Hi everyone,
those of us who were at the SASE conference in Madrid have looked into a
meeting in Brussels in October. We tentatively agreed on a couple of
days in the 42nd week (October 17-21). We now learned that the Alter EU
network is holding its assembly meeting on October 14. Will Dinan needs
to be there and would like to see if we could push the Think Tank
Network Research Initiative meeting to October 13.
If we can do that i think it would be wise to arrrive on Wednesday,
October 12 to start the meeting in the evening, work all day Thursday
and finish with a public presentation / discussion Thursday evening.
Alter EU people might already be there to join the public event, and I
am sure that the Alter EU network meeting would be open to individuals
who would like to participate in this meeting the following day to look
into an element of European "counter think tankery", though we may have
to ascertain this with the steering committee of Alter EU.
Who could and would like to come on October 12-13???
I can and would be happy to see if I can find some funding for people
who need help with travel cost (from Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, for example).
The purpose of the meeting is to develop a framework for a project
proposal to be submitted to the European Science foundation or other
possible funding agencies asap. Everyone who would like to participate
in such a hopefully Europe wide research project should try to come to
help framing the research agenda. Later participation is not excluded if
you can't come to the meeting, of course, but I hope we will succeed in
developing a convincing program in Brussels to move forward in due course.
As far as I can see it so far the key dependend variable is
transnational research, consulting and advocacy/lobby networks (like the
climate change sceptic discourse coalition) with a particular focus on
their organizational infrastructure, namely the rising think tank
networks (that can include university isntitutes, private corporations,
private or public foudnations etc.; think tank networks is in a way a
short cut for expert/consutling/advocacy or lobby networks).
Key difference to traditional comparative think tank studies:
transnational networks rather than national organizations, which
requires to think of national systems as open systems and interrelated
system. Interrellated systems in the EU consist of vertically
interrelated and horizontally interrelated systems (multi-level system
as key "logic of supranational influence", which is considered an
important explanatory variable in addition to "logics of
constituency/membership" (e.g. differences between more academic/expert
constituencies and more straightforward corporate or social movement
constituencies or the particular mixes)
To clearly specify both the independent and dependent variables we need
to move into thematic fields. So far we considered the environmental
policy area a promising field, but we should have a few more options. We
need at least two different thematic fields I would say, and they should
have the potential to allow important differences with regard to
(powerful / competing) transnational expert/consulting/lobby or advocacy
groups) that can be used to better explain network differences and or
influence differences (obviously related to composition / resources, the
repsective worlds of ideas / competences, institutional configuration
and what not). network analysis sure is one promising tool to be
exploited in the pursuit of this study.
So much in terms of reminding myself of what we have been discussing /
thinking so far: please come back with information and the commitment to
participate and or comments / written contributions / suggestions of any
kind / ideas about promising thematic fields or concrete transnational
expert/consulting/lobby networks to be studied...
I am looking forward to hearing from you
Dieter
--
Dr. phil. Dieter Plehwe
- Internationalisierung und Organisation -
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Deutschland
Telefon +49 - 30 - 25491 - 102
Telefax +49 - 30 - 25491 - 118
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