RESEARCH PROGRAMMES
Emerging Regional Orders
While China’s neutrality was rejected as durable by most global politics analysts, its ascendancy for the last couple of years has already become a normal aspect of international relations. Therefore, countertrends such as the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and a still recovering European Union (EU) are expected to counterbalance China’s burgeoning position in the greater Eurasia region, drastically limiting the space for pursuit of its national and aggregated interests.
The very existence of all the three apparently competing regional integration models, Eurasia Economic Union, European Union and still One Belt, One Road, often comes at the intersection of great powers, established, rising or restoring states.
And yet, when researching on the emerging regional orders it is especially pertinent to look also at small states in terms of explaining and predicting their participation in military alliances or trade agreements: will they enter into an asymmetric relationship with a major power patron, seek to maintain neutrality, non-alignment, or multiple strategic partnerships, or lobby for membership in regional or international institutions?
New Romanian Foreign Policy
This research programme seeks to foster informed policy discussion and a non-partisan approach to reforms in Foreign and Security Policy as Romania needs to be better prepared to face the contemporary international environment.
It values paradiplomacy as the new generation of foreign policy construct that must engage non-profit organizations, subnational governments and citizens at large in the formulation of foreign and security policy in Romania.
Elite Perceptions of the International System
Another major research programme pursued by CFPSS is the analysis of how national decision-making elites perceive power arrangements in the international system, and the resultant situation of the state within this environment. The project will have two main foci: 1), constructing a database on diplomatic agreements bargaining and negotiation and 2), developing a methodology for calculating the between “low” and “high” political issues.
Transition in the Developing World
The developing world has been and remains one of the most contested research areas in international relations and comparative politics. On the one hand, its importance in economic, social and political terms cannot be overemphasized, especially in a globalized environment. Concepts that have dominated and structured our understanding of international relations throughout the Cold War and Post-Cold War have been the result of research focused on developing countries, as well as of the fertile empirical trove offered by an extremely diverse cultural and social context. On the other hand, the developing world remains one of the topics often affected by essentialist arguments and oversimplified explanations/ The Transitions program aims to discuss not only the most relevant events and trends, but also to tackle the important theoretical and thematic issues at hand: inequality, development, humanitarian aid, the Global South, the responsibility to protect (R2P), the consequences of decolonization, human, weapons and drug trafficking, good governance, migration, and terrorism. The program will also feature interviews and presentations of leading researchers and specialists on the dynamics of the region.
