Private Organisations in Global Politics

Karsten Ronit, Volker Schneider

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134634866
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Economía política

Private Organisation in Global Politics is a groundbreaking study which brings together a broad range of case-studies to examine the role and character of private organisations in the process of political globalization. Focusing on areas such as human rights organisations, the international women's movement and the combating of disease, the panel of expert contributors investigate the function of these in relation to governance in the globalizing world.

1	Private organizations and their contribution to problem-solving in the global arena
	Karsten Ronit and Volker Schneider

Introduction

Many private organizations “make the world ‘go round”. Today, a diverse array of private organizations are, in one way or another, active in global politics. These include multi-national corporations, cartels, business associations, federations of trade unions, standardizing associations, learned societies, think tanks, the international media, religious orders, sporting organizations, environmental groups, etc. Private organizations sometimes seriously complicate governance, whereas at other times they make important contributions to problem-solving. Either way, they have changed the landscape of global politics without always being credited for this.

The involvement of private organizations in the global arena may be traced far back in time. From the late middle ages onward, major transformation processes changed societies and paved the way for the creation of autonomous private organizations.¹ Although a framework had been established in previous centuries, the proliferation of private organizations on a international scale increased significantly between the mid nineteenth century and World War I. This time period witnessed great enthusiasm for improved co-operation and peaceful dispute settlement. With the internationalization of economies and the expansion of communication facilities, private actors found new forms of international and global cooperation. A bundle of organizations, which today thrive in diverse policy fields, were founded (e.g. the International Red Cross as the flagship organization in the humanitarian field, the International Olympic Committee in sports, and, in business, the International Chamber of Commerce). Propelled by the systematic encouragement of the UN and its many specialized agencies, private organizations experienced new and even stronger growth after the Second World War. Over the last few decades, various private actors with differing agendas have enhanced the process of globalization, while globalization has given impetus to new forms of private co-operation as well as a search for new mechanisms of governance that go beyond market and state.

Presently, the state is drawing back and has surrendered to the market dominance in numerous areas. This trend, seen not only in the Western world but also in countries previously under communist rule and in large parts of the third world, may not, however, be unilaterally characterized by a “retreat of the state”. In a number of emerging issue areas and established policy fields, new rules for control over market processes and communication, together with measures to minimize negative impacts of globalization, are frequently called for. In such cases it is often through private organizations that new forms of governance are established. Thus, where effective regulation is achieved through either the state or market, private organizations may also contribute. Where neither state nor market can effectively collaborate with private organizations to provide desirable and legitimate regulation, authority may be exercised by those private organizations demonstrating solid administrative capabilities.

This chapter is divided into three sections: proliferation, representation and regulation. Discussion in the first part focuses on the different types of private organizations and concepts through which they are analyzed. Although different forms of political action are reviewed, the aim is not to identify the various kinds of private organization, but rather to highlight the fundamental framework upon which private interest groups are organized. Various categories of non-governmental organizations exist, each seeking, at the conceptual level, to identify private structures and activities, but few attempts have been made to synthesize these into a general framework. It is on these grounds that the concept of private organization is offered as a means to portray, and interpret, the many variations of organized international private action.

The second part of this chapter examines the participation of private organizations in global policy processes. Private organizations are widely recognized and granted a kind of public status by intergovernmental organizations, thus becoming an integral part of the global political machinery. The operation of intergovernmental organizations and the complex role of private organizations cannot be properly understood without examining this. In this context it is necessary to ask which theories can assist in analyzing relations between private organizations and intergovernmental organizations at the global level.

Having discussed the proliferation of organizations and the patterns of representation, we turn to the issue of regulation. Private organizations are not only influential through their participation in the policy process. In some cases they assume the primary responsibility for problem-solving, either on their own initiative or through encouragement by public authorities. In this way self-regulation through private organizations becomes an alternative to the more traditional and recognized forms of regulation through states and markets.

In the concluding section we further develop this perspective and argue that a treatment of global politics is incomplete without full integration of all relevant actors, including those organized in a private framework. They deserve more than the scant attention which they usually receive in studies on international affairs. Despite various attempts to bring this view into discussions on global politics, private organizations are still marginal elements of the academic debate, despite having long ago entered the scene of global politics.

Proliferation of private organizations in global politics

The organization of private interests is characterized by an enormous proliferation of actors at the international and global level (see Judge 1995). Therefore it is not surprising that private organizations are given various labels within studies on international relations, international political economy and transnational relations. Indeed, one finds interesting contributions in other disciplines. For example, management studies and business history consider the organization of firms; sociology of religion looks at the organization of beliefs; industrial relations research discusses the role and relationship of workers and employers; and anthropology investigates the character and structure of ethnic groups. Traditionally, theories have focused on different structures of governance. International relations is based on states, international political economy on states and markets, and transnational relations on civil society and associations. These disciplines, which are not always easily separable, and which will be considered below, regard private organizations differently.

International relations

In the vast area of international relations, with its myriad of approaches and schools of thought, empirical studies and theoretical developments are orientated at public authority. A variety of academic and historical reasons account for this. When international relations emerged as a scientific discipline, the study of international authority was almost completely dominated by international public law, a field sharply separated from international private law, which includes business law. In international relations the power paradigm of structuring international affairs was stressed, but the new discipline remained preoccupied with the analysis of public authority and, in this respect, followed the established legalist approach. A number of events cemented this line of reasoning. The world wars, cold war, collapse of colonial empires and the emergence of new and independent states strengthened the belief that international and global politics is best understood from the perspective of independent and unitary states struggling for power and hegemony inside or outside the framework of intergovernmental organizations.

In disputes between state-centric schools of thought in international relations, little room is left for other actors.² The existence of private organizations is not denied, but they are, a priori, considered of minor importance and, accordingly, solid investigations are hardly worth the effort. However, even from a strong state-centric perspective, it makes sense to study private organizations to demonstrate how states influence the formation of private actors, or how they instrumentalize them in their rivalry with other states. This includes terrorist organizations, private armies, arms dealers, peace movements and other groups. Although voluntary private groups co-operating across states may disturb state-centric thinking, some aspects of private activity are discussed in writings primarily concerned with states and referenced in studies linking foreign policy with domestic policy processes (Evans et al. 1993; Skidmore and Hudson 1993; Keohane and Milner 1996). Nevertheless, in terms of global politics private organizations are rather a “backstage” phenomenon.

The broad tradition of international organizations refers to both public and private actors and inter-organizational networks. Still, the focus is primarily on inter-state co-operation, and less on private activity. However, international organizations building upon public authority cannot be interpreted through the lenses of inter-state co-operation or through a principal-agent perspective where their activities are determined by member states alone, as they may also develop a certain degree of autonomy (Reinalda and Verbeek 1999). Again, it is not clear how this may affect, or is of relevance to, private organizations.

International political economy

In the field of international political economy, problem-solving is arranged around the state and market. Markets influence politics and vice versa without there being a balanced reciprocal influence. In some analyses, states are seen as having a controlling influence on economies. This strand of research somewhat reformulates the realist approaches. In some other studies the organization of markets is analyzed with states and intergovernmental organizations sharing responsibility for the operation of markets with firms, unions and trade associations. These have become increasingly institutionalized because deregulation is often followed by re-regulation (Vogel 1996; Strange 1996) or voluntary standards and norms in the marketplace.

Macro-economic problems, as well as the conditions of specific industries, are scrutinized and intergovernmental organizations, such as, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the World Trade Organization, are analyzed. Following the process of globalization, it is no surprise that some areas, such as the regulation of financial markets, and to a lesser extent the private organizations in the field, have received special attention over the last ten to fifteen years (Cerny 1993; Kapstein 1994; Stubbs and Underbill 1994; Underbill 1997; Porter 1993; Helleiner 1994; Filipovic 1997).

When observing state-market relations, a greater role is attributed to private organizations although a rather limited spectrum of organizations is actually reviewed. Emphasis is first and foremost on transnational corporations that are sometimes more powerful than those nations which host them or where they operate. Nevertheless, a plethora of other private organizations involved in global politics exist in the marketplace, but these are rarely acknowledged. This applies, for instance, to: family dynasties, such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, Krupps or Rothschilds; various ethnic groups (Kotkin 1993); cartels in air transport, oil, diamonds and other commodities (see Sampson 1984; Yergin 1991; Kanfer 1993); conferences created in different areas of shipping (Marx 1953; Cafruny 1987); and business associations representing producer interests (Streeck and Schmitter 1985; Hollingsworth et al. 1994) and business roundtables, clubs or commissions fostering ideas and debates on general economic problems at “private summits” such as the Bilderberg meetings, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission (Gill 1990) and so-called “international class coalitions” (Pijl 1984, 1998).

By ignoring or giving relatively little attention to these fairly robust units of organized political action, the international political economy tradition cultivates, to some degree, the myth that business is individualistic and guided by narrow self-interests. This line of argument, consequently, goes on to state that business interests are generally unable to organize collectively on the global scene. Indeed, some of these private organizations in the business world are not necessarily created for political purposes, nor routinely involved in politics; however, some are established for this purpose or are politically active when the occasion warrants such behavior.

Although many analyses of state and market provide only a partial idea as to how economic interests are collectively organized in global politics, some recent academic contributions highlight this (Cutler et al. 1999; Underbill 2000). This is somewhat ironical given the fact that globalization, perhaps more than anything else, propels the emergence of new private actors and has been an important consideration for the development of global politics during the last decades (Yergin and Stanislaw 1998). It is problematic that the roles of many market actors in global politics are only vaguely dealt with by international political economy and a better guidance should be expected. However, it is also noteworthy that private, non-economic players generally fall outside the paradigms of international political economy. Hence, to understand the roles performed by this subset of private organizations, we must turn to a third approach for studying global politics.

Transnational relations

The third method reviewed here is the transnational or civil society approach. By analyzing structures of governance beyond market and state, this strand of research examines global processes in areas where civil society structures contribute to problem-solving through private organizations.³ Thus, a number of other policy fields, most typically those involving non-market actors and non-market relations, are addressed. This includes environmental protection, human rights and relief work, and efforts to safeguard underprivileged groups such as ethnic minorities, women and children. However, the transnational approaches are not only concerned with the involvement of private actors in policy fields that are commonly ranked as “low politics”, but they also point to the existence of secret private organizations such as arms dealers, mercenary groups, illegal uranium exporters and groups which influence “high politics” domains. While the alleged policy monopoly of states in areas of security policy is challenged, systematic publicly available knowledge about these groups is limited.

Although international relations analyses are generally characterized by a state-centric view that devotes little space to private organizations, and whereas the international political economy only observes certain types of economic actors in politics, transnational relations is primarily occupied with understanding the role of organizations emerging out of civil society. This field does not employ a consistent vocabulary and a range of concepts are employed to describe different private organizations. Arguably, it would be more correct to speak of a collection of perspectives. The commonly used but contested concept developed within transnational relations studies is that of non-governmental organization. This is also supported by the branch of international organization research. Studies of non-governmental organizations encompass a very broad group of actors, and a huge glossary of acronyms has been created to account for the variety in the organization of private interests. Still, “non-governmental organizations” is a problematic category for characterizing private organizations.⁴ There are three major deficiencies.

First, some basic features of private organizations are not elaborated on. “Non-governmental organizations” is a negative definition, which serves to distinguish such organizations from the more prominent—and presumably more important—intergovernmental organizations, which are fewer and easier to identify. The reason for adopting this concept is relatively straightforward. Scholarly work in international affairs has been heavily influenced by the efforts of the UN to identify and define relevant exchange partners in the years ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Series editor’s preface
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Private organizations and their contribution to problem-solving in the global arena
• 2 Representation of private organizations in the global diplomacy of economic policy-making
• 3 Embedding global financial markets: securitization and the emerging web of governance
• 4 The good, the bad or the ugly? Practices of global self-regulation among dyestuffs producers
• 5 The Internet Society and its struggle for recognition and influence
• 6 Why do community-based AIDS organizations co-ordinate at the global level?
• 7 The global social capital of human rights movements: a case study on Amnesty International
• 8 The international women’s movement as a private political actor between accommodation and change
• 9 The policy roles of private research institutes in global politics
• Index