Transforming Global Governance in the Post-2015 Era: Towards an Equitable and Sustainable World†

This article reports on a dialogic symposium that brought academics from a wide range of disciplines together with practitioners and activists. The purpose was to discuss key issues conditioning the possibility of establishing global governance mechanisms which could promote transition paths toward a more equitable and sustainable world. Following the structure of the symposium, the article is divided into four thematic sections. The first contextualizes the discussions by looking at the characteristics and challenges of global governance today. The second addresses power relations in global governance with a focus on the corporate and financial sectors. It discusses practices of multistakeholder governance and public–private partnerships, the unhealthy levels of corporate influence on the UN system, and the dominant discourse that naturalizes corporate power, ‘free’ trade, and corresponding definitions of ideas such as knowledge, efficiency, and development. The third section turns to sites and forms of countervailing power and practice with particular attention to transcalar approaches and social movement actors. It highlights the potential of multi-level, territorial approaches for breaking out of hierarchical and nation state-based frames and building alternative forms of democracy. It illustrates the relevance of bioregions and ecosystems as meaningful arenas for thinking about and organizing social and economic life and for managing common pool resources. It invokes the imperative of protecting the human rights framework from the multiple challenges it faces. Finally, it explores alternative ways of generating and sharing knowledge and of challenging narrowly defined ‘evidence-based’ policy by assembling legitimate, qualitative evidence rooted in lived realities. The concluding section raises the question of whether—and on what conditions—intergovernmental multilateralism can be seen as a locus for transformation, and suggests some avenues of future research.     

Reconsidering conceptualisations of farm conservation activity: The case of conserving hay meadows

Changes to agri-environmental policy, with an emphasis on encouraging more environmentally friendly farming practices, have been paralleled in the last two decades by a body of research into agri-environment scheme adoption. To date much of this research has considered conservation behaviour as a static issue across whole farms, and viewed participation decisions as solely a present-day issue. Based on an in-depth case study from the Peak District (UK) this paper considers the case of hay meadows—an important cultural, ecological and agricultural feature of the landscape which has been seriously threatened by changing farm practices during the last century, and which now features as a conservation option in the main agri-environment schemes. Drawing on material from semi-structured interviews on 62 farms, and participant observation on 20 farms, the paper discusses how hay meadows represent a unique case for conservation and considers the limitations of existing conceptualisations of scheme adoption for understanding hay meadow conservation. In particular, the paper examines how current conservation decisions are constrained by, and intersect with, past managements that affect the “eligibility” of meadows for scheme adoption. A model is developed which places meadow types of different eligibility against conservation styles to illustrate how different conservation scenarios are created.     

New Identities

The transformation of a segment of the Hamilton working class in the space of a couple of decades—from lifestyles supported by good jobs that, given the global demand for steel, seemed certain to last forever, to week-to-week insecurity and shattered gender expectations—came about not only through structural shifts in the global economy, but through the agency of the members of steelworker families as well, all mediated by local cultural ideas and practices. This article considers how we might think about the apparently mundane, everyday actions of women as contributing to—rather than simply responding to—broader shifts. I suggest this means thinking about women's lives as entailing meaningful acts that, through continuous and combined application, gradually alter structural conditions. Sensitivity to the forms of agency that women employ requires a notion of agency that can account for different experiences and, thus, different meanings, which arise from unequal access to wealth and power. Human agency involves a cognitive process of remembering the past, engaging the present, and imagining the future as people reflect on ideas and events, make judgements, and evaluate imagined alternatives. In the distinctively human ability to incorporate imagined futures into decisions over which path to take, we can see a particularly gendered expression of agency. As women reflect on their own experiences of the past and the present, they can rarely avoid confronting gendered forms of inequality. Action rests on a capacity to imagine a future free of (the effects of) gendered inequalities. Imagination thus spurs gendered action.     

Towards building an integrated perspective on e-democracy

This paper evaluates the dominant perspectives for understanding e-democracy in practice. It argues that although these, on their own, only provide static and partial accounts of the role and implications of e-democracy, nevertheless they should not be disregarded. The paper proposes an integration of their key positions to generate a more rounded and complete account of the role of e-democracy in practice. It suggests that Giddens's Structuration Theory provides a starting point in this direction. A structuration perspective is able to integrate many of the diverse perspectives whilst simultaneously avoiding technological and social determinism by focusing attention on the interplay of social structures and agency in e-democracy practices. This perspective assists in illuminating the underlying institutional arrangements and structures in which e-democracy practices are embedded, as well as the strategies employed by human actors. It focuses attention on structures of signification, domination and legitimation that surround e-democracy practices and also how individuals are both enabled and constrained in these practices. It is argued that more complete and balanced accounts which emerge from such an integrated perspective could assist in developing a more effective e-democracy policy.     

Between argument and coercion: Social coordination in rural environmental governance

Increasingly, partnerships and other cooperative forms of governance are common-place in addressing problems of environmental management in rural landscapes. These forms of governance are multi-dimensional in the policy instruments employed; the make-up of actors; and, the types of rationalities that actors use to debate the problem and proposed solutions. This paper pursues the question of how different modes of social action, represented in argumentative claims of participants, influence social coordination in these governance arenas. An empirical study is presented of agri-environmental governance in Australia where actors debate planning and policy initiatives to reduce diffuse water quality impacts from farms on the adjacent Great Barrier Reef. Forester’s conceptualisation of practical social action which locates communicative action in the ‘real world’ of interest-based planning contexts, is used as an analytical frame to identify: (i) the type of claims made by governments, farmer groups and other actors in argumentation; (ii) the claims association with communicative, strategic and instrumental modes of action; and, (iii) their consequence for social coordination in formation and maintenance of inclusive, legitimate and viable forms of governing. The study finds that the interconnected character of claims made by actors, and the ready switching between modes of action observed, point to a situated and dynamic expression of rationality within these contested and prolonged debates on how to legitimately and effectively govern rural environments.     

Cockpits,Hangars, Boys and Galleys: Corporate Masculinities and the Development of British Airways

This article sets out to examine the role of masculinity in the development of a gendered organizational culture over time. The development of images of masculinity within one company — British Airways — is examined through content analysis of company newsletters, advertising copy, annual reports, internal memoranda, and written rules and regulations. Exploring the notion of ‘multiple masculinities’, the article traces the prominent forms of masculinity that emerged in British Airways and assesses their impact on the ways that organizational practices were developed, maintained and understood. Four key corporate images of masculinity are examined — the pilot, the steward, the engineer and the ‘native boy’— and it is argued that those images contributed to the exclusion of women and people of colour from those occupations by laying down cultural rules about the ideal typical characteristics of the job holder. The article concludes by raising questions about the value of a multiple masculinities focus in explaining changing and contradictory practices of discrimination; the primacy of extra-organizational over organizational practices; and the relationship between multiple masculinities and hegemonic masculinity. Further research is suggested into the extent to which hegemonic masculinity is undermined, over time, by changing and contradictory forms of masculinity within definite sites of gender construction.     

Regulating the new rural spaces: the uneven development of land

With the demise of agricultural productivism, that set of economic and political arrangements which made food production the overriding aim of rural policy, new forms of regulation have come into existence. These are linked to new patterns of development in rural areas which have arisen as economic actors seek to exploit the opportunities presented by the crisis in agriculture. Both development and its regulation have become localised — that is, detached from the national regime associated with productivism. This is leading to increased differentiation. We examine three land development sectors — minerals, farm building conversion and golf — to illustrate how the processes of differentiation are driven by a variety of economic, political and social actors. These are assessed using the notion of ‘arenas of representation’. Two arenas are identified — those of the market and regulation — showing how uneven development of the countryside can be understood as arising from action-in-context. Such differentiation, or the emergence of new rural spaces, is inevitable in the post-productivist era.     

Bourdieu, International Relations, and European security

This article takes the failure to grasp fully the paradigmatic case of European security after the Cold War as an example of how International Relations (IR) would benefit from reformulating not only its empirical research questions but also several of its central conceptual building blocks with the aid of Bourdieusian sociology. The separation between theory and practice and the overemphasis on military power and state actors blind IR from seeing the power struggles that reshaped European security. Instead, a Bourdieusian reformulation adds new types of agency, focuses on the social production of forms of power, and stresses the processual rather than the substantive character of social reality.     

Consultation on the countryside premium scheme: creating a `market’ for information

This paper explores the agri-environmental policy network in Scotland, focusing on the public consultation concerning a new agri-environmental scheme. It applies one of the standard frameworks of market analysis, structure–conduct–performance (SCP) analysis, to explore how the interactions between policy actors, and particularly the provision of information, affect policy outcomes. An important stage in policy development is gathering information for the design and implementation of subsequent policy measures. In the UK, there has been increasing use of public consultation procedures as a means to obtain information from interest groups and individuals. This can be considered in terms of the government issuing a request or `demand’ for information, which is then `supplied’ by interested parties; a `market’ for information is thus created. In the spring of 1996, a consultation was undertaken by the Scottish Office Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department (SOAEFD), over a proposed new agri-environmental scheme, the Countryside Premium Scheme. This paper reports the results of an analysis of this consultation in terms of an information `market'. This `market’ appeared to have an oligopolistic structure, with some barriers to entry, and involved considerable costs to the groups involved. Agricultural and environmental interest groups both appeared to have some impact on the policy outcome, though the type of impacts differed.     

Children's Challenges to Efforts to Save Them: Competing Knowledges in the Child Welfare System

The child welfare system is founded on a belief that children are sometimes endangered by their parents or caregivers and must be saved by agents of the state. Children are perceived as objects to be saved, but they are rarely seen as active strategists in their interactions with child welfare system social workers. Using ethnographic data collected during observations of social workers and juvenile court proceedings, this article shows how children have their own complex understandings of state intervention and strive—to varying degrees of success—to contest official views of their lives and provide competing forms of knowledge. Specifically, children attempt to rework state actors' perceptions of their families and familial problems, use state actors as an audience for their versions of their lives, and attempt to mobilize state power for personal or material gain.     

Accounting for success and failure in policy implementation: The role of commitment in India's MGNREGA

Commitment or political will is often notable by its absence. While lack of commitment is a key factor in policy failure, it has been challenging to identify and operationalize how commitment can shape successful implementation. This article applies Brinkerhoff's (2000) framework of expressions of commitment to explain how commitment of policy elites shape policy implementation processes. Evidence for five characteristics of commitment traces these expressions from two types of policy elites — politicians and bureaucrats. Primary data from four Indian states were used—Chhatisgarh, Assam, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh—to examine the case of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA). The data were collected through interviews with state‐level elites, supplemented by secondary data on the political economy of these states. In explaining how successes and failures of the MGNREGA are attributable to the commitment of these actors, the article considers the politics of policy implementation. It argues that commitment is critical at the sub‐national level in India, and explains the different outcomes of MGNREGA in the four states. The article considers how to strengthen policy implementation, and demonstrates that this can be done through capitalizing on positive feedback loops between different strands of commitment, as well as between commitment of administrative elites and political party leaders. The paper concludes that commitment and capacity feed off each other, improving implementation of social policies.     

The conditions of action,power and the problem of interests

It is argued that the problem of ‘structure and agency’ should be reconsidered as the problem of ‘fate and agency’ for event causation and agency causation). The problem of fate and agency is addressed by outlining a model of the conditions of action derived from work by Giddens and Wright Mills. The model uses the concepts of different forms of knowledge and of the unintended consequence to set up a framework by which it should, in principle, be possible to decide of fate or events. This framework is then used to discuss the problems raised by defining power in terms of interests. It is argued that this definition is inadequate and suggested that a definition of power based on access to resources and causal responsibility for outcomes may be more useful.     

Schooling a European Identity: ethno‐cultural exclusion and nationalist resonance within the EU policy of “The European dimension of education”

This article aims to explore how the role of education as an aide in the process of “European” identity formation is being articulated in the European Union's (EU) policy of “The European dimension of education”. After having located the EU's views on education in the context of the neo‐liberal discourse on economic globalization, the article goes on to trace EU discussions of the European dimension of education historically. Subsequently, it deliberates on the understanding of European culture and identity which the European dimension of education endeavours to advance. Here a critique is developed of the policy's ethno‐culturalism, thereby excluding delineation of a collective identity in the EU. Basing itself on a notion of cultural identity which, implicitly, includes only those who fit certain versions of European historical “roots” and cultural “heritage”, the policy, it is argued, impedes a discussion of how a trans‐ethnic identity formation could be created in today's EU. Towards the end of the article, a scrutiny of the European dimension's perception of the so‐called “language diversity” in the EU seeks to illustrate this issue further.     

Bureaucratic power in note‐writing: authoritative expertise within the state

What produces the power of senior civil servants at ministries of finance, positioned at the top of the bureaucratic hierarchy? Max Weber has claimed that a hierarchical organization, meritocratic recruitment and procedural work provide bureaucracies with legitimacy. In particular he insisted on the role of Fachwissen (disciplinary knowledge) obtained through formal education. However, he also argued for the role of Dienstwissen, forms of knowledge and skills stemming from the experience of service in itself. Weber did not elaborate on this concept in detail, and few analysts of governmental expertise have examined this notion. We draw on the practice‐turn in sociology, combining the study of governmental expertise with micro‐sociological studies of administrative practices. By analysing interviews with 48 senior civil servants at the British, French and Norwegian ministries of finance about their daily practices, this article demonstrates that bureaucratic note‐writing and the procedural evaluation of such notes constitute a key form of expertise that yields authority. The study provides an analytical framework for understanding what administrative expertise consists of, how it is integral to procedural work, the forms bureaucratic hierarchies take in practice and how these three dimensions provide authority.     

Networks — a new paradigm of rural development?

The network concept has become widely utilised in socioeconomic studies of economic life. Following the debates around exogenous and endogenous development, networks may also have particular utility in understanding diverse forms of rural development. This paper assesses whether networks provide a new paradigm of rural development. It seeks to capture a series of differing perspectives on economic networks — including political economy, actor-network theory and theories of innovation and learning — and attempts to show how these perspectives might be applied to different types of rural areas. The paper demarcates two main “bundles” of networks: “vertical” networks — that is, networks that link rural spaces into the agro-food sector — and “horizontal” networks — that is, distributed network forms that link rural spaces into more general and non-agricultural processes of economic change. It is argued that rural development strategies must take heed of network forms in both domains and that rural policy should be recast in network terms.     

World Bank technical assistance: Locating and cultivating sympathetic interlocutors

International development agencies have need of sympathetic interlocutors in developing countries who are receptive to and capable of sustainably implementing global policy norms. This article analyses World Bank technical assistance (TA) as a tool used to stack the policy deck in its favour by identifying and cultivating those government officials receptive to its ideas. Pairing its analysis with the policy mobilities literature, the article considers two questions: how does the World Bank locate receptive actors and how does it socialize new actors into accepting its ideas and practices? Observing the World Bank's four main TA pillars, the article reviews the different strengths and weaknesses of these pillars in garnering domestic support. In critiquing the World Bank's attempts to identify and cultivate sympathetic interlocutors, the article provides new insights into the mechanisms that facilitate the transnational movement of policy.     

Leading the debate for the business case for gender equality,perilous for whom?

This research examines how the framing of the business case for gender equality (BCGE) in the European Union (EU) translates in the Irish national context and how different actors have engaged with this framing exercise. A central concern is how gender knowledge is mobilized by different actors as they compete to shape discourse, policy and practice on gender equality. We draw upon theoretical work that has interrogated the relationship between neoliberalism, gender inequality and feminist mobilization before reviewing critical assessments of the BCGE. The primary focus of this paper, having mapped this theoretical debate, is to analyse the role different Irish actors and organizations play in reproducing key frames and to examine the ambiguous or ambivalent engagement of different interest groups with this agenda. In turn, we assess the degree to which the agenda enables or disables structural change in access to power. We explore three case studies through which the BCGE in the EU was reinforced, adapted, resisted and rejected in our discussions, and draw out the constraints, opportunities and outcomes in each. Our first case study, which sets the national context for the following case studies, reviews how the Irish state interacts with the EU to frame gender equality and how it partners with key actors (state feminism and femocrats, private actors and feminist actors) to advance the BCGE. The second case study examines the role of the leading Irish feminist civil society organization (CSO) in the Women on Boards campaign that reinforces the dominant instrumental discourse associated with EU and national framing of gender parity on boards, and the ambiguity of feminists about this campaign. The third case study examines how Irish financial elites symbolically engage with gender parity on boards while simultaneously seeking to veto the implementation of gender representation targets proposed in the EU Capital Directive. It is clear that a degree of instrumentality informs most actors’ framing of BCGE. We also find evidence of how power actors and financial elites, while rhetorically engaging in BCGE and employing it when relevant to develop reputational capital, will seek ultimately to protect the status quo rejecting the governance benefits implied in BCGE. Ultimately, our cases illustrate the potential of the BCGE to support the inclusion of women in governance structures yet demonstrate that engaging with BCGE is perilous for some.     

From coherence to coheritization: explaining the rise of policy coherence in EU external policy

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, the external policy of the European Commission has become increasingly entangled by the notion of policy coherence. Previously ‘siloed’ policy areas such as trade, agriculture, and development are increasingly approached as challenges only effectively resolved by addressing their positive and negative interlinkages. While the EC is critical of fundamental incoherencies between different policy areas, it simultaneously calls to harness synergies between them. To explain this ambiguous approach, we combine insights from speech act theory and cultural political economy. We aim for methodological triangulation by employing social network analysis, an explanatory narrative, and expert interviews. We argue that the Commission’s approach towards coherence can be understood as a process that reshapes the actor landscape around the discourse on coherence. By gradually pushing out the most outspoken actors, the Commission discursively resolves the inherent contradictions of reconciling free trade and development of the Global South.     

Boundary Objects Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of World Making in Avant-Garde Fashion Design and Animal Husbandry

Drawing on Susan Leigh Star’s conceptualization of boundary objects as a corpus of actions through which an imaginary context for doing social work emerges, this article examines how two seemingly disparate sites of cultural production can be comparatively brought into conversation with one another. These sites include specific expert communities where actors within the fields of fashion design and livestock husbandry both evaluate and theorize new social possibilities. By attending to how these practices unfold through an experimental rendering of expertise this article employs the notion of a boundary object to comparatively analyzing the speculative practices of these two sites.