CLPE Mission

·        Interdisciplinary and Comparative

To date, there is no interdisciplinary initiative comparable to the CLPE Network. The CLPE Network provides a platform for border-crossing thought exchange and synergies among scholars in Law, Economics, Sociology, Political Science and History interested in governance and regulation. At a time of an ever-faster growing scope of scholarly, scientific data, the role of social scientists is navigating and shaping the transnational knowledge society has become crucial. As the borders between different academic disciplines continue to erode and with the growing importance of collaborative research across disciplinary and territorial boundaries the CLPE invites scholars to participate in critical, theoretically informed research on the changing frontiers of governance studies in a globalized world. Whether we are concerned with the differences between the common and the civil law, the differences between the Varieties of Capitalism or the claims to democratic governance in groups and organizations around the world, it is clear that no longer can a single scholarly perspective illuminate the growing complexity.

·        Innovative and Boundaryless

The CLPE Network constitutes a fully-fledged research portal [RP], fuelled by a state-of-the-art document management system [DMS], a Research Paper Series and a ground-breaking real-time multidimensional video-conferencing system. This infrastructure is available to CLPE Research Associates, Project Directors and Fellows to enhance interdisciplinary research, whether in residence in Toronto or at their home institution.

The CLPE Research Portal will provide:

• a cutting-edge facility for the joint authoring, editing and posting of research papers
• an archive/database of all research papers
• written feedback and commentary on papers
• hyper-links to profiles of papers’ authors and of those in the network of collaborators providing feedback (such profiles having at minimum affiliation and email contact details but also providing for website members to upload descriptions of their own research projects, published papers, course syllabi, and bibliographies)

·        Research Themes include:

o       the legal status of emerging instruments and mechanisms in the so-called “Third Sector”;

o       the viability of new forms of governance, privatization, the “contracting state” and “private interest government”;

o       non-state actors in both domestic and transnational arenas and contexts;

o       the historical and socio-economic reassessment of contemporary capitalism after Polanyi and Shonfield;

o       the role of corporatism in Europe and of its absence in North-America;

o       the social role of the (multinational) business corporation;

o       the changing nature of national political economies in an increasingly integrated global order: the fate of industrial relations, welfare policies and vocational training;

o       the prospects for securities regulation – domestic or international, public or private?

o       innovation and sustainability in contemporary post-industrial societies;

o       convergence and divergence in corporate governance regimes;

o       transnational human rights litigation versus international institution building