Coordinators: Wiebke Denecke (MIT) and Michael Puett (Harvard University)
Overview
In many of the world’s societies basic political consensus is eroding and political institutions are under threat. We require new paradigms for political stability, global, cooperation, human well-being, and social justice: in short, new visions of governance that can help us work towards a sustainable future.
Governance has mainly been studied in isolation, and largely from regional perspectives in the humanities or from universalizing Euro-American perspectives in the social science. This research cluster gives urgently needed depth to debates on governance by studying, in comparison, how concepts and visions of good — and bad — governance developed in world history. Positioned athwart the flattening of issues in contemporary media outlets and the presentist orientations of dominant social scientific methodologies in academic research, we explore the deeper roots of socio-political conflicts, which often emerged from disparate points of view and values within and across language communities and cultures, often over centuries or even millennia.
Current Scope
Selected cases will range from the wisdom literature, scripture, and philosophy of the ancient Mediterranean to East and South Asian visions statecraft and world order, to European, Persian, and Arabic Mirror for Princes. These will be examined in relation to recent global ideologies, from (neo-)liberal nationalism to communism, to contemporary manifestations of right-wing populism.
Guiding Questions
- What are the core concepts, narratives, and images around “governance” in major cultural regions of the world, and how do these intersect with other central human pursuits (e.g., bureaucratic practices of state and civil society, rituals and religious activities, the development of literary cultures)?
- How did outside influences shape canonical notions of governance in each of these macro regions?
- What continuities and ruptures can we observe in visions of good and bad governance? How have border crossings and impositions from without shaped this dynamic?
- What does the comparison of theories and practices of governance tell us about processes of human community building?
Goals
Our primary goals are to gain
- a more diverse repertoire of political visions through global comparisons
- a richer understanding of local political crises around the world and thus a clear sense of how to address these in their full complexity
- attention from media outlets, NGOs, and political institutions to mobilize this deeper understanding in order to develop more effective strategies for resolution.