Research question/goal:

Modern welfare states react to the challenges of globalization with a dual strategy. At the international level they endeavor to increase institutional cooperation, while at the domestic level they seek new forms of cooperation between politics, markets and social groups. The tendency in recent years toward a regionalization of the world economy, as well as the augmentation of the UN's system of global cooperation through regional cooperative efforts, is generally regarded as an attempt to channel globalization both economically and politically.
While such efforts proceed independently of the EU, the possibilities open to the EU (as an international actor) to structure international interdependence relationships, as well as how current regionalization processes change the national scope of action, remains largely unresearched. This focus of the contribution here is to examine what regional cooperation contributes to addressing the tasks of interdependence. The project was part of the Ladenburg-Kolleg that devotes itself to addressing the challenges of globalization through interdisciplinary cooperation. The project was continued within the project Strategy options of international governance" by Beate Kohler-Koch and Fabrice Larat.