Cooptation in Times of Great Power Rivalries

In Kooperation mit dem Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, LMU München

Leitung: Anja Opitz / Andreas Kruck / Bernhard Zangl

Sekretariat: Karin Klemm-Vollmer, Tel.: 08158 / 256-46

* Fester Teilnehmerkreis. Zusätzliche Anmeldungen nur nach Rücksprache mit dem Tagungssekretariat.

Great power rivalries are back. While having been tamed considerably for much of the post-Cold War period, great power rivalries, e.g. between China and the US or between the European Union, the US and Russia, are gaining steam again. While these rivalries take on many forms from economic to military confrontation, many of them are also dealt with politically by means of what we call “cooptation”, i.e. the trading of institutional privileges for institutional support in international institutions (broadly understood). For example, great powers give smaller powers institutional privileges to win them as partners against their rivals and they grant rising powers institutional privileges to tame their rivalry. But the forms of cooptation to deal with great power rivalries vary considerably, as do the evolution, impact and durability of cooptation. The contributions to this workshop use cooptation as a concept to study the institutional dynamics of great power rivalries. They analyze how different types of cooptation are used by states to cope with great power rivalries; how cooptation evolves over time in great power rivalries; and when cooptation is successful in managing great power rivalries and when it is failing or even leading to adverse effects. Following up on the memo paper conference in November 2022 in Jerusalem, the workshop participants produce draft papers which will be circulated and read by all participants in advance. There are no paper presentations in Tutzing. Rather, the assigned discussant will briefly summarize the respective paper and start off the discussion with a couple of critical comments