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

是否有区域组织的体制设计模式，如果有，有多少？区域组织的体制设计如何随时间和空间演变？这些设计是趋同的，还是有不同的进化轨迹？是什么决定了这个轨迹？该项目扩大了比较区域组织（CROP），该组织是由DFG最初的赠款产生的。CROP的建立是为了系统地比较区域组织，检测成对的单一协定之间的相似性模式，并在开发相似性指数之后，测试理论上推导出的问题的假设：如何解释区域组织的制度设计的相似性？扩散是否可以解释这种相似性，如果可以，是哪些扩散机制？CROP的核心是生成两个数据集，CROPDA I的制度设计特征，和CROPDA II的解释和控制变量，这使我们能够衡量和解释的相似性区域组织与扩散为导向的方法。这两个数据集是收集区域组织数据的独特努力。第一个描述性分析的CROPDA我已经证明，区域组织的相似性，可以在一个有区别的，经验直观的方式来解决：而不是定义的相似性的区域组织的趋同性衡量的协议，我们提取经验模型的区域组织通过因子分析的四个维度：规范，政策领域，机构和能力。这为我们提供了一种相似性度量，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，以就区域组织的度量和这种度量的维度进行理论讨论。进行一些统计测试来验证这些模型，生成高阶模型，探索不同模型如何结合在一起，最后，解释模型及其随时间和空间本身的演变。作为该项目的一项成果，我们将了解区域组织如何随着时间的推移而演变，以及是什么决定了这种演变。从实践上讲，我们将了解区域组织是否有从功能性组织向政治性组织、从威斯特伐利亚组织向自由主义组织发展的趋势，或者它们是否有自己的发展轨迹。此外，我们还将在比较区域主义和比较政治领域为关于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.