The research group, “Small States in the Multi-Polar World”, was founded and held its initial meeting at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, September 28th, 2015. Professor Radhika Desai and Assistant Professor Petar Kurecic, founded the Group as a part of GERG. The initial meeting was held during GERG’s inaugural conference entitled “From the Thirty Years’ Crisis to Multi-polarity: The Evolution of the Geopolitical Economy of the 21st Century World”.
The topics that were discussed as the possible future research agendas were the following:
1. Studying small states using geopolitical economy as the discipline of multipolarity
2. Regional clusters of small states
3. Small states originating from the breakup of larger entities
4. Small unrecognized entities i.e. pseudo-states;
5. Tax Havens (‘Treasure Islands’)
6. Imperial outposts (‘aircraft cariers’)
7. Small states and alliances – bandwagoning, balancing, integrating etc.
8. Cooperation between small states through cooperation groups;
9. Benefits of integration for small states – in economic terms.
This list is suggestive, not exhaustive and the Group is opened to other topics that are devoted to the problematics of small states/small economies in the multipolar world, and it strongly encourages the studying the afore-mentioned research interests using geopolitical economy, as the discipline of multipolarity.
The Group currently has about twenty active members. So far, we have managed to organize three panels, devoted to small state research, at the Socialist Studies Society (of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences) Conference, that was held in Calgary in May-June 2016. The titles of the panels were the following: Small States in a Multipolar World (Part I & Part II), and Small States in a Multipolar World: Regional Economic/Political Integrations and Small States.
We are also co-editing a special issue of the World Review of Political Economy (WRPE), and have received nine papers (from the authors that have sent the accepted abstracts and then papers for the Conference), which are now undergoing peer-review. The authors of the papers are from the following countries: Canada, Croatia, Spain, Mexico, and Australia.
We are currently pursuing cooperation with some other research groups that are also studying small state problematics.
Among other research efforts, we are presenting papers at the EU SAAP Conference (July 2017), and plan to organize panels at the next ISA Annual Conference (April 2018), that would be devoted to small state problematics.
We are open to new suggestions that would enhance the work of the Group as well as give visibility to new contributors.
Contact person: Petar Kurecic, [email protected]
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