Ongoing projects

The Polycentric Governance of the Earth's Orbital Space

This project aims to improve our understanding of the global governance of the Earth’s orbital space, seen as a common-pool resource threatened by debris. It asks how the growing number of space actors and their increasing heterogeneity affect the governance of orbital space. Instead of modeling an alternative governance system, as much of the existing literature does, it sets out to collect empirical evidence to improve our understanding of how space actors really interact.

Funded by an Insight Grant (2020-2023) of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada

Principal investigator: Prof. Jean-Frédéric Morin

Research coordinateur: Dr Eytan Tepper

Collaborateur: Prof. Scott Shackelford

Frames in Productions: Actors, Networks, Diffusion (FRAMENET)

The overall aim of the project is to create a new, comparative research agenda that investigates when and how specific statements (frames) emerge in a political debate, by which kinds of actors they are proposed, and whether and how they diffuse to others. The project studies frames in five issue areas (trade, immigration, environment, global health, and transparency).

Principal investigator in UK: Dr. Ece Özlem Atikcan

Principal investigator in Germany: Prof. A. Holzscheiter

Principal investigator in Canada: Prof. JF Morin.

Funding: ORA 6 (2021-2024)

Design of environmental agreements

Prof. Morin and his team built a new dataset of specific provisions found in more than 2000 international environmental agreements. The full text of these IEAs came from the IEA Database Project, created and maintained by prof. Ronald Mitchell.

Various publications will come out of this project, including on flexibility clause, economic clauses, aid clauses, withdrawal clauses, dispute settlement clauses, amendment procedures, health-related clause, and delegation clauses.

Partners include C. Peacock (UL/SFU), R. Mitchell (U of Oregon), C. Brandi (DIE), J. Schwab (DIE), F. Stender (DIE), Chantal Blouin (UL) and L. Bélanger (UL).

Funding was provided by SSHRC (Insight Development grant), Canada Foundation for Innovation, Government of Québec, CIGI, and CEPCI.

TRade & ENvironment Dataset (TREND)

Prof. Morin and his team of research assistants have collected data on nearly 300 different environmental provisions found in 730 trade agreements. We call this dataset the TRade & ENvironment Dataset (TREND)

This project is conducted in collaboration with various researchers, including A. Dür (University of Salzburg), L. Lechner (University of Innsbruck), J. Pauwely and J. Hollway (both at the Graduate Institute, Geneva), C. Brandi, A.Berger, J. Schwab and D. Bruhn (all four at the German Development Institute), and S Jinnah and Z Dove (both from the University of California Santa Cruz) . Trade agreements used for this dataset are coming from the DESTA project.

This project already led to the publication of 1 book (MIT Press), 12 peer-reviewed articles, 5 book chapters, 8 policy briefs (by 6 different think tanks), and 41 presentations (in 11 different countries). More publications are currently in the pipeline.

It also provides material for several master and PhD theses.

Funding provided by: SSHRC (insight grant); Canada Foundation for Innovation; CIGI; CEPCI

The dataset is available at http://www.trend.ulaval.ca

A data visualization tool was created in partnership with DEI: www.TRENDanalytics.info

The Global Governance of Intellectual Property

Prof. Morin and Dr. Jenny Surbeck developed a database of TRIPs-Plus provisions found in preferential trade agreements. Prof. Morin also create a dataset of domestic IP regulations in collaboration with prof. R. Gold.

These two datasets are used for a variety of studies, on the diffusion and implementaiton of IP standards. Some of these studies are done in collaboration with Dr. M. Cartwright.

Space – Cyber Governance

With the aim of identifying principles for responsible space – cyber behavior that will represent a broad consensus, this project brings together a cohort of scholars, experts, and practitioners from around the world to discuss governance responses to the emerging nexus of space – cyber.

This project is a cooperation between the Laval University Graduate School of international Studies (ESEI), CIGI, and the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University, Bloomington. Funding for this project is provided by Mitacs and CIGI.

The academic principal investigators are Eytan Tepper, Jean-Frédéric Morin, and Scott Shackelford.

More information at www.chaire-epi.ulaval.ca/en/space-cyber