Sciences Po Transatlantic Research Fund

Beatriz Botero Arcila, Assistant Professor of Law at Sciences Po, Chinmanyi Sharma, Assistant Professor of Law at Fordham, and Olivier Sylvain, Professor of Law at Fordham, will work together on their Transatlantic Research Collaborative on AI Law and Governance. This year-long project will unfold amongst scholars from Sciences Po, Fordham University and partner organizations (“the Collaborative”), providing a platform to engage in a dialogue and collaboration with each other on the fast-developing field of AI law and governance. The Collaborative will work towards (1) fostering the development of cross-disciplinary research specifically responding to the immediate threats and challenges presented by AI; (2) interfacing with the private sector and policymakers internationally during special closed-door convenings to ensure the research is practicable, responsive to governance priorities, and reflective of realities on the ground in AI development; and (3) support participants in the publication of their work in internationally renowned law reviews and peer reviewed journals and its dissemination across different disciplines and stakeholder groups to ensure real impact.

Jean-Philippe Cointet, Researcher at Sciences Po Médialab, and Sylvaine Guyot, Professor of French Literature, Thought, and Culture at NYU, will collaborate on the project: Standing Up and the Body Politic: The Stage as Political Evidentiary Practice. This prototype research project, meant to investigate a growing form of political interventions in France- the first-person auto-theater testimony on stage- aims to document the forms of political interventions that these new genres usher in by studying the performance themselves and their modalities of resonance in the French press. The transformations of the political scenes in the USA and France with the rise of populist agendas carried out by politicians outside the mainstream political parties and a taste for ridiculing the politics of representation serves as the backdrop of Standing Up. By collecting and analyzing these other forms of evidence through performance, the researchers will contribute to the current debate around the new forms of political actions with their uncanny redistribution of the established divide between the singular and the collective, the personal and the general.

Jérôme Doyon, Junior Professor at Sciences Po CERI, and Aaron Glasserman, Academy Scholar at The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, will collaborate on their research titled: The Historical Evolution of Ethnic Ordering in the PRC: A Reconsideration from the Perspective of Personnel Management. This project addresses the fundamental question: How has the Chinese party-state bureaucratically ordered—through personnel recruitment, deployment, and organization—the risks and opportunities involved in ethnic governance? Their research will leverage under-utilized sources and cutting edge methods developed for the study of organizational and personnel management in the PRC, undertaking the first-ever systematic collection and analysis of data on the individuals engaged in PRC “ethnic work” and the bureaucracy in which they operate. The project also aims to contribute to the ongoing transatlantic discussion on how to conduct rigorous research amid growing constraints, especially related to the collection and exchange of sensitive data/documents.

Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Director at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, and Marlène Laruelle, Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, will be working jointly on their research, Global Illiberalism: The Domestic and International Interplay of the National-Populist Trans-Atlantic Relationship. The project explores the interplay between domestic political landscapes and the international scene to show that many external and internal contestations of the liberal order are entangled and transnationally interconnected. It proposes a long-awaited decentering from Russia’s and China’s influence to include the structuration of a Transatlantic anti-liberal trend in the Global North and another one in the Global South that largely bypass the usual West/non-West, democracy/authoritarianism, pro-US/pro-Russia or pro-China dichotomies. The project connects global politics, democracy, and social justice issues and will result in a collective research and outreach effort and a consolidation of the institutional links between Sciences Po and GWU.

Adam Baczko, Sciences Po CERI, Gilles Dorronsoro, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and Gregory Mann, Columbia University will collaborate on their research project: The Vagaries of Praetorianism in Mali Military and Civilian Regimes Amidst Foreign Intervention. Given the international rise of authoritarian populism, precarious state of democracy in west Africa, and three coup d’etat in Mali in the past decade, this project forms part of a broader collaboration on politics in Mali which aims to address the lack literature on the military regime and sanctions that emerge in reaction to it. The project will culminate in two conferences, the first on a civilian rule characterized by tension between internationalization and autonomy amongst the political class. The second explores the relationship between the military regime and international and foreign organizations involved in the administration of the country.

Johannes Boehm, Sciences Po Associate Professor of Economics, and Ezra Oberfield, Associate Professor of Economics at Princeton University will be working jointly on their research, Firm-to-Firm Trade and Growth in Long-Term Relationships. The project was motivated by the observation that in the face of lack of formal contract enforcement, firms improve incentives by forming long-term relationships with their suppliers that are supported by trust or family ties. The research will focus on such relation contracts which have emerged in India in face of weak judicial institutions, and mobilize innovative tools for quantitative analysis: a novel model of firm dynamics in a production network. The project ultimately seeks to understand the magnitude of welfare losses associated with the congested courts systems and suggest policies which could be effective to increase allocative efficiency.

Laurent Fourchard, Sciences Po CERI, and Gregory Mann, Professor, History department, Columbia University will collaborate on research titled: Competing for the Past: Academic and Vernacular Histories of Africa. Intending to explore history as a mobilizing cause in Africa, the project will examine the production of academic history in light of the development of vernacular histories all over the continent. A transatlantic endeavor, this research brings together historians and political scientists from Sciences Po and Columbia to highlight the ways these new producers of history challenge, contest or dialogue with existing historical narratives in order to assess the role and place of professional and amateur historians in raising controversial issues in African and global history.

Hélène Le Bail, Sciences Po CERI, Ya-Han Chuang, Sciences Po CERI,  Khatharya Um, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California Berkeley and  Russell Jeung, Department of Asian American Studies, San Francisco State University will collaborate on the project: Asian Minorities in Europe and in North America: A transatlantic dialogue on memories, representations, and recognition. Motivated by the resurgence of violence targeting Asians in Western countries, the project addresses minority representation and recognition gap of Asian minorities in European and North American democracies. In addition to addressing two questions concerning the appropriation of collective memory to achieve just representation and tithe ways different regimes determine the recognition of Asian minorities in public space, the project aims to develop a transnational network of researchers and civil society actors to construct a long-term research program promoting social change. 

Isabelle Mejean from the Sciences Po Department of Economics jointly with Andrei Levchenko from University of Michigan Department of Economics have been selected for their project: Building Resilient Global Supply Chains: Lessons from the Pandemic and Beyond. Climate crises and current geopolitical tensions permanently expose firms to higher foreign risks, and likely affect the geography of global value chains. Motivated by the increasingly evident importance of cross-border supply chains, and the vulnerabilities associated with participating in them,  uses new data and new theory to study what features of input-output relationships make supply chains resilient. The project will be useful for individual firms and public authorities alike in working to design more resilient supply chains.