Submitted Abstract
Throughout the world, development policies have made great strides toward addressing structural inequalities which have traditionally characterised and divided world regions. Nonetheless, many development challenges remain, in part because effective governance strategies are still evolving in local, national, and global development systems. The global economic crisis of 2008-2009 highlighted this fact as global leaders publicly declared the need for new forms of governance and economic regulation.The third international conference of the Consortium for Comparative Research on Regional Integration and Social Cohesion (RISC), held in November 2010 in Luxembourg and funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg, focused on challenges to existing governance systems. Under the theme of “Development, Poverty and Global Crises: Reinforcing Governance,” the conference brought together a wide range of contributions that addressed the need to strengthen existing and develop new forms of governance in order to overcome economic insecurities, political crises, social inequalities, and environmental challenges from the local to the global scale. Two keynote panels highlighted the challenges of fragility and development regarding vulnerability and democracy respectively. The edited book brings together selected contributions from these keynote panels, as well as additionally invited contributions. Rather than attempting to capture the complex and geographically diverse nature of governance systems – an undertaking that clearly lies beyond the scope of this book – the book seeks to provide a cross-regional and interdisciplinary perspective based on a number of case studies focusing mainly on the developing world.The book is edited by an interdisciplinary team (anthropology, sociology, geography) with wide ranging research experience on social and environmental issues, such as contentious politics and governance, around the world including Latin America, Europe, North America and Australia.The book is published by P.I.E. Peter Lang (Brussels) in the Regional Integration and Social Cohesion Series edited by Prof. Harlan Koff (University of Luxembourg).