Politics, Philosophy and Economics for Global Challenges: Institutions Under Pressure

Researchers-in-charge: Filipe Nobre Faria, Ana Brasão, Sabrina Medeiros
Abstract
Contemporary global challenges place pressure on institutions of many kinds, from social norms and legal rules to national and international political bodies. Challenges such as technological disruption, geopolitical tensions, demographic change, climate transition, and declining social trust confront these institutions with problems that are simultaneously empirical, normative and strategic. None of these challenges can be adequately addressed by isolating political analysis from ethical reflection or economic modelling. They require an integrated mode of inquiry that asks what institutions are doing, whether their responses are justified and how they could be improved, treating these questions as inseparable.
The project adopts Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) as a research framework that brings the three fields into sustained dialogue. Its central question is how interdisciplinary inquiry across these three fields can improve the analysis and design of institutional responses to complex global challenges. The project pursues this question through three connected modes of work. First, it seeks to understand how institutions respond to global challenges through political economy, the study of international order, and the modelling of strategic interaction. Second, it evaluates those responses against criteria of legitimacy, justice, efficiency and feasibility, using political philosophy and public ethics. Third, it explores how institutions could be improved through regulatory design and policy innovation, informed by public policy, public choice and comparative institutional analysis.
This PPE approach is especially concerned with institutions operating under conditions of complexity, where knowledge is dispersed, values conflict and outcomes are uncertain. It gives particular attention to how ethical judgment and incentive structures shape public decision-making. Selected global challenges provide the cases that test how institutions respond under pressure; the project uses these cases to apply and refine the PPE approach.
The project is led by Filipe Nobre Faria, Ana Brasão and Sabrina Medeiros, and contributes to LusoGlobe's mission of interdisciplinary research on global challenges by developing a PPE research agenda on institutional responses to global change.
Expected outcomes
1. Seminars and academic workshops
Seminars and workshops bringing together internal and external researchers from philosophy, political science, economics, international relations, law, sociology, psychology and related fields to discuss institutional responses to global challenges.
2. Academic publications and research outputs
The project will support academic outputs such as journal articles, book chapters, conference communications, papers in proceedings and, where appropriate, student dissertations or research projects.
3. Student and early-career researcher involvement
Opportunities for students and junior researchers to participate in seminars, reading groups, research assistance, short papers or public-facing outputs.
4. International cooperation
Development of links with PPE programmes and research centres in Europe and beyond, with a view to future seminars, joint events, research collaboration and academic mobility.