Transnational Expertise

Der Sammelband widmet sich der Analyse transnationaler Expertise - eines Themas, das in jüngerer Zeit beträchtliche Aufmerksamkeit in der Sozial- und Geschichtswissenschaft auf sich gezogen hat. Ihren Ausdruck fand die Forschung in der Entwicklung von Konzepten über transnationale Expertennetzwerke, Epistemische Gemeinschaften oder Gemeinschaften von Praktikern. Dennoch mangelt es bislang weiterhin an systematischem Wissen über die Funktionsweise transnationaler Expertengruppen und die Wechselbeziehungen, die es zwischen ihnen und Akteuren und Organisationen der transnationalen Politik gibt. Vor dem Hintergrund, dass transnationale Expertise bereits seit geraumer Zeit eine wichtige Rolle in der öffentlichen Politik spielt, nimmt dieser Band eine interdisziplinäre Perspektive ein und präsentiert Beiträge aus der Politikwissenschaft, der Soziologie und der Geschichtswissenschaft. Mit Beiträgen von Ingvild Bode, Christian Henrich-Franke, Robert Kaiser, Christian Lahusen, Alexander Reinfeld, Lukas Schemper, Andrea Schneiker und Carola Maria Westermeier.

Diane Stone addresses the network alliances or partnerships of international organisations with knowledge organisations and networks. Moving beyond more common studies of industrial public-private partnerships, she addresses how, and why, international organisations and global policy actors need to incorporate ideas, expertise and scientific opinion into their 'global programmes'. Rather than assuming that the encouragement for 'evidence-informed policy' in global and regional institutions of governance is an indisputable public good, she queries the influence of expert actors in the growing number of part-private or semi-public policy networks.

Although Asia has a long history of governance practices, its modern governance systems have been profoundly influenced by the Western models. This book explores how the declining economic and political influences on the global stage of the USA and Europe has significantly reduced developing countries’ confidence in the public governance models promoted by the Western world. As academics have begun to challenge the assuredness of the conventional logic of ‘Western = Global = Best’, scholarship has also grown on the contextualized governance experiences in Asia. This timely volume explores the emergence of Asian models of governance, taking into account the shifting global political economic landscape and the region’s rapid growth in recent decades. Could there be Asian models of governance that are distinct from the Western ones? If so, what are the key characteristics? The authors examine the potentials and challenges of Asian models of governance based on empirical studies from various Asian societies, ranging from Singapore and South Korea to Myanmar and Vietnam. As well as theoretical explorations, the book also provides rich empirical evidence on the contextualized lessons accumulated in Asia, offering a more nuanced understanding of Asian governance experience through comparative case studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Asian Public Policy which was supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education AcRF Tier 2 Grant entitled “Transnational Knowledge Transfer and Dynamic Governance in Comparative Perspective”.

This is he first edited book on gender issues in transnational business cooperation concerning knowledge work. This area has so far been researched mainly by organizational theorists, with their background in business studies, finance, communication or sociology, and gender has seldom been taken into account in these studies. This book shows how fruitful a gendered take on issues within this area is, both for a deepened understanding of these organizational issues and for a widened understanding of gender issues. The chapters in the book cover a range of themes from a gender perspective; culture, communication, identity work, structures, organizational change, globalization, mobility, resistance, leadership and management, international business, work life balance, education and labour market, policies and value systems. The chapters also demonstrate the multidisciplinarity within gender research itself and how different perspectives on gender can be combined and developed. They on the social constructionist approach of “doing gender”, feminist organization theory, gendered discourse analysis, techno-feminism, and critical studies on men and masculinities. The book provides insights relevant for some of the relevant debates in business, economics, geography, sociology, and gender and women’s studies. While primarily a research volume, the book is also useful for people who develop and manage transnational business relations.

This edited volume advances existing research on the production and use of expert knowledge by international bureaucracies. Given the complexity, technicality and apparent apolitical character of the issues dealt with in global governance arenas, ‘evidence-based’ policy-making has imposed itself as the best way to evaluate the risks and consequences of political action in global arenas. In the absence of alternative, democratic modes of legitimation, international organizations have adopted this approach to policy-making. By treating international bureaucracies as strategic actors, this volume address novel questions: why and how do international bureaucrats deploy knowledge in policy-making? Where does the knowledge they use come from, and how can we retrace pathways between the origins of certain ideas and their adoption by international administrations? What kind of evidence do international bureaucrats resort to, and with what implications? Which types of knowledge are seen as authoritative, and why? This volume makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the way global policy agendas are shaped and propagated. It will be of great interest to scholars, policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, international relations, global governance and international organizations.

This book examines the largely neglected but crucial role of transnational actors in democratic constitution-making. The writing or rewriting of constitutions is usually a key moment in democratic transitions. But how exactly does this take place? Most contemporary comparative constitutional literature draws on the concept of constituent power – the power of the people – to address this moment. But what this overlooks, this book argues, is the important role of external, transnational actors who tend to play a crucial role in the process. Drawing on sociolegal methodologies but informed by new legal realism, this book develops a new theoretical framework for examining the involvement of such actors in constitution-making. Empirically grounded, the book uncovers a more comprehensive picture of how constitution-making unfolds on the ground. Illuminating the power dynamics at play during the legal process, it reveals not only the wide range of external actors involved but also the continuity between decolonisation and post-Cold War constitution-making. This book, the first to provide an in-depth examination of external actor involvement in constitution-making, will appeal to scholars of constitutional law, sociolegal studies, law and development, and transitional justice.

A transnational approach to understanding and analyzing knowledge circulation. The contributors to this collection focus on what happens to knowledge and know-how at national borders. Rather than treating it as flowing like currents across them, or diffusing out from center to periphery, they stress the human intervention that shapes how knowledge is processed, mobilized, and repurposed in transnational transactions to serve diverse interests, constraints, and environments. The chapters consider both what knowledge travels and how it travels across borders of varying permeability that impede or facilitate its movement. They look closely at a variety of platforms and objects of knowledge, from tangible commodities—like hybrid wheat seeds, penicillin, Robusta coffee, naval weaponry, seed banks, satellites and high-performance computers—to the more conceptual apparatuses of plant phenotype data and statistics. Moreover, this volume decenters the Global North, tracking how knowledge moves along multiple paths across the borders of Mexico, India, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, the Soviet Union, China, Angola, Palestine and the West Bank, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom. An important new work of transnational history, this collection recasts the way we understand and analyze knowledge circulation.

In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education. Often the expertise needed stemmed from problems at a local or regional level, but many transcended nation-state borders. Experts helped shape a new transnational sphere by creating communities that crossed borders and languages, sharing knowledge and resources through those new communities, and by participating in special events such as congresses and world fairs.