Announcing the Creation of the Agirre Lehendakaria Center for Social and Political Studies

(Agirre Center)

The “Agirre Lehendakaria Center for Social and Political Studies” is a recently created autonomous academic institution founded at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) through a collaborative effort with Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC⁴) and George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (S-CAR).

The Center´s principle purpose is to research and implement knowledge transfer collaborative projects on the Basque model of socio-economic transformation with a particular focus on the importance of identity and participatory democracy in progress and sustainable human development. The Agirre Lehendakaria Center has evolved out of years of collaboration between Columbia University, George Mason University, and the Basque Country, and most recently through a series of multilateral and bilateral consultations to evaluate a proposed “Basque model”.

The program has been created in the honour and memory of Mr Jose Antonio Aguirre, the first democratically elected President of the Basque Government who also served as Columbia University lecturer. The programming of the Agirre Lehendakaria Center will not only honour the President´s contribution to the Basque people, but also re-establish the historic academic relationship between Columbia University and the Basque Country. The current lines of research of the Center focus on an analysis of the decision-making processes that enabled the transformation of the Basque Country in two areas:

• The Circulation Analysis of the Basque Economy and Sustainable Human Development Scenarios, an exploratory study of the Basque Country’s economy and social innovation development based on Lonergan economic theories.
• The study of the uniqueness of the Euskadi Peace Scenarios through mapping and visualizing individual actors, their mutual perceptions, reasoning, actions and goals.

The coordination and leadership of the Agirre Lehendakaria Center is comprised of former President of the Basque Country Dr. Juan José Ibarretxe at the University of the Basque Country, Dr. Andrea Bartoli, Dean of GMU’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and Dr. Peter Coleman, Director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity(AC⁴).