As NET ROL begins to take shape, Professor Antoaneta Dimitrova – our lead for management and coordination – shares a brief reflection on this milestone and what lies ahead

All collaborative projects are different – every call attracts different partners, every consortium creates a different dynamic. Even though NET-ROL is my third European collaborative project, beyond the common rules and the commitment to getting something important and interesting out of the research, I did not know what to expect. Our first meeting in Trento was not just an occasion to meet many of our project colleagues in person, but also an opportunity to brainstorm about some difficult concepts and their relationships: rule of law, networks, socio economic outcomes, formal and informal institutions. 

Rule of law is the subject of huge scholarly interest in the last decade in Europe and with good reason – it has been under attack in all parts of the world. Networks are a concept and a method and are defined in ways that do not immediately come to mind. Institutions have been the focus of social sciences for half a century and yet different disciplines such as economics, political science and law use slightly different definitions.

The partners in our project do come from different disciplines so an initial calibration exercise was essential. But, as it happens with scholars who draw on different ideas and literatures , we have not reached final and definitive outcomes. What we have achieved is a conceptual framework that does some justice to decades of debates and a scale of definitions – from Hayek and Weber to Weingast and Scheppele, from network science to economics and law.

I am optimistic that we have all learned a lot by discussing our key concepts and that the different perspectives provide fertile ground for innovation, at the boundaries of disciplines and ideas, previous work and future plans.

 

Antoaneta Dimitrova