191125 - The Boardroom Dynamics of Globalization: How Politics and Expertise Shape the World Polity

Date: 
25 November, 2019 - 12:30 - 14:30


Seminar "The Boardroom Dynamics of Globalization: How Politics and Expertise Shape the World Polity" (PDF, 40 Ko)
Co-organised by Sciences Po, MaxPo & Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics

Monday 25 November 2019, 12.30-2.30 pm, Sciences Po, LIEPP’s Conferences Room, 254 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007 Paris

Globalization is underpinned by international organizations—intergovernmental, non-governmental, or private—that develop norms to diffuse around the world. This article presents an integrative model for understanding how boardroom dynamics within international organizations impact the content of global norms: we argue that these processes are determined, initially, by board members’ education and careers—both a function of the dominant norm apparatus of globalization—and, subsequently, by boardroom interactions between these individuals. To document these processes, we focus on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a body that decides on economic policy issues impacting the lives of billions. First, we trace the education and career trajectories of all 727 board members—that is, state representatives—between 1980 and 2009. We find that they are homogeneous in terms of academic training, but heterogeneous in terms of professional backgrounds. Second, we document how the aforementioned attributes of Board members impact the way they behave in the boardroom, and—by extension—organizational output. Our findings reveal that global norm-making is driven by professionalization and elite socialization dynamics in apex communities, even in formal intergovernmental contexts where the primacy of state interests is commonly assumed to dominate

Speaker: Alexander Kentikelenis, Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Sociology, Bocconi University, Department of Social and Political Sciences

Alexander Kentikelenis has published extensively on three research areas: decision-making in global governance, the development and evolution of global norms, and the social consequences of austerity and market-oriented reforms.
He‘s work has appeared in leading academic journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, The Lancet, and World Development. This research has received attention by various media outlets, including the New York Times, Le Monde, El País, Reuters, Associated Press, and the BBC. In addition, it formed the basis of parliamentary questions in the House of Lords and the European Parliament. Before moving to Milan, Alexander Kentikelenis held research posts at Oxford and Harvard, and read politics and sociology at Cambridge (King’s College) and Athens.

Discussion: Matthias Thiemann, Sciences Po CEE

 

Compulsory registration - For the external people to Sciences Po: You will have to arrive 10 minutes before the beginning of the seminar and to provide you with your identity papers)


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