Hybrid networks and the global politics of the digital revolution – a practice‐oriented,relational and agnostic approach

The rapid growth of internet users and the importance of networked technologies for most spheres of life raise questions about how to foster and govern the digital revolution on a global scale. Focusing on internet governance and the use of ICTs for development purposes, I provide a multi‐sited, ethnographic exploration of two UN‐based multi‐stakeholder arrangements – comprising governments, business and civil society groups – that have contributed to the construction of the digital revolution as an object of global governance. In this article I show how analytical insights from governmentality studies and actor‐network theory can be used to capture how objects of governance and organizational arrangements are constructed and consolidated. Conventional approaches to networks and governance tend to treat organizational arrangements and issue areas as bounded, separate and fixed. By contrast, I demonstrate the merits of a practice‐oriented, relational and agnostic research strategy, which foregrounds the governmental techniques and moments of translation involved when new objects and modes of governance are assembled and negotiated.     

Participation and inclusiveness in private rule-setting organizations: does it matter for effectiveness?

Governance, from local to global levels, relies increasingly on private governance arrangements. Private actors, specifically corporations and civil society organizations, increasingly design, implement and monitor rules and standards that guide and prescribe behavior in a range of policy areas, including sustainability, banking and international security, to name a few. Even though the involvement of private actors in global politics is not a new phenomenon, the creation of cooperative arrangements in the form of organizations that lead to private regulation – thus complementing traditional ways of political influence – is relatively novel. This paper focuses on private rule-setting organizations that have emerged in the global governance of sustainability. It starts from the observation that, despite seemingly performing similar roles and functions, organizations differ both in terms of outputs they produce as well as rules of participation and decision-making. Accordingly, the paper evaluates whether organizations providing a more inclusive and participatory approach in relation to others have different implications for the quality and relevance of rules (outputs). Hence, it aims to shed light on the way private rules and standards are decided and the associated implications, in view of their increasing role and relevance in sustainability governance. In more detail, we contend that there is no linear relation between democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. While inclusiveness and representativeness in the standard-setting process will probably lead to more stringent and comprehensive rules, those regulatory systems with high stringency will be the ones least taken up. Empirically, the paper illustrates its argument with a comparison of five private rule-setting organizations that have emerged in the global governance of fisheries sustainability: the Marine Stewardship Council, Friend of the Sea, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, the Global Aquaculture Alliance and GlobalGAP.     

Confronting the Informal in Good Governance: The Case of Decentralised Education‐System Reform in Guinea

For twenty years, technocratic planning and management approaches have dominated good‐governance reforms in developing countries. This is true even for newer ‘participatory’ and ‘citizen‐driven’ reforms that still struggle to engage with powerful informal forces affecting public service delivery. This article presents evidence from a case study of decentralised education‐system reform in Guinea, revealing a wide range of influential dynamics outside the technical realm. These corroborate the argument for ‘good‐fit’ alternatives to traditional governance approaches and concrete measures to better capture the constructive and disable the destructive effects of informality on development.     

Access to Water in the Slums of Sub‐Saharan Africa

This article reviews the changing perspectives for improving access to water in the slums of developing countries, especially in sub‐Saharan Africa. While much of the literature continues to maintain an aversion to state‐led urban development policies, there is now increasing emphasis on the importance of informal, small‐scale providers and communitarian initiatives, following the many failures of privatisation. The article argues that market‐oriented solutions are inappropriate for sub‐Saharan African countries where over two‐thirds of the urban population live in squatter settlements with multidimensional challenges.     

Corporate social responsibility and conflicts of interest in the alcohol and gambling industries: a post‐political discourse?

The corporate pursuit of social goals – known as Corporate Social Responsibility or ‘CSR’ – has been subject to critique on a number of grounds. However, a hitherto underexplored potential consequence of CSR has been suggested in a recent paper by C. Garsten and K. Jacobsson (‘Post‐Political Regulation: Soft Power and Post‐political Visions in Global Governance’ (2013), Critical Sociology 39: 421–37). They suggest that CSR is part of an international trend towards ‘post‐political’ governance discourses, where an emphasis on different actors’ common goals obscures conflicts of interest, subverting the open political conflict necessary for a well‐functioning democracy. This paper examines whether such post‐political discourses – including an outright denial of conflict of interest – can be found within the alcohol and gambling industries, where conflicts of interest are likely to be particularly acute given the addictive nature of the goods/services in question. Based on interviews with CSR professionals in these industries in Italy, the UK, and at EU‐level, we do indeed find evidence of a post‐political discourse. In these discourses, alcohol/gambling industry staff deny potential conflicts of interest on the basis that any small benefits from sales to a small number of addicts are seen to be outweighed by the reputational damage that addicts cause. Crucially, however, this coexists with another, less post‐political discourse, where addictions CSR professionals emphasize ‘common ground’ as a basis for CSR, while accepting some instances of possible conflict of interest. Here interviewees make considerable efforts to differentiate good (sustainable) from bad (short‐term) self‐interest in order to stress the genuineness of their own actions. We conclude the paper by considering whether CSR embedded within a ‘common ground’ discourse still hides conflicts of interests and subverts democratic debate, or overcomes the problems identified by Garsten and Jacobsson.     

The Orthodox Church in revolutionary Cheliabinsk: reform,counter-reform,and popular revolution in 1917

In 1917 the Cheliabinsk Vicariate, like the Church in most areas in the Russian empire, declined to support the autocracy, welcomed the February Revolution, endorsed the Provisional Government, and envisioned a broad set of reforms that even included a greater role for the laity in Church governance. The key agent for reform in Cheliabinsk – as in other dioceses – was the Assembly of Clergy and Laity, the focus of this study. Although the Assembly did adopt a radical and ostensibly popular social and administrative program, the vicariate encountered growing lay disenchantment – because of its support for an unpopular war, because of a caveat deferring social reform, but also because of the Church’s reluctance to give parishioners full power over the parish. The intensifying crises of 1917 heightened expectations for reform, and the disintegration of authority in Cheliabinsk and within the Church itself widened the chasm between the Church and parishioners. In response, diocesan authorities supported conservative measures, which deferred reform, in an attempt to re-establish order, while parishioners – frustrated by the pace of reform and the Church’s wavering support of it – led a revolution against diocesan authority aimed at making the Church subservient to their own agendas.     

Multilevel embeddedness: The case of the global fisheries governance complex

This paper explores how bilateral and multilateral clustering are embedded in a multilevel system of interdependent networks. We argue that in complex systems in which bilateral and multilateral relations are themselves interrelated, such as global fisheries governance, embeddedness cannot be reduced to unipartite or bipartite clustering but implicates multilevel closure. We elaborate expectations for ties’ multilevel embeddedness based on network theory and substantive considerations and explore them using a multilevel ERGM. We find states’ bilateral ties are embedded in their shared membership in multilateral fisheries agreements, which is itself clustered around foci represented by similar content and treaty secretariats.     

The Logic of A Co‐Operative Economy and Democracy 2.0: Recovering the Possibilities for Autonomy,Creativity, Solidarity,and Common Purpose

Over the past 30 years, the collectivist‐democratic form of organization has presented a growing alternative to the bureaucratic form, and it has proliferated, here and around the world. This form is manifest, for example, within micro‐credit groups, workers’ co‐operatives, nongovernmental organizations, advocacy groups, self‐help groups, community and municipal initiatives, social movement organizations, and in many nonprofit groups in general. It is most visible in the civil society sector, but demands for deeper participation are also evident in communities and cities, and the search for more involving and less bureaucratic structures has spread into many for‐profit firms as well. Building on research on this form of organization, this article develops a model of the decisional processes utilized in such organizations and contrasts these “Democracy 2.0” standards for decision making from the Democracy 1.0 (representative and formal) standards that previously prevailed. Drawing on a new generation of research on these sorts of organizations, this article and this special section discuss: (a) how consensus decisional processes are being made more efficient; (b) how such organizations are now able to scale to fairly large size while still retaining their local and participatory basis; (c) how such organizations are cultivating a more diverse membership and using such diversity to build more democratic forms of governance; (d) how such organizations are combatting ethnoracial and gender inequalities that prevail in the surrounding society; and (e) how emotions are getting infused into the public conversations within these organizations and communities.     

Some Outstanding Issues in the Debate on External Promotion of Land Privatisation

Since the early 1990s, the dominant consensus in the debate on land rights reform in sub‐Saharan Africa has been that external interventions to privatise land rights are usually inappropriate and likely to remain so. This article suggests that two elements in the debate – the scope for varying adjudication criteria, procedures and support systems in order to enhance equity, and the influence of a region's agro‐ecological and socioeconomic characteristics on the impacts of tenure change – merit further attention. The article urges a shift towards a more pragmatic approach, sensitive to the diversity of both physical and socio‐economic conditions within which tenure systems operate. Illustrative evidence is drawn from a relatively low‐potential farming region in eastern Kenya.     

The morphogenesis of disability policies and the personalisation of social services. A case study from Italy.

Across Europe, and particularly since the 2008 Financial Crisis, new demands for tailor-made services came from different actors and perspectives: user-led organizations, intellectuals, policy makers, social workers, advocacy organizations, which call for a new way of programming, realizing and evaluating social policies. Personalization became a relevant part of the so called ‘welfare innovation narrative’, which concerns – to name but a few – English personalization agenda, Scottish self-directed support, Finnish education system, Norwegian cash-for-care policies. Even the European Commission is addressing new social services, reshaped through users’ capabilities. The aim of this paper is to critically explain, through a case study focused on the Sardinian disability policy, how social policy's morphogenetic cycles influence the governance of personalized disability plans and, consequently, the possibility of their implementation.     

Not by Rent Alone: Analysing the Pro‐Poor Functions of Small‐Scale Fisheries in Developing Countries

The dominant view in academic and policy arenas is increasingly one in which the major contribution of capture fisheries to development should be derived from the capacity of society to maximise the economic rent of fishery resources. Drawing upon empirical experience from the South, this article highlights the potentially disastrous consequences that a universal implementation of the rent‐maximisation model would have in developing countries, and argues that a more gradual approach would be preferable. The welfare function of small‐scale fisheries, namely, their capacities to provide labour and cash income to resource‐poor households, should be preserved until the appropriate macroeconomic conditions for rent‐maximisation and redistribution are fulfilled.     

CIVIC LABORATORIES

This paper examines the extent to which the perspectives of science studies and actor-network theory can be combined with those of post-Foucauldian governmentality theory to understand the processes through which cultural institutions fabricate distinctive entities and bring these to bear on the governance of the social. The argument is developed by considering the respects in which the procedures of museums and the distinctive forms of cultural objecthood these give rise to can be illuminated by comparing them to laboratories. This prepares the way for an examination of the ways in which such forms of objecthood have been mobilized in programmes of social and civic governance both within museums and outside them, paying due attention to the differences between their functioning in these regards in the context of liberal forms of government and more directive forms of role. These general arguments are then illustrated with reference to contemporary debates focused on the refashioning of museums as instruments of cultural diversity. The paper concludes by reviewing the respects in which the perspectives it develops suggest the need to question the analytical effects of the extended concept of culture that has underlain the development of cultural studies and contemporary sociological understandings of culture.     

The social shaping of digital research

The social shaping of technology (SST) has become a broad umbrella term to cover a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives in the social sciences. It has also defined a set of funded projects in the UK focused on a particular technical initiative around e-social science – digital social research. It is increasingly understood that social science research and work on the SST, in particular, should be applied to the study of innovations in digital research and their implications for the sciences and humanities. This overview is designed to help introduce the diversity of perspectives that the social sciences can bring to bear, such as under the social shaping umbrella and explain why this set of perspectives is of value to policy and practice in this field. The continuing advance and diffusion of digital research make it ever more important to strengthen the role of the social sciences in this area of multi-disciplinary research, policy, and practice.     

Incorporating translation into sociolinguistic research: Translation policy in an international non‐governmental organisation

This article explores aspects of translation, multilingualism and language policy in the field of transnational civil society. By focusing on translation policies at Amnesty International, an international non‐governmental organisation that performs a key role in global governance, this article seeks to contribute to a globalisation‐sensitive sociolinguistics. It argues that combining a sociolinguistic approach – more precisely linguistic ethnography – with translation studies leads to an increased understanding of the language practices under study. Furthermore, the article calls for more interdisciplinary research, stating that there is space for sociolinguistics and translation studies to contribute to research in international relations and development studies by highlighting the role of multilingualism and challenging the traditionally powerful position of English in transnational civil society.     

Integrating Poverty and Environmental Concerns into Value‐Chain Analysis: A Strategic Framework and Practical Guide

This article aims to guide the design and implementation of action‐research projects in value‐chain analysis by presenting a strategic framework focused on small producers and trading and processing firms in developing countries. Its stepwise approach – building on the conceptual framework set out in a companion article – covers in detail what to do, questions to be asked and issues to be considered, and integrates poverty, gender, labour and environmental concerns.‘Upgrading’ strategies potentially available for improving value‐chain participation for small producers are identified, with the ultimate purpose of increasing the rewards and/or reducing the risks.     

Liberal Chiefs or Illiberal Development? The Challenge of Engaging Chiefs in DFID's Security Sector Reform Programme in Sierra Leone

It is increasingly recognised that informal actors, including chiefs, are dominant providers of services and need to be factored into overwhelmingly state‐focused programmes. This article looks at the ability of the UK's Department for International Development to engage with the chieftaincy system in Sierra Leone through its security sector reform programme – a relationship which poses important political challenges.     

Eventful Subjectivity: The Experiential Sources of Solidarity

Scholarship on events has been devoted primarily to large‐scale occurrences that transform macro structures. Here we put forward a perspective that we term eventful subjectivity which moves the analysis of events in two related directions. First, we shift the arena of eventful analysis from rare world historical occurrences to smaller, more frequent events. Second, we direct attention away from macro‐structural outcomes to micro‐level changes in understanding. We employ the framework of eventful subjectivity to examine a living wage campaign in Chicago, demonstrating how the multi‐faceted diversity of the campaign – in the context of collective action – engendered solidarity rather than fragmentation.     

Multistakeholder initiatives in global production networks: naturalizing specific understandings of sustainability through the Better Cotton Initiative

In recent years, various academics, consultants, companies and NGOs have advocated a move towards more cooperative approaches to private sustainability standards to address the widely identified shortcomings of the compliance paradigm. However, is it possible to address these limitations by moving towards stakeholder inclusion and capacity building while at the same time catering to the demands of lead firms supplying the mainstream market? In this article, we analyse how the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) seeks to do just that, in the process identifying three key tensions and competing policy concerns with which standard‐setters have had to grapple – (a) stakeholder inclusion vs process‐control/efficiency; (b) stringency of the standard vs scale of production; and (c) capacity building vs auditing. Combining theoretical considerations about governance in global production networks (GPNs) with a convention theory perspective, we explore these inherent tensions and show that due to pre‐existing power relations in the cotton GPN, it is hard to develop more cooperative approaches because market and industrial values tend to win out despite efforts to follow current best practice on sustainability standard‐setting.     

Can vigilance‐focused governance reforms improve service delivery? The case of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in Bihar,India

Child undernourishment is a major challenge in India even though the government has, since 1975, been running the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), one of the largest programmes of this type in the world. Ever since its inception, this scheme has been marred by various governance challenges: widespread corruption, absenteeism and targeting problems, more visible in states like Bihar than in others. The ruling dispensation in Bihar has instituted major reforms to tackle these problems. These include regular inspection of service delivery centres, strict monitoring of funds, swift disciplinary action and vigilance through community participation. While these reforms are generally accepted as good in theory, research‐based empirical evidence of their impact on the ground is scarce. This article tries to fill this gap through an in‐depth case study of ICDS in Bihar. The findings indicate that, contrary to conventional thinking about good governance, the vigilance‐focused reforms along with community‐based monitoring have not been successful in curbing systemic corruption. The study concludes that alternative approaches are required to resolve the governance problems in ICDS. These include tackling the problems of understaffing and heavy workloads, and providing stronger incentives to the frontline service providers.     

The Frisch Elasticity in the Mercosur Countries: A Pseudo‐Panel Approach

In estimating the Frisch elasticity – i.e., the elasticity of substitution between worked hours and real wages, holding constant the marginal utility of wealth – for the Mercosur countries, this article finds a strong heterogeneity. It argues that severe liquidity constraints are the main reason for the negative estimates and that the heterogeneity is the outcome of differences in many relevant economic dimensions – ranging from sectorial specialisation to welfare‐state provisions and labour‐market specificities. The diversity of Frisch elasticities calls for the development of a cross‐country (rather than a within‐country) policy approach, since they crucially affect the dynamics of the business cycle, the synchronisation of which is a step prior to the design of macro‐convergence policies in the Mercosur context.