Conference Reports

Economics, as a body of research, has failed to provide solutions to many of our most pressing challenges. The CIGI and INET conference, False Dichotomies: Economics and the Challenges of Our Time, held in November 2012, trained a spotlight on lines drawn by economists — between macro and micro, commercial lending and capital markets, and efficiency and equality.

This report summarizes the international policy discussions and recommendations made to build the global governance arrangements required to counter the lingering effects of the crisis.

On September 5–7, 2012, the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, A.C., The Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, with the support of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German political foundation, hosted the second meeting of the Constructive Powers Initiative, held in Mexico City. The workshop, Global Governance and the Challenge of Transnational Organized Crime: The Role of the Constructive Powers, addressed questions surrounding transnational organized crime, and policy responses to it.

Each year, CIGI hosts its premier event, gathering leading experts and policy makers from around the world to explore international governance issues and challenges. The CIGI ’11 conference, An Unfinished House: Filling the Gaps in International Governance, tackled questions regarding gaps in international governance, focusing on governance challenges under CIGI’s thematic areas of concentration. This conference report combines findings from the conference discussions with points from written responses and attempts to indicate the range, depth and flavour of the proceedings.

This paper reviews a menu of indicators for the 12 candidate goals to inform the future process of selecting the post 2015 successors to the Millennium Development Goals.

How can think tanks increase their positive influence on governments and international organizations in the digital age? How can think tanks develop a culture that produces innovative policy ideas? These were among the questions addressed at a conference on September 20, 2011 marking the tenth anniversary of the founding of The Centre for International Governance Innovation.

The Constructive Powers Initiative (CPI) was launched on the premise that existing global governance architecture is not effective in tackling new security challenges given the changing global order. The CPI regional conflict management workshop, organized by The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, The Centre for International Governance Innovation and Middle East Technical University, was held in Istanbul, Turkey on June 2–3, 2011. The goal of the meeting was to identify common security challenges that could benefit from policy coordination, and explore the relationship between the constructive powers and the G20. In June 2011, the Constructive Powers Initiative met in Istanbul to identify security challenges that could benefit from policy coordination.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and CIGI convened a meeting of development experts, representatives from international organizations and research institutes, and policy and governance experts to discuss a post-2015 development paradigm. The four-day meeting in Bellagio, Italy resulted in agreement on a proposed architecture of 12 new development goals.

There is mounting pressure on the G20 to shift from crisis response to a medium-term agenda with demonstrated progress on its agenda topics. A joint conference held from June 6-8, 2011, was the third in a series of conferences organized by The Stanley Foundation, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), and The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) on the prospects for key influential nations to cooperate on summit diplomacy.

This conference report follows a two-day workshop “Re-energizing Canada-Asia Relations: Defining an Asian Strategy” co-sponsored by CIGI and The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, the Security and Defence Forum Program, the Institute of Asian Research at UBC, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, the International Development Research Centre and the Munk School of Global Affairs. The goal of the workshop was to look at how the global re-distribution of economic and political power demands a new understanding of Asia’s global role and a new strategy for advancing Canadian interests and involvement in the region.