International Cooperation before a global context of profound changes: A look at the Basque case

On the 21st of October 2019 Ignacio Martínez Martínez defended his doctoral thesis, enrolled in the Doctorate Programme on Development Studies. The thesis is titled “International Cooperation before a global context of profound changes: A look at the Basque case”, and has been supervised by Koldo Unceta.

The thesis deals with the primary global transformations that have been reconfiguring the reality and contemplating new global problems and challenges for the international society. These transformations have consolidated a model of global coexistence that puts in jeopardy the capacity to guarantee a life in conditions of dignity and wellbeing for the whole of humanity.

More specifically, this thesis is dedicated to contrasting the frame of reference considered through the elaboration of a case-study focused on Basque cooperation. This research proposes an exercise of analysis and diagnostic that deals with the explicatory elements of the potentialities and strengths that embrace the changes that could allow Basque cooperation to give an answer to global challenges, as well as those that limit them.

The nature of the challenges generated in this context demands a collective action that questions in a direct manner the international agenda of development and the system and cooperation policies. Nevertheless, international cooperation as a whole, in order to offer answers adequate to the nature and dimension of the problems, has to address a process of deep revision of the foundations and practices on which it has sat upon in the last decades.

The opening towards a system which is more open, more plural and more democratic, orientated at transforming the model of global coexistence in which problems are generated and guaranteeing sustainability of life are some of the key horizons of transformation that can guide such change.

The thesis points at decentralised cooperation, and the local and regional actors as the protagonists therein, as an important area of action in order to achieve such change. This is due to the differential value that, by nature, they can assume in responding to global problems starting from the practices of cooperation.