5 proposals selected for the Sciences Po Transatlantic Research Fund

The Sciences Po Transatlantic Research Fund (Sciences Po TRF) was created to provide Sciences Po researchers the opportunity to initiate and engage in research with peers from a U.S. university, supporting the development of transatlantic ties through research.  Five proposals for innovative research in various disciplines in the social sciences have been selected for this opportunity . 

Adam Baczko, Sciences Po CERI, Gilles Dorronsoro, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and Gregory Mann, Columbia University will collaborate on their research project: The Vagaries of Praetorianism in Mali Military and Civilian Regimes Amidst Foreign Intervention. Given the international rise of authoritarian populism, precarious state of democracy in west Africa, and three coup d’etat in Mali in the past decade, this project forms part of a broader collaboration on politics in Mali which aims to address the lack literature on the military regime and sanctions that emerge in reaction to it. The project will culminate in two conferences, the first on a civilian rule characterized by tension between internationalization and autonomy amongst the political class. The second explores the relationship between the military regime and international and foreign organizations involved in the administration of the country.

Johannes Boehm, Sciences Po Associate Professor of Economics, and Ezra Oberfield, Associate Professor of Economics at Princeton University will be working jointly on their research, Firm-to-Firm Trade and Growth in Long-Term Relationships. The project was motivated by the observation that in the face of lack of formal contract enforcement, firms improve incentives by forming long-term relationships with their suppliers that are supported by trust or family ties. The research will focus on such relation contracts which have emerged in India in face of weak judicial institutions, and mobilize innovative tools for quantitative analysis: a novel model of firm dynamics in a production network. The project ultimately seeks to understand the magnitude of welfare losses associated with the congested courts systems and suggest policies which could be effective to increase allocative efficiency.

Laurent Fourchard, Sciences Po CERI, and Gregory Mann, Professor, History department, Columbia University will collaborate on research titled: Competing for the Past: Academic and Vernacular Histories of Africa. Intending to explore history as a mobilizing cause in Africa, the project will examine the production of academic history in light of the development of vernacular histories all over the continent. A transatlantic endeavor, this research brings together historians and political scientists from Sciences Po and Columbia to highlight the ways these new producers of history challenge, contest or dialogue with existing historical narratives in order to assess the role and place of professional and amateur historians in raising controversial issues in African and global history.

Hélène Le Bail, Sciences Po CERI, Ya-Han Chuang, Sciences Po CERI,  Khatharya Um, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California Berkeley and  Russell Jeung, Department of Asian American Studies, San Francisco State University will collaborate on the project: Asian Minorities in Europe and in North America: A transatlantic dialogue on memories, representations, and recognition. Motivated by the resurgence of violence targeting Asians in Western countries, the project addresses minority representation and recognition gap of Asian minorities in European and North American democracies. In addition to addressing two questions concerning the appropriation of collective memory to achieve just representation and tithe ways different regimes determine the recognition of Asian minorities in public space, the project aims to develop a transnational network of researchers and civil society actors to construct a long-term research program promoting social change. 

Isabelle Mejean from the Sciences Po Department of Economics jointly with Andrei Levchenko from University of Michigan Department of Economics have been selected for their project: Building Resilient Global Supply Chains: Lessons from the Pandemic and Beyond. Climate crises and current geopolitical tensions permanently expose firms to higher foreign risks, and likely affect the geography of global value chains. Motivated by the increasingly evident importance of cross-border supply chains, and the vulnerabilities associated with participating in them,  uses new data and new theory to study what features of input-output relationships make supply chains resilient. The project will be useful for individual firms and public authorities alike in working to design more resilient supply chains. 

The Sciences Po Transatlantic Research Fund