Creating, challenging, and changing pathways for cooperation through imagination

Abstract

We started this book project with an interest in better understanding how imaginations matter for global cooperation. In the introduction to this volume, we suggested that examining the role of imaginations and reflexivity in processes of global cooperation can help to overcome some of the limitations of systemic approaches to global governance, including a tendency towards making sweeping statements about the current state of global cooperation; a focus on authority relationships in institutionalized settings, as well as on outcomes of cooperation rather than on its process; and a neglect of the open-ended character of cooperation processes. When dissatisfaction with classic forms of global cooperation becomes widespread, the potentials and limits of human creative imagination become a central issue: in the face of gridlock in global cooperation, will the outcome be resignation or a hopeful search for new solutions? The increasing complexity and interconnectedness of our globalized world has prompted a certain pessimism regarding the potentialities of political change. However, the same developments have inspired a rediscovery of imagination as an important and necessary capacity. This shift resonates with the endeavour in this volume to explore the role of imaginations in open-ended processes of global cooperation.The ten preceding chapters provide in-depth case studies from different historical periods, policy fields, and world regions. By offering rich insights into the practice of global cooperation, they deepen our understanding of the multiple ways in which imaginations shape pathways of cooperation.In these concluding remarks, we revisit the main findings of the chapters to offer some overall reflections. We provide insights on how cooperative processes function across a variety of different actor constellations and are able to engender change, often through imagining new or alternative ways ahead. Since cooperation, in our understanding, is not synonymous with normatively positive outcomes, our analytical focus has shifted to the inner dynamics of