Welcome to The Asia Pacific Dispute Resolution Project
A piece of good news for the New Year
Congratulations to Dr. Pitman Potter, Principal Investigator on securing another highly competitive grant
It is our pleasure to announce that the Dr. Pitman Potter, Hong Kong Bank Chair in Asian Research, has received a new $2.5 million Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Reseach Council of Canada to continue and expand it’s research on the dynamic relationships between trade and human rights policies and practices in Canada and Asia. Whereas the initial MCRI generated an explanatory model that enabled reliable forecasting of local compliance with international trade and human rights standards as separate and distinct discourses, the Phase II project will build an expanded model to forecast conditions for coordinated compliance with international trade and human rights standards. Predictable coordination can in turn facilitate stronger cooperation in trade and human rights relations, such that expanded trade connections can be demonstrated to contribute to improved human rights conditions and vice versa.
The project will include interview and archival research methods in dispute resolution as well as local Case Studies selected and developed with Canadian policy needs in mind. By conducting field studies in Canada, China, Japan, India and Indonesia, it will be possible to test the application of paradigms in regions that are critical for generating important policy knowledge for Canada. The project will generate policy proposals for building treaty compliance programs, processes and institutions that are more responsive to cross-cultural differences and aim to resolve and where possible prevent disputes over trade and human rights. The research results will thereby enable Canadian policymakers (and counterparts internationally) to address needs of coordinated trade and human rights compliance through domestic economic and social regulation. The knowledge generated by the proposed research will also be useful to inform future studies of coordinated compliance with international treaty standards in areas such as security, climate change, and resource and technology policy.
This Phase II research involves collaboration among 54 researchers from 21 institutions in North America and East Asia, all of whom share collaborative research experience, in part through our Phase I MCRI. Team members are drawn from law schools, social science departments, policy research institutes, and dispute resolution organizations, and have a wealth of interdisciplinary training and experience in cross-cultural and comparative research.
In sum, the Phase II research builds on a successful existing MCRI project to generate significant new data, insights, and policy analysis on critical issues facing Canada and the global community.
