Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

With a grant from the Program on Peace and International Cooperation of the MacArthur Foundation, the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley has established two working groups to examine emerging issues in international studies.

The first group studies multilateralism as an institutional form. Its activities include an interdisciplinary colloquium of faculty and graduate students, and support for graduate students at the pre-dissertation and dissertation research stage. This research program includes the Multilateralism Colloquium and sponsors dissertation and predissertation fellowships.

The second working group examines the "politics of identity." Its activities will include an interdisciplinary colloquium of faculty and graduate students, the offering of a new interdisciplinary graduate level course, and support for graduate students at the pre-dissertation and dissertation research stage. This research program includes the Politics of Cultural Identity Colloquium. In addition, it sponsors a predissertation fellowship, and, with the Mellon Foundation, a dissertation fellowship.

In addition to the programs described above, the MacArthur Foundation also sponsors the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance research group. The larger goal of this project is to understand the various ways in which barriers to economic advancement facing the poor reduce their potential for innovation and human resource development, how institutional structures and opportunities for cooperative problem solving are foregone by organizations and whole societies that are sharply divided along economic lines, and how such cooperation at the local level inhalding the degradation of common environmental resources may be facilitated by a reduction in economic disparity and a lower intensity of economic conflicts. Understanding these ways and mechanisms can provide insight in designing and implementing better public policies and also in a small way contribute to the eternal human pursuit of a just, humane, and yet efficient and innovative society that still remains so elusive.

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