Private actors in politics and policy-making: Trespassers producing norms?
Type: Workshop
Date: February 29, 2016
Location: Czech Republic
Subject Fields: Political Science, Public Policy, Social Sciences, Sociology, Law and Legal History
Workshop for young researchers, CEFRES Research area “Norms and transgressions”
Deadline for Submission: 29 February 2016.
Decision notification due: 14 March 2016.
Date & Place: 12 May 2016, at CEFRES on Národní 18, conference room on the 7th floor.
Organizers: Jana Vargovčíková (CEFRES & FF UK) and Kateřina Merklová (FF UK)
Please send your CV, paper title and a 500 words-long abstract to: jana.vargovcikova@cefres.cz.
The
workshop will include among its discussants Hélène Michel (SAGE,
Institut d´Études Politiques in Strasbourg) and Michael Smith (CERGE-EI,
Czech Academy of Sciences).
For non-Czech participants, accommodation in Prague can be provided by the organizers.
Call for papers
Political
activities of private actors have long since been an object of study in
many disciplines of social sciences. In political science and
sociology, the notion of “interest group” has served as a particular way
of conceptualizing private actors when they try to influence public
decision-making (Courty 2006; Grossman and Saurugger 2006). In the face
of a growing diversity of entities undertaking such activities (e.g.
individual companies, their associations, think-tanks, hybrid networks
of companies and NGOs), some suggested that the definition of the term
should be extended to encompass this variety of actors (Gray and Lowery
1996; Saurugger 2004) while others have highlighted the specificities of
the role companies (Mclaughlin, Jordan, and Maloney 1993; Coen 1997;
Hart 2008; Ciepley 2013; Landemore and Ferreras 2015) or lobbyists
(Heinz et al. 1993; Kersh 2002; Michel 2005; Courty and Michel 2012)
play as actors in politics. The distinction between the private and the
public spheres, however, remains a common analytical ground to these
works, even when they conclude by observing how the two interlock.
In recent decades however, a body of literature has emerged
that documents a growth in private actors’ involvement in politics and
policy at multiple levels of government, which it relates to the changes
in modes of governance towards more horizontality and flexibility in
creating policy-making fora (Rhodes 1997; Héritier 2002; Hall and
Biersteker 2002; Stone 2013; Peters 2009), but also to the state’s
changing regulatory modes and capacities (Majone 1994; Lascoumes and Le
Galès 2004; Lascoumes and Le Galès 2007).
While some contend these developments testify to a “retreat of the
state” (Strange 1996) or “hollowing out of the state” (Rhodes 1994),
others consider that when outsourcing parts of their responsibilities,
states are indeed keeping control over the process, and remain, in fine,
agents of authority delegation and “accomplices” of the growing role of
private actors (Wright 1994; Knill and Lehmkuhl 2002; Green 2013).
Still, this rising part taken by private actors in politics and policy
has to be read in the context of what has come to be labelled as a
crisis of representation. As public authorities are striving to ground
more firmly their legitimacy, they are opening windows of opportunity
for actors still deprived of a formalized role in politics to negotiate
their place in the public sphere.
As the dichotomy underpinning most of this literature suggests, when
private actors develop activities in order to influence the production
of norms, they can be seen as transgressing borders between the private
and the public sphere.
Our
workshop will focus on the management, the implications, and the
meanings of such transgressions, both analytical and normative:
(1) since norm-production and oversight have been key elements of the
classical distinction between the public and private spheres at least
from the formation of modern state, the very foundations of such
distinction may be questioned with private actors’ increasing
involvement in public decision-making.
(2) the analytical distinction, however, cannot entirely be separated
from a normative one, the private actors’ involvement sometimes leading
to a transgression of norms of democratic decision-making founded on
publicity, legitimacy, equality and accountability.
The
ambivalence in the perceptions of their role also seems to be growing
sharper: On the one hand, private actors are increasingly providing not
only technical, but also legal and legislative expertise, be it via
expert groups or through the outsourcing of legal work by parties and
administrations. They are labelled as partners of public authorities in the Public-Private Partnership projects, as collaborators (Donahue and Zeckhauser 2006), stakeholders or
become entrepreneurs of norm-creation themselves (Green 2013). In
reaction to broader pressures for companies to take responsibility over
their impacts on society and the environment, CSR strategies have become
a common exercise for large firms. Growing out of the CSR concept, the
notion of corporate citizenship appeared in managerial literature and debates on the purpose of multinational firms, and initiated claims of rights based on these new ways of legitimation (Champion and Gendron 2005; Gendron 2014).
On the other hand, accounts multiplied of private actors’ involvement
in financing political parties, of their seeking public procurement
contracts through practices of clientelism or corruption, and of their
growing investments in lobbying. After decades of reluctance, the
criminal liability of companies has entered criminal codes of most
European countries: today, companies, and not only “deviant” individuals
working for them, can be accountable for white-collar crime (Lascoumes,
1997). Correspondingly, the “fight against corruption” has been
institutionalized at both transnational and national levels
(Favarel-Garrigues 2009). As contextual as perceptions of corruption
might be (Heidenheimer and Johnston 2001; Lascoumes 2011), countless
scandals and affairs related to corruption (Thompson 2000; Offenstadt et
al. 2007; Rayner 2007; Blic and Lemieux 2005) have stirred public
indignation in the recent decades.
Our workshop will bring together junior researchers (advanced PhD
students and post-docs in political science, law, sociology and
economics) who seek to address the changing role of private actors in
norm-production. We particularly welcome papers, empirical or
theoretical, related to Central and Eastern European contexts.
Areas of interest include but are not limited to the following:
1.
How do private actors manage these transgressions both internally
(vis-à-vis their shareholders and employees), and externally (public
communication, interactions with public actors)? How do they adapt their
practices to the rules of the public sphere? How in turn do they
transform these very rules?
2. What
role do intermediaries such as consultants, lobbyists, lawyers or
advisors play in managing the transgressions between the private and
public spheres, both as analytical and as normative categories?
3. How do various public actors manage private actors’ transgressions in the political sphere?
4.
What does the growing involvement of private actors in politics and
policy mean for the very dichotomy of the public and private spheres and
the associated dichotomy of public and private actors? How can we grasp
the impact of such developments on our understanding of democratic
governance?
The scientific committee will include Hélène
Michel (SAGE, Institut d´Études Politiques de Strasbourg), Michael
Smith (CERGE-EI, Czech Academy of Sciences), Ondřej Slačálek (Charles
University in Prague) and Ondřej Císař (Institute of Sociology, Czech
Academy of Sciences).
For References and further information, please see the website of the workshop.
Contact Info:
Jana Vargovčíková
Charles University in Prague
Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (cotutelle)
CEFRES UMIFRE 13 CNRS-MAEDI
+420 224 921 400
Contact Email: