Rethinking Power and Institutions in the Shadows of Neoliberalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
World Development, 2019
Despite the recognition that institutions matter for international development, the debates over institutional reforms tend to obscure the role of power. Neoliberal models of development are often promoted in terms of their technical merits and efficiency gains and rarely account for the multiple ways that social, economic and political power shape institutional design and institutional change. Even recent efforts to address power tend to conceptualize it too narrowly. This special issue seeks to rethink the role of power in institutional creation and change in the context of persistent neoliberalism. In the introduction, we synthesize the literature on the nature of power to develop a new conceptual framework-a power in institutions matrix-that highlights the multiple dimensions of power involved in institutional development and change. We argue that such a theoretically-informed mapping of power in institutions will enable scholars, practitioners, and citizen groups to go beyond the standard critiques in order to analyze the multifaceted effects of neoliberal institutional change. Our introduction draws on an extensive literature review as well as the special issue contributors who examine institutional change in a variety of policy sectors in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and North America. We find that a range of diverse local, national and transnational actors, with disparate access to power, negotiate institutional changes from above and below through overt imposition of and resistance to new rules, influence of agendas, and promotion of discourses. Neoliberalism thus creates a new distributive politics. The special issue thus offers a theoretically-grounded approach for linking international and domestic power differences to the process of institutional change, with a specific focus on equity and sustainability. In a departure from the current literature's focus on elite bargains, we showcase the efforts by less powerful groups to gain a foothold in decision-making processes.
Integrating Power in Institutional Analysis - Journal of Theoretical Politics
A micro-foundational perspective about integrating power in institutional analysis. Proposes the concept of interlinked action arenas and outlines its importance for theories of collective action and institutional change. ABSTRACT Studies of social dilemmas consistently report higher than expected levels of cooperation, especially in the presence of appropriate institutions. At the same time, scholars have argued that institutions are manifestations of power relations. The higher than expected levels of cooperation amidst widespread power asymmetries constitute an important puzzle about the linkages between power asymmetries and the outcomes of local institutional deliberation. In this paper I develop a microfoundation-based approach that examines incentives and imperatives to explain how power asymmetries shape individuals’ responses to institutional development and institutional change. I argue that local power asymmetries work across multiple interlinked institutional arenas. A fuller examination of the effects of power asymmetries, therefore, requires that scholars account for how interlinked institutional arenas shape strategic actions of the members and leaders within local communities.
Endogenous Institutional Change and Privileged Groups
Since the recent advances in the institutional perspective of economic development, there is considerable increase in the literature on the evolution of institutions. In this study, while employing the game theoretic approach, we explore the rent-seeking fundamentals of institutions. We model the manner in which the rent-seeking behaviour of state actors results in inefficiency of the institutional framework. The main focus is on the rents provided by the availability of natural resources wealth, foreign aid or corruption potential. By originating a framework where rulers, agents of the state, and citizens act endogenously, we show that the rents from these resources can be a significant constraint to institutional reforms. In order to come out of the bad institutions trap, the society needs to offer a substantial amount of incentives to the privileged groups. The focus is on two privileged groups, i.e. the rulers and the state agents. In most of the societies, these two groups have the highest bargaining power in the negotiations over the rules and institutions.
Power and resistance in multilayer Global Governance
Multiple layers of global governance exert power in its multiple forms, in the process producing multiple sites of power that simultaneously evoke and challenge the possibility or perhaps of resistance. This is so because power relations cannot exist without resistance (Foucault, as quoted in Neumann and Sending, 24). I employ these ontological and foundational arguments to frame the thesis of my discussion. Specifically, I argue that different power relations evoke different possible forms of resistance that nonetheless coalesce around the demand for accountability, which involves calls for fairness and equity, greater transparency, enhanced participation and holding power responsible. I unpack this thesis by first illustrating why demands for accountability are in themselves acts of resistance before explaining the logic behind the possibility of resistance, which I link to the broad contours of what I argue is a neoliberal form of GG. Here, I briefly illustrate how neoliberal mechanisms accentuate the difficulties that confront dissent and resistance. After laying out this contextual framework, I turn my attention to four specific relationships of power and resistance: neoliberal regimes/institutions and reformist demonstrations; intergovernmental organizations and dissenting blocs within those organizations; transnational corporations and public-private partnerships; and credit rating agencies and global administrative law. I end by emphasizing the feasibility of resistance while taking into close consideration the constraints put on it.
The paper introduces a sociological analytical perspective that reconceptualises forum shopping from above and below as interrelated strategies of social mobility within a stratified international society. I argue that power shifts – understood as changes in the allocation of institutional as well as extra-institutional resources – lead states to experience upward or downward social mobility. By shifting issues to alternative fora, both rising and declining members of international society seek to generate additional institutional and extra-institutional capital that they can use to boost their rise or soften their decline. The proposed rethinking positions the strategic institutional choices of individual states within a multidimensional and relational conception of power. This shift of perspectives helps us to see how forum shopping initiatives from above and below are both systematically related to structural change within and outside institutions, how they can influence one another, and how they in turn affect the social structure of international society.
Randall W. Stone, Controlling Institutions: International Organizations and the Global Economy
ERIS – European Review of International Studies, 2016
Global governance and international organisations have taken some serious knocks lately. Indeed, in a recent issue of Governance, David Coen and Tom Pegram argue that "Global governance is not working". They identify a 'first generation' of global governance research that "focused almost exclusively on formal mechanisms of interstate relations within public multilateral institutions. … With these structures apparently in gridlock, observers now regard global governance to be in crisis". Their 'second generation' refocuses on "new forms of public and private global governance as a response to the limitations faced by states in tackling pressing transboundary challenges', while their 'third generation … [is] distinguished by a concern for the complexity and dynamism of global public policymaking and delivery in a new century". 1 Similar arguments have also been made in a symposium of Public Administration entitled Global Public Policy and Transnational Administration, edited by Diane Stone and Stella Ladi. 2 However, Randall Stone's analysis in Controlling Institutions is unfortunately stuck somewhere in the middle-to-later phases of Coen and Pegram's first generation. The main 'red thread' of the book is the argument that all international organisations are characterised by a trade-off between more formalised and legalised decision-making processes, on the one hand, and an accepted safety valve for the most structurally powerful states to manipulate outcomes in favour of their own perceived-especially their most 'intense'-interests, policies, alliances and other special relationships, on the other. Less powerful states have a greater voice in the formal and legal processes and therefore can defend their interests in those fora-up to a point. But their greater voice gives them a stake in the process despite losing out on certain major decisions. More powerful states, reluctant to give up their positions when they see their own interest at stake, are happy to allow these formal and legal processes to develop as long as they have a kind of safety valve or virtual opt-out when they decide they want or need it. Stone identifies and analyses how this
Fields of Global Governance: How Transnational Power Elites Can Make Global Governance Intelligible
International Political Sociology, 2014
To make global governance intelligible, we need to study a neglected but crucial phenomenon, namely the development of the social division of labor, both in transnational society and more specifically with regard to the fields of politics, law and economics. This notion of a social division of labor has to be distinguished from the mere technical division of labor. The process in question is not merely one of differentiation in an ever more complex world, nor does it take place in a relative power vacuum. Instead, it involves unequal distributions of resources and the use of influence and power. In other words, we need to examine, far more carefully than in the existing literature, the operators of globalization: those individuals and social and professional groups, rooted in evolving national and transnational societies, who govern global governance. Going behind the fac ßade of global institutions and instead focusing on the arguably deeper structures of global governance, we can also start to explain the emergence of new forms of power as they develop around new transnational power elites operating in, around, and beyond a growing number of international institutions (Kauppi and Madsen 2013).