Pierre Larouche, Filomena Chirico and Saskia Lavrijssen have been awarded a grant of 211 600 Euros by the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) for the project "Coping with the challenges of globalization". The aim of the project is to analyse from a legal, economic and political perspective how national legal systems can cope with the pressures of globalization. The project uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyse how national legal systems can cope with the pressures of globalization. The project is divided in two sub-projects. The first one deals from an economic and legal perspective with the convergence and divergence of legal systems. Its research questions are: In the light of globalization, why is there convergence or divergence of legal systems and how can it be identified and measured? When and how should divergence be corrected, if at all? The second research question touches upon the evolution of fundamental principles in the light of globalization and new modes of governance for the regulation of economic and social behaviour. Its research question is if and how the fundamental democratic principles of the rule of law and accountability are translated in new forms of governance. The project will start in 2007 and the expected output will be scientific articles for legal and economic international journals and a monograph which will contain a collection of the results of the project.