Globalization has brought enormous changes in every dimension of the world for decades. It operates political, economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects. These changes make more and more interdependent world and national boundary cannot be the panacea for the problems associated to the globalization. It is one of the most important challenges for the contemporary international society to find the fundamental way of governance to deal with these changes. There is of course no world government and the role of the United Nations is still limited. The European Union, consisted of 25 countries, has large economy and population and continues to deepen its integration. It becomes an important actor and develops a unique governance system in international politics. The governance of the EU is so complicated that it has the diversity of EU policy-makings across a range of policy domains. The Union has a strong policy-making power over some domains, but in other domains, for example Common Foreign and Security Policy, the authority remains to each member state. We need to analyze the interaction between the Union and member states to understand the governance in Europe. In addition to dynamic change in the Europe, the external relationship of the EU and its impact on the governance at global level is another main research topic of the project. What is the "global governance" that the EU and its member states aim to construct? How does Europe work with other counties, for example the United States and Japan, and other international organizations as the United Nations to achieve it? This research project tries to address those questions.
The project hosted an international symposium, "Japan and Germany in Global Governance －Responsibility for Peace and Security－," on 4 June 2005 at Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo. The symposium focused on the possible policy cooperation between Japan and Germany in the field of international security and peace building. The project will also host another international symposium about the future of European integration on 12 October 2006 at the University of Tokyo.