Are Regional Organizations Contagious? - Diffusion and the Institutional Design of Regional Organizations

有没有区域组织的制度设计模式？如果有，有多少模式？区域组织的制度设计是如何在时间和空间上演变的？这些设计是趋同的，还是它们具有不同的进化轨迹？是什么决定了这一轨迹？该项目扩大了从DFG赠款中产生的比较区域组织(CROP)。建立CROP是为了系统地比较区域组织，发现两对单一协定之间的相似性模式，并在开发相似性指数之后，检验从理论上得出的关于以下问题的假设：如何解释区域组织的制度设计的相似性？扩散是否解释了这种相似之处？如果是，扩散的机制是什么？CROP的核心是生成两个数据集，即关于机构设计特征的CROPDA I和关于解释和控制变量的CROPDA II，这使我们能够用面向扩散的方法来衡量和解释区域组织之间的相似性。这两个数据集提供了收集区域组织数据的独特努力。首先，CROPDA I的描述性分析表明，区域组织的相似性可以用一种不同的、经验直观的方式来处理：我们没有将区域组织的相似性定义为通过协议的聚合相似性来衡量的趋同，而是通过四个维度的因素分析提取区域组织的经验模型：规范、政策领域、机构和能力。这为我们提供了一种相似性的衡量标准，即1)数据驱动，2)比总体水平更细粒度，3)为我们提供了概念杠杆，以产生关于区域组织的衡量和这种衡量的维度的理论讨论。该项目的主要目标是建立区域组织之间的模型的数量和类型，进行一些统计测试来验证这些模型，生成更高阶的模型，探索不同的模型是如何结合在一起的，最后解释模型及其随时间和空间的演变。作为该项目的一个成果，我们将了解区域组织是如何随着时间的推移而演变的，以及是什么决定了这种演变。从实践上讲，我们将知道区域组织是否倾向于从功能组织发展到政治组织，从威斯特伐利亚组织发展到自由组织，或者它们是否有自己的发展轨迹。此外，我们还将对比较区域主义和比较政治领域中衡量区域组织的概念辩论作出贡献。

Are there models of institutional design of regional organizations and if yes, how many? How does the institutional design of regional organizations evolve over time and space? Do the designs converge or do they have different trajectories of evolution? What determines this trajectory? The project expands the Comparative Regional Organizations (CROP) which has emerged out of the initial DFG grant. CROP has been established to systematically compare regional organizations, to detect patterns of similarity between pairs of single agreements, and–following the development of a similarity index–to test theoretically derived hypotheses to the questions: What explains the similarity of the institutional designs of regional organizations? Does diffusion explain such similarities and if yes, which mechanisms of diffusion? The core of CROP is the generation of two datasets, CROPDA I on institutional design characteristics, and CROPDA II on explanatory and control variables, which allow us to measure and explain similarities among regional organizations with a diffusion oriented approach. These two datasets present unique efforts of data-collection on regional organizations. First descriptive analyses of CROPDA I have demonstrated that the similarity of regional organizations can be addressed in a differentiated, and empirically intuitive way: instead of defining the similarity of regional organizations as convergence measured by the aggregated similarity of agreements, we extract empirical models of regional organization through factor analysis on four dimensions: norms, policy areas, institutions and competences. This provides us with a measure of similarity that is, 1) data-driven, 2) more fine-grained than the aggregate level, and 3) provides us with conceptual leverage to generate a theoretical discussion on the measurement of regional organizations and the dimensions of such a measurement.The major objectives of the project are to establish the number and type of models among regional organizations, to conduct a number of statistical tests to validate these models, to generate higher-order-models, to explore how the different models hang together, and finally, to explain the models and their evolution over time and space themselves. As an outcome of the project, we will know how regional organizations have evolved over time and what determines this evolution. Practically speaking will we know whether regional organizations tend to develop from functional to political ones, and from Westphalian to liberal ones or whether they have their own developmental trajectories. We will additonally have contributed to the conceptual debate on the measurement of regional organizations in the field of comparative regionalism and comparative politics.