement the conference on causal mechanisms with the discussion of research on dynamics of international knowledge transfer in social policy in the post-Soviet region. Special emphasis is made on the policy fields of basic income security (alleviating poverty), health care and education.

The workshop aims to bring together approaches from political science, sociology and other relevant academic disciplines to get a more comprehensive picture of the influence of social policy concepts originating in the OECD world on reform processes in the post-Soviet region and of the role that international actors play in this knowledge transfer. The focus of invited papers should always be on the international knowledge transfer and on the domestic evaluation of these social policy concepts.

Deadline for proposals: 30 April 201

Deadline for the submission of paper proposals is 30 April 2019. In addition to a 300 word abstract, please include a brief biographical statement in your submission. Selected paper-givers will be invited by 31 May 2019. Full papers will be due 15 September 2019.

The workshop will involve around 15 scholars; early-career researchers are especially encouraged to apply. Travel expenses and accommodation costs of invited participants will be covered by the organiser. For further information on our research group, visit our website.

We plan to publish selected workshop papers in a special issue of Global Social Policy.

Paper proposals and any questions should be addressed to:
Dr Andreas Heinrich (heinrich@uni-bremen.de)