Why do we have the kinds of actors in global politics that we have? States, international organizations, transnational corporations, civil society organizations, experts – all of these are well accepted without question. Just open a textbook or ask a political scientist and these entities will be mentioned. But why do we have these „global governors“ and not others? In the past, nobility had a similar kind of international agency and nobles were frequently called upon to mediate in inter-state disputes. Not any longer. Clearly, global political agency is something contingent and evolving. Matthias Hofferberth and I had started to think about…
Schlagwort: Agency
In 2010, Deborah Avant, Martha Finnemore and Susan Sell coined the term „global governor“ to refer to „authorities who exercise power across borders for purposes of affecting policy“ (Who Governs the Globe?, p. 2). I’m not sure the term „authorities“ is the best one (I’d prefer „actors“) but the remainder of their book makes it clear that they are looking for authority in the legal sense but in the more practical one – a „global governor“ is an actor who gets a seat at the tables of global policy-making. The History and Future of Global Governors Who are the global…
As we are watching the results of the US midterm elections trickle in on our livefeeds (FiveThirtyEight for me; first impression: it’s looking better for the Democrats than expected), I am again reminded how Elon Musk urged his fans to vote Republican. Yesterday, I could only address this in parentheses and called it „ridiculous“ but I want to explain this a little more. My main point is not that Musk is a maverick daredevil who plays by own rules – from a historical perspective, Musk is not atypical for a particular class of businessmen that are gaining prominence again in…