Alejandro Milcíades Peña

Governing differentiation: On standardisation as political steering

The introduction of Luhmann’s System Theory to International Relations has been long overdue. In the last few years, articles by Donnelly (2012) and Buzan and Albert (2010) have started to discuss the application of the concept of differentiation to International Relations theory, and an edited book by Albert et al. (2010) has examined how systemic thought can reinvigorate the study of world politics. This article welcomes and continues these developments by proposing a Luhmannian reinterpretation of the evolution and functioning of governance via standards. The article argues that standardisation — involving the proliferation of standards but also of standardised instruments such as rankings, indicators and benchmarks — can be understood as a mechanism of political steering in a growingly differentiated (world) society. By considering standardisation as a systemic adaptation of the political system to a multifunctional environment, this article contests conventional economistic and power-based explanations where the ‘standardisation turn’ in global governance is a mere consequence of neoliberal globalisation, power struggles among states or some type of hegemonic logic. In this manner, the article suggests that Luhmann’s Systems Theory can provide a more encompassing framework to understand the operation of standards as an extension of politics beyond territory, and to frame the challenges of governing an increasingly complex world.

Marina Silva and the rise of sustainability in Brazil

In August 2014, the Brazilian political landscape was rocked by the ‘Marina phenomenon’. After the death of Eduardo Campos in an airplane accident, the presidential ticket of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) was assumed by Marina Silva, former Minister of Environment under Lula da Silva, former Green Party presidential candidate, and one of the founders of the political platform Rede Sustentabilidade (Sustainability Network). Spurred by popular disillusionment with the Worker’s Party (PT) and the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) – the two parties that have dominated Brazilian politics in recent decades – the PSB quickly jumped from 8% to 21% in voting intention polls. In the end, however, Silva did not reach the second round of the election and ended up supporting PSDB candidate Aécio Neves against Dilma Rousseff, the candidate of the ruling PT. What does this turn of events mean for the ideas espoused by Silva, namely her emphasis on environmental issues and sustainable development? It is too soon to declare the demise of the ‘phenomenon’ embodied by Silva. Here, we analyse the origins of Silva’s challenge to the political status quo, arguing that more important than her electoral results are the lasting implications of the sustainability discourse she espoused. This discourse not only accentuated an environment-focused cleavage previously absent from Brazilian politics but also, and perhaps more importantly, contributed to the consolidation of an overarching, sustainability-centred political challenge. This challenge goes beyond environmental issues by conjoining a diverse range of social, economic and political demands such as the reform of the political system, the fight against corruption and the control of inflation.

RESPONDING TO THE STREET: GOVERNMENT RESPONSES TO MASS PROTESTS IN DEMOCRACIES*

This article proposes two models that address the neglected relationship between protests, government countermovement strategies, and democratic politics. By contrasting centrifugal and centripetal dynamics triggered by government responses to mass protest, the models theorize the link between government counterframes and opposition politics in democracies. The strategies deployed by the Argentine and Brazilian governments during the cycle of mass protests that erupted in these countries in 2012–13 are used in illustration. The counterframing models developed in this article shed new light on the role of government responses in the dynamics of contentious politics, with potential for application to other contentious episodes and political contexts.

Politics, Ideology, and Indifference in Argentina

The situation of sustainability governance in Argentina outlines a scenario of limited engagement by relevant actors and of low visibility in public opinion and civil society. In this chapter, I argue that this ‘indifferent’ pattern of engagement can be explained by three main features of national, political culture interfering with major semantic premises of the sustainability agenda: (i) a historical sidelining of ecological concerns in public opinion and political struggles, (ii) a resilient anti-corporate stance pervading the position of influential political players and sectors of civil society, rejecting the involvement of business in public affairs, and (iii) the exclusive and polarizing effect of the ideology and rhetoric advanced by the Kirchnerist governments since the early 2000s, deterring private-led governance rationales.

Introduction: Where Does Private Governance Go?

The chapter outlines the book’s overall argument, pointing to the limitations of ‘globalist’ perspectives in the governance literature whereby macro processes and explanations take precedent over developments at the domestic level, particularly when these refer to the global South. Against this, I argue that the diffusion of transnational regulation can be conceived as a process of collective mobilization, aiming to motivate actors in different locations to adopt new norms and behaviors. Hence, I rely on a detailed examination of the contrasting situation of sustainability governance in Argentina and Brazil to demonstrate the conditioning effect of national political cultural institutions, discourses, and legacies over the type of engagement and interest local actors display in relation to transnational regulatory initiatives.

Global Trajectories in Sustainability Governance

The chapter explores the evolution of sustainability governance from a global perspective. By tracing the modern origins of international and private programs of social, environmental, and corporate regulation, I identify the context of emergence of distinct strands of the ‘governance of the social’ through the twentieth century. These ‘cleavages’ represent different rationales, discourses, and institutional mechanisms of transnational regulation, which in time combined to constitute broader agendas. Thus, in the chapter I trace the evolution of social and environmental regulatory initiatives from the early twentieth century to the late 1990s, when the sustainability agenda consolidated, and introduce three transnational initiatives, the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the ISO 26000 Working Group, as institutional representatives of the contemporary phase of transnational governance.

Mapping Participation in Argentina and Brazil

The chapter develops the initial examination of the engagement of Argentine and Brazilian actors with contemporary sustainability governance. By mapping participation in three case study initiatives, the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and the ISO 26000 Working Group, and performing a wider network analysis, I reveal that the countries display markedly different participation profiles. In Brazil, this is characterized by a dense and centralized network comprising a variety of important firms and civil society actors, an identifiable cluster of core players, and diverse links with the international sustainability community. In Argentina, the pattern is more fragmented and dispersed, featuring actors with scarce institutional links with both the global initiatives and with each other, as well as proxy organizations of limited influence.

Sustainability, Ethical Business, and Party Politics in Brazil

The chapter argues that the dense and centralized participation pattern found in Brazil reflects, first, the overlapping of private governance frames with relevant dimensions of the local political agenda since the late 1990s, and second, the close ideational and institutional links developed between a particular faction of businesspersons, civil society, and the political system, particularly around the Workers’ Party PT. As a result, global sustainability norms and initiatives have not been restricted by domestic cultural political cleavages: on the contrary, they benefited from being perceived as an extension of domestic campaigns, struggles, and political discourses. Due to this, the sustainability agenda in Brazil has assumed a more public and assertive political orientation, often surpassing regulatory ambitions and mechanisms found at the global level.

Framing Transnational Governance

In this chapter, I situate transnational governance and diffusion processes against mainstream explanations. I challenge what I consider a pervasive Western perspectivism in conventional theoretical models and point to the limitations of technical and transcendental explanations for unravelling domestic trajectories of private regulation and accounting for context-specific developments and outcomes. Subsequently, drawing from social movement ideas, I propose an interpretative framework where the transnational diffusion of private governance is conceived as a contingent process of framing, sense-making, and (eventual) collective mobilization, significantly affected by the degree of semantic alignment between ‘global’ regulatory norms and frames with relevant dimensions of national political culture, including historical institutional and non-institutional legacies, models of state-society relations, and political discourses.