Renita Thedvall

The EU’s Nomads: national Eurocrats in European policymaking

In the popular view of the EU, its bureaucrats are often seen as the epitome of what Herzfeld (1992: 71) identifies as the stereotype of a bureaucrat: a rigid, inflexible, boring person working for his bureau rather than its clients or society at large. EU bureaucrats are frequently associated with forming useless, interventionist policies, such as prescribing the size of a strawberry or the curve of a banana. Moreover, like its national counterparts, the EU bureaucracy is held to be a hierarchical system akin to that envisaged by Weber (1958: 196ff.) with its emphasis on rules, uniformity and compliance.

Organizing for Social Sustainability: Governance through Bureaucratization in Meta-Organizations

Abstract The difficulties nation states face when attempting to use traditional legal means to cope with transnational phenom-ena such as environmental degradation, international labor conditions, and global trade have created an opportunity for the emergence of new types of regulations. These rules are often issued by organizations that produce voluntary measures such as standards and action plans to influence the behavior of individuals and institutions. These are in many cases meta-organizations that have other organizations rather than individuals as members. They are important links in the process of creating and diffusing dominant definitions in the “ideoscape” of influential policy concepts such as sustainable development. This article explores how two meta-organizations, Fairtrade International (FLO) and Organic Forum, shape the concepts of fair trade and organic food by providing ideas and content to the ideoscape of sustainable development. We argue that this process takes place by governance through bureaucratization in which fair trade and organic food become formalized, precisely defined, and made visible. This in turn determines how—or even if—the social dimension of sustainability can be made into policy. Furthermore, we find explanations in these processes as to why the social dimension of sustainability tends to be the most underdeveloped. We conclude that bureaucratization is also a form of politics, although not one that is as easily recognizable as an open power struggle.

Introduction : makeshift work in a global labour market

In the contemporary world, labour markets and the everyday lives of work are being radically transformed. The guiding ideals for how labour markets should be organized are strongly influenced by fluctuations in the economy and by the direction of ideological winds. In this way, the labour market represents a good indicator for broader changes occurring in society. In 2007, the collapse of the financial market in the US had repercussions all over the world. Many countries fell into recession, the effects of which were dire and immediate, both in the financial world and in the manufacturing industry. Entire regions across the world were soon faced with the threat of mass unemployment. People who had never before had cause to worry about what it might mean to lose their jobs entered the ranks of the unemployed for the first time. For some, redundancy notices came quickly and seemingly without warning; for others, they were more expected. The crisis hit some parts of society hard, resulting in unemployment levels we had not seen since the beginning of the 1990s. A large part of the world is now getting used to unemployment numbers that were recently seen to be unacceptable. After this economic slump, the labour market has become a tougher, more competitive place than it has been for many years. Already with the crisis of the 1990s the labour markets of the Western world underwent significant changes and a different labour market emerged. The neoliberal political ideas of free markets, free trade and emphasis on individual entrepreneurial capabilities and skills as an ideal for organizing society and the labour market slowly gained ground (Harvey 2005; Peck 2010). Twenty years later this ideal had become naturalized as a policy formula for solving problems with unemployment and social exclusion in many countries formerly guided by other ideals, such as an active labour market policy with the goal of protection and full employment rather than