The Mitrany Initiative has been launched as part of a special partnership between the University of Bucharest and KPMG Romania and is supported by an institutional partnership consisting of “Babes-Bolyai” University, the Academy of Economic Studies, Banca Comerciala Romana, London School of Economics-IDEAS, the Ratiu Forum and British Council Romania. As such, it will develop a complex portfolio that will include teaching, archival research, foundational and applied studies, publications, translations, dissemination, conferences and public events.

The Project is predicated on the notion that Mitrany’s ideas –if recalibrated to the current landscape of social sciences and public debates– may become a significant contribution to the advancement of theoretical and practical responses to the current governance and public policy challenges. Hence, the project, although it has at its core a solid intellectual history dimension, is not relegated to that. Its second major objective is to advance a fresh research agenda, taking as vehicles ideas and insights from Mitrany’s work and extending them into new territories, while enhancing them with an updated conceptual apparatus inspired by modern institutional theory and political economy.

Among its operational objectives, the Project will initiate the first (and much overdue) series of translation of Mitrany’s work into Romanian, will try to reignite the international community’s interest in Mitrany’s functionalist thinking as an alternative approach to the current governance challenges confronting the EU, and will advance new versions of Mitrany’s ideas as working governance solutions able to engender coexistence, toleration and cooperation in conditions of the deep diversity of values, beliefs and lifestyles, generated by the current demographic, technological and cultural trends.