Academic Supervision: Professor Sabino Cassese, former Judge, Constitutional Court of Italy
Supported by: Professor Edoardo Chiti, Full Professor of Administrative Law, Member of the Academic Senate, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa
Global challenges require coordinated responses that transcend territorial boundaries and political silos. Global administrative law (GAL)—the field concerned with the administrative mechanisms, procedures and accountability structures that operate beyond the nation-state—offers a conceptual toolbox for understanding and improving these responses.
Approaching global governance from this perspective, this year’s Global Administrative Law in Action Summer School explores how administrative-type norms and processes shape the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across institutional levels; from local authorities and national governments to regional organizations and global institutions.
The program focuses on the governance architecture of the SDGs, fifteen years after their adoption and just four years before the 2030 deadline. While the SDGs are formally universal, their implementation has relied on a complex interplay of multilateral institutions, domestic administrations, transnational networks, public-private partnerships and private standard-setting bodies. Yet, the simultaneous decline of trust in multilateralism, the emergence of fragmented regulatory regimes, and the rise of geopolitical rivalries have raised fundamental questions: Can the SDGs still deliver their transformative promise? And what role can GAL-inspired reforms play in revitalizing their governance framework?
To address these concerns, GAL 2026 will examine how different SDGs illustrate the strengths and limits of contemporary global administration. The program anchors its discussions around four Goals whose implementation particularly highlights tensions between multi-level governance and the weakening of multilateral cooperation.
Who should apply?
The GAL summer program aims to attract a diverse cohort of participants—advanced students in law (LLM, PhD) and political science (MA, PhD), early-career practitioners in international organizations, policy-makers, members of domestic administrations and legal professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of global regulation. The program offers a unique forum for critical engagement, comparative analysis and interdisciplinary dialogue on the administrative structures that shape global governance beyond the State.
