THE TRANSATLANTIC POLICY CONSORTIUM

The Transatlantic Policy Consortium is a project of several European and American academic and training institutions in the fields of education and research for public policy and administration. The organization essentially provides a network for these institutions to facilitate a variety of activities, including joint research and publications, faculty and student exchanges, and occasional colloquia and conferences.

The idea for the Transatlantic Policy Consortium grew out of an on-going relationship between the I.U. School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) and the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) in Paris, France. The two organizations jointly sponsored an international conference on transatlantic public policy issues in Paris in June 1997. The foci of the conference were, "Development and Security Issues for the EU and the US in the 21st century"; and "The Next Generation of World Trade Issues." In addition to the SPEA and ENA faculty and staff involved, several content experts and public policy leaders participated in the program. The conference was quite successful, and many of the participants argued strongly for a continuation of this type of activity on transatlantic policy issues. As a result, Charles Bonser, Dean Emeritus of SPEA, and Jean Marie Duffau, Director of Studies at ENA, developed a plan that would continue these programs, but that would bring several other public policy/administration academic programs in Europe and the U.S. into the process.

A second transatlantic issues colloquium was held on the topic of "Globalization and the Environment" at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, September 30 - October 2, 1998. Participating in that colloquium, in addition to ENA and SPEA, were: the German governments Bundesacademie (Bonn, Germany); the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona); the National School of Administrative Sciences (Speyer, Germany); the Netherlands School of Government; the Erasmus University School of Social Sciences (Netherlands); the Instituto Nacional de Administracao (Lisbon, Portugal); and the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (Milan, Italy). Once again, the participants included both faculty and outside experts from the various countries involved. The style of this colloquium - and the preference for future meetings - was a round table format that allowed plenty of time for informal exchanges. The Bloomington colloquium had 40 persons in attendance for 2 1/2 days

At the Bloomington meeting, it was decided to formalize the activity by establishing a consortium. 

The first two collections of papers written for the consortium's colloquia have been published.  The books, published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, include "Security, Trade, and Environmental Policy: A US/European Transatlantic Agenda," edited by Charles F, Bonser, and "Globalization and Regionalization: Challenges for Public Policy," edited by Charles Bonser and David Audretsch.  Papers from the 2003 colloquium in Speyer, Germany, will be included in a forthcoming book published by LIT Verlag.  You can learn more about the past colloquia by visiting the colloquia section of this web site.

The American and European institutions presently working on this project is available on the institutions web page.  Access to their individual web sites is linked, where available.