Launch of the inaugural seminar cycle of the DÉCRIPT program

This presentation examines how polarization and identity politics influence the design and implementation of IGO roles. Drawing on role theory, I argue that IGOs can be seen as role bearers, playing roles such as mediator, stabilizer, reformer or guardian, depending on the interplay between member states' expectations, institutional perceptions and external crises. Polarization and identity politics, whether internal or between member states, modify these expectations and can generate pressure to adjust, adapt, innovate or even abandon roles. The recent redefinition of EU foreign policy roles following Russia's invasion of Ukraine illustrates how ontological security crises force IGOs to renegotiate their identities and align their external roles with shifting internal cleavages.

By linking comparative IGO research with role theory, the analysis highlights two wider implications. First, polarization reshapes IGOs' external action by limiting consensus, producing fragmented role implementations and restricting their ability to project stability. Second, identity politics transforms IGOs internally, as competing narratives about "who we are" among member states spill over into organizational role design, sometimes reinforcing cohesion through shared threat perceptions, other times deepening internal fractures.

This presentation aims to clarify the notions of crisis and civilizational narrative using examples drawn from the wider Middle East. First, the notion of identity regime as a hierarchical organization between groups (ethnic, religious) will be clarified. From there, we can approach the civilizational narrative as a particular form of identity narrative, whose distinctive feature is its claim to make sense of events as a whole (a meta-frame). These identity-based narratives inspire the definition of foreign policy (defense of Eastern Christians, for example) or transnational mobilizations (caricature of the prophet and defense of Islam). Secondly, we'll look at crises that lead to changes in social structures. More specifically, we'll show how conflicts over the interpretation of disruptive events enable the mobilization of competing narratives (jihad or nationalist struggle in Afghanistan, the events in Gaza as genocide or defense against Islamism), which condition the definition of situations and the resources that can be mobilized. In particular, identity regimes are redefined by new narratives (Kemalist revolution, status of non-Sunnis in Iran after the revolution).

This presentation examines the civilizational turn observed in recent years, which erects civilizational identity as a major discourse on the international scene. Academic literature increasingly tends to conceive civilizationism not as an immutable entity doomed to confrontation, but as a flexible, politically constructed identity. These new "imagined communities" emerge from both elite discourses and popular perceptions, raising questions about the balance between mobilization from above and identification from below. More broadly, civilizationism functions as a counter-hegemonic ideology, challenging liberal universalism and articulating alternative systems of belonging and values. This paper will focus particularly on the mobilization of civilizational narratives in Russia and the West, highlighting their role in the construction of domestic political legitimacy and in international confrontations.

This session will propose a conceptualization of political Salafism and sovereignism as they manifest themselves in three countries of the Sahelian interior, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Issues analyzed will include the narrative structure of the two ideological discourses, their convergences and divergences, and what they reveal and conceal about power stakes - at both an "event" and structural (sociological) level - in the countries concerned.

This inaugural session of the Indo-Pacific seminar offers multidisciplinary reflection and cross-views on the cultural and civilizational registers mobilized in the region. It will focus in particular on three key notions - "civilization", "culture" and "Asian values" - which are used to narrate national or regional histories and to assert the singularity of political trajectories. The challenge will be to examine both the way in which these notions structure discourses and practices, and their circulatory dimension, on regional and international scales, between revivals, appropriations and reinterpretations.

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