Christopher K. Ansell

Managing Transboundary Crises: Identifying the Building Blocks of an Effective Response System

In recent years, crises have become increasingly transboundary in nature. This exploratory paper investigates whether and how the transboundary dimensions of crises such as pandemics, cyber attacks and prolonged critical infrastructure failure accentuate the challenges that public and private authorities confront in the face of urgent threats. We explore the transboundary dimensions of crises and disasters, discuss how an increase in ‘transboundedness’ affects traditional crisis management challenges and investigate what administrative mechanisms are needed to deal with these compounded challenges. Building on lessons learned from past crises and disasters, our goal is to stimulate a discussion among crisis management scholars about the political-administrative capabilities required to deal with ‘transboundary’ crises.

The Networked Polity: Regional Development in Western Europe

Drawing together work in comparative politics, public administration, organization theory, and economic sociology, this article describes a distinctive form of modern polity-the ‘networked polity’. In the networked polity, states are strongly embedded in society and pursue their objectives by operating through networks of societal associations. Both state agencies and societal associations take the form of ‘network’ or ‘organic’ organizations-decentralized, team-based organizations with strong lateral communication and coordination that crosses functional boundarieswithin and between organizations. These organizations are then linked together by means of cooperative exchange relationships around common projects. The role of the state is to empower stakeholders and facilitate cooperation among them. The concept is illustrated through an examination of regional development strategies in Western Europe.

Symbolic networks : The realignment of the French working class, 1887-1894

How can abstract symbols provide the basis for organizational cohesion? In the early 1890s, the general strike provided such a symbol for French trade unions. In rallying around this symbol, the unions broke free from competing political loyalties and brought about a fundamental realignment of the French labor movement. The article argues that organizational cohesion emerges through the interplay between powerful symbols, political discourse, and social or interor‐ganizational networks. Using archival records and a statistical analysis of the watershed vote for the general strike, the author demonstrates how the organizing power of this symbol was embedded in local multitrade union federations known as bourses du travail and in the corporatist discourse they evoked.

Restructuring Territoriality: Europe and the United States Compared

Part I. Theoretical Frameworks: 1. Restructuring territoriality and authority Christopher K. Ansell 2. Old and new peripheries in the processes of European territorial integration Stefano Bartolini 3. Center-periphery alignments and political contention in Late-Modern Europe Sidney Tarrow Part II. The Transformation of Governance: 4. Sovereignty and territoriality in the European Union: transforming the UK institutional order James A. Caporaso and Joseph Jupille 5. Social citizenship in the European Union: towards a spatial reconfiguration? Maurizio Ferrera 6. Islands of transnational governance Alex Stone Sweet 7. Regional integration and left parties in Europe and North America Gary Marks and Ian Down Part III. Europe-US Comparisons: 8. The European Union in American perspective: the transformation of territorial sovereignty in Europe and the United States Sergio Fabbrini 9. Is the democratic deficit a deficiency: the case of immigration policy in the US and EU Bruce Cain 10. Territory, representation, and political outcome: the United States and the European Union compared Alberta Sbragia Part IV. Concluding Thoughts: 11. Territoriality, authority, democracy Christopher K. Ansell 12. Postscript: what inefficient history and malleable practices say about nation states and supranational democracy when territoriality in no longer exclusive Giuseppe Di Palma.

The Art of Being Indispensable Noncharismatic Personalism in Contemporary Political Parties

Max Webers theory of leadership authority has deeply influenced theories of political parties, but Webers concept of charisma is often used indiscriminately to refer to all kinds of personalist leadership. What is more, Webers tripartite typology of traditional, charismatic and rational-legal authority neglects a form of leadership often found in major contemporary political parties. This article formulates a differentiated typology and conceptualization of personalism, and theorizes an important but heretofore poorly understood form of political organization: the non-charismatic personalist political party. The leaders of such parties embody great personal authority within their organizations and often serve as symbols around which their parties can rally. But they are anything but prophets. Their authority arises not from an ability to inspire or transform their followers but rather from the skill to mediate conflicts within the party.

Organizing International Politics: Sovereignty and Open Systems

Changes in the meaning of sovereignty are at the center of intersecting discussions between comparative and international politics. This article uses open-system perspectives from organization theory to move beyond arguments over the erosion or resilience of sovereignty, toward more substantive questions about the nature of the boundaries of political actors, and to frame the possibility that changes in world politics are constituting new actors whose relationships would follow logics different from those ascribed to sovereign states.

Strengthening political leadership and policy innovation through the expansion of collaborative forms of governance

ABSTRACT This article explores how political leadership and policy innovation can be enhanced through collaborative governance. The main findings are that while wicked and unruly problems create an urgent need for policy innovation, politicians are badly positioned to initiate, drive and lead this innovation. They are either locked into a dependency on policy advice from senior civil servants or locked out of more inclusive policy networks. In either case, they are insulated from fresh ideas and ultimately reduced to ‘policy-takers’ with limited engagement in policy innovation. Collaborative policy innovation offers a solution to these limitations.

Perspective—pragmatism in organization studies: : Meeting the challenges of a dynamic and complex world

Organizational scholars have shown a growing interest in drawing on the philosophy of Pragmatism to address contemporary problems and theoretical questions. We elucidate Pragmatism’s core ideas and show their uniqueness and relevance to the field. We present Pragmatism as a problem-solving philosophy that builds on a rich and behaviorally plausible model of human nature, views reality in terms of processes and relations, and highlights the interplay of meaning and action. We demonstrate how Pragmatist ideas can help transcend the perennial problem of agency and structure and illustrate how these ideas might contribute to one specific domain of research on categories and categorization. More generally, Pragmatism is well suited to understanding the contemporary challenges of change and complexity especially as they play out across multiple levels of analysis. We argue that Pragmatism provides a “third way” between rational and structural approaches and represents a living school of organization theory in i...

Bosses of the City Unite! Labor Politics and Political Machine Consolidation, 1870–1910

In the late nineteenth century – an age when the phrase “all politics is local” contained even greater truth than it does today – the distinctive institution of urban public life was the political machine. In assessing the machines importance, some scholars have emphasized the machines role in integrating newly arrived immigrants into the American political system, its provision of basic material goods to the impoverished, its promotion of upward mobility of immigrants, and its coordination of a socially and politically fragmented city. Other scholars have focused on the long-range effect of the political machine on American politics and policy, arguing that the cross-class coalitions built by machine politicians muted the development of a politicized working class in the United States. Some extend this causal chain, arguing that the lack of a stronger class-based politics produced in turn the relative weakness of the American welfare state compared to other Western democracies.

Dynamic Conservatism: How Institutions Change to Remain the Same

The environment of most organizations is beset by continuous change, instability, flux, and unpredictability. If organizations are to survive and prosper under such conditions, they must be capable of dynamic adaption and stable and reliable performance. Organization theory recognizes the importance of both imperatives, but typically assumes that they pull organizations in different directions. Building on Selznick’s theory of institutionalization, we argue that institutions can, should and sometimes do master the challenge of being responsive and stable, while avoiding the potentially destructive tendencies of rigidity and opportunism. Contrary to a prominent view that strong institutionalization leads to inertia, Selznick’s theory suggests that strong institutions are capable of preemptive adaptation to protect the character of their institutions. We describe this state as one of dynamic conservatism and explore four types of preemptive internal reform strategies: strategic retreat, self-cannibalization, experimentation, and repositioning. We conclude with a consideration of factors that might moderate the ability of strong institutions to proactively change in order to remain the same.