Events
2007-2008
Tuesday, March 25, 11:45am
Horchow Seminar Room, 55 Hillhouse AvenueThe Yale Working Group on Global Governance presents a talk by
Luc Fransen, University of Amsterdam
“Understanding dynamics of private regulatory competition: the case of global labour standards”
Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to robert.bartholomew@yale.edu
Literature on private governance of labour and environmental issues holds that competition between private regulatory initiatives may promote an upward shift in higher level regulation, more stringent corporate policies and wider positive social and environmental impacts. This would be possible because of a trend towards rising public transparency, the commitment to continuous improvement and the practice of comparison and evaluation by parties involved. This paper argues both inductively and deductively that this contention may be too optimistic. Using illustrations from the field of private regulation of labour standards, it questions assumptions about the nature and effect of regulatory competition as well as propositions on the “upward” direction of harmonization efforts.
2006 - 2007
Tuesday, April 17 12:00-1:00
Horchow Seminar Room, 55 Hillhouse AvenueThe Yale Working Group on Global Governance Presents:
"An Informational Theory of Election Observers, Allowing for Domestic and International Audiences"Nikolay Marinov, Political Science
*Lunch will be served-please RSVP to nicole.cusano@yale.edu by April 13*
In politics, information is a valuable commodity. Elections, even in the most autocratic political regimes, transmit information about the motivations of the incumbent regime, opposition party behavior, voter preferences, and the degree to which the country can be considered democratic. Once thought of as an event that characterized only democratic regimes, elections have spread to nearly all countries in the world. In addition, post-Cold War changes in the international system have increased the demand for information about election quality. As a result, nearly all regimes in developing countries now invite official delegations of international observers to observe and report on their elections. International election monitoring has become a booming field for many international organizations and non-governmental organizations, and a typical election monitoring mission now lasts for more than three months, coordinates and shares information with domestic organizations, evaluates all aspects of the electoral process, deploys hundreds of observers on election day, and most importantly, is usually willing to condemn an election which is found to be fraudulent. How has the proliferation of international election observation influenced political transitions throughout the developing world?
Tuesday, March 6, 12:00-1:00
Room 102, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse AvenueThe Yale Working Group on Global Governance presents:
"ISO 26000 on Social Responsibility: An Experiment in Multi-stakeholder Process"Ira Feldman, Greentrack Strategies
*Lunch will be served-please RSVP to nicole.cusano@yale.edu
ISO 26000 will be an international standard on "social responsibility" with a scope covering much the same ground that most in academia and industry would generally label as "corporate social responsibility" or CSR. Why did the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) decide to drop the "C" in CSR? How does this initiative differ from all previous ISO standardization activities? Is this process likely to produce a successful and useful outcome? This talk will address these and other substantive and procedural issues raised by ISO's first effort to convene an multi-stakeholder process. The ISO Working Group (WG) on Social Responsibility established six stakeholder categories: industry, labor, government, NGOs, consumers, and a catch-all group known as "service, support, research and others" (SSRO). The SSRO stakeholder group includes service providers (i.e., consultants and lawyers), academics, and representatives of national standards bodies (NSBs). Over the last two years, the ISO/SR process has included four international rounds and two working drafts; the final guidance standard will likely be published in 2009.
Tuesday, February 20, 12:00–1:00
Horchow Seminar Room, 55 Hillhouse Avenue"Is there a legitimacy crisis of the nation state?"
Frank Nullmeier, University of Bremen
Globalization is widely understood to challenge the quality of democratic governance, and hence to foster the erosion of the democratic nation-state’s legitimacy. Probing the crisis diagnosis, our paper develops a twofold conceptual and substantive argument. We contend, first, that the communicative dimension of legitimacy – the (de)legitimation of political orders and institutions in public discourse – remains largely unexplored. The paper therefore sketches the rationale and contours of a discourse analytical approach to the study of empirical legitimacy. Secondly, we present findings from a comparative project on legitimacy communication in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The empirical material suggests that there is no pervasive legitimacy crisis of the democratic nation-state. Similarly, there is little evidence for a uniform transformation of the criteria on which legitimacy is based – instead, standards of democratic quality continue to play an important role. Our discourse analytical approach makes it possible to identify a set of factors that account for this stability: political objects and evaluative criteria that function as “anchors” of legitimacy, the number and breadth of the normative criteria that underscore legitimacy, and the rise of postnational and postdemocratic pattern of legitimation.
(This paper was co-authored by Achim Hurrelmann, Zuzana Krell-Laluhova, Steffen Schneider, and Achim Wiesner.)
Tuesday, November 7, 12:00-1:00
Horchow Seminar Room, 55 Hillhouse Avenue"Does membership on the UN Security Council influence IMF decisions? Evidence from panel data."
James Vreeland, Political Science
We find that countries serving as rotating members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF in terms of both program participation and number of conditions. We argue that this is because the UN Security Council votes on issues important to the major shareholders of the IMF - issues such as imposing sanctions and going to war. The major shareholders, namely, the United States, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, use their influence at the IMF to ensure favorable treatment from the Fund for temporary members of the UN Security Council. We substantiate our claim using panel data for 191 countries over the period 1951 to 2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary UN Security Council membership and participation in IMF programs, even after accounting for economic and political factors, as well as regional and country effects, and duration dependence. There is also evidence that UNSC membership reduces the number of conditions included in IMF programs. The size of the loan, however, is not affected by UNSC membership. The paper contributes to the growing literature showing that the IMF is abused by major powers to pursue international political goals. We conclude with recommendations for the reform of both international institutions.Tuesday October 3, 12:00-1:00
Horchow Seminar Room, 55 Hillhouse Avenue"Explaining Transnational Private Regulation of Labor and Environmental Conditions"
Tim Bartley
University of Indiana/ Princeton University Center for Globalization and GovernanceTim Bartley is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University and currently a Fellow at the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Much of his research examines the rise of transnational private regulation (in particular, in response to controversies about sweatshops, deforestation, and human rights abuses), the construction of new institutional forms, and the dynamics of "corporate social responsibility."
Professor Bartley's publications include "Certifying Forests and Factories: States, Social Movements, and the Rise of Private Regulation in the Apparel and Forest Products Fields" (Politics & Society), "Corporate Accountability and the Privatization of Labor Standards: Struggles over Codes of Conduct in the Apparel Industry" (Research in Political Sociology), and "Regulating American Industries" (with Marc Schneiberg, American Journal of Sociology).
WG3 Meeting
May 16, 2006, 12:00 - 1:30, Luce Hall, Room 103.Guest Speaker:
Debora Spar, Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration, Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research, Harvard Business SchoolShe will discuss her recent book: The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception
FROM THE PUBLISHER
This is a young industry with staggering potential and daunting challenges. In the baby business no one wants to admit that they own a product, or sell a product, or even that a commercial transaction is taking place. Despite the ambiguities, it is a big market. Fertility procedures in the United States alone accounted for over $3 billion in 2002 and have mushroomed from there. The Baby Business-well-written and deeply researched-is the first book to cast a probing eye on this complicated and fascinating sector and explore it specifically as a business. Still in its infancy, this industry includes stem cell research, human cloning, surrogacy, egg swapping, cross-border adoption, "designer babies," and gender selection. Whether we are talking about the global adoption market or choosing the hair color and height of your offspring, The Baby Business goes behind the scenes to explore how the financial promise and the ethical controversies are inextricably linked. Spar has interviewed top scientists who operate at the forefront of reproductive and genetic science. And she gets inside the firms with the cutting-edge offerings: entrepreneurs struggling to carve out a high potential niche. She looks at all of these enterprises and how they must appropriately deal with the legal, moral, and regulatory challenges that will inevitably come their way. Ultimately, Spar argues, the supply and demand sides of this growing industry will support further innovation, if only we are able to balance the enormous business imperatives and moral controversies.Debora Spar is the Spangler Family Professor at Harvard Business School, where she works on issues of business-government relations and the political environment of international commerce. Dr. Spar's current research focuses on issues of foreign trade and investment, examining how firms compete in foreign markets and how government policies shape and constrain their options. She is particularly interested in information-based industries such as media, entertainment, and biotechnology. Her current research examines the politics of reproductive science, analyzing how the "baby business" has developed and how commerce, politics and technology are likely to interact in and affect this market. Other projects examine the political drivers of foreign direct investment and the impact of investment on human rights and labor standards. At Harvard, Dr. Spar is Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research and teaches courses on the politics of international business, comparative capitalism, and economic development. She is also Chair of Making Markets Work, an executive education program devoted to public and private sector leaders in Africa, and teaches and consults for a number of multinational corporations, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations.
Dr. Spar is the author of numerous publications in academic and public policy journals. Her latest book, The Baby Business was published by Harvard Business School Press in January 2006. She is also author of Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet and The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels, and co-author with Raymond Vernon of Beyond Globalism: Remaking American Foreign Economic Policy.
2005-2006 WG3 Discussions
April 18 – Nicholas Sambanis (Political Science) Why do groups want to secede?
In which regions are we most likely to observe self-determination movements? This research develops a comprehensive theory of secession by analyzing the entire spectrum of demands for self-determination, ranging from demands for greater fiscal and administrative autonomy to demands for complete national independence. The book also explains why some groups use violence in pursuit of self-determination whereas others use nonviolent means. Empirical tests are based on data at the group level and the level of subnational regions and quantitative analysis is supplemented with case-studies
March 20 – Peter Gourevitch (UCSD) Discussing the findings of his recent book Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance
February 21 – Jonathan Koppell (SOM) What is global governance?
Professor Koppell will present a typology of international organizations as a way of examining the nature of global governance. What are the key attributes to look at in studying international organizations? What is governance and how do we distinguish government and governance? What are the key hypotheses to examine with respect to global governance organizations?
November 22 - Lawrence King (Sociology) “The Governance Grenade:
Mass Privatization, State Capacity and Economic Development in Postcommunist and Reforming Communist Societies”This paper argues that rapid large-scale privatization creates severe supply and demand shocks for enterprises, thereby inducing firm failure. The resulting erosion of tax revenues leads to a fiscal crisis for the state, and severely weakens its capacity and bureaucratic character. This, in turn, reacts back on the enterprise sector, as the state can no longer support the institutions necessary for the effective functioning of a capitalist economy, thus resulting in de-modernization and the emergence of crony capitalism.
October 18 - Ben Cashore (FES) “Can Non-State Global Governance be Legitimate? The Paradoxical Institutionalization Stages of Market-Based Authority”
September 20 - Dan Esty (Law/FES) "Toward Good Global Governance: The Role of Administrative Law"
