This article assesses the usefulness of Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink's spiral model as an explanation of the changes in the Chinese government's human rights practices from the time of the 'anti-rightist' campaign in 1957-1958 to the end of 2003. It is concluded that the spiral model has provided a valid explanation for many of the changes in the Chinese government's human rights practices, and its responses to its internal and external critics, over this time period. Many of (...) the responses of the transnational human rights network and the Chinese government by the end of this period indicate that the latter had progressed to phase three of the model. It is also concluded that the spiral model only conceptualises part of the constitutive relationship between the target state and international human rights norms - the influence of these norms on the identities, interests and behaviours of a target state. It does not conceptualise the influence of a target state on international human rights norms or the transnational human rights network. Therefore, the spiral model cannot explain why the Chinese government has had such a significant influence over the enforcement mechanisms of these norms. (shrink)

Combining case studies with normative theory, this book analyzes the democratic credentials of transnational actors participating in global governance, ranging from corporations and philanthropic foundations to NGOs and social movements. This leads to innovative interpretations of democratic legitimacy in a transnational context.

: We discuss the role that transnational corporations should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the (...) social responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

Abstract:We discuss the role that transnational corporations (TNCs) should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the (...) social responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

The literature on transnational civil society encompasses a number of conflicting views regarding civil society organizations’ (CSOs) behavior and impacts and the desirability of civil society involvement in international policymaking. This piece suggests that this lack of consensus arises from the diverse range of contexts in which CSOs operate and the wide variety of activities in which it engages. This article seeks to organize and analyze the disparate data on civil society by developing a context-based standard of democratic legitimacy (...) for CSOs. The article disaggregates democracy into input, throughput, and output components, and shows how CSOs must support or manifest different aspects of democracy in order to be democratically legitimate in a given context. Applying this standard to existing works, the article identifies several problems in current research, including a failure to recognize ways the democratic imperatives of transnational advocacy differ from national advocacy, and the potential for international civil society interventions to undermine local democratic processes. Keywords: transnational civil society; democracy; global governance; NGOs; international policymaking (Published: 1 September 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2010, pp. 217-238. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i3.4882. (shrink)

Globalization arguably generated a governance gap that is being filled by transnational rule-making involving private actors among others. The democratic legitimacy of such new forms of governance beyond nation states is sometimes questioned. Apart from nation-centered democracies, such governance cannot build, for example, on representation and voting procedures to convey legitimacy to the generated rules. Instead, alternative elements of democracy such as deliberation and inclusion require discussion to assess new instruments of governance. The recently published standard ISO 26000 (...) is an interesting example of transnational governance. ISO 26000 was developed in a lengthy multiorganizational process for the purpose of giving guidance on the social responsibility of organizations. By assessing the specific case of ISO 26000, this study sheds light on the question of how legitimacy beyond nation-state democracy is ensured or constricted. Centering on the idea of deliberate democracy and democratic legitimacy, the study offers in-depth insights on the normative legitimacy of the development process of ISO 26000. Positioned on the interface of business studies and public policy, this article contributes to the academic literature on transnational governance and on the role of multistakeholder processes in shaping the role of business in society. (shrink)

During this age of globalisation, the law is characterised by an ever diminishing hierarchical framework, with an increasing role played by non-state actors. Such features are also pertinent for the international enforceability of human rights. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to be given broadening obligations, which approach the borderline between ethics and law. The impact of soft law in this context is also relevant. This paper aims to assess whether, and to what extent, this trend could be (...) a proper path to enforce the legal accountability of transnational corporations for human rights. It will be argued that the interplay between law and ethics should be assessed differently depending on which kind of correlative duty is at stake. With regard to negative duties, soft law tools concerning TNCs’ conduct may weaken the impact of hard law. By contrast, when positive duties are concerned, insofar as the horizontal effect of rights cannot be assumed, soft law turns out to be much more useful. (shrink)

Can civic organizations be both locally rooted and globally connected? Based on a survey of 1,002 of the largest civic organizations in Hungary, we conclude that there is not a forced choice between foreign ties and domestic integration. By studying variation in types of foreign interactions and variation in types of domestic integration, our analysis goes beyond notions of footloose experts versus rooted cosmopolitans. Organizations differ in their rootedness according to whether they have ties to their members and constituents, whether (...) they have ties to other organizations in the civic sector, and whether they associate with actors from outside the civic sector. Similarly, we specify different types of foreign ties. In both domains our emphasis is on the type of action involved in the tie–especially relations of accountability and partnership. By demonstrating a systematic relationship between the patterns of foreign ties and the patterns of domestic integration, we chart three emerging forms of transnational publics. (shrink)

Given that the practices and institutions of knowledge production commonly referred to as ‘science’ are believed to have ‘Western’ origins, their apparent proliferation entails negotiations and power dynamics that shape both science and diplomacy in specific locales. This paper investigates a facet of this co-production of science and diplomacy in the emergence of knowledge infrastructure in Japan during the Allied Occupation. It focuses on the 1947 delegation from the United States National Academy of Sciences to Japan and its role in (...) creating the Science Council of Japan (SCJ). While historians view this mission as having been dispatched to provide advice on the foundation of the SCJ, it was in fact an unintentional outcome. The original plan was to recruit long-term scientific advisers on science policy to Douglas MacArthur's headquarters. The creation of the SCJ was not the brainchild of any individual but the result of an unforeseen alteration of the original idea through negotiations among various actors. By examining the transnational aspects of this process and the complex social process underlying it, and drawing on Manuel DeLanda's assemblage theory, this paper proposes the concept of ‘techno-diplomatic assemblage’ for understanding the transnational construction of knowledge infrastructure such as the emergence of the SCJ. (shrink)

The impact and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in healthcare settings has been increasing since 2019. This is greatly due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. But beyond accommodating an extraordinary and complex situation in terms of healthcare services, or beyond replacing personalised care delivered by healthcare professionals (HCPs), has there been a process of information and consultation for communities and HCPs? Do we have the basic requirements needed to make such use commonplace in health care? What will the impact (...) be on communities and their governance? Have we arrived here by consensus or by imposition? Our purpose has been to conduct a transnational analysis by approaching communities, social actors, and healthcare professionals in three territories in a pilot study following a qualitative methodology. The aim being to discover the potential impact of such measures beyond the right to health and if such measures are compatible with the purpose of population settling in rural areas. Furthermore, to identify if this entails a conflict of value and priorities or if we need new ethical reviews both for communities and healthcare professionals. (shrink)

Interactions between state, international, transnational and intra-state law involve overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, claims to legitimate authority. These have led scholars to new theoretical explanations of sovereignty, constitutionalism, and legality, but there has been no close attention to authority itself. This book asks whether, and under what conditions, there can be multiple legitimate authorities with overlapping or conflicting domains. Can legitimate authority be shared between state, supra-state and non-state actors, and if so, how should they relate to one (...) another? Roughan argues that understanding authority in contemporary pluralist circumstances requires a new conception of relative authority, and a new theory of its legitimacy. The theory of relative authority treats the interdependence of authorities, and the relationships in which they are engaged, as critical to any assessment of their legitimacy. It offers a tool for evaluating inter-authority relationships prevalent in international, transnational, state and non-state constitutional practice, while suggesting significant revisions to the idea that law, in general or even by necessity, claims to have legitimate authority. (shrink)

The possibility for transnational democratic representation is a huge topic. This article is restricted to exploring two unconventional aspects. The first concerns ‘the representative claim’, extending one critical part of previous analysis of the assessment of such claims, especially by largely unelected transnational actors. The second, which strongly conditions the account of the first, concerns ‘slow theory’ as the way to approach building democratic models and, in particular, to approach transnational democratic representation. Keywords: slow politics; slow (...) theory; transnational representation; democracy and representation; slow movement. (shrink)

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders (...) and jurisdiction and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

The small portion of philosophical work on global distributive justice that directly discusses particular agents, institutions or practices in global politics tends to focus on a narrow range of the existing set. The emphasis is chiefly on bilateral diplomacy or intergovernmental organisations, to the neglect of a variety of more recent forms of transnational governance, many of which incorporate non‐state actors, have more limited membership, involve informal and dynamic structures, employ cooperative and reflexive methods for ensuring compliance, and (...) operate largely out of the public eye. This article considers how philosophers should conceive of distributive justice in relation to these neglected sites of transnational governance, using the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as an illustration. (shrink)

A theme of growing importance in both the law and philosophy and socio-legal literature is how regulatory dynamics can be identified and normative expectations met in an age when transnational actors operate on a global plane and in increasingly fragmented and transformative contexts. A reconsideration of established theories and axiomatic findings on regulatory phenomena is an essential part of this discourse. There is indeed an urgent need for discontinuity regarding what we know about, among other things, law, legality, (...) sovereignty and political legitimacy, power relations, institutional design and development, and pluralist dynamics of ordering under processes of globalisation and transnationalism. Making an important contribution to the scholarly debate on the subject, this volume features original and much-needed essays of theoretical and applied legal philosophy as well as socio-legal accounts that reflect on whether legal positivism has anything to offer to this intellectual enterprise. This is done by discussing whether global and transnational cultural, socio-political, economic, and juridical challenges as well as processes of diversification, fragmentation, and transformation reinforce or weaken legal positivists’ assumptions, claims, and methods. The themes covered include, but are not limited to, absolute and limited state sovereignty; the ‘new international legal positivism’; Hartian legal positivism and the ‘normative positivist’ account; the relationship between modern secularisation, social conventionalism, and meta-ontological issues of temporality in postnational jurisprudence; the social positivisation of human rights; the formation and content of jus cogens norms; feminist critique; the global and transnational migration of principles of justice and morality; the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties rule of interpretation; and the responsibility of transnational corporations. (shrink)

In recent years, the development and the use of engineered nanomaterials have generated many debates on whether these materials should be part of the new or existing regulatory frameworks. The uncertainty, lack of scientific knowledge and rapid expansion of products containing nanomaterials have added even more to the regulatory dilemma with policy makers and public/private actors contenting periods of both under and over regulation. Responding to these regulatory challenges, as well as to the global reach of nanotechnology research and (...) industrial needs, governance arrangements beyond the state have addressed the challenge head-on. This article focuses on the governance arrangements of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which has led to the development of numerous “horizontal anticipatory standards” with an important role in setting the foundation for science, technology and market development. During the course of its operation ISO has broadened its scope to address not only technical issues related to the concept and the size of nanomaterials but also broader aspects of the technology, including health, environment and safety issues. The increasing relevance of the ISO to regulate economic relations and achieve certain public policy goals has given rise to many concerns about its legitimacy. The important questions are whether these governance arrangements may be deemed as being legitimate and where this legitimacy is derived from? What are the main sources of legitimacy at the transnational level and how we can apply them to analyse nanotechnology standardization? This article provides concise answers to these questions. It focuses at the normative concepts of democratic and scientific legitimacy and explores the institutional structures and processes by which nanotechnology standards are established. (shrink)

The small portion of philosophical work on global distributive justice that directly discusses particular agents, institutions or practices in global politics tends to focus on a narrow range of the existing set. The emphasis is chiefly on bilateral diplomacy or intergovernmental organisations, to the neglect of a variety of more recent forms of transnational governance, many of which incorporate non-state actors, have more limited membership, involve informal and dynamic structures, employ cooperative and reflexive methods for ensuring compliance, and (...) operate largely out of the public eye. This article considers how philosophers should conceive of distributive justice in relation to these neglected sites of transnational governance, using the International Organization for Standardization as an illustration. (shrink)

The settler-colonial and republican principles of early U.S. politics tend to be studied as paradoxical ambitions of American nation-building. This article argues that early republican thought in the United States developed through what I call ‘ideological code-switching’, a vernacular practice that allowed popular actors to strategically vacillate between anti-colonial and neo-colonial discourses as complementary principles of revolutionary change. I illustrate these claims by tracing a genealogy of anti- and neo-colonial thought from the founding of the United States to its (...) transnational emergence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I demonstrate that ideological code-switching first appeared as a rhetorical strategy among the Federalist debates, where Publius argued for the feasibility of expansionist republics via a hemispheric account of American exceptionalism. These appeals to hemispheric unity remained salient into the nineteenth century among groups like the ‘Republicans of ‘Nacogdoches’, a militia comprised of Indigenous, Mestizo, and White actors that mobilized an attack on Spain and founded the Republic of Texas in April of 1813. Drawing on archival research, I turn to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as an example of the way marginalized groups instrumentalized links between anti- and neo-colonial politics to envision their position in the rapidly evolving landscapes of transnational revolution. (shrink)

One of the most visible symbols of the debate over human rights and national security in the context of the U.S. "War on Terrorism" has been the detainment of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The controversy concerning the fate of the nearly 600 prisoners demonstrates the emergence of new modes of democratic deliberation over how to strike the balance between rights and security. These new modes (...) of deliberation involve nongovernmental organizations and individuals who function as norm entrepreneurs, by mobilizing public opinion through transnational networks of opinion-makers and policymakers. Transnational networks of norm entrepreneurs have emerged where traditional avenues for foreign policymaking in the U.S. have failed to create a space for meaningful consideration of human rights in the rights/security balance. These traditional avenues are envisioned in the Constitution, which gives the President authority regarding foreign affairs, bounded by checks provided to Congress and the courts. While the goal of the constitutional process is to bring these institutional players into a dialogue, Congress and the judiciary have failed to engage the President in a conversation regarding the balance between human rights and national security. In the absence of initiatives by the government, nongovernmental actors have used communication structures within transnational networks to promote what this Article calls a dialogic approach to enforcement of human rights law. (shrink)

The disastrous AIDS epidemic, the numbers killed by which worldwide have overtaken those of the dead in all civil wars of the 90s, took a special turn in South Africa with the legal case “Hazel Tau vs. Glaxo and Boehringer”. The case translates the multidimensional social issues into the narrower quaestiones juris : has the pricing policy of transnational pharmaceutical enterprises violated fundamental human rights? Can AIDS patients assert their right to life directly against transnational corporations? Does “Access (...) to Medication as a Human Right” exist in the private sector? More generally, do fundamental rights obligate not only States, but also private transnational actors directly? (shrink)

Higher education (HE) mobility programmes around the globe have been key initiatives over the past thirty years, driven by combinations of supranational and national state-led knowledge economy policies, university strategies, and decisions made by individuals regarding employability, credentials, or academic tourism. In this paper we argue that mobility too often is understood through the prism of internationalism, itself umbilically tied to and nourished by Enlightenment liberal thinking, such as Kantian cosmopolitanism, and the romantic figure of the wandering scholar. This has (...) the effect of reducing our understanding of transnational mobility to individual actors, their desires, and experiences. In this paper we ask: to what extent and in what ways can HE transnational mobility projects be understood as forms of imperialism? In this regard we examine the literature on imperialism and argue for a more capacious use of the term; as taking economic, political and cultural forms. We use these to examine the links between the expansion and securing of empires historically, the state’s spatial projects and global market making. We do this through the prism of two nations, the UK and China, comparing their state’s transnational HE strategies, selectivities and outcomes. (shrink)

In 1956, ICJ judge Philip Jessup highlighted the gaps between private and public international law and the need to adapt the law to border-crossing problems. Today, sixty years later, we still ask what role transnational law can play in a deeply divided, post-colonial world, where multinationals hold more power and more assets than many nation states. In searching for suitable answers to pressing legal problems such as climate change law, security, poverty and inequality, questions of representation, enforcement, accountability and (...) legitimacy become newly entangled. As public and private, domestic and international actors compete for regulatory authority, spaces for political legitimacy have become fragmented and the state's exclusivist claim to be law's harbinger and place of origin under attack. Against this background, transnational law emerges as a conceptual framework and method laboratory for a critical reflection on the forms, fora and processes of law making and law contestation today. (shrink)

Responsibility for Human Rights provides an original theoretical analysis of which global actors are responsible for human rights, and why. It does this through an evaluation of the different reasons according to which such responsibilities might be assigned: legalism, universalism, capacity and publicness. The book marshals various arguments that speak in favour of and against assigning 'responsibility for human rights' to any state or non-state actor. At the same time, it remains grounded in an incisive interpretation of the world (...) we actually live in today, including: the relationship between sovereignty and human rights, recent events in 'business and human rights' practice, and key empirical examples of human rights violations by companies. David Karp argues that relevantly public actors have specific human rights responsibility. However, states can be less public, and non-state actors can be more public, than might seem apparent at first glance. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Hägel’s book is timely. As economic inequality has been on the rise, the increasing number of billionaires and their political activities have come under public scrutiny. The book contributes to such scrutiny and allows to ask questions about responsibility, accountability, and legitimacy. It also adds to scholarship on individuals in world politics. Our comment provides a critical discussion of two specific aspects of Hägel’s analysis. First, we clarify that most of the book focuses on billionaires as transnational (...) class='Hi'>actors while few billionaires seem to exert influence on broader structures or processes of global governance. This clarification helps to understand the character of billionaires’ activities in world politics. Second, we reverse the perspective from which Hägel looks at billionaires. We point out that, while Hägel tends to look over the shoulders of the billionaires and mainly observes how they exercise influence in world politics, we argue that the other actors matter, too. More specifically, we maintain that billionaires’ roles in global governance are shaped through their specific recognition by international society (state actors) and/or by world society (non-state actors). This change in perspective sheds additional light on the conditions that affect the role(s) billionaires can play in world politics. (shrink)

The religious transnationalism evident in the 21st century has heralded a new paradigm of religion ‘made to travel’ as adherents of religions navigate various cultural frontiers within Africa, Europe and North America. The role of Africa in shaping the global religious landscape, particularly the Christian tradition, designates the continent as one of the major actors of the Christian faith in the 21st century. The inability of European Christianity to address most of the existential realities of Africans and the stigmatisation (...) of African Traditional Religion mainly contributed to the emergence of African Independent Churches in the 19th century in Africa. The emergence and proliferation of African Independent Churches in Africa was Africa’s response to Europeanised Christianity with its imperialistic doctrines and practices that negated expectation of its new context – Africa. Despite the declining fortunes of Christianity in the West, African Christianity, which includes the African Independent Churches and African Pentecostal traditions, is now a major non-commodity export within Africa and North America. Apart from their rituals and peculiarities, African Independent Churches like other faith organisations are development actors. Although notions about the role of religion in development amongst some social scientists are mainly negative, African Independent Churches over the years are actively involved in various human and community transformation initiatives. This study argues that the transnational status of African Independent Churches has led to the emergence of developmental ideals that defy territorialisation. The collaboration with some Western development agencies by some of the African Independent Churches in Diaspora further blurs the concept of diaspora as the members of this Christian movement are active development actors in the receiving nations and their former home countries. This study argues that the role of religion in development in any context cannot be overemphasised. As a result of the globalisation of African Independent Churches, the United Kingdom and Nigeria will serve as our case study using historical survey and descriptive analyses to highlight African Independent Churches as development actors. (shrink)

With the proliferation of private standards many significant decisions regarding public health risks, food safety, and environmental impacts are increasingly taking place in the backstage of the global agro-food system. Using an analytical framework grounded in political economy, we explain the rise of private standards and specific actors – notably supermarkets – in the restructuring of agro-food networks. We argue that the global, political-economic, capitalist transformation – globalization – is a transition from a Fordist regime to a regime of (...) flexible accumulation (Harvey, 1989). We also argue that the standard making process of this new regulatory regime is increasingly moving from the front stage – where it is open to public debate and democratic decision-making bodies – to the backstage – where it is dominated by large supermarket procurement offices. We assert that transnational supermarket chains are increasingly controlling what food is grown where, how, and by whom. We also contend that the decision-making processes of transnational supermarket chains are typically “black-boxed.” The Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group (EUREP) is presented as a case of private governance by transnational supermarket chains. We conclude by examining the limitations and long-term efficacy of a system of private governance in the global agro-food system. (shrink)

What makes a multimillion-dollar, transnational intimate industry possible when most people see it as exploitative? Using the newly emergent case of commercial surrogacy in India, this article extends the literature on stratified reproduction and intimate industries by examining how surrogacy persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the “rent-a-womb industry” and “baby factory.” Using interview data with eight infertility specialists, 20 intended parents, and 70 Indian surrogate mothers, as well as blogs and media stories, we demonstrate how market (...) actors justify their pursuits through narrating moral frames of compassion and altruism that are not incidental but systematic to and constitutive of transnational surrogacy. We observed two predominant moral frames: surrogacy liberates and empowers Indian women from patriarchal control; and surrogacy furthers reproductive rights. Within these frames, the market exchange of money for babies is cast as compassion, which allows commissioning clients to sidestep accusations of racism, classism, and sexism. Yet, we reveal that the ability to navigate around these threats relies on racist, classist, and sexist tropes about Third World working-class women. Further, we find that surrogate mothers did not experience significant changes in economic status after surrogacy. (shrink)

_Border-crossing in Education_ comprises a series of case studies covering a variety of cultural areas, in order to reveal the density of connections and exchanges that inform educational practices, policies, and systems. It attaches particular importance to individual and collective actors that govern these flows – initiating, promoting, or reconfiguring transfers of policy models. The contributors explore various aspects of the circulatory mechanisms that have been deployed in the field of education during the modern and contemporary period. Varying the (...) observation scales, from local to international, they demonstrate the multilateral character of the circulatory dynamics observed. The implementation of rich and varied approaches to these complex processes offers a perspective that complements and renews our knowledge of the genesis and evolution of educational policies and systems, most notably highlighting their foreign inspirations. However, these studies do not merely evoke borrowings and hybridization, as if national borders proved porous or non-existent. Instead they show that the phenomena of resistance, reinterpretation, and rejection are also an integral part of transnational mechanisms of exchanges. The book thus demonstrates the relevance of a historical approach in addressing these transnational mechanisms in the field of education and childhood policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Paedagogica Historica. _. (shrink)

BackgroundHuman genome editing technologies offer much potential benefit. However, central to any conversation relating to the application of such technologies are certain ethical, legal, and social difficulties around their application. The recent misuse, or inappropriate use, by certain Chinese actors of the application of genome editing technologies has been, of late, well noted and described. Consequently, caution is expressed by various policy experts, scientists, bioethicists, and members of the public with regard to the appropriate use of human germline genome (...) editing and its possible future effect on future generations.Main textAs concerns about the applications of heritable genome editing have grown, so too have the questions around what is to be done to curtail ‘rogue actors’. This paper explores various ways in which to regulate genomic editing that are socially beneficial, while being cognisant of legal and ethical principles and rights values. This is done by evolving regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions in an attempt to raise issues, address common principles, and set responsible standards for stewardship of the novel technology.ConclusionsIt is suggested that robust and concrete regulatory measures be introduced that are culturally and contextually sensitive, inclusive, appropriate, and trustworthy – and are based on public empowerment and human rights objectives. Doing so will ensure that we are perfectly positioned to harness and promote the benefits that novel technologies have to offer, while safeguarding public health and curtailing the ambitions of rogue actors. This it is acknowledged is no easy task, so, as a point of departure, this paper sets out a path forward by means of certain, practical recommendations – by constructing genome editing regulation in a manner that both fulfils the desire to better progress human health and that can withstand legal and ethical scrutiny.The following observations and recommendations are made: Firstly, that a solution of effective, legitimate governance should consist of a combination of national and supranational legislative regulation or ‘hard’ law, in combination with ‘soft’ ethics, firmly anchored in and underpinned by human rights values. Second, that efforts to support legal and ethical solutions should be rigorous, practical, and robust, contribute to a reaffirmation of human rights in a contextually sensitive manner, and be transnational in reach. Lastly, that greater harmonisation across jurisdictions and increased public engagement be sought. This it is proposed will address the question of how to implement a normative framework which in turn can prevent future rogue actors. (shrink)

A great deal of constructivist international relations research on norms focuses on the diffusion of liberal human rights values. In contrast, this article analyzes how critics seek to undermine human rights principles in contexts where human rights norms are increasingly hegemonic. It argues that when norm challengers are frustrated by the institutionalization of human rights, they engage in transnational strategies to pursue their agendas. In norm proxy war, actors patronize surrogates in locales where norms are weak in the (...) hope that victories abroad will reverberate internationally and at home. This dynamic is illustrated by American evangelical sponsorship of political homophobia in Uganda, culminating in that country’s draconian anti-LGBT legislation. When norms are resisted through outsourcing, actors contract out human rights violations in an effort to erode norms through practice, as evidenced by patterns of extraterritorial detention and extraordinary rendition to torture in the post-9/11 “Global War on Terror.” Identifying these patterns broadens understanding of potential pathways of norm contestation. (shrink)

In combining the micropolitics approach in international management, the industrial relations literature and business ethics, this article conceptualizes global framework agreements as an alliance between central CSR managers of transnational corporations and central actors within trade unions to monitor subsidiaries in the implementation of CSR policies. The empirical investigation, based on the qualitative analysis of ten French multinational companies, confirms the relevance of such a conceptualization. It particularly shows that central CSR managers hope mobilizing the union network to (...) increase their capacity to supervise subsidiaries. Over there, it helps understanding concrete mechanisms adopted to implement global framework agreements since, in some of the studied cases, the managerial and union channels are coordinated precisely to strengthen this capacity. It, then, highlights the procedural nature of policies regarding global framework agreements. Overall, this paper examines the conditions necessary for mobilization of the union network and suggests avenues for future research. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay aims to bring two important lines of inquiry and criticism together. It first lays out an institutionally enriched account of what a just world economic order will look like. That account prescribes, via the requisites to that mechanism which most directly instantiates the account, “three realms of equal treatment and market completion”—the global products, services, and labor markets; the global investment/financial markets; and the global preparticipation opportunity allocation. The essay then suggests how, with minimal if any departure from (...) familiar canons of traditional international legal mandate interpretation, each of the Bretton Woods institutions—particularly the GATT/WTO and the IMF—can be viewed at least in part as charged with the task of fostering equal treatment and ultimate market completion within one of those three realms. The piece then argues that one of the institutions in particular—the World Bank—has, for reasons of at best negligent and at worst willful injustice on the part of influential state actors in the world community, fallen farthest short in pursuit of what should be viewed as its proper mandate. The article accordingly concludes that a fuller empowerment of the Bank to effect its ideal mission will press the Bretton Woods system more nearly into ethical balance, and with it the world into justice; and that full empowerment of the GATT/WTO and IMF should be partly conditioned upon the fuller empowerment of the Bank. (shrink)

The European Universities Initiative (EUI), created by the European Commission in 2017, is a recent novel phenomenon within the European Union policy toolkit that explicitly targets the development of transnational cooperation in higher education (HE). To date, the EUI counts 44 European university alliances, involving around 340 HE institutions. In this paper, we argue that the EUI can be seen as a case of a transnational institution building process representing a potentially significant structural reform for European higher education. (...) Anchored in new institutionalism, we explore the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive dimensions of the EUI. Methodologically, this study analyzes the perspectives of European policy actors (n = 4), a set of policy documents (n = 13) and the mission statements of the EUI’s partnerships funded before 2022 (n = 41). The results show that the EUI emerges as the ‘next level of cooperation’ in European HE since it aims to transform European cooperation (regulative dimension), to create and diffuse a new model for European HE following a challenge-based approach (normative dimension), and to work as a way to reinforce and institutionalize European and global scripts for European HE (cultural-cognitive dimension). (shrink)

The dissertation deals with the questions surrounding the legal, ethical and strategic aspects of armed drones in warfare. This is a vast and complex field, however, one where there remains more conflict and debate than actual consensus. -/- One of the many themes addressed during the course of this research was an examination of the evolution of modern asymmetric transnational armed conflict. It is the opinion of the author that this phenomenon represents a “grey-zone”; an entirely new paradigm of (...) warfare. International terrorism has not been dealt with in a cohesive fashion. Any international prosecution of terrorism which has been conducted has been either “sectoral” adopting a piecemeal typological approach or has been carried out at the domestic level. -/- A novel approach to the problem, of sub-national actors with transnational reach, was proposed, by attributing certain groups with a new legal personality, that of “Stateless International Entities”, or “SIEs”. Those groups who possess, for all intents and purposes, the same attributes as those of States, could then be judged for their behavior before an international tribunal. Other important topics addressed in this research include an examination of important case law, targeted killing, autonomy, preemption versus prevention, imminence versus intent, the find, fix and finish paradigm, the impact of the media, and the role of the CIA, and finally, the flawed reasoning which adopts technology as a form of strategy. (shrink)

This article explores the significance of feminism in transnational activism around LGBTQ protest events, namely equality marches and associated festivals in Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw in Poland. The arguments advanced in this article are based on a multi-method qualitative research project focusing on transnational cooperation in the planning and realization of LGBTQ protest events in Poland, conducted in the years 2008–2009. The authors highlight the decisively coalitional nature of the activist networks around LGBTQ politics in some of the (...) locations studied. They argue that feminists are core actors in these ‘networked solidarities’ around the oppression and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people both in local and transnational contexts. Solidarity is a concept used by many research participants to account for their political actions and to rationalize intra- and intergroup dynamics shaped by complex webs of differences. The authors draw on postcolonial feminist discussions on the limits and potentialities of politics of solidarity as a ‘politics of location’ to account for tensions which some activists reported regarding their experience of ‘coalition work’. Some of these tensions related to gender politics and gender relations, always articulated in the conjunction of wider webs of power relations. (shrink)

The World Bank’s World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development 2012 makes many recommendations for addressing the severe gender disparities that it finds persisting across much of the world. This paper proposes that the recommendations focus too exclusively on remedies at the national level while paying insufficient attention to transnational arrangements. The imbalance of the report’s analysis places too much responsibility for addressing the disparities on local and national actors, while underplaying the responsibilities of transnational actors, (...) including the World Bank itself. The idea of transnational cycles of gendered vulnerability provides a methodological approach for better assigning responsibility for global gender disparities. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 20th century, research on material substances such as blood and metals was in high demand, as is apparent from the successful careers of the serologist Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884–1954) and the metallurgist Jan Czochralski (1885–1953). Both were leading experts of their time, their transnational biographies – spanning the German-speaking countries and Poland – were remarkably similar, and they both played important roles in the development of their respective disciplines. This paper explores how their contributions were (...) closely tied to the circulation of their respective research materials – blood and metals – and of knowledge about them throughout Europe and beyond. These examples forcefully demonstrate that, in order to fully understand how specific, widely accepted bodies of knowledge emerge, both local situations and the material conditions have to be considered. Drawing on Latour's actor-network theory, the transnational stories of serology and metallurgy demonstrate the range of human and non-human actors, practices, and techniques that contributed to the circulation of knowledge, to its successful application, and also to occasional failure in specific geographical and cultural contexts. (shrink)

In recent years, countries have begun to establish ministries of transitional justice as part of political transitions from authoritarianism to democracy or from conflict to peace. This may reflect a broader historical trend in the administration of TJ, which has evolved from isolated offices within a particular ministry to ad hoc cross-ministry coordinating bodies to the establishment of dedicated ministries. The reasons for the establishment of specific ministries to pursue TJ, what we call ministerialization, have not attracted scholarly attention. This (...) article explores the causes and likely consequences of this development. In particular, it applies international relations, comparative politics, and public policy theories to explain the phenomenon. Contrary to some TJ literature that is concerned about hegemonic transnational discourse, international actors have played little to no role in shaping how TJ is bureaucratically managed. Rather, based upon fieldwork in Solomon Islands and Tunisia, the article concludes that ministerialization has been the result of domestic policy entrepreneurship. For TJ ministries to become a norm, however, more transnational actors will need to be convinced of the benefits of such an institutional arrangement. (shrink)

Les sciences sociales ont longtemps appréhendé le concept d'événement avec méfiance en évitant d'accorder sa juste place à leur capacité de rupture. Dès lors qu'il est question d'événements médiatiques, la perspective constructiviste fait des événements le produit d'une construction déformante de la réalité. Or, un événement est différent d'un fait ou d'une simple occurrence parce qu'il comporte une capacité de rupture qui déborde largement le travail des médias. Celui-ci s'articule en amont à l'activité d'une multitude d'acteurs et en aval au (...) regard d'un public. La question est alors de savoir de quelle façon les événements internationaux affectent un large public. Or, il semble que la médiatisation de ces événements imbrique des normes et des valeurs universelles à des contextes d'interprétation culturellement situés. Parce qu'ils se déploient sur des scènes publiques internationales et convoquent des acteurs transnationaux, parce qu'ils sont retransmis en direct par des chaînes de télévision transnationales, les événements internationaux ont pris la forme « d'événements globaux» et suscitent des émotions qui traduisent l'émergence d'une sensibilité mondiale.The social sciences have long grasped the concept of the event with suspicion by not granting its rightful place in their ability to rupture. When it comes to media events, the constructivist perspective of events is the product of a construction distorting reality. However, an event is different from a simple fact or occurrence because it has a breaking capacity far beyond the work of the media. It is divided into upstream activity of a multitude of actors and downstream with respect to a public. The question then is how international events affect a wide audience. However, it seems that the media coverage of these events overlaps standards and universal values ​​of culturally situated contexts of interpretation. Because they are deployed on public stages and convene international transnational actors, because they are broadcast live by television channels transnational, international events took the form of "global events" and raise emotions reflect the emergence of a global sensibility. (shrink)

This article provides a biographical overview of the life of the Venerable Lokanatha (1897?1966), who was born in Italy as Salvatore Cioffi and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After converting to Buddhism in his late-twenties, Lokanatha travelled to Burma, took ordination as a monk, and began a remarkable 40 year career as a writer, lecturer, organizer, and Buddhist missionary throughout South Asia and the world. Beyond biography, Lokanatha and the various responses to him are contextualized within the different cultural spheres (...) in which he operated, from the anti-colonial Buddhist revival in Burma to the mocking indifference Lokanatha found in the United States. Scholarship on modern Buddhism, particularly recent work on U Dhammaloka, is used to situate Lokanatha's life and its facets of conservative reformer and transnational actor. Finally, an account of the source material used to reconstruct the life of Lokanatha is employed to offer practical methodological explanations for his absence from conventional narratives of modern Buddhism and what his inclusion along with other figures might mean in the future. (shrink)

The demand for more accountable international relations is really a demand for greater legitimacy. While many transnational actors are highly accountable, they lack legitimacy because they are not democratically accountable. Recent innovations in the theory and practice of accountability suggest that accountability to democratic standards can provide greater legitimacy for transnational actors and international relations without requiring the replication of democratic mechanisms of accountability globally.

Using the tools of normative political theory, this book explores the political relationship between exiles and the communities from which they have fled. It makes two central claims. First, exiles have rights and responsibilities in their homelands and are morally required and permitted to play particular roles in the homeland. Second, in playing these roles, exile politics can perform two corrective functions: it can repair defective political institutions at home and it can compensate for institutional shortcomings in the global domain. (...) In short, exiles engage in a ‘politics from below’ and ‘away’ that produces alternative sites of power and can mitigate the several failings of an international system of states in an unequal world. This normative exploration of exile politics has a few implications. It counters an overwhelming focus, in both political philosophy and public discourse, on the consequences of forced migration for receiving societies—a focus that often treats exiles as passive actors. Recognizing the political agency of exiles reveals another side of the migration story, and allows for a more fulsome exploration of what political obligation and membership mean in an increasingly transnational world. Identifying exiles as important domestic and transnational actors also points to the ways third parties ought to enable the different roles exiles play in their communities of origin and in the international domain. And recognizing exile agency highlights the shortcomings of an international system of refugee protection that focuses on exiles’ humanitarian needs but denies them their political rights and agency. (shrink)

This article addresses India's contemporary population control policies and practices as a form of gender violence perpetrated by the state and transnational actors against poor, Adivasi and Dalit women. It argues that rather than meeting the needs and demands of these women for access to safe contraception that they can control, the Indian state has targeted them for coercive mass sterilisations and unsafe injectable contraceptives. This is made possible by the long-term construction of particular women's lives as devalued (...) and disposable, and of their bodies as excessively fertile and therefore inimical to development and progress. It further considers how population policy is currently embedded in the neoliberal framework of development being pursued by the Indian state. In particular, it argues that the violence of population policies is being deepened as a result of three central and interrelated aspects of this framework: corporate dispossession and displacement, the intensification and extension of women's labour for global capital, and the discourses and embodied practices of far-right Hindu supremacism. At the same time, India's population policies cannot be understood in isolation from the global population control establishment, which is increasingly corporate-led, and from broader structures of racialised global capital accumulation. The violence of India's contemporary population policies and the practices they produce operate at several different scales, all of which involve the construction of certain bodies as unfit to reproduce and requiring intervention and control. (shrink)

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in South Africa has drawn particular attention in recent years, not only because of the country's high rates of infection but also because of the highly contentious debates between the state, AIDS NGOs, and scientists over AIDS policy. The national AIDS lobby in South Africa, including groups such as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), has been forcefully articulating a rights-based discourse as a strategy to realize particular normative claims on the state. I examine these recent public (...) debates and challenges to the human rights based response to AIDS that has gained consensus internationally among AIDS NGOs, governments, doctors and medical researchers. I explore the limitations of framing political demands in terms of the constitution and within a rights-based discourse in the present are of globalization and neo-liberalism, where the state’s capacity to respond to the social welfare demands of its citizens has declined, and where the protection of universal human rights requires that powerful transnational actors, in addition to the state, be held democratically accountable. (shrink)

In the current era, governments are playing smaller roles in regulating workers’ rights internationally, and transnational corporations (TNCs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in the struggle for workers’ rights, and labour/trade unions have started to fill this governance gap. This paper focuses on the least researched of the relationships among these three actors, the union–NGO relationship, by analysing the ways in which it affects definitions of TNC responsibility for workers’ rights at their suppliers’ factories. Based on a qualitative study (...) of the union–NGO relationship in the Swedish garment industry between 1996 and 2005, we propose that there are six main configurations of union–NGO relationships. By linking these configurations to their effects on TNC responsibility, we propose that co-ordination relationships between unions and NGOs, particularly high-commitment co-ordination relationships, are likely to result in a broadening of the definition of TNC responsibility, while conflictual relationships, both high and low commitment, result in a narrowing of the definition of TNC responsibility. The study indicates that co-operation is generally more beneficial for both unions and NGOs than is any form of conflictual relationship, in terms of broadening the definition of TNC responsibility. (shrink)

Multi-stakeholder initiatives involve actors from several spheres of society in collaborative arrangements to reach objectives typically related to sustainable development. In political CSR literature, these arrangements have been framed as improvements to transnational governance and as being somehow democratic. We draw on Mouffe’s works on agonistic pluralism to problematize the notion that consensus-led multi-stakeholder initiatives bring more democratic control on corporate power. We examine two initiatives which address two very different issue areas: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (...) and the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. We map the different kinds of adversarial relations involved in connection with the issues meant to be governed by the two initiatives, and find those adversarial relations to take six main shapes, affecting the initiatives in different ways: competing regulatory initiatives; pressure-response relations within multi-stakeholder initiatives; pressure-response relations between NGOs and states through multi-stakeholder initiatives; collaboration and competition between multi-stakeholder initiatives and states; pressure-response relations between civil society actors and multi-stakeholder initiatives; and counter-hegemonic movements against multi-stakeholder initiatives as hegemonic projects. We conclude that multi-stakeholder initiatives cannot be democratic by themselves, and we argue that business and society researchers should not look at democracy or politics only internally to these initiatives, but rather study how issue areas are regulated through interactions between a variety of actors—both within and without the multi-stakeholder initiatives—who get to have a legitimate voice in this regulation. (shrink)

The history of the sciences and humanities follows cycles in some of which there is greater emphasis on the continuity of developments, in others on the breaks in continuity. In recent years the main focus of research for the 20th century has been on the continuities extending beyond the boundaries of 1933 and 1945. The main aim of this study, however, is to examine the impulses for the internationalization of German universities provided by a transnational group of academic migrants. (...) These migrants, whose origins were in the German academic community, represented an alternative continuity beyond the boundaries of this period: they were visiting academics who were the conveyors and interpreters of ideas from Germany into the USA and Britain and vice versa. The study of this group therefore combines remigration history and the history of universities as institutions, focussing on actors, networks and innovations in teaching, with the history of individual subjects and disciplines. (shrink)