Ummatics Institute Workshop
Political Unification
Istanbul, July 2025
The Ummatics Institute’s Political Unification Academic Working Group invites submissions for a workshop exploring the evolving dynamics, challenges, and prospects of political unification in general, and with reference to the Global South and the Muslim World in particular. Besides the persisting desire for political unity in the Muslim Umma, the recent political confederation treaty between Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, revives the notion of voluntary transnational integration and unification. This workshop seeks to bring renewed academic focus to this topic from an ummatic lens.
As the Ummatics Institute explores pathways to ummatic unification, it is crucial to theoretically and empirically explore voluntary political unification. To this end, the Political Unification Academic Working Group is a project initiated in early 2024 that brought together a group of distinguished political science professors and doctoral students to explore the conditions under which political unification occurs and the variables that affect its success. Political unification here refers to the process by which sovereign states voluntarily unite to form a larger sovereign political entity governed by shared institutions. This workshop is intended as a means to discuss, deepen, and share the research of the working group while enriching it with the research of others who work in relevant fields.
Among the preliminary fruits of the working group is a thorough literature review of foundational texts on political unification in the western academy. This literature review, which is being published alongside and as an aid to this call for papers, discusses the contemporary relevance of political unification, the diverse terminology scholars use to describe it, the key theoretical frameworks they adopt to study the phenomenon, the variables influencing the sustainability of political unification, and some of the relevant case study literature. It concludes by identifying gaps in the literature and potential areas for further research.
Despite a robust though sparse body of literature on voluntary political unification, scholarly interest has waned in recent times, even as unification efforts persist in some parts of the world or are revisited within contemporary ummatic discourses. We seek to promote academic research on this topic and engagement with its longstanding theoretical frameworks. This will allow the contrasting of existing literature with advances in the political and social sciences, and connecting it with other related themes within the broader social science literature. It is also crucial to address contemporary political realities that may reshape our understanding of political unification.
We invite established and aspiring scholars to contribute original research on political unification within today’s increasingly complex global order, with a particular focus on Muslim-majority regions. We welcome papers that critically examine voluntary political unification theoretical frameworks (neo-functionalist, realist, liberal, constructivist), or propose novel frameworks that reexplore historical cases as well as account for the impact of recent political and social developments on unification efforts. More specifically, we invite submission on the following themes and related questions:
- Reassessing Theoretical Frameworks that explain Political Unification
- Revisiting classic theories by Ernst Haas, Karl Deutsch, Amitai Etzioni, and others, with an emphasis on their relevance or limitations in light of recent unification attempts, particularly in the Umma and the Global South.
- Proposing new or improved frameworks of how political unification could be understood and applying them to various case studies.
- Political Unification in the Umma and beyond: Case Studies and Comparative Analyses
- In-depth comparative case studies of recent and past unification efforts and processes, whether successful or not, in Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia and Latin America.
- Examining the roles of regional security threats, political elite dynamics, economic pressures, institutional designs, and other variables.
- The Role of Federalism and Regime Type in Political Unification
- Examining the role of federalism in sustaining political unification and whether the different ways of designing or setting up federal arrangements has an effect on the sustainability of unification.
- Assessing whether regime type has an effect on political unification outcomes
- Studying decentralization in the light of political unification.
- Investigating the current ongoing confederation process between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
- Challenges and Prospects of Unification in Authoritarian Contexts
- Examining the effects of authoritarian governance on unification efforts, focusing on how elite dynamics, power structures, and regime survival shape the success or failure of such efforts.
- Exploring regime discourses and unification.
- The Role of Institutions in Political Unification
- Examining the role of various institutions during political unification, such as financial, security, and military institutions.
- Conducting comparative institutional design studies in contexts of political unification.
- Examining the role of civil-military relations in political unification outcomes.
- The Role of Identity, Religion, and Non-State Actors in Political Integration
- Investigating how collective identity, religion, and regional affiliations (e.g., Arab nationalism, Pan-Africanism) influence the feasibility and sustainability of political unification.
- Investigating the historical success and failures of unification movements.
- Examining the influence of, and comparing, non-state actors—such social movements, religious movements, transnational networks, tribes and others—on unification efforts and their potential to either foster unity or deepen division.
- Examining the role of migration within unification and its dynamics and effects on the process.
- International Relations and Political Unification
- Examining how regional states react to political unification with relevant case studies.
- Examining how regional states react to political unification with relevant case studies.
- Methodological Advances and the Quantification of Political Unification Readiness
- Proposals for developing indexes or methodologies to assess the “readiness” or potential for political unification among states, accounting for factors such as economic interdependence, security needs, and cultural homogeneity.
- Empirical and quantitative studies exploring the specific conditions that increase the likelihood of successful unification efforts.
Submission details
Please direct all inquiries and submissions to [email protected]. Abstracts of 350-400 words, with an accompanying author bio, are due by February 20, 2025. Abstracts should outline the scope, methodology, and potential contributions of the proposed paper; and should clearly define the research question/s, outline the hypothesis, justify any case selections, and highlight anticipated findings, with an emphasis on relevance to contemporary issues in political unification. Authors of preliminarily accepted papers based on abstract submissions will be notified by March 20, 2025, inshāʾAllah.
Full draft papers, of a minimum 6000 words, must be submitted by June 1, 2025. Confirmation of paper inclusion in the workshop will be determined at this point. The workshop with all accepted papers will be held in Istanbul in July 2025, with the exact date and venue to be advised in due course. Lodging and meals will be provided. Travel expenses are to be covered by participants. Those who cannot travel are still encouraged to submit an abstract and work on a paper for publication. The best paper submitted, as judged by a panel of scholars from the Ummatics research team, will be awarded a prize of $500. Additionally, selected papers will be considered for submission to a Scopus-indexed academic journal, possibly in a special issue on political unification.
