Economic Statecraft: Competition and Cooperation

The aim of the annual GIGA Global Transitions Conference is to bring together scholars and practitioners to address key issues of our times. In 2019, we want to explore the topic of economic statecraft.

The meeting on 9 December will be launched with a GIGA Distinguished Speaker Lecture by Professor Henry Farrell (George Washington University) and Professor Abraham Newman (Georgetown University). Their seminal work on “Weaponized Interdependence” has been generating an important discussion in the academic and policy community and represents a new understanding of globalisation and power with clear policy implications. We want to build on this debate and add to it in at least three ways.

First, as the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, we have expertise in the areas of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. We want to bring these world regions into the debate, and investigate how countries are both using weapons of economic statecraft and responding to moves against them. Second, we want to analyse the role of institutions. We will investigate how multilateral and regional institutions form a part of and shape these interactions, and also if and how these institutions might be reformed. Third, we hope to contribute to a growing scholarly debate on distinguishing Weaponized Interdependence from other manifestations of economic statecraft, and indeed a straightforward pursuit of profit that might be unrelated to geostrategic purpose.

We are proud to present some of the world-leading thinkers in this area – from research institutions, think-tanks, policy, and the media – to engage in this vibrant debate and explore possible solutions together.

The GIGA launched the Global Transitions Conference Series in 2015 to promote analysis and debate on key problems the world faces today from diverse academic and practitioners’ perspectives, and to propose innovative and feasible solutions. Once a year, leading thinkers from around the globe are invited to join GIGA scholars for this dynamic interaction at the GIGA in Hamburg, Germany.