The Advanced Institute for Law and Politics in the Graduate School of Law at Hokkaido University launched a collaborative research project called “Comparative Research into Changes in Governance in an Age of Globalization” from the fiscal year 2002. The project is funded by a Creative Scientific Research Grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), and draws on an interdisciplinary mode of inquiry. Although the primary field of many of the members of the project is political science, other members represent fields as diverse as economics, environmental science, history, medicine, and so forth. This is an audacious project that aims to formulate an interdisciplinary approach to structural changes in political economy caused by globalization, and to analyze the various policy problems that accompany these changes, and from this basis to construct a policy model for the future.

We have opened this home page both to propagate the knowledge obtained from our research and to publicize the various activities of the Advanced Institute for Law and Politics, including symposia and workshops open to the public. With the collaboration of scholars from around the world, we intend to engage in wide-ranging discussions on topics related to globalization (e.g. global environmental issues, crises in social welfare systems, and the disintegration of regional economies) and to create thereby a new paradigm for grasping some of the most pressing issues of the new century.

We would also like to widely publicize to a general audience the efforts of the researchers taking part in our project. This is in keeping with one of our ultimate objectives the creation of a new relationship of collaboration between academia and society for the solution of economic, political and social problems. It is our sincere wish that this home page will serve as a first step in this direction.