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Papers by Eva Hartmann
International Political Sociology, Sep 1, 2012
This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relat... more This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relations. It analyzes how the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure for the tradability of services in a global knowledge-based economy relies on informal regulatory practices for the adjustment of ICT-related skills. By focusing on the challenge that highly volatile and short-lived cycles of demands for this type of knowledge pose for ensuring the right qualification of the labor force, the article explores how companies and associations provide training and certification programs as part of a growing market for educational services setting their own standards. The existing literature on non-conventional forms of authority in the global political economy has emphasized that the consent of actors, subject to informal rules and some form of state support, remains crucial for the effectiveness of those new forms of power. However, analyses based on a limited sample of actors tend toward a narrow understanding of the issues concerned and fail to fully explore the differentiated space in which nonstate authority is emerging. This article develops a three-dimensional analytical framework that brings together the scope of the issues involved, the range of nonstate actors concerned, and the spatial scope of their authority. The empirical findings highlight the limits of these new forms of nonstate authority and shed light on the role of the state and international governmental organizations in this new context. "Global knowledge-based economy" has become a popular term for ongoing changes in contemporary capitalism. The service sector is at the core of changes that require a constantly evolving stream of specialized skills. The crucial role of knowledge in a postindustrial society, where the delivery of services supersedes the production of goods, was identified over 30 years ago by Daniel Bell (1973). Similarly, Manuel Castells has analyzed the rise of the network society around *The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of the contribution, Liesl Graz for her help with the language, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for its support (grant PP001-110528 Standards and International Relations: Devolution of Power in the Global Political Economy).
International Political Sociology, 2012
This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relat... more This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relations. It analyzes how the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure for the tradability of services in a global knowledge-based economy relies on informal regulatory practices for the adjustment of ICT-related skills. By focusing on the challenge that highly volatile and short-lived cycles of demands for this type of knowledge pose for ensuring the right qualification of the labor force, the article explores how companies and associations provide training and certification programs as part of a growing market for educational services setting their own standards. The existing literature on non-conventional forms of authority in the global political economy has emphasized that the consent of actors, subject to informal rules and some form of state support, remains crucial for the effectiveness of those new forms of power. However, analyses based on a limited sample of actors tend toward a narrow understanding of the issues concerned and fail to fully explore the differentiated space in which nonstate authority is emerging. This article develops a three-dimensional analytical framework that brings together the scope of the issues involved, the range of nonstate actors concerned, and the spatial scope of their authority. The empirical findings highlight the limits of these new forms of nonstate authority and shed light on the role of the state and international governmental organizations in this new context. "Global knowledge-based economy" has become a popular term for ongoing changes in contemporary capitalism. The service sector is at the core of changes that require a constantly evolving stream of specialized skills. The crucial role of knowledge in a postindustrial society, where the delivery of services supersedes the production of goods, was identified over 30 years ago by Daniel Bell (1973). Similarly, Manuel Castells has analyzed the rise of the network society around *The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of the contribution, Liesl Graz for her help with the language, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for its support (grant PP001-110528 Standards and International Relations: Devolution of Power in the Global Political Economy).
Distinktion: Journal Of Social Theory, May 4, 2015
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 2018
Over the past decades, the perception has become dominate according to which national sovereignty... more Over the past decades, the perception has become dominate according to which national sovereignty and the authority of the state has been increasingly challenged or even substantially eroded. 4 Economic globalization advancing a structural liberalist, i.e. neo-liberal dis-embedding of the economy is seen as the major reason for this erosion. Concerns have increased about the negative consequences for the social fabric of societies, deprived of the strong shock absorption capacity that the welfare states had established in the time of the embedded liberalism to use a term John Ruggie coined. 5 The concerns have also helped nationalistic movements to gain in power in many high-income countries, not at least in the United States, calling for putting their economy first. Accordingly, a number of commentators have announced
Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will ... more Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will solve the current economic crisis. Much in line with Adam Smith, competition is seen as the most effective means to prevent producers from overpricing their products and from delivering poor quality. This take on competition differs diametrically from the view that strong competition will trigger a destructive race to the bottom, to the detriment of the whole society. Despite these fundamental differences, what both positions have in common is the assumption that competition has a major impact on society. In their seminal book on EU competition law, Michelle Cini and Lee McGowan identify competition policy as ‘the most important organizing principle in the capitalist world’.In the light of the importance assigned to competition, it comes as something of a surprise that competition is not a major topic within sociology. This special issue intends to contribute to overcoming this lacuna by...
International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn'... more International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn' in the field of International Relations. At the heart of this transformation are the juridification of international politics and subsequently the judicialisation of international law. I argue in this contribution that scholars of critical International Political Economy have not yet paid enough attention to this process. What is needed is a theory of international law that is able to grasp the societal implications of this transformation. In a first step I present some accounts drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Evgeny Pashukanis, with a view to making their theory fruitful for analysing international law. Against the background of an empirical study that compares the global regulation of trade in goods with the brother, delivered notably through natural persons, I outline some major shortcomings of these accounts. In the last part of the contribution I present some ideas on how to further develop a critical theory of international (trade) law that introduces a communicative dimension into the legal turn with a view to distinguishing between different extra-economic dynamics.
The paper outlines the insights we gain by drawing on Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality ... more The paper outlines the insights we gain by drawing on Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality in the light of the importance of Ordoliberalism as a structuring principle of European integration process. It further develops this perspective by interrelating it to a critical state theoretical perspective and sociology of competition with a view to contributing to a better understanding of the role of competition in establishing social bonds. A key concept the paper develops is competitive solidarity. The second part of the paper provides a more empirical analysis of an emerging competitive solidarity at European, highlighting the interaction between solidarity and competition in the sphere of European social policy. The analysis of this sui generis social policy provides interesting insights into the complexity of the attempt to establish European social bonds, paving the way for a European society.
This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relat... more This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relations. It analyzes how the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure for the tradability of services in a global knowledge-based economy relies on informal regulatory practices for the adjustment of ICT-related skills. By focusing on the challenge that highly volatile and short-lived cycles of demands for this type of knowledge pose for ensuring the right qualification of the
labor force, the article explores how companies and associations provide training and certification programs as part of a growing market for educational services setting their own standards. The existing literature on non-conventional forms of authority in the global political economy has emphasized that the consent of actors, subject to informal rules and
some form of state support, remains crucial for the effectiveness of those new forms of power. However, analyses based on a limited sample of actors tend toward a narrow understanding of the issues concerned and fail to fully explore the differentiated space in which non-state authority is emerging. This article develops a three-dimensional analytical
framework that brings together the scope of the issues involved, the range of nonstate actors concerned, and the spatial scope of their authority. The empirical findings highlight the limits of these new forms of nonstate authority and shed light on the role of the state and international governmental organizations in this new context.
in Forum Wissenschaft 31(1) 2014, pp. 22-27. Der „Kampf um die klugen Köpfe“ ist ein internationa... more in Forum Wissenschaft 31(1) 2014, pp. 22-27.
Der „Kampf um die klugen Köpfe“ ist ein internationaler – weshalb sich auch die Bemühungen der Bologna-Staaten um eine Internationalisierung zum Zwecke regionaler Interesse verschärft. Eva Hartmann zeigt die Logik der internationalen Dimension von Bologna auf.
This contribution seeks to further strengthen a sociological turn within International Relations ... more This contribution seeks to further strengthen a sociological turn within International Relations (IR). This turn aims to make classical social theory fruitful for analysing the transnationalisation of societies. The paper focuses on the contribution of Antonio Gramsci´s analysis in this regard. A number of scholars have transferred his theory of hegemony to the global level in order to gain a more sophisticated understanding of global power and its transformation in reaction to the deepening of global economic integration. Surprisingly, most Neo-Gramscian scholars have devoted little attention to education so far despite the importance Gramsci assigned to this social sphere. The contribution seeks to overcome this lacuna with a study of the internationalisation of higher education since the end of World War II. Against the backdrop of the insights this case study provides, I will suggest some modifications of the Neo-Gramscian account of hegemony with a view to taking the sociological turn more seriously and to deepening our understanding of the social quality and the scale of the emerging postnational hegemony.
A number of scholars have criticised the methodological nationalism of the study of capitalist di... more A number of scholars have criticised the methodological nationalism of the study of capitalist diversity for ignoring a global convergence trend triggered by global competition. This contribution agrees with this criticism but insists on the need to take the diversities into account in order to understand the dependence of capital on the geographical concreteness of living labour and its social context. At the same time, the contribution outlines an analytical framework that sheds light on the process that makes this dependency invisible, hidden behind the convergence trend. This framework further develops Karl Marx’s and Evgeny Pashukanis’ notion of fetishism by drawing on accounts of state theory and economic sociology with a view to outlining the complex interplay of economic and extra-economic processes enabling the disguising. It assigns this process a relative autonomy and thus highlights another type of dependence of capital in its drive towards the realisation of surplus value.
Keywords: Marx, Pashukanis, fetishism, economic sociology, economic imaginary
With its Lisbon Strategy, the European Council coined a slogan for a major objective of the Europ... more With its Lisbon Strategy, the European Council coined a slogan for a major objective of the European Union: to create 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion' (European Council 2000: para. 5). This strategy reflects growing recognition that the economies of the European Union face growing competitive challenges from other advanced capitalist economies and from rapidly developing economies in East Asia and the elsewhere. One part of this response has been to reorganize the global service economy, not only regarding routine commercial services but also in relation to more research-and knowledge-intensive services. This is linked in turn both to efforts to complete the internal EU market in services as part of the general neo-liberal project that dominates current European policies and to efforts to open markets for services beyond the European economic area. Similar moves to liberalize commercial services can be seen in other advanced capitalist economies (notably in the United States) and are also being actively promoted by the World Trade Organization and other international economic agencies concerned to pursue the global neo-liberal project on a global scale. Leading economic and political forces in the EU and USA are especially concerned to globalise their knowledge-intensive service economies in an effort to keep their supremacy in a rapidly changing world market, where low-income countries are becoming significant competitors in the production of commodities of varying degrees of maturity and sophistication and not just in low-tech, mature goods. This chapter explores one important dimension of the Lisbon Agenda and the more general global effort to liberalize knowledge-intensive services, namely, the recent attempts to facilitate the mobility of highly-qualified workers, especially through the mutual recognition of academic qualifications. In particular, I identify the content of the emerging set of norms and principles concerning recognition of education qualifications and their enabling conditions and seek to show their significance for the reorganization and internationalization of higher education in the context of an emerging global knowledge-based economy. For this
publié dans Ph. Laredo, J.-Ph. Leresche et K. Weber (Eds.) 2009 , L'internationalisation des sys... more publié dans Ph. Laredo, J.-Ph. Leresche et K. Weber (Eds.) 2009 , L'internationalisation des systèmes de recherche en action. Les cas français et suisse, Lausanne : PPUR.pp.51-64.
The Bologna-Process and its effectiveness in the light of the interaction between legitimation, l... more The Bologna-Process and its effectiveness in the light of the interaction between legitimation, legitimacy and legality, in juridikum zeitschrift für kritik | recht | gesellschaft, 2/2008, Schwerpunkt Universitätspolitiken, pp.85-90.
International Political Sociology, Sep 1, 2012
This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relat... more This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relations. It analyzes how the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure for the tradability of services in a global knowledge-based economy relies on informal regulatory practices for the adjustment of ICT-related skills. By focusing on the challenge that highly volatile and short-lived cycles of demands for this type of knowledge pose for ensuring the right qualification of the labor force, the article explores how companies and associations provide training and certification programs as part of a growing market for educational services setting their own standards. The existing literature on non-conventional forms of authority in the global political economy has emphasized that the consent of actors, subject to informal rules and some form of state support, remains crucial for the effectiveness of those new forms of power. However, analyses based on a limited sample of actors tend toward a narrow understanding of the issues concerned and fail to fully explore the differentiated space in which nonstate authority is emerging. This article develops a three-dimensional analytical framework that brings together the scope of the issues involved, the range of nonstate actors concerned, and the spatial scope of their authority. The empirical findings highlight the limits of these new forms of nonstate authority and shed light on the role of the state and international governmental organizations in this new context. "Global knowledge-based economy" has become a popular term for ongoing changes in contemporary capitalism. The service sector is at the core of changes that require a constantly evolving stream of specialized skills. The crucial role of knowledge in a postindustrial society, where the delivery of services supersedes the production of goods, was identified over 30 years ago by Daniel Bell (1973). Similarly, Manuel Castells has analyzed the rise of the network society around *The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of the contribution, Liesl Graz for her help with the language, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for its support (grant PP001-110528 Standards and International Relations: Devolution of Power in the Global Political Economy).
International Political Sociology, 2012
This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relat... more This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relations. It analyzes how the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure for the tradability of services in a global knowledge-based economy relies on informal regulatory practices for the adjustment of ICT-related skills. By focusing on the challenge that highly volatile and short-lived cycles of demands for this type of knowledge pose for ensuring the right qualification of the labor force, the article explores how companies and associations provide training and certification programs as part of a growing market for educational services setting their own standards. The existing literature on non-conventional forms of authority in the global political economy has emphasized that the consent of actors, subject to informal rules and some form of state support, remains crucial for the effectiveness of those new forms of power. However, analyses based on a limited sample of actors tend toward a narrow understanding of the issues concerned and fail to fully explore the differentiated space in which nonstate authority is emerging. This article develops a three-dimensional analytical framework that brings together the scope of the issues involved, the range of nonstate actors concerned, and the spatial scope of their authority. The empirical findings highlight the limits of these new forms of nonstate authority and shed light on the role of the state and international governmental organizations in this new context. "Global knowledge-based economy" has become a popular term for ongoing changes in contemporary capitalism. The service sector is at the core of changes that require a constantly evolving stream of specialized skills. The crucial role of knowledge in a postindustrial society, where the delivery of services supersedes the production of goods, was identified over 30 years ago by Daniel Bell (1973). Similarly, Manuel Castells has analyzed the rise of the network society around *The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of the contribution, Liesl Graz for her help with the language, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for its support (grant PP001-110528 Standards and International Relations: Devolution of Power in the Global Political Economy).
Distinktion: Journal Of Social Theory, May 4, 2015
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 2018
Over the past decades, the perception has become dominate according to which national sovereignty... more Over the past decades, the perception has become dominate according to which national sovereignty and the authority of the state has been increasingly challenged or even substantially eroded. 4 Economic globalization advancing a structural liberalist, i.e. neo-liberal dis-embedding of the economy is seen as the major reason for this erosion. Concerns have increased about the negative consequences for the social fabric of societies, deprived of the strong shock absorption capacity that the welfare states had established in the time of the embedded liberalism to use a term John Ruggie coined. 5 The concerns have also helped nationalistic movements to gain in power in many high-income countries, not at least in the United States, calling for putting their economy first. Accordingly, a number of commentators have announced
Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will ... more Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will solve the current economic crisis. Much in line with Adam Smith, competition is seen as the most effective means to prevent producers from overpricing their products and from delivering poor quality. This take on competition differs diametrically from the view that strong competition will trigger a destructive race to the bottom, to the detriment of the whole society. Despite these fundamental differences, what both positions have in common is the assumption that competition has a major impact on society. In their seminal book on EU competition law, Michelle Cini and Lee McGowan identify competition policy as ‘the most important organizing principle in the capitalist world’.In the light of the importance assigned to competition, it comes as something of a surprise that competition is not a major topic within sociology. This special issue intends to contribute to overcoming this lacuna by...
International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn'... more International law is currently undergoing a major transformation that has provoked a 'legal turn' in the field of International Relations. At the heart of this transformation are the juridification of international politics and subsequently the judicialisation of international law. I argue in this contribution that scholars of critical International Political Economy have not yet paid enough attention to this process. What is needed is a theory of international law that is able to grasp the societal implications of this transformation. In a first step I present some accounts drawing on Antonio Gramsci and Evgeny Pashukanis, with a view to making their theory fruitful for analysing international law. Against the background of an empirical study that compares the global regulation of trade in goods with the brother, delivered notably through natural persons, I outline some major shortcomings of these accounts. In the last part of the contribution I present some ideas on how to further develop a critical theory of international (trade) law that introduces a communicative dimension into the legal turn with a view to distinguishing between different extra-economic dynamics.
The paper outlines the insights we gain by drawing on Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality ... more The paper outlines the insights we gain by drawing on Michel Foucault’s study of governmentality in the light of the importance of Ordoliberalism as a structuring principle of European integration process. It further develops this perspective by interrelating it to a critical state theoretical perspective and sociology of competition with a view to contributing to a better understanding of the role of competition in establishing social bonds. A key concept the paper develops is competitive solidarity. The second part of the paper provides a more empirical analysis of an emerging competitive solidarity at European, highlighting the interaction between solidarity and competition in the sphere of European social policy. The analysis of this sui generis social policy provides interesting insights into the complexity of the attempt to establish European social bonds, paving the way for a European society.
This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relat... more This article examines the extent and limits of nonstate forms of authority in international relations. It analyzes how the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure for the tradability of services in a global knowledge-based economy relies on informal regulatory practices for the adjustment of ICT-related skills. By focusing on the challenge that highly volatile and short-lived cycles of demands for this type of knowledge pose for ensuring the right qualification of the
labor force, the article explores how companies and associations provide training and certification programs as part of a growing market for educational services setting their own standards. The existing literature on non-conventional forms of authority in the global political economy has emphasized that the consent of actors, subject to informal rules and
some form of state support, remains crucial for the effectiveness of those new forms of power. However, analyses based on a limited sample of actors tend toward a narrow understanding of the issues concerned and fail to fully explore the differentiated space in which non-state authority is emerging. This article develops a three-dimensional analytical
framework that brings together the scope of the issues involved, the range of nonstate actors concerned, and the spatial scope of their authority. The empirical findings highlight the limits of these new forms of nonstate authority and shed light on the role of the state and international governmental organizations in this new context.
in Forum Wissenschaft 31(1) 2014, pp. 22-27. Der „Kampf um die klugen Köpfe“ ist ein internationa... more in Forum Wissenschaft 31(1) 2014, pp. 22-27.
Der „Kampf um die klugen Köpfe“ ist ein internationaler – weshalb sich auch die Bemühungen der Bologna-Staaten um eine Internationalisierung zum Zwecke regionaler Interesse verschärft. Eva Hartmann zeigt die Logik der internationalen Dimension von Bologna auf.
This contribution seeks to further strengthen a sociological turn within International Relations ... more This contribution seeks to further strengthen a sociological turn within International Relations (IR). This turn aims to make classical social theory fruitful for analysing the transnationalisation of societies. The paper focuses on the contribution of Antonio Gramsci´s analysis in this regard. A number of scholars have transferred his theory of hegemony to the global level in order to gain a more sophisticated understanding of global power and its transformation in reaction to the deepening of global economic integration. Surprisingly, most Neo-Gramscian scholars have devoted little attention to education so far despite the importance Gramsci assigned to this social sphere. The contribution seeks to overcome this lacuna with a study of the internationalisation of higher education since the end of World War II. Against the backdrop of the insights this case study provides, I will suggest some modifications of the Neo-Gramscian account of hegemony with a view to taking the sociological turn more seriously and to deepening our understanding of the social quality and the scale of the emerging postnational hegemony.
A number of scholars have criticised the methodological nationalism of the study of capitalist di... more A number of scholars have criticised the methodological nationalism of the study of capitalist diversity for ignoring a global convergence trend triggered by global competition. This contribution agrees with this criticism but insists on the need to take the diversities into account in order to understand the dependence of capital on the geographical concreteness of living labour and its social context. At the same time, the contribution outlines an analytical framework that sheds light on the process that makes this dependency invisible, hidden behind the convergence trend. This framework further develops Karl Marx’s and Evgeny Pashukanis’ notion of fetishism by drawing on accounts of state theory and economic sociology with a view to outlining the complex interplay of economic and extra-economic processes enabling the disguising. It assigns this process a relative autonomy and thus highlights another type of dependence of capital in its drive towards the realisation of surplus value.
Keywords: Marx, Pashukanis, fetishism, economic sociology, economic imaginary
With its Lisbon Strategy, the European Council coined a slogan for a major objective of the Europ... more With its Lisbon Strategy, the European Council coined a slogan for a major objective of the European Union: to create 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion' (European Council 2000: para. 5). This strategy reflects growing recognition that the economies of the European Union face growing competitive challenges from other advanced capitalist economies and from rapidly developing economies in East Asia and the elsewhere. One part of this response has been to reorganize the global service economy, not only regarding routine commercial services but also in relation to more research-and knowledge-intensive services. This is linked in turn both to efforts to complete the internal EU market in services as part of the general neo-liberal project that dominates current European policies and to efforts to open markets for services beyond the European economic area. Similar moves to liberalize commercial services can be seen in other advanced capitalist economies (notably in the United States) and are also being actively promoted by the World Trade Organization and other international economic agencies concerned to pursue the global neo-liberal project on a global scale. Leading economic and political forces in the EU and USA are especially concerned to globalise their knowledge-intensive service economies in an effort to keep their supremacy in a rapidly changing world market, where low-income countries are becoming significant competitors in the production of commodities of varying degrees of maturity and sophistication and not just in low-tech, mature goods. This chapter explores one important dimension of the Lisbon Agenda and the more general global effort to liberalize knowledge-intensive services, namely, the recent attempts to facilitate the mobility of highly-qualified workers, especially through the mutual recognition of academic qualifications. In particular, I identify the content of the emerging set of norms and principles concerning recognition of education qualifications and their enabling conditions and seek to show their significance for the reorganization and internationalization of higher education in the context of an emerging global knowledge-based economy. For this
publié dans Ph. Laredo, J.-Ph. Leresche et K. Weber (Eds.) 2009 , L'internationalisation des sys... more publié dans Ph. Laredo, J.-Ph. Leresche et K. Weber (Eds.) 2009 , L'internationalisation des systèmes de recherche en action. Les cas français et suisse, Lausanne : PPUR.pp.51-64.
The Bologna-Process and its effectiveness in the light of the interaction between legitimation, l... more The Bologna-Process and its effectiveness in the light of the interaction between legitimation, legitimacy and legality, in juridikum zeitschrift für kritik | recht | gesellschaft, 2/2008, Schwerpunkt Universitätspolitiken, pp.85-90.
This book investigates the consecutive shifts between three types of intermediary institutions in... more This book investigates the consecutive shifts between three types of intermediary institutions in the European context: Corporatist, Neo-corporatist and Governance institutions. It develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the function and position of intermediary institutions in society, as well as a vocabulary capable of explaining the causes and consequences of these shifts for politics, economy and society at large. The book is designed to fill a gap in three rather distinct, yet also overlapping bodies of literature: European Political Economy, European Integration and governance studies, and socio-legal studies in the European context.
Reviews:
- Anne Guisset: Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 22, 3, 427-429, 2016.
- Ian Bruff, Capital & Class, 40, 3, 555 – 57, 2016.
List of Content:
INTRODUCTION
Poul F. Kjaer
PART I: The Big Picture: From Corporatism to Governance
Chapter 1
From Corporatism to Governance: Dimensions of A Theory of Intermediary Institutions
Poul F. Kjaer
Chapter 2
Corporatism and Beyond? On Governance and its Limits
Bob Jessop
CHAPTER 3
From Neo-corporatism to Neo-pluralism: The Liberal Drift of Multilevel Governance
Richard Münch
PART II: Intermediary Institutions in the Transformation of Economic Policy
Chapter 4
Collective Action and the Making of Economic Policy: Intellectual Lineages from the History of Political Economy
Alexander Ebner
Chapter 5
EU Competition Regulation: A Case of Authoritarian Neo-liberalism?
Angela Wigger & Hubert Buch-Hansen
PART III: Intermediary Institutions in the Re-configuration of Social Policy
Chapter 6
Fabricating Social Europe: From Neo-corporatism to Governance by Numbers
Gert Verschraegen
Chapter 7
European Social Policy: Social Cohesion through Competition?
Eva Hartmann
PART IV: Intermediary Institutions and the Law
Chapter 8
The Shadow of the Law: Intermediary Institutions and the Ruling Part of Governance
Alfons Bora
Chapter 9
Taking Governance to Court: Politics, Economics, and a New Legal Realism
Sabine Frerichs
Part V: Intermediary Institutions and Constitutional Transformations
Chapter 10
The Consitutionalisation of Everyday Life?
Grahame F. Thompson
Chapter 11
The Democratic Surplus that Constitutionalised the European Union: Establishing Democratic Governance through Intermediate Institutions
Gorm Harste
Chapter 12
The Crisis of Corporatism and the Rise of International Law
Chris Thornhill
Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will ... more Competition has become a catchword which divides the world. Some present it as panacea that will solve the current economic crisis. Much in line with Adam Smith, competition is seen as the most effective means to prevent producers from overpricing their products and from delivering poor quality. This take on competition differs diametrically from the view that strong competition will trigger a destructive race to the bottom, to the detriment of the whole society. Despite these fundamental differences, what both positions have in common is the assumption that competition has a major impact on society. In their seminal book on EU competition law, Michelle Cini and Lee McGowan identify competition policy as ‘the most important organizing principle in the capitalist world’ (Cini and McGowan 1998, 2).
In the light of the importance assigned to competition, it comes as something of a surprise that competition is not a major topic within sociology. This special issue intends to contribute to overcoming this lacuna by outlining key dimensions of a sociology of competition. Such an account of competition is much more than just a sub-category of economic sociology; it rather explores all the different forms of competition in the sphere of economics, politics, sport, knowledge, beauty, fashion, art, and love, to name but a few areas where competition has gained momentum.
Fortunately, this intellectual endeavour does not have to start from scratch but can benefit from the reasoning on competition which was prevalent in the sociology of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Accordingly, the contributions to this special issue draw on scholars such as Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, as well as Talcott Parsons, Franz Neumann, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi, and more recent sociological accounts of competition developed by Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Niklas Luhmann. The overall idea is to cover a broad range of different sociological accounts of competition with a view to providing a better understanding of how competition structures society.
The contributions also aim to cover a broad range in methodological terms. Some analyses in this issue examine changes in the scholarly discussion on competition over the last two centuries. Other studies take the dissemination of these arguments into account by analysing changes in the dictionaries’ definition of competition. Another contribution examines the World Bank's training manuals, which are used in capacity-building workshops. Last but not least, the concept of competition and its modification is studied through the lens of European case law.