Our Current Research Projects

Research now underway at the Institute includes a number of multi‐year projects spearheaded by our affiliated faculty.  These projects provide a focal point at Harvard Law School for new thinking in the fields of comparative law, global governance and international law. Our current research projects include:

Rethinking the Legal Structure of Liquidity and the Nature of Money in the Global Economy.
This project, organized by Christine Desan of our Advisory Council focuses on the lessons of heterodox and institutionalist traditions in both economic and legal science for understanding global political economy in the aftermath of the crisis. We are particularly interested in the relationships among private law, private ordering, national regulation and opportunities for multilateral governance or coordination. We are exploring the significance of disarticulation and intended inefficiencies in global systems in avoiding systemic risk – when introduced both within the transnational governance of private financial institutions and through regulation. Our Project on Capital Dynamics focuses on the legal structure of money, credit and financial liquidity. It considers capital dynamics as a matter engineered over time by different government, non‐governmental organizations and private actors, paying particular attention to the ways in which capital dynamics cross borders, studying the domestic and global dimensions of capital dynamics in tandem.  As part of this project, the IGLP co-sponsored a two day conference on The History of Capitalism in November, 2011.

Program on Global Financial Regulation:  This project is  organized in collaboration with our Leading Sponsor Visa International. This initiative will focus on three topics: Liquidity in the global economy, including foundational research on the nature of global liquidity and capital as legal institutions; Financial inclusion and banking services for the “unbanked” as an aspect of development policy; Structuring financial services in emerging markets and alternative paths to economic development. Through a series Sponsored student and faculty research projects and public academic and policy discussions we seek to develop a transnational research network of young scholars and IGLP faculty working on research themes related to global financial regulation.  The initiative’s inaugural event will be a policy workshop, which will take place at Harvard Law School on March 30, 2012. The event will bring scholars from the IGLP network into sustained conversation with high-level government officials and industry representatives.

Expertise and Governance:  This project is an inter-faculty reading group on organized by IGLP Director David Kennedy and Sheila Jasanoff of the Kennedy School. The group will meet several times during the winter and spring of 2012 for discussion on themes related to expertise with a view to enlarging our conceptual horizons and influencing our teaching. Questions we hope to address include the following: Who are experts, whom do they represent, what are the sources of their authority, and how can expertise be held accountable? What kinds of institutions employ expertise, and what are the organizational characteristics of such institutions? How does the growing global reliance on experts affect the quality, effectiveness, and accountability of public policy and governance? Through readings and/or presentations from several fields—including law, anthropology, history, sociology, and science and technology studies—we will consider how expertise is defined, constituted, challenged, defended, or defeated in contemporary societies.

The Next Left – The Challenges and Opportunities for Social Democratic Politics in a Global Economy. This project, which we are co-sponsoring with Dr. Alfred Gusenbauer of our Honorary Council, encourages dialog among those rethinking the politics of the left after globalization in various regions of the world, with a particular emphasis on the dynamics within Europe and between Europe and Latin America.  The IGLP will next convene a meeting of the group in the Spring of 2012.

Assessing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act:  This project examines the current structure and efficacy of the anti‐corruption legislation passed in more than 30 countries since the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. We are investigating the relationships among the network of statutory and treaty obligations, the emergence of a transnational practice of private sector compliance and due diligence, and the growth of criminal enforcement efforts in the last several years, particularly in the United States. In September, 2011 David Kennedy and Dan Danielsen of our Academic Council published a report entitled Busting Bribery: Sustaining the Global Momentum of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that examines the current efforts in Washington, D.C., to amend the FCPA.

Click HERE to read about the Research History of the IGLP

 

 

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